Slashdot Mirror


User: MrChips

MrChips's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
50
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 50

  1. Re:Sharing Economy? on Japan Now Has More Car Charging Points Than Gas Stations · · Score: 1

    Using your numbers, going 40 miles on $2.40 worth of gas is 16.67 miles per $, while going 108 miles on $7.20 worth of electricity is 15 miles per $. So the electric car is more expensive on a cost-per-mile basis.

  2. Re:Layered with, not instead of, HTTP/2 on Why Aren't We Using SSH For Everything? · · Score: 1

    And if you have influence over the server, have it listen on port 443. Use sslh to share 443 with https if necessary. This will usually get you out from behind a web browsing only internet connection.

  3. Re:There can be no defense of this. on British Spies Are Free To Target Lawyers and Journalists · · Score: 1

    Justice is more important than security. Freedom is more important than security.

    It's as if justice, freedom (and privacy) are prerequisites for security.

  4. Re:Engines are more than just for movement: on A Garbage Truck That Would Make Elon Musk Proud · · Score: 1

    Aren't the majority of fire truck rolls false alarms? Could those be all electric while an on-board engine/generator burns diesel for the actual fires?

  5. Re:Guaranteed Death on It's Not a Car, It's a Self-Balancing Electric Motorcycle (Video) · · Score: 2, Interesting

    According to these stats for Canada in 2009, car drivers suffered about 1173 deaths and 5393 serious injuries while among motorcyclists there were 194 deaths and 1271 serious injuries. If you add these up and look at the percentage chance of death if involved in a collision severe enough for serious injuries than you'll see an 18% chance of death for the car drivers and 13% for the motorcyclists.

    Care to share your source for "guaranteed death"?

  6. > You get what you vote for

    No we didn't. Over 60% of us voted against the conservatives and yet here they are. Running amok. I'd be much happier if really did get what we voted for.

  7. Re:So let me get this straight on Largest Bitcoin Mining Pool Pledges Not To Execute '51% Attack' · · Score: 1

    When you control 51% of the computing power, you can start faking transactions.

    Not fake transactions, but control which transaction get in and rollback the recent past. So you can spend some coin to the recipient's satisfaction, then undo that transaction and spend your coin somewhere else.

    I assume by "faking transactions" you mean forging other people's signatures to spend their coins. You can't do that, but you can prevent them from spending their coin.

  8. Re:The double standard on Physicist Peter Higgs: No University Would Employ Me Today · · Score: 1

    You'll meet assistant professors who've published more journal papers in two years (and brought in more research money) than a full professor has done in his entire career, while being told it isn't good enough by the P&T committee.

    You're probably right that the younger faculty are publishing more papers, bringing in more funds and are better teachers, but what is the chance that any of them will ever do anything really profound. I think that's the point Peter Higgs is trying to make.

  9. Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it? on Airline Pilots Rely Too Much On Automation, Says Safety Panel · · Score: 1

    Likewise, the automation is not designed to handle extreme failures of the aircraft. For example, the situation many years ago in Iowa where the hydraulics failed and the pilot had to steer the plane using only the engine throttles is an example of something that no computer system is designed to do. Yet a veteran pilot managed to pull it off.

    This scenario has happen several times and the pilots have not always been successful at control via engine throttle only. But an autopilot program has been developed now that can do a much better job than the human pilots. See Propulsion Controlled Aircraft.

  10. Re:Keep the phone ban on FAA To Allow Use of Most Electronic Devices Throughout Flights · · Score: 3, Informative

    I like to use this ABM1 - Passive Air Band Monitor when flying. I keep it discreet as I'm sure most flight crews won't understand how it's different from a typical radio receiver. I regularly hear that "bzz bzz bzz" of cell phones with this device. I then ask my girlfriend sitting next to me if she put her phone in airplane mode. If she hadn't and does it the noise usually goes away. If she had her's in airplane mode then I assume it's someone else sitting near me. Phones do cause interference in the aircraft frequency bands (at least at short range).

  11. Re:Waitaminit... on Security Researchers Want To Fully Audit Truecrypt · · Score: 1

    No, the argument is that it can happen if someone decides that it's worth doing. Just making the code open doesn't mean that anyone will read it. It does, however, mean that:

    • You can build it yourself, so you know that the code that is audited is the code that is built (modulo toolchain trojans)
    • You can audit the code, or pay someone else to do it, without permission from the original authors beyond their original license
    • You can fix any security holes that such an audit turns up (or pay someone else to do it, again without requiring permission from the original authors beyond their original license

    And, if someone else does an audit, there's a better chance that they are not bound by NDA and can therefore speak freely about what they find.

  12. 190 Megajoules on It Takes 2.99 Gigajoules To Vaporize a Human Body · · Score: 1

    To turn 75kg of water (165lbs) starting at 37C to steam at 100C requires 190 megajoules. Wouldn't that be enough to vaporize a human body? I suppose the bones would be left behind.

  13. Re:Meh on Dr. Dobb's Calls BS On Obsession With Simple Code · · Score: 2

    Do you re-use your functions, or do they only exist to break apart a single operation into smaller blocks? If it's the latter, then he may have a good point

    I disagree, strongly. Breaking a large routine into smaller ones abstracts away what those smaller routines are doing. It puts a boundry around their interaction with the rest of the code, and puts their code away somewhere that I don't have to worry about, unless there's some reason I want/need to know the details of how that routine accomplishes what it does.

