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User: stienman

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  1. Re:Hrm. on Making Ice Without Electricity · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The ancient egyptians did the same. In the desert.

    If you build a solar reflector, but only employ it at night the items inside will become cold, and can attain temperatures below freezing.

    Doesn't work as well on cloudy nights (you are essentially 'beaming' the heat out into the great heatsink called space) and it has to be well insulated from the environment around it (ground, air, etc).

    -Adam

  2. Re:Printers these fast are very dangerous. on New IBM Ultra Fast Printer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Print admins should have had a process in place to place jobs that required more than an estimated 500 pages into an administrative approval queue.

    They probably do now...

    -Adam

  3. My choice... on Virus Prevention in the Small/Medium Business? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    After looking at several options (including trendmicro, norton, etc) I finally went with Sophos. Their AV line covers servers (NT, Novell, Linux, etc) through desktops, and has central management of all installations. Auto update (hourly, if you want) and all the features the other corporate editions of virus software had.

    In either case, all these companies will give you trial software. Try each one out and find the one that you feel comfortable dealing with. In a small company it might be fine to use individual licenses (such as a bunch of boxed mcaffees) but when users start getting messages about expiration, or errors about incomplete updates it only makes your job harder. My setup involved 14 licenses (a few servers and a bunch of workstations) and the users never needed to deal with the software. I was also able to prevent them from turning it off or uninstalling it as well (for all but the most determined, anyway) and if they did mess with it I was alerted.

    Your situation may be different, so try out several different companies. As a point of reference, my 14 licenses cost about $1,100 for two years. $40/year/computer may seem excessive, but when you start looking at corporate licensing from some other companies and the cost of recovery from a major virus break because a user disabled theirs to install a flash game then it is favorable by comparison.

    As a non-profit, AVG might still be free for you (requires payment for commercial use). You may also find that other companies have discounts for non-profit or charitable entities, especially those located in your own country as they can deduct taxes.

    Good luck.

    -Adam

  4. Re:Tragically... on Hydrogen Stored in Safe High Density Pellets · · Score: 1

    Add an "Energy Supplement!" label, and you're all set to sell at GNC.

    -Adam

  5. Re:Web designer/web developer/network admin $30,00 on How Much Money do Programmers Really Make? · · Score: 1


    A link would have been appropiate.

    -Adam

  6. Ah, the memories... on Parasites That Can Control Insect Minds · · Score: 1

    Somehow mature hairworms brainwash their hosts into behaving in way they never usually would - causing them to seek out and plunge into water.

    Man, I loved lemmings.

    Though it was equally fun to simply make them go *pop*.

    -Adam

  7. Re:A lot of potential for translation on Google Opens Digital Library to EU · · Score: 1

    This project will also be tapped (likely) to do the reverse: Improve machine translation.

    Recently Google's machine translation program performed significantly better than attempts made by other MT expert organizations.

    By having high quality texts in their database they can improve their machine translation. By having the same work in different languages they can significantly improve their MT.

    -Adam

  8. Re:Only 3 days?? on T-Mobile Offers Relief for Hurricane Victims · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Why would you only do it for 3 days and then "evaluate" whether you'll charge or not.

    One word: Spammers. Or, more generally, idiots who *will* abuse the system. It's not like a food line where you can pretty easily evenly distribute scarce resources and prevent people from poisoning the stew.

    After three days they'll have a pretty good idea of patterns of usage and optimize the service to weed out the abusers. They will also likely tweak the caches so that most frequently used resources will be readily available without tying up the backbones so much.

    Chances are good it was sold to higher management as a good publicity stunt, but managment is afraid that it'll either become very costly, or they'll destroy the service for users who actually pay for it. So the 3-day completely free is a good compromise. They can gauge complaints and usage, and then make a longer term decision.

    -Adam

  9. Re:It all works out on The Greying of the Mainframe Elite · · Score: 1

    Have you checked out your local university's EE program? I know that University of Michigan has an excellent EE program that *gasp* focuses on analog electronics.

    A lot of companies are moving towards SOCs, so a lot of students are going into VLSI design, but it's all analog.

    Of course a student can focus on the digital side of the EE program. If they move much further into the digital realm they end up in the Computer Engineering program, though a CE major can emphasize the analog side of electronics just as much as the EE can emphasize the digital side.

    So, to recap:
    Schools still teach analog electronics.

    Now, whether students choose an analog major is another story altogether. Usually universities teach what students take. As the classes and majors dwindle in size the school adjusts the program. Usually a lot of these go in cycles - there's a glut in the industry, so students choose a different major. This causes scarcity in the industry and students move back to it, which leads to a glut.

    If there really were a high demand for mainframe administrators/programmers/etc then there would be university courses all over. This stuff is largely taught on the job now because there is a very limited demand.

    If analog EE goes the way of tubes then the work force will adjust. We'll have those that make the chips handle all the analog stuff, and the engineers will simply be throwing chips together and tossing it over to the programmers. Only a few specialized troubleshooters will have the full analog knowledge. Others will simply follow a few rules to avoid 99% of the problems, and talk to the troubleshooters when that doesn't work.

    -Adam

  10. Re:In Other News... on Piracy Not To Blame In Decline of Moviegoers · · Score: 1

    You're not stripping enough away from the movies. We can work backwards, though:

    Introduce Hero, Hero succeeds --> can be upgraded to --> Introduce Hero(s), Hero(s) learn something about themselves/others around them.

    Like the penguin documentary? Try Introduce lots of heros throughout the movie - Some stuggle heroically and succeed, some fail, and some are just heros because they're cute.

    Some movies strip even more away and become Introduce Hero.

    That covers about half of your movies. Do I need to go on?

    Certainly you cannot complain that the market is 'too small to be able to make a profit'.

    I concede this general point. The movie studios, however, are not in the business to make a profit. They are in the business to make enough money to keep doing business the way they have always done business. This requires not merely a "profit" but a "blockbuster profit."

    Furthermore, it's very difficult to gauge whether an "alternative" storyline (which still fits into my two category system) will even cover its own expenses. It's a very risky venture. Are you going to take that risk? If you and a million of your friends are willing to pay $30 per ticket then perhaps you can form your own movie studio and absorb the cost of 4 out of 5 of your movies failing to pull a profit.

    Supply and demand. There is little supply because demand is so low.

    -Adam

  11. Re:I don't get it? ; onboard ; memory ; solid stat on Intel and Laptop RAID? · · Score: 1

    A read generally only pulls from one drive at a time.

    I've never seen a hardware RAID implementation do this. Perhaps they did in the past, but I get just under 2X read speed than with a single drive under RAID mirroring.

    Third, any money says it'll use the onboard memory for its RAID controller or maybe even software RAID, meaning it, like onboard video will slow your computer down.

    Be careful. If I were a gambler I'd take a lot of money on that bet. The RAID needs very little, if any, memory to accomplish it's basic tasks. Sure, wads of memory can speed things up a bit, but it's not necessary. Look at all the single chip RAID controllers out there. Additional off-chip memory? Nope. All performed in hardware? Yep. Load DOS on it with no drivers and it still performs its RAID functions.

    Intel could be taking the low road, and simply implementing a cheap and simple copy or interleave module which at least removes most of the work of RAID from the OS, but it's unlikely to do so since the headaches become more troublesome (boot-up is done before such drivers are loaded, more headaches developing software support, etc)

    Lot's of money is being put into solid state storage. But hard drives can beat solid state in the price war very easily. If someone does come up with a breakthrough, the HD manufacturers will "suddenly" double, triple, or quadruple their storage per dollar (or speed) without too much work. They can do so now, but the marginal cost isn't worth the marginal revenue - they climb the slope slowly because it's in their best financial interest to do so.

    -Adam

  12. Re:In Other News... on Piracy Not To Blame In Decline of Moviegoers · · Score: 1

    Yeah, if you generalise enough, you can boil almost any film down into "bad thing happens to good person; good person prevails". But that's being too general.

    That's exactly my point. If you summarize every movie today into a 5 word sentence, they all look unimaginative. If you give a whole paragraph they all look different. I'm simply commenting on the fact that the original poster has set their standards of creativity so high that it is unlikely they will find a movie that satisfies them which is also generally applicable to the mainstream audience.

