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User: Milharis

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Comments · 63

  1. Why do they want to climb? on Debris, Bodies Recovered From AirAsia Flight 8501 · · Score: 1

    It's probably not the (only) reason for the crash, but I don't understand why they want to climb in this situation. The Air France flight did the same IIRC.
    They can't hope to outclimb a CB and at FL390, the difference between stall speed and VNE gets pretty damn small.
    Maybe it was too late to do anything else, but then they really need to improve their weather forecast in the area.

  2. Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING. on The EU Has a Plan To Break Up Google · · Score: 1

    The problem is that you can't have a better product in six months, at least not a search engine that provides more relevant results.

    I've recently had a lecture from a guy from Bing, and when asked who was more relevant and why, he simply said "Google", especially outside the USA.
    The reason is that search engines are now way more about user data than any IR algorithm.
    Simply put, without the huge market share and time advantage Google has, you won't be able to match them is relevance.
    Now, you can compete on features or things like privacy, but Duckduckgo hasn't been able to upset the market with that.

    To go back to the story, I don't think it's Google's monopoly the problem, it's that Google is accused of leveraging its monopoly to promote their other products.

  3. Too little time in the air on US Air Force Reporting Pilot Shortage · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I don't know if that's as true as in Europe, but the biggest complain I've heard by far from would-be pilots as well as pilots is that they don't fly enough. A flight is so costly that they don't fly more than a few times a month.

    What's rather funny though is that in Europe the situation is reverted, there are far more people that want to become a pilot, fighter or commercial, than jobs available. A lot of airlines have totally frozen hiring for a few years.

  4. Re:Support was already bad on AMD/ATI Drops Windows XP Support · · Score: 1

    It was Rome Total War.
    Upgrading to 7 was both needed and an improvement, so nothing of value was lost.

  5. Support was already bad on AMD/ATI Drops Windows XP Support · · Score: 1

    I've recently bought an AMD card, and it had rendering errors in XP, although it was with a 2004 game.
    Upgrading to 7 fixed the issue.

    So support for newer cards on XP was already rather poor.

  6. Re:Naivete, Stupidity, Etc. on Smartphones Driving Violent Crime Across US · · Score: 0

    I'm not from the US, but it works the same everywhere.
    Most of the time, it's not someone who steal your phone and run, it's 2 or 3 guys with knives waiting in an alley near a building lot.
    When they see someone alone, they threaten/beat him, and take everything, including the smartphone which is often the most valuable thing.

    It's common here to have two phones, a shitty dumbphone with a prepaid card as a bait, and a smartphone hidden somewhere safe.

  7. The true question on Manga Girls Beware: Extra Large Eyes Caused Neanderthal's Demise · · Score: 1

    I think the true question is : could they see better than us with those bigger eyes?
    The rest seems to be wild conjectures.

  8. Re:Speaking for German language, yes on Ask Slashdot: Do Most Programmers Understand the English Language? · · Score: 1

    It's probably because in French bit and byte are pronounced the same way, so you have to either pronounced it like in English, or use a different word.
    While your average French IT worker might understand written English rather correctly, their pronunciation clearly suck, so the first option is a rather bad idea.

    Octet is based on octa, the 8 prefix, so it makes some sense too.

  9. Re:For the record -- why do we still need pilots? on Royal Canadian Air Force Sees More Sims In the Future of Fighter Pilot Training · · Score: 1

    I doubt commercial pilots are going to disappear anytime soon, though their number will decrease, and their role might change.
    Autopilot might be able to perform as well as real pilots (or even better) for normal flight, and during some emergencies, but there's still the problem of catastrophic failures.
    If the whole system shut down (or has to be shut down) on an automatic train or car, you can just stop the vehicle. Obviously, that's not possible with a plane, you need a real person there to handle the situation.

    For the record, you're right about the Skymaster, it was in 1947.

