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User: afidel

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  1. Re:EA on How Cities: Skylines Beat SimCity At Its Own Game · · Score: 2

    Public companies can also have a mechanism to halt a hostile takeover, it's called a poison pill. Generally it involves some kind of massive payoff to the current staff, but it can also be the automatic issuance of new stock which dilutes the holdings of the company attempting to do the acquisition. The first known use of the latter technique that I'm aware of was the Westinghouse corporation which issued massive amounts of stock when JP Morgan tried to take them over, ultimately providing them with enough money to complete the Niagara power station project.

  2. Re:Blackberry bold on Ask Slashdot: What's the Best Dumb Phone? · · Score: 1

    The trackball was the weakness of the 8820, any of the later bold models with the optical trackball would be vastly superior from a reliability standpoint.

  3. Re:Threatens security on Do Russian Uranium Deals Threaten World Supply Security? · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Exactly, just last week I was reading about a proposed Canadian mine that was vetoed by the native council, not due to environmental concerns, but because of uncertainty over environmental impact in the future because current and projected prices didn't actually support opening the mine in the near term but the company looking for approval was looking for a 50 year lease on the land. If Russia ties up a lot of the world supply and shuts down mines they own then the price will rise and mines like that one will come online, it's not like they're going to take over so much of the world supply that we'll be shutting down reactors due to lack of fuel. The real fear I'm sure is that Westinghouse and GE and their suppliers will have to pay more for yellowcake in order to produce their overpriced fuel rods.

  4. Re:Dumb question... on Oregon Testing Pay-Per-Mile Driving Fee To Replace Gas Tax · · Score: 1

    Probably have to keep receipts and get a refund from the DOT office running the trial program.

  5. Re:Government Intrusion on Oregon Testing Pay-Per-Mile Driving Fee To Replace Gas Tax · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Since it's primarily weight per axle that determines the wear caused on the roads, and the point of the tax is to maintain roads, it seems logical that heavier vehicles, whether they be SUV's or big sedans like the Tesla, should be charged more. It's not like a Leaf is particularly heavy (it's basically the same weight as the similarly sized Chevy Cruze).

  6. Re:And OP is retarded. on Stock Market Valuation Exceeds Its Components' Actual Value · · Score: 1

    When the bottoms fall out of the fiat currencies,

    Most people will be dead as it will be the result of total war. Nothing else is going to rock the worldwide markets so thoroughly that all 6 major reserve currencies have their value evaporated.

  7. Re:And OP is retarded. on Stock Market Valuation Exceeds Its Components' Actual Value · · Score: 1

    That something should be relatively rare, easily verified, have low carrying costs (i.e. doesn't rust or rot), and be somewhat portable. Gold and silver fit the bill,

    So does the greenback, and in the modern world it's used a hell of a lot more extensively than gold or silver. Unless the fed goes full retard and starts printing physical bills at a rate significantly greater than inflation (would be basically impossible to do with the current infrastructure) that's not going to change.

  8. Re:cover everything with mirrors on Navy's New Laser Weapon: Hype Or Reality? · · Score: 1

    to shoot down hundreds of incoming warheads, plus ten thousand dummy balloons.

    I don't think anyone is realistically planning to use an ABM system against China or Russia, it's much more likely to be used against the one or two missile boats that North Korea or Iran manage to outfit with a handful of missiles.

  9. Re:and dog eats tail on Feds Order Amtrak To Turn On System That Would've Prevented Crash · · Score: 1

    No, not all towers need to have an EA done, only those meeting the criteria in 47.1.1307 which is a fairly limited set of criteria where it makes sense to me to require a review. The rules basically come down to, are you in a sensitive wildlife habitat, are you in a designated historic place like Gettysburg or an Indian burial ground, or are you going to potentially fry people if you aim something wrong. That doesn't seem like an onerous list, and the percentage of towers that falls under it has to be at most, what 10-20% (and it's probably well under 5%).

  10. Re:and dog eats tail on Feds Order Amtrak To Turn On System That Would've Prevented Crash · · Score: 1

    That article was very much wrong, the engine in question was Amtrak locomotive 601, of the brand new Cities Sprinter class, the class entered service in February of 2014.

  11. Re:and dog eats tail on Feds Order Amtrak To Turn On System That Would've Prevented Crash · · Score: 1

    No, he's right, this is almost assuredly a strict liability scenario, unless it can be proven that something outside the engineers control was to blame then he is negligent and will go to jail. It's not just that he was exceeding the speed limit for the curve, he was significantly exceeding the speed limit for the straightaways so absent a system fault that caused uncontrolled acceleration combined with complete loss of brakes (almost impossible given the evidence of speed reduction at the curve) he's responsible. A medical condition which was missed at his last physical might be a mitigating circumstance, but that's really about it.

  12. Re:No self driving trains? on Feds Order Amtrak To Turn On System That Would've Prevented Crash · · Score: 2

    For a fraction of that effort (although a lot more pain an initial expense) we could lay down rails through every suburb and have automated travel cars.

    You don't have a clue how capitalism works, do you? If the market says it's more expensive to put in rail everywhere then there's a good bet that it's more effort. Capitalism has its flaws, but relatively efficient allocation of resources is not one of them.

  13. Re:Trolling Douchebags on FCC May Stop 911 Access For NSI Phones · · Score: 3, Informative

    They're given out free to people in abuse shelters and the homeless which is probably the source of almost all of the legitimate traffic and the majority of the non-legitimate traffic as well (homeless folks tend to have mental problems as the root cause of their homelessness).

    As to pranks, we've had E911 as a requirement for over a decade now, shouldn't be too hard to locate the perps if they keep doing it.

  14. Re:Both ways? on Apple, A123 To Settle Lawsuit Over Poached Battery Engineers · · Score: 1

    Non-competes are basically unenforceable in California unless you're a principal who is selling the business and nonsolicitation clauses even against poaching clients are void in California so going after former coworker is almost surely protected. The ONLY leg they might have to stand on is if they can prove that Apple was hiring these folks to misappropriate A123's trade secrets, not merely to hire them for their skills in the arts which is a very hard thing to prove so long as Apple was smart enough not to leave a smoking gun like an email stating clearly that they wanted A123's tech.

  15. Re:Both ways? on Apple, A123 To Settle Lawsuit Over Poached Battery Engineers · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Uh, how is this any different than when Apple ties up all the Gorilla glass capacity, or 1.8" hard drives (original ipod), or Samsung fab capacity for X months, or any other scarce resource that doesn't allow competitors to compete directly with them through contracts and offering a higher price? Oh, it involves non-executives earning a higher wage so therefore it's somehow bad. Pure BS.

  16. my prediction is that the LED status panel on a remote solar power installation somewhere will still be functioning hundreds of years

    Only if someone makes one with non-RoS solder and uses solid electrolyte capacitors or only glass/mica dielectric capacitors since there's no way regular electrolytic capacitors will survive anywhere near that long.

  17. Re:The Pit on (Hack) and Slash: Doing the LORD's Work · · Score: 1

    Yup, though I was more partial to BladeMaster since it didn't have the three turn limit on most systems (if at all, hard to remember that far back). In fact I ran a BladeMaster IP-BBS for a while, was interesting getting a WorldGroup module working in modern Windows.

  18. Re:Possibilities on Microsoft Is Confident In Security of Edge Browser · · Score: 1

    It's just within the realm of possibilities that the Ballmer days of "When I want your opinion, I'll tell you what it is," are over? In more than just name?

    I'm not sure about that, they had a good start menu implementation early in the windows 10 tech preview and managed to mess it up and haven't listened to anyone who has told them that the new shrunken start screen alternative in the newer builds is crap so I don't think that part has changed that much. There are other positive changes happening at MS, but that particular cultural wart still seems to be in place.

  19. Re:This is project proposal V 1.0. on Microsoft Is Confident In Security of Edge Browser · · Score: 4, Informative

    Some powerful customer will demand some interface to be supported or else

    No, they're shipping IE11 with enterprise compatibility mode to support back to IE8 quirks which will be fine for 99+% of their customers for legacy apps. Trust me, most of their customers are going to be happy to have a standards compliant browser as the default, the only trick will be in the mechanism to kick user over when they try to go to a corporate site that needs classic IE within Edge and keeping that mechanism from being abused by the bad guys.

  20. Secure? on Microsoft Is Confident In Security of Edge Browser · · Score: 4, Informative

    They support WebGL which is going to be the next attack vector as well as continuing to support flash with sandboxing that the hackers will tear to shreds in short order.

  21. Re:who cares? Me. on Windows 10 the Last Version of Windows? Not So Fast. · · Score: 2

    MS is doing exactly that with Windows 10, there will be the slow release branch that will be mostly security fixes, with infrequent but pre-announced feature changes (kind of the service pack model but more modern), and the fast release branch which will be more disruptive but will do things like keep Edge more up to date with emerging standards.

  22. Re:Head/desk... on Poor, Homegrown Encryption Threatens Open Smart Grid Protocol · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The least you can do is implement a real algorithm; but screw it up somehow

    That's why the best recommendation is to not only use the approved algorithm, but also the standard implementation. Don't get cute, don't try to optimize it, just use it as is. AES was required to run on emdedded systems 13+ years ago, any modern chip should have zero problem running the standard C implementation today.

  23. Re:$9 my ass on $9 Open Source Computer Blows Past Crowdfunding Goal · · Score: 1

    $20 is international shipping, US is $5, not every project needs HDMI, and this board includes WiFi and BT 4.0 which are expensive and bulky when adding to an rPi plus it includes storage.

  24. Re:Post-scarcity society kicking in. on $9 Open Source Computer Blows Past Crowdfunding Goal · · Score: 1

    Because Firefox or Chrome would run like crap on something as low end as a Desire HD, not enough ram or CPU. The best browser for something that old is Opera Classic or maybe Dolphin.

  25. Re:Pretty amazing, but not much cheaper than RPi on $9 Open Source Computer Blows Past Crowdfunding Goal · · Score: 4, Insightful

    However, once you add the HDMI, it's essentially the same price as a raspberry pi model A.

    But a heck of a lot cheaper than an rPi plus WiFi dongle plus BT 4.0 dongle and I'm sure it uses way less power (you generally can't run both wireless dongles without a powered USB hub. I'm working on a hub for my BT LE thermometer (ET-735) and it turned out to be cheaper to buy a Moto E or Allwinner based tablet than to add all the components to an rPi, which is just insane to me considering the non-rPi solutions added storage, a screen, a battery, and case to the BOM, oh and the Moto E would be considerably smaller.