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User: Tim+Ward

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  1. Re:Three reasons why this won't work on EU Proposes To Fit Cars With Speed Limiters · · Score: 0

    Why not fit cars with a voluntary limiter that users can enable themselves?

    I've got one. It's called a "cruise control". I set it to the speed limit and ignore the pricks trying to climb in my rear window.

  2. But we've always known ... on Feds Seek Prison For Man Who Taught How To Beat a Polygraph · · Score: 2

    ... that there's no such thing as a working lie detector.

    Surely you're not trying to tell us that there's some government somewhere that believes otherwise and actually uses the things??

  3. What will they do with the ones they take in? on Apple Launches iPhone Trade-In Program · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Throw them away? - they don't want people buying "old" iThingies, do they, that reduces the market for new ones. How green is that.

  4. Self-referential story? on New JavaScript-Based Timing Attack Steals All Browser Source Data · · Score: 1

    My browser won't let me open the target web site because it thinks it's nasty!

  5. The answer hasn't changed for decades on Ask Slashdot: Learning DB the Right Way; Books, Tutorials, or What? · · Score: 4, Informative

    Date, An Introduction to Database Systems

  6. Who do you sue ... on British Architects Develop Open-Source Home Building · · Score: 1

    ... when you've built your house and the building inspectors or planning enforcement come along to check and find something wrong with it?

  7. Re:Useful as Surrogates on An Open Letter To Google Chairman Eric Schmidt On Drones · · Score: 1

    It needs to have feedback, though, so that the "pilot" dies if the drone crashes.

    Otherwise it's a bit of an uneven playing field, no, with me up there in my little aeroplane and people flying drones into my path with no comeback if they screw up?

  8. Backwards on Ask Slashdot: Linux Friendly Video Streaming? · · Score: 4, Informative

    The usual answer to questions like this is:

    (1) Decide what you want the computer to do

    (2) Acquire the right platform.

    Syaing "I've already got [whatever platform], how do I make it do what I want?" is often not a helpful approach.

  9. April Fool's gag?? on New Director Chosen At Fermilab · · Score: 1

    Eh??? It's 19:28 here (that's around 7:30pm in American, I think).

    Plenty of other web sites manage to adjust themselves to the time zone of the reader ... obviously that would be a bit too clever for /.

  10. hitting dummy targets just 50 percent of the time on US To Deploy Ballistic Missile Interceptors In Response To North Korean Threats · · Score: 2

    So, somewhere around ten times more accurate than most other munitions then?

  11. Isn't it the constitutional right of any American on Nuclear Arms Cuts, Supported By 56% of Americans, Would Make the World Safer · · Score: 0, Troll

    ... to buy as many nukes as they like at any gun show without even having to prove their identity?

  12. Get a life? on Ask Slashdot: Dealing With Flagged Channels For XBMC PVR? · · Score: 1

    As title. Get a life, then no need to watch the box.

  13. Using a laptop for programming?? on Ask Slashdot: Monitor Setup For Programmers · · Score: 0

    Crap display, crap keyboard, crap mouse replacement, low main memory, small slow hard disk. (Unless you've got a solid state disk.)

    Just use a real computer, you know you want to.

  14. Re:Every step of the election process is observed on Lessons From the Papal Conclave About Election Security · · Score: 1

    Exactly. The problem with buying votes is verifying that you've got what you've paid for. With a vote placed in the ballot box by the voter there is no way to achieve this ... but there is a way to achieve it with postal votes, which is one of the things wrong with postal votes.

  15. Every step of the election process is observed on Lessons From the Papal Conclave About Election Security · · Score: 4, Interesting

    That's the key, and makes for clean elections - I've observed elections in the UK, Kosovo and Ukraine.

    This tends to mean manual counting of physical pieces of paper that have been marked by the voter by hand, as that's vastly easier for lay people to observe and verify than hidden things going on inside computers or other machines. (I'm not saying that proper independent observation by lay people of what goes on inside a machine isn't possible, just that nobody has worked out how to do it yet.) If I'd observed an election involving machines I would have had to write in my report that I had no confidence in the outcome of the election because I had no visibility of what was going on inside the machines.

    The big problem with the cleanliness of the UK voting system is postal votes - and this is in my view precisely because this is a part of the process which is *not* independently observed - you don't know for sure who applied for the postal ballots, who acquired them, or who filled them in under what pressure.

  16. Re:Boggle on USMA: Going the Extra Kilometer For Metrication · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Good point.

    I come across this when calculating how much fuel to put in an aeroplane - the bowser dispenses litres, I need to know what that is in pounds for the weight and balance calculation, and the fuel burn (and thus how much fuel I need) is specified in the POH in gallons per hour ... ... but these are indeed American gallons, not Imperial ones, and getting that sort of thing wrong can kill people.

  17. Boggle on USMA: Going the Extra Kilometer For Metrication · · Score: 5, Funny

    Are the Colonies really still using Imperial units? - thought they must have stopped doing that yonks ago, after losing all those space probes to erroneous conversions between foot-slug-poundals and furlongs-per-fortnight.

    Or is it like their refusal to use global standard paper sizes, or basically follow any other international standards - if it was invented in Europe it must de facto be Communist and therefore can't be touched with a barge pole?

  18. Um ... excuse me ... on Investing In Lego Bricks For Fun But Mostly Profit · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ... but these people haven't made a "profit" until they have SOLD their holdings.

    Who to? Other investors? What if they all sell at once?

  19. Suggest you find a better local shop on Ask Slashdot: Linux-Friendly Motherboard Manufacturers? · · Score: 1

    My local shop would build me what I asked them to, and it would work.

    They've got people who know what each week's new motherboards can and can't do - there's no way I could keep up with that.

    Of course manually built-to-order is slightly more expensive than buying commodity-boxes-designed-for-Windows off the shelf, but sometimes you get what you pay for.

  20. Re:Why is the list of permit holders anybody ... on New York Paper Uses Public Records To Publish Gun-Owner Map · · Score: 1

    Well yes, that as well.

  21. Why is the list of permit holders anybody ... on New York Paper Uses Public Records To Publish Gun-Owner Map · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ... else's business?

    Maybe I'm trying to work out where I'm going to live, and want to avoid neighbourhoods that are so dangerous that their residents think they need guns.

  22. Re:Yeah! on Google Chrome 25 Will Disable Silent Extension Installation · · Score: 1

    Well, you could always follow the NRA's advice and get a gun and shoot everyone who walks through the door. You gotta gun, you don't need locks.

  23. The only real need ... on Man Charged £2,000 For Medical Records Stored On Obsolete System · · Score: 1

    ... to get your records from the NHS that I've come across is when you want to transfer to a private doctor. In which case when the right conversations have been had you don't even pay the £10.

  24. is freedom and to be let alone on The Privacy Illusion · · Score: 1

    You don't get that many places. Conservative governemnts want to tell you to live your life the conservative way (things like, who you can sleep with, drinking laws etc), socialists want you to live your life the socialist way (things like, what you're allowed to do with your own money, the state will only engage with groups not individuals, one size fits all, etc).

    Very few places have liberal governments who want you to be left alone to live your life *your* way, whatever that might be.

  25. Road space on Electric Velomobiles: Urban Transportation For the Future, Available Now · · Score: 1

    Only suited, it seems to me, for use in large numbers if you've got more land to waste than you know what to do with (which is the case in some parts of the world but not others).

    In constrained city streets there is neither the road space nor the parking space for vehicles like this. OK so it might be a modest improvement if motorists started using them, but it would be a pretty catastrophic backwards step if existing cyclists started using them in any numbers.