  10. Re:Take-home exams? on Dozens Suspended In Harvard University Cheat Scandal · · Score: 1

    Here in France in the Classes Préparatoires, students have written and oral exams. And it's not only in humanities, but in science as well.
    Basically, you've got 20 minutes to prepare 3 exercises on paper, and 20 minutes to present them. And unless you're really good, you don't have the time to prepare everything before going to the black board, so you have improvise.
    It works quite well, people are rarely contesting the grades, and there's no way a student can cheat.

  11. What if there was a mistake? on Machine Gun Fire From Military Helicopters Flying Over Downtown Miami · · Score: 1

    Apart from the stupidity of using real infrastructure instead of false ones, or at last empty highways, what if one guy mistakenly took real ammo instead of blank ones?
    Don't tell me it can't happen, it already has in France.
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1030442/Horror-French-military-17-people-seriously-hurt-live-bullets-fired-crowd.html

    17 people hurt, and it was with firearms during the day.
    Now imagine a Blackhawk at night...

  12. Ubuntu 32-bit? on Nvidia Doubles Linux Driver Performance, Slips Steam Release Date · · Score: 1, Interesting

    "All tests run on the same system using Intel Core i7-3930K CPU @ 3.20GHz with 8 GB memory, GeForce GTX 680 and Ubuntu 12.04 32-bit."
    8 GB of RAM, and they're using the 32 bit version of Ubuntu ?
    I know it's what Ubuntu is recommending by default, but come on, with the rig they have, why go for 32 bit?

  13. Re:Actually several candidates for "Tauredunum" on Ancient Tsunami Devastated Lake Geneva Shoreline · · Score: 3, Informative

    By ad 563, there was no West Roman Empire anymore, but your arguments still stand for whoever controlled the region at that time.

  14. Almost no harm can be done on Ask Slashdot: Securing a Windows Laptop, For the Windows Newbie? · · Score: 1

    Since he will be the only one to use it, and for games, there should be nothing of value on the computer, so some malware are not going to be the end of the world.
    At worst, he will have his battlenet account hacked, so just teach him to use secure passwords and an authenticator. (You probably already did.)

    As some others have already pointed out, the best is to let him experiment by himself. However, there aren't that many (common) ways to get malwares; if it happens, you'd best have a talk with him about not going to shady websites, or download random stuff (plus you don't necessary want him to go to porn websites too).

  15. Why I would never participate on Want to Change the Slashdot Logo? For 1 Day in October, You Can · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "entrant agrees to allow Sponsor and its designees to use entrant's name, photograph, likeness, statements, biographical information, voice and city and state address for advertising and promotional purposes for this and similar promotions, worldwide, and in perpetuity, in any and all forms of media, now known or hereafter devised without additional compensation, review or approval rights, notification or permission, except where prohibited by law."

    This is why I'm never going to participate to something like that.

  16. Original post by moot on 4chan Undergoing Major Revision, Getting Public API · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://www.4chan.org/news#108
    The original post.
    It's on 4chan, but the page shouldn't contain anything NSFW.

  17. Re:$313? on US Doctors Back Circumcision · · Score: 1

    You do realize that you are quoting a "study" that advise to hurt children so they don't masturbate?
    Unless I've missed something, masturbation is not dangerous, and I find it rather sick to hurt children to protect your own sense of morality.
    If you don't want your children to masturbate, that's your problem, and you can talk with them about that. But you don't hurt them, that's child abuse.

    And if I were to forget about that, you don't even touch the issue of the price.
    You do realize that you have to pay for the surgeon and the operation, and not just the products they are using? And that any operation is by no mean cheap?

  18. $313? on US Doctors Back Circumcision · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Is that over the price of doing the surgery?
    Because from what I could find, it's in the 2-3k range; so if you have to pay $2000 to save $313, that might not be the best idea.

