Slashdot Mirror


User: torpor

torpor's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
3,835
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 3,835

  1. Excellent 'cluster' interface. on Life-Saving Baseballs · · Score: 4, Interesting


    Such an elegant solution, using the 'cluster' configuration.

    I suppose things like this could be used for ship-wreck/plane-wreck situations too, where some sort of mass of floating balls is released during structural damage or hull-breach to be grabbed by survivors for tracking purposes.

    Maybe in Space this would be useful? Hull-breach in the dome, sections of which when destroyed by structural breaks, release thousands of tiny 'life-balls' which, when activated by a human, send out "SOS"...

  2. Duh. Who said you have to have anyone standing? on Sir Isaac Newton: The world Will End In 2060 · · Score: 1

    Angels have wings. They can fly there.

    And anyway, that's why its a river.

    Sheesh...

  3. hot damn on Berman Bill Dead in the Water? · · Score: 1

    'viligante'

    If you read that like I do, it sorta makes sense.

    Same syllables, different placement.

  4. Errmm... dude ... on Web Log 'Word Bursts' Could Identify New Crazes · · Score: 1

    ... it's called the National Debt.

    If you don't keep consuming, and don't keep spending money (and thus moving material through the American universe), your government gets into trouble with the people it owes money to.

  5. Duh? on Web Log 'Word Bursts' Could Identify New Crazes · · Score: 1

    If they buy Blogger, they can integrate the sorting/statistical analysis *into* the Blogger network, put it on a Google interface ... connect the nets, and oila:

    The answer to the question of 'when will it be realtime?' is moot.

  6. Re:Apple's Switch? on VMware: Another Netscape? · · Score: 2, Interesting


    Drives me stinking mad. I love VPC under OSX. If it weren't for VPC, I wouldn't have switched so fast, thats for sure.

    What's bochs like for running Linux distro's under these days, anyone know? I guess it's portable to OSX ... but what's it's instruction-mapping like?

    Can it dynamically translate some stuff to native, like VPC does (I think)?

  7. Oh god no please, say it ain't so. on VMware: Another Netscape? · · Score: 1

    I do *NOT* want Microsoft to buy Connectix.

    I love Virtual PC, I live by it every day. It rocks under OSX, and I have a lot of VPC images containing all sorts of intel-flavoured OS's.

    If Microsoft get their hands on VPC, it's game over for VPC/OSX and all those 'other' OS images. Mark my words, it'll take them less than 2 revisions.

    I want Apple to buy Connectix. That'd be doper than soap on a rope.

  8. Re:Cathedrals and Nazi's use infrasound on Soundless Music? · · Score: 1

    You could say that about lasers as well.

    Can't see them.

    Can't easily detect them (well, that may not be true), can only feel their burning presence.

    It's a good thing terrorists don't have these, eh?

  9. Re:"How" eXtrEmE pRogrAMming destroyed my project on Agile Software Development with Scrum · · Score: 1

    Anyways, XP doesn't work. Proponents like to say that XP is high throughput, but I just don't see it. At my last job (where XP was employed) programmers had to put in long hours, despite this being against XP tenet. This resulted from abbreviated design cycles and hit-and-run feature development.


    What you did was not XP. You even admit it in the same breath ...

    If you're not enforcing the tenets, its unfair to say that "XP doesn't work".

  10. Re:Another use for hyperbaric on Alternative Hyperbaric Chamber Use · · Score: 1

    As if its not already difficult to watch.

  11. Re:Bunk! on Web Programming by printf() · · Score: 1

    ... and as for you, if you don't understand why using Python in an embedded system might be a good thing ...

  12. Hey man ... on Web Programming by printf() · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... back off printf();

    I'm with you on everything else though bro'!

  13. What is Sony's OS update record like? on Two New Handhelds From Sony · · Score: 1

    I just got an NX70V, anyone know what Sony's update track record is like? Will this thing survive up to PalmOS5.5/etc?

    I figure soon enough, it'll be running Linux. I'm not worried so much, but it'll be interesting to see what happens.

    The Clie's are pretty trick hardware...

  14. Here's a tip to kill the RIAA: on Individual ReplayTV Users Pulled Into Lawsuit · · Score: 2, Insightful


    - Write your own damn music.

    - Only buy music from people you personally know.

    This is not as difficult as it seems...

    You don't need 'recording artists' any more ...

  15. Re:I hope for the sake of your boys ... on Bush Orders Guidelines for Cyber-Warfare · · Score: 1

    I'm afraid the only way aggressive nations will be safe from our overwhelming military force is to *change themselves* to not warrant retaliation.

    Who draws the line around what is 'retaliation', and what is 'enforced ideological change for the benefit of American consumers'?

  16. Incidentally ... on Rand Expert Says To Keep Mum About Killer Asteroids · · Score: 0, Troll

    ... the same policy is applicable to:

    - Non-stoppable domestic terror attacks

    - Aliens landing and harvesting us all for our brains (GWB2.0 is safe, though)

    - The return of Christ

    In either event, the U.S. Government is supposed to tell FEMA heads to activate the Iron Mountain facility, and leave it at that.

  17. Re:Spectrometer? on More on the Mars Ice Cap · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yeah, but the chances are you'll lose interest right after hearing the word 'spectrometer', unless you know what one is...

  18. Re:Spectrometer? on More on the Mars Ice Cap · · Score: 5, Informative

    I dare say that they're not 'just' using this evidence, it's the only bit of evidence out of the datapool which makes for good press release.

