Slashdot Mirror


User: afidel

afidel's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
11,418
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 11,418

  1. Re:Not concerned on German Auto Firms Face Roadblock In Testing Driverless Car Software · · Score: 1

    I think it's more likely we'll ban human drivers. Just this morning I counted over 16 silver/grey/blue-grey vehicles driving in pouring rain and light fog without headlights on. On average a computer driver today is probably better than a human, and they'll just get better as time moves on whereas human improvements are a bit slower to happen.

  2. Re:Trade secret? on Facebook Sued For Alleged Theft of Data Center Design · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yup, why do you think IBM and their Nazgul went after SCO so heavily despite it probably costing 10x what a settlement would have? Because it's cheaper in the long run to kill the invaders and put their heads on pikes outside your walls than to pay them off.

  3. Re:Aww poor baby on Jeremy Clarkson Dismissed From Top Gear · · Score: 5, Informative

    No, because their star with an over-inflated ego physically assaulted a coworker and drew blood. Nobody should have to put up with that. That being said I'll miss him as he was a fairly unique personality in tv.

  4. Re:Some advice to Indians on Wikipedia Admin's Manipulation "Messed Up Perhaps 15,000 Students' Lives" · · Score: 1

    How do you say "Don't believe anything you read on Wikipedia without checking the citations " in Hindi?

    FTFY

  5. Re:Cruise control? on Ford's New Car Tech Prevents You From Accidentally Speeding · · Score: 2

    whereas cruise couldn't be used below 50mph.

    What? I've owned or driven dozens and dozens of cars and I've never encountered a higher low end limit than 25mph for cruise control, many work at 15 or 20 mph.

  6. Re:Morning exists on Costa Rica Goes 75 Days Powering Itself Using Only Renewable Energy · · Score: 1

    Solar thermal with molten salts works fine, and those mid latitude locations all receive ~10-14 hours per day of sunshine, though obviously peak output would be during the noon to 4PM period.

  7. Re:mountains, canyons, droughts. Combination yes on Costa Rica Goes 75 Days Powering Itself Using Only Renewable Energy · · Score: 1

    California does have geothermal potential, the rest of the US does not.

    Really? Because I could have sworn the largest geothermal upwelling on the planet is located in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho.

    If you do the research and the arithmetic, you find that renewables can make a significant impact - 11% to 13% of our total energy needs.

    Bullshit, wind and solar alone can potentially generate many, many times our current energy demands. To get an idea of just how little land would be needed to generate our current needss with even junk solar cells check out this page which has a handy graph showing 6 solar farms in desert areas that would work. Now granted, that's approximately twice the area that we currently occupy with road and parking structures, but it would be completely possible if we were to set it as a goal like we did with reaching the moon, put 5-10% of global GDP for the next few decades to work on converting to 100% renewables and we could get there easily. The problem is not the technology, or the availability, it is the will to do what we know must be done, because it is harder than the current path which we know leads to problems.

  8. Re:mountains, canyons, droughts. Combination yes on Costa Rica Goes 75 Days Powering Itself Using Only Renewable Energy · · Score: 1

    California does have geothermal potential, the rest of the US does not.

    Really? Because I could have sworn the largest geothermal upwelling on the planet is located in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho.

    If you do the research and the arithmetic, you find that renewables can make a significant impact - 11% to 13% of our total energy needs.

    Bullshit, wind and solar alