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User: LWATCDR

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Comments · 15,647

  1. Re:A taste of things to come? on France Cries Foul At World Cup "Spy Drone" · · Score: 1

    simple get another quad and hang a net from it. Fly it above the offending quad and tangle the props and land with it.
    In the US you own the airspace up to about 500 feet over your land so it should be completely legal if done safely. AKA don't do it over people.

  2. Re:A taste of things to come? on France Cries Foul At World Cup "Spy Drone" · · Score: 1

    It is accurate and misleading at the same time. People think of drones as military style drones while small RC aircraft are usually called RC models and have been for decades. The AMA is not happy about the use of word drone because they have had a very good relationship with the FAA up till now.
    As to RC aircraft with cameras. I remember reading about people putting cameras on RC planes back in the 70s. Of course that was in the days of film.

    This was a guy with radio control quad or a guy with a drone depending if you want to be scary or not.

  3. Re:And hippies will protest it on "Super Bananas" May Save Millions of Lives In Africa · · Score: 1

    You are forgetting the other part of the equation.
    The working poor do not have a lot of time to cook. High fat and salt foods taste good and are fast to cook. A really good healthy meal often takes more time to prepare so that it is tasty.
    The fast food places do not prey on the poor with their $1.00 menu. They offer fast calories. BTW salt does not make you fat. It is good to limit your salt but it is the calories in the food that make you fat.
    Honestly most of the working poor I see are not overweight at all.

  4. Re:That's Odd. on NVIDIA Is Better For Closed-Source Linux GPU Drivers, AMD Wins For Open-Source · · Score: 1

    OpenCL, Cuda, CAD, POVRay, Blender..... Not everyone uses Linux the way you do. There are many linux systems that do not have any graphics cards at all and just use a UART.

  5. Re:That's Odd. on NVIDIA Is Better For Closed-Source Linux GPU Drivers, AMD Wins For Open-Source · · Score: 1

    Intel graphics just plain suck... Actually they are not too bad these days but really do not complete with AMD or nVidia.

  6. Re:Analog : Digital :: Embedded : Software Eng. on Are the Glory Days of Analog Engineering Over? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I think part of the problem is that analog has shifted of the mainstream for hobbyists. Let's face it, a lot of best engineers start as kids and kids today are not getting into HAM radio all that much but instead are working with Arduinos. It is sad.

  7. Re:Progenitors? on Aliens and the Fermi Paradox · · Score: 1

    I like the idea that Humans developed time travel and went back in time and set up the universe so that humans are the only intelligent species in the galaxy and made time travel impossible. But lets face it. Humans have only been a technological species for around 130 or so years depending on where you draw the line. You could have a lot of civilisations that never develop past victorian levels of technology. Or we just have not been interesting enough for long enough.

  8. Re:Texas has regulations? on Brownsville SpaceX Space Port Faces More Regulatory Hurdles · · Score: 1

    " Also unlike Florida, it would have been not nearly so far from the Houston command center."
    Cape Canaveral pre-dates NASA in Houston. You see mission control was in Florida for Mercury and Gemini and was moved because... LBJ had some buddies that would make a lot of money if Mission control was moved to Houston. The Eastern Test Range which is what NASA uses for the Cape was already set up and working long before Houston Control.
    It is also not as far south as you can get in the lower 48, that would have been Key West and their was a navy base their but logistics would have been terrible.

  9. Re:Two-party recording laws on The Ethics Cloud Over Ballmer's $2 Billion B-Ball Buy · · Score: 1

    It does not have to be A or B.
    A police officer on the job in pubic has no expectation of privacy just as you do not have any expectation of privacy at a bar. "Outside of the restroom that is".
    A person on a phone call does have an expectation of privacy.

  10. Re:Read Asimov on The Sci-Fi Myth of Killer Machines · · Score: 1

    sigh...
    I said Asimov invented the term Robotics not Robot.

  11. Re:Read Asimov on The Sci-Fi Myth of Killer Machines · · Score: 1

    Wow people on Slashdot just can not read....
    The play RUR is where the word Robot comes from.
    Robotics was a term invented by Asimov.

  12. Re:Read Asimov on The Sci-Fi Myth of Killer Machines · · Score: 1

    "But if you want to talk about the guy who invented Robots "!="Really the man that invented the term robotics"

    Yes I have heard of RUR but just can not find a copy, been looking decades on and off. Asimov invented the term robotics. Different thing. I did not mention RUR since it involved killer robots.

  13. Re:pishaw on The Ethics Cloud Over Ballmer's $2 Billion B-Ball Buy · · Score: 1

    No they could have said that this was a private conversation and is nobody's business. Just as Slashdot should not post stories about it.
    The discussion should be on privacy IMHO. People get bent over someone wearing Google glass in a public bar but they are not jumping up and down over the broadcast and people making judgement and commentary on a private phone conversation?
    Really?

  14. Read Asimov on The Sci-Fi Myth of Killer Machines · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Really the man that invented the term robotics did not fall into the trap.
    BTW the movie of I Robot in no way qualifies as a work of Asimov. It in now way reflects his books.