    If they say 'our spectrometer says that it is water', people won't know how that works or even why they believe it. But explaining the temperature difference between CO2 and H2O to the general public is a lot easier, so that's what we hear ...

    I think MGO has a spectrometer or two aboard...

  19. Re:A Leap Ahead for Apple on Mac OS X Solutions for Stereographic Applications · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Never before in the history of comouting has the consumer had so much power and convenience available to him.

    Never before? Maybe, but then why do we keep hearing this phrase, year after year ...

  20. Typo: on Sony Ericsson P800 Reviewed · · Score: 1

    Damn:

    "... single web browser vendor has bothered to fix ..."

  21. Re:Opera on the p800 (screenshots) on Sony Ericsson P800 Reviewed · · Score: 1

    Is it just me, or do these groups currently making web clients, still slogging at it in spite of the apparent revenue conundrum, seem to have serious balls of steel?

    "Small-screen rendering"? For some reason, that just seems brilliant in every possible way.

    Man, I suddenly have a lot more respect for these guys and what they're going up against. Opera, Gecko, Microsoft, etc. What are there now, probably *15* different 'browser' projects? Whoa!

    And when I see shit like this on a P800, it re-affirms that respect. There's still a *lot* of sway left in this browser market it appears!

    It does have to be said that there seems to be *some* sort of mis-direction occurring in the browser arena, though.

    These cool features, and the kind of spirited thinking behind it, seems to me to be seriously lagging. Why am I so surprised? Because I'm down on the whole browser thing.

    I feel like we've gone off into chase-the-pretty-media land in rendering terms, instead of addressing the issues which make the 'manage-our-collective-knowledge' a daily grind.

    (Who do we thank for that this week, Apple or Microsoft?)

    Browsers, feature-wise, are still incredibly crap to use frequently.

    +Google happens because of -Bookmarks.

    For heavens sake, we've still got a 'menu' for our bookmarks as standard in most browsers - oh, wait, we can put them in 'folders', thanks for that metaphor ...

    That no single web vendor has bothered to fix this massive oversight, or that I am too browser-bound to give a shit to find out if other browsers -have- solved this problem, just seems to indicate that, in fact, The Browser War is not over.

    Cool!

    (I remember when 'http' was something you only saw on a gopher server.)

  22. Re:I hope for the sake of your boys ... on Bush Orders Guidelines for Cyber-Warfare · · Score: 1

    Well, I feel a lot better about being so hard on you now that I know you have no pretense of intellectual honesty.


    And I enjoy knowing that you are as gullible as every red-blooded, trigger-happy American who ever fought for the right to be governed by a war-mongering dictator hell-bent on trampling all civil liberties while at the same time guaranteeing that future generations of Amerikans can drive their SUV's in ... 'peace'.

    No, we Americans want the rest of the world to not fly airplanes into our buildings and/or aid and abet those who do.

    Great, so come up with a good technological solution for those planes, and leave it at that.

    Amerika has *ALREAD* lost the war on terrorism, and it cannot defeat it - will not, can not.

    Attempting to enforce ideological change through artillery *NEVER* works. The only way you Americans will be safe from this sort of attack in the future is if you *change yourselves* to not warrant the aggression which *many* people in this world have for your nation, its corporate masters, and its economic strings.

    Considering that Idaho farm boys fighting an almost hopeless battle on the island of Guadalcanal kept the phrase "The rape of Sydney" out of the history books, I feel some credit is due. I can put you in touch with some Nanking survivors if you disagree.


    Oh yeah, right. Like I'm gonna try and disprove that this would ever have happened... nice one.

    Thank you, sir, and your wonderful country, for providing such wonderfully warm and luxurious accommodations for my small and humble nation for so many years, pending global-destruction-through-American-Warfare notwithstanding.

  23. Re:Don't forget... on Mac OS X 10.2.4 Is Out · · Score: 1

    .. umm no, the s000per l333t have Terminal open up a root session window along with all the other windows when it fires up automatically.

    I'll leave security out of this. sudo is for chumps.

  24. Really nice tutorial... on Scientific Visualization with Mac OS X · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ... up to page 2 and I'm finding this tutorial to be quite a positive experience.

    I'm no scientist, but I could certainly think of some great, creative uses for this toolkit, based on what I've read so far.

    One thing that comes to mind is to do some sort of visualization app for the various mailing list archives ... sort of a big 'thread view', which would be pretty easy with VTK, it appears.

  25. Re:I hope for the sake of your boys ... on Bush Orders Guidelines for Cyber-Warfare · · Score: 1

    Just for fun, who do you think did it if not the people photographed getting on the plane in Boston and whose voices screaming "allah akbar" were recorded on cockpit voice recorders?

    Beats me, but how do you know these people were terrorists?

    Of all the arguments that could be leveled against Bush these days, this one makes the least sense. The rest of the world seems directed toward the purpose of ensuring that the American people experience maximum possible threat against their lives.

    While Americans seem to want the rest of the world to worship them for being the 'protectors of good' that we all know and love the good ol' USofA for, eh?

    As for 'threats against American lives', I'll say nothing of the sanctions which Americans impose on smaller nations, for purely corporate reasons.

    You enjoy your drinking water there, buddy ...
    Speaking of American lives, enjoy Australia. Like so many free lands, it is brought to you by the blood of Americans, specifically that of the 1st Division, USMC.

    And I suppose, actually, that Australians have had nothing to do with this country's well-being, growth, or relative peacefulness.

    And Americans wonder why people in the world consider Americans' arrogant ...