  19. Re:Quarterly security patch? on Experts Develop 3rd-Party Patch For New Java Zero-Day · · Score: 1

    Luckily for criminals, those exploits are made public the day following the quarterly update.

    Seriously though, they don't have out-of-schedule updates for critical security bugs?

  20. That's why comparative charts are good on Inside the Business of Online Reviews For Hire · · Score: 1

    When you've got a website that use comparative charts of all the products they have reviewed, you can have some trust in their value.
    That doesn't mean they there are no review that were paid for, or that no bad side of a product were purposely omitted, but at least that way they can't fake every performance, because they still have to compare them against each other.

    Apart from that, I guess it's best to stick to the website(s) you know you can (more or less) trust, and to always triple check, or more, with user reviews and other websites.

  21. Removing his titles might be pointless on Lance Armstrong and the Science of Drug Testing · · Score: 3, Insightful

    On television tonight, they showed a picture about the 2000 Tour de France (IIRC) with the first ten cyclists.
    All of them (if we count Armstong) had been tested positive to one thing or another, so the title would go to the eleventh guy. He's not positive because he probably hasn't been tested as much.
    Add to that that if I were to take the same drugs they did, I'd still not be able to compete with them (without doping) by a huge margin.

    So regardless of whether he took drugs or not, he still arguably was the best at that time.

  22. What happens if he can't pay? on New Judge Assigned To Tenenbaum Case Upholds $675k Verdict · · Score: 2

    If the judgement is upheld, and he has to pay the $675k, he's most likely not going to be able to pay that sum.
    What would happen then?

    I guess they would probably seize and sell his properties, but that's probably not enough.
    So would he go to jail and have his debt written off, or is he going to kept them for his whole life?
    Something else maybe?

    Basically, why fine someone a sum the judge knows that the defendant won't be able to pay? To make an example I guess, but is there something else?

  23. It's not necessarily tools that are needed on The Rebirth of PC Gaming? Bring On the Modders! · · Score: 3, Informative

    I'm a Rome Total War modder, so my knowledge of modding is mainly restricted to the Total War franchise, and how The Creative Assembly deals with modding.
    But I think that it's probably the same thing everywhere.

    When people think of mod tools, they often think of an editor which allows to modify textures/models and scripts, for the most part. While that's great because it allows beginner to easily mod a few things, that's only minor modding.
    The problem is that while it's fun to change the texture of a horse to a bunny with a hat, it's not those kind of mods that TFA is talking about.
    It's the total overhaul mods that make modding so good, like Counter Strike. And with the amount and diversity of modifications needed, no tools is going to be able to do it.

    In RTW, most files are text files, which means that basically everything that is not hardcoded in the exe can be changed using Notepad. The only place where a tool is needed is for art ressource, as those are packed. And for RTW, it wasn't CA that released this tool, but a guy who reversed-engineering the packing system. In the subsequent release Medieval II Total War, CA actually released a tool to unpack things, because they had added protections.

    The newer TW games however don't have the same major mods, because they changed the way data is structured. Things which used to be rather easy to do are now (almost) impossible, simply because no one can access the data in a useful manner. Because of the thriving modding community created by the previous games, there are a few people that are painfully trying to make sense of things, but HEX editing is a huge pain, and has huge limitations.

    All of that to say that modders don't really need tools like editor (though they are quite nice).
    What they need is a way to access and modify data easily (which can be through a tool like an unpacker, or a converter), and documentation/information to make sense of it.

  24. Wikipedia analysis was wrong on Romney Taps Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan As Running Mate · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Looks like the story from the other day about knowing Romney's VP from Wikipedia edits was wrong.
    Wikipedia Edits Forecast Romney's Vice Presidential Pick

  25. Iain M. Banks on Ask Slashdot: Most Underappreciated Sci-Fi Writer? · · Score: 1

    Iain Banks is a Scottish writer of the Culture universe, among others.
    He's considered by The Times as one of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945, and yet he's relatively unknown compared to many people discussed here.