  15. -1 bad anology on Xanadu Software Released After 54 Years In the Making · · Score: -1, Troll

    ", this is like making a very top tier points/condensor/magneto system for a car's engine... while the world has moved on to common rail EFI."
      point, condenser and magneto are part of the ignition system. Common rail EFI is fuel injection.
    Kind of like saying "it is like making really good magnetic core memory... while the rest of the world has moved on to LCD monitors."

    You fail in your car analogy. BTW light aircraft, and lawn mowers still often use magnetos.

    The rest of your comment is good and informative but since you blew the car analogy you suck as human being.

  16. Re:pishaw on The Ethics Cloud Over Ballmer's $2 Billion B-Ball Buy · · Score: 1

    Hummm.... So because someone says something in private that people do not like......
    Yea just see how well that works out when you apply it everyone. You make a joke about any group in private and the people in your condo find out and tell you that you have to sell your condo right now and are banned for life.

    That is just it. NO ONE SHOULD HAVE PUBLISHED THIS CALL! It is not anyone's business.

  17. Re:pishaw on The Ethics Cloud Over Ballmer's $2 Billion B-Ball Buy · · Score: 1

    Actually I am not a libertarian in any way shape of form. What I am saying is that for anyone to publish a private conversation like this or for any organisation to use it is unethical.
    It had nothing to do with actual business of the game. It had nothing to do with any laws being broken. It was an old man telling his young ex? girlfriend that he did not like the kind of people that she was bringing to his games "using his tickets" I bet. Frankly I find her disturbing and him rather pathetic. My guess is most of what we are seeing are the effects of illness and old age but that is just my opinion.
    This was a completely private matter and has zero impact on the public but it all in public was being used to make him sell his team and to ban him. People also need to understand the term forfeit. He has to give up his team. He was not required to forfeit without compensation. You act as if the only value in the team is the cash value.
    I have no idea why you think I am a libertarian. I think most libertarians are clueless. Just as clueless as Tea Party members, or Democrats that are sure that they are smarter than all Republicans, or Republicans that are sure that they are morally superior to all Democrats.

    My moral outrage is over everyone elses sense of entitlement to comment on, debate, publicize, and base punishment on what was a completely private matter that frankly was nobody's business.

  18. Re:pishaw on The Ethics Cloud Over Ballmer's $2 Billion B-Ball Buy · · Score: 2

    And was the league harmed?
    Also do you think that any owner can pass that rule if you looked at all their private conversations?

  19. Re:pishaw on The Ethics Cloud Over Ballmer's $2 Billion B-Ball Buy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Ethics on Slashdot? No one questions that someone was banned for life and was forced to forfeit his property because of something he said in a private conversation that was recorded and published without his permission.

    If you are not outraged by this then please do not bother ever complaining about privacy.

    Remember racism is not illegal. Discrimination based on race in the workplace is.

    BTW I do not like racism at all but this is just too weird for words.

  20. Re:180 satellites... on Google To Spend $1 Billion On Fleet of Satellites · · Score: 1

    I said Sigint not Comint. The communications part is of Iridium is just a cover. Those radios and antennas can pick up signals other than those from Iridium phones like radars.

  21. Re:180 satellites... on Google To Spend $1 Billion On Fleet of Satellites · · Score: 2

    I figured that the Iridium and GPS constellations had some Sigint functions paying some cash to add a sigint receiver to each bird should not be that expensive. Even if you limit to strong emitters around the XBand you should a large number of SAM, AWACS, and AI radars.

  22. Re:Not what I had expected on Robots and Irradiated Parasites Enlisted In the Fight Against Malaria · · Score: 1

    Now if we could just figure out the exact protein that triggers the immune response and just use that it might be easy to produce.

  23. Re:180 satellites... on Google To Spend $1 Billion On Fleet of Satellites · · Score: 1, Insightful

    What a great way to build an global sigint platform. I am sure that those sats could pick up any radar signal transmitted on Earth in real time.

  24. Re:Wait on Study: Stop Being So Cynical, You Could Give Yourself Dementia · · Score: 1

    This is Slashdot which is a US based website so the assumption should be US. I also doubt that many other nations are use the argument that solar replaces foreign oil the way the US does. Most other nations seem to use the more logical argument that it reduces greenhouse gases.
    Unless your are in the middle east or a small island nation, odds are very high that only a tiny % of your electricity is from oil.

    " "Stupid" is not the same as "uninformed", "misinformed" or "wrong"."
    Making an incorrect statement over and over or defending such a statement without research is stupid in one of the common use of the word.

  25. Re:Really? Mutant registration? on Mutant Registration vs. Vaccine Registration · · Score: 1

    No. I think Marvel was pandering if they added it in.

    The issue with not saying things out of fear of being offensive when dealing with history is that it can and does lead to a distorted view of history.

    For instance when learning about World War II and the Japanese internment almost no one is taught about the Nihau Incident. the shelling of Long Beach, or the attack on Fort Stevens in Oregon.
    People need to understand why thinks like both the holocaust and the Japanese internment happened and why they actually seemed like good ideas to the people of the time.
    Until you understand why you might have made that same mistake at that point in history you can not learn how to avoid mistakes like in the future.
    Frankly the whole Japanese internment is a sore spot for me. The way is is taught is almost always along the lines of "look at what those terrible people did to the Japanese Americans for no reason!", which is just a way of saying look how great and enlightened I am because I would never do that.