    Both approaches have merit and should be used where it makes sense. When abstracting away some lower level detail, a separate method may be best, but when breaking a higher level method into it's higher level steps (if that makes sense), keeping it all in one method keeps it linear which can help with reading/review.

    It matters though how a method is broken up. Use whitespace to separate logical sections. Have a short comment at the top of each section to indicate what that section does. Write the comments first as an outline of the method. Declare variables where they are first used. Declare them in a limited scope where possible. Declare them const where possible (especially if method-global) to limit later misuse. In some languages you can introduce a nested scope for no other reason than to isolate local variables if you like.

    And note that breaking the method into separate sub-methods doesn't necessarily solve the problem of changes near the beginning breaking things later on. It just makes it harder to know where the "beginning" and the "later on" are.

  14. Re:Could we achieve 1G of thust. on NASA's NEXT Ion Thruster Runs Five and a Half Years Nonstop To Set New Record · · Score: 1

    Though practically impossible with current or proposed technology, it would, indeed, take only 35 days to reach 0.1c, and we'd be 225 million km from our starting point, ignoring gravitational effects of other bodies. Though in astronomical terms that's not very far (less than the diameter of Earth's orbit) - less than half way to Jupiter on the closest possible approach.

    35 days at 1g to get to 0.1c is about right, but the distance you'd travel in the process is around 45 billion km. You'd pass the Voyager probes.

  15. Re:Could we achieve 1G of thust. on NASA's NEXT Ion Thruster Runs Five and a Half Years Nonstop To Set New Record · · Score: 2

    At 1g accel/decel you could get to Mars in about 24 hours. At 1/3g it would be about 48 hours. And for those who want to approach the speed of light, that would take a year at 1g.

  16. Re:Rotate the frakking spacecraft on NASA Prepares For Space Surgery and Zero Gravity Blood · · Score: 1

    Why rotate. Nuclear powered spacecraft could simply keep accelerating at 1G until it was time to turn around and decelerate at 1G. Problem solves, and they would get there a lot quicker too.

    Not sure how close we are technologically to doing something like this, but Earth to Mars would only be a day or two. Think about how much less life support (food, water, etc.) needs to be sent along with the crew if the transit is that short. Also, if you're going to Mars, why not do .33G (Mars gravity equivalent) instead. Or start at 1G and slowly drop to .33G. Then there's little to no adaptation required when you get there.

  17. Re:What are the chances on One In Eight Chance of a Financially Catastrophic Solar Storm By 2020 · · Score: 1

    that it will happen in 2012?

    12,5%

    Uh, no. It's about 1,66%. That is, if the probably is the same for each of the next 8 years (it isn't) and the probably of it *not* happening in the first year is 98,34%, then the probably of it *not* happening in the next 8 is 0.9834^8 = 87.5%.

  18. Re:Brute-force password guessing not a problem on GPUs Used To Crack WiFi Passwords Faster · · Score: 1
    A little more efficient and easier to type:

    head -c 15 /dev/random |base64

  19. Re:No back doors? on Seagate To Encrypt Data On Hard Drives · · Score: 1

    Someone should put crypto in the sata/scsi controller. It's probably easier to ensure they're not writing the key to non-volatile storage (although they still could write the key to their internal flash).

  20. Re:Sure, you could, but... on Lunar Space Elevator Instead? · · Score: 1
    The concept of geostationary orbit doesn't really make sense around the Moon.

    Sure it does. You can think of the earth as being in geostationary orbit around the moon. If you were standing on the moon, the earth would appear at a fixed location in the sky.

  21. Re:Name the book KatieT.com on The Saga of Katie.com · · Score: 1

    Even the creators of Friends were smart enough to register www.hahanotsomuch.com before it was used as a joke URL in the TV show two seasons ago.

    The Simpsons did the same with whatbadgerseat.com.

  22. Re:linux != full access on Linux Smartphones Race To Be 1st In U.S. · · Score: 1

    Do they plan to adhere to the terms of the GPL?

  23. Re:Attention Conspiracy Nuts! on Apollo 11 Photographs Unfrozen · · Score: 2, Interesting

    For those who still don't understand what's going on, take your camera outside at night, when the full moon is high in the sky, and try to photograph the moon. Make sure you set your camera so the moon is not over exposed and its details can be seen. Are there any stars visible in the resulting photo?

  24. Re:They're not the same on Forget Mars. Should We Go To The Moon? · · Score: 1
    How about a test space elevator made on the Moon? (I can see the headlines: elevator from nowhere to nowhere!)
    The Moon rotates too slowly for a space elevator. If I'm not mistaken, the Earth is in geosyncronous orbit around the Moon (from the Moon's point of view), so a space elevator on the Moon would have to reach at least as far as the Earth.

    Actually, it might work if the space elevator had its center of gravity at the L1 Earth-Moon Lagrange point. You could only have that one elevator, but I suppose it would be enough.

  25. Re:Size of key on NSA Turns To Commercial Software For Encryption · · Score: 1
    If I can reduce a RSA 1024 bits to a new method using only 4 bits, how can my way be as secure?
    Obviously a 4 bit keyspace does not offer any real security. If you can reduce 1024-bit RSA to 4 bits, you've broken RSA.