    There is certainly a lack of originality in the majority of films where there is the possibility to be original.

    Again, it's a matter of degree. You, who appears to have seen a an average number of movies over your lifetime, will see similarities that are uncreative in newer movies. You are no longer the target audience.

    -Adam

  13. Re:In Other News... on Piracy Not To Blame In Decline of Moviegoers · · Score: 1

    Obviously, then, the person who you thought was the hero was not. Think hard, who is the main character or focus for Psycho? Were they introduced? Did they die, or succeed?

    Of course, I've generalized too much, but that was part of my point anyway. The original poster complained that nothing was original or new. Well, guess what? That's because the poster remembers the old movies. The new movies are aimed at younger audiences. But even then, all movies are, at one level or another, the "same unimaginative story" that occured in an earlier creation. The original poster is simply setting their standard movie plot summary at a level such that any of today's movies fail. Movie a little further up the plot summary (more detail) and today's movies are very different.

    It's a matter of degree.

    -Adam

  14. Re:In Other News... on Piracy Not To Blame In Decline of Moviegoers · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Oh, come on.

    If you strip away enough you can get to the fact that every movie has one of two plots:

    Introduce hero, Kill hero (or hero's dreams)
    or
    Introduce hero, hero succeeds.

    It's a matter of how deep you want to go. Every movie made now can certianly be compared to a movie made in the 70s. Or 60s. Or 80s. Etc.

    Complete lack of imagination? Describe an artist, writer, composer, or book that would not only fullfill all your criteria for imaginative (ie, completely new idea, concept, etc) AND would have enough mainstream appeal to pay for its own production and distribution.

    All the interesting stories are exactly the same as the old interesting stories. People's basic needs haven't changed (food, security, love, recognition, etc), and therefore the basic movie fair isn't (arguably can't) going to change.

    The reason the movie industry is declining is not so much due to the fact that there really are no new stories. It's due to the fact that there are so many other equivilant forms of entertainment available, and many are cheaper and more convenient.

    -Adam

  15. Re:SO will they go on Laser Cannons Coming to an F-16 Near You · · Score: 1

    The laser cannons won't go anything. The item they hit may go Pew or Brzzap or any number of strange, yet subtly exciting, sounds.

    -Adam

  16. Re:This is exciting. on Shape Changing Plane In Development · · Score: 1

    WHY IS IT THAT A 1940's ERA war plane can KICK my Cessna's Butt?

    It may have something to do with the 4 machine guns, but I'm no expert. Since your Cessna likely spends more time on the ground than in the air, the 1/2 ton of bombs may also be a factor.

    -Adam

  17. Re:Meh... on Shape Changing Plane In Development · · Score: 1

    What if two of them worked together. You could use your standard creeper...

    -Adam

  18. Re:Interesting flash-based captcha on Defeating Captcha · · Score: 1

    If the browser can decode the flash file to play it, so too can an automated agent. Even if you have to look at 100 frames of animation, you can simply add them all together and the text will pop out.

    -Adam

  19. Re:rock paper scissors... on Defeating Captcha · · Score: 1

    Are you implying that bots beat slashdot?

    -Adam

  20. Of course they are dominating in many areas... on Google's Turn To Be The Villain · · Score: 1

    "Maybe you can call it arrogance, but there's that same sense that they can do anything and get into any area and dominate."

    Ok, let's think about this.
    1. Get a bunch of intelligent geeks with slightly different interests.
    2. Make them work on core products 80% of their time
    3. Let them do whatever they want 20% of the time, and turn those projects into core products when mature.
    4. ...
    5. Profit!

    Honestly, does anyone expect them to do differently? They are turning each employee into a researcher with the possibility of producing something that can rocket past whatever is already in the market.

    If the employees enjoy working, they will produce better than average work, regardless of their intelligence and experience. If they also happen to be intelligent and have experience then you get Google.

    -Adam

  21. Re:Something other than x86 on Intel Reveals Next-Gen CPUs · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Finally! We move on from x86. We have advanced beyond 20 year old technology.

    That's a bit like saying, "Finally! We move on from English. We have advanced beyond centruries old technology."

    The X86 is just a language. No recent processor actually uses it raw. There may be some inefficiencies in the language itself, but the most significant have been reduced by extensions and smart compilers which avoid those constructs. The remaining inefficiencies are worth the backwards compatability, but they are minimal anyway.

    A lot of people keep complaining about this "ancient" instruction set, but the reality is that it doesn't matter at this point. Even low-level drivers are being written in C due to fast processors and infinite storage space.

    Yeah, sure, it would be nice to move to another instruction set, but previous efforts have failed. Intel's 64 bit chip requires a monstrously complex compiler, but it's wicked fast/efficient. But the P4 has surpassed it with it's "inefficient, outdated, and clunky" instruction set.

    There's so much momentum on the X86 caravan that to develop something else and surpass the caravan is a hurculean task. Currently it is more effective to improve the architecture that runs X86 than it is to make a new instruction set and try to improve the architecture at the same time. (which is required since just changing the instruction set won't advance the performance enough to compete with the X86 that comes out when you're ready to release)

    -Adam

  22. Re:Power concerns on Intel Reveals Next-Gen CPUs · · Score: 2, Insightful

    2. Relatively none explosive,

    As any battery manufacturer will tell you, batteries do not explode. They may, however, "vent with flame."

    -Adam

  23. And the economist might say... on Scientists Create New Human Embryonic Stem Cell · · Score: 1, Insightful


    Scientists were bound to find other less ethically charged sources of stem cells once the market for easy obtained cells was restricted. In other words, had the restriction not existed it would be unlikely that this path of research would have been explored as vigorously as it has.

    As an aside, one reason the government's restriction on using federal funds is causing so many problems is due to the way research organizations request and use federal grants. If scientist A is doing embryonic stem cell research in scientific foundation XYZ's labs without government funding, then it is likely that
    no one working in those buildings, or under the auspices of foundation XYZ can do legitimate gov't funded stem cell research. The reason can be as simple as part of the money of any grant goes towards the general lighting and HVAC "pool" of resources and then is used as needed. That means that some of the gov't funding is going to be paying for lighting in the area where stem cell research is going on that is lot eligible for gov't funding. It is possible, but costly (administrative costs as well as physically seperating mechanical and lighting systems) to strictly seperate all resources, but for most organizations it is more profitable to work completely within gov't guidelines and regulations so as not to restrict other research.

    Of course these stem cells may have different properties than embyronic stem cells. But until we have some useful treatments involving the current fully-funded stem cells then why are these specific types of cells so coveted when we have no idea if they will actually be better or worse than other stem cells we can get from other resources? And why are run-on sentences so annoying?

    -Adam

  24. How callous... on Therapists use Virtual Reality for Veterans · · Score: 4, Insightful

    One can only assume that soon someone be reforming carjackers by letting them play the GTA.

    Because, as everyone knows, a criminal hijacking cars results in the same trauma that soldier experiences when his humvee is blown up.

    I can't believe someone could even equate the "thrill" of performing a criminal act with the trauma of war.

    The psychologists are trying to help the soldiers understand why they act and react the way they do after a traumatic event. One Mash episode scratches the surface of this type of therapy. A doctor experiences something which seems ordinary in the daily life of a soldier, but he later tries to prevent another physician from administering gas anesthesia to a patient in need of surgery. During therapy the doctor comes to realize the the "ordinary" experience was actually a mother smothering her child to prevent the nearby enemy from finding the group's location.

    A PTSD soldier desires a normal life.

    -Adam

  25. Re:Are your government leaders psychopaths? on Is Your Boss a Psychopath? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    1) Most of your answers are exceptionally narrow and don't fully answer the question.
    2) You can take nearly any previous president: ask the same questions, and get similar responses. Clinton is an easy target, but even revered leaders (Washington, Lincoln, and certianly presidents of the last century) can be vilified using the same techniques you are using to vilify President Bush.

    Your claim that Bush is a psychopath is unconvincing. He may be to a certian extent, the question of how severe a psychopath he is remains unanswered. Were that question answered it wouldn't necessarily cast light on his suitability for presidency.

    Nice propoganda, though. You should be in PR - a good place for psychopaths.

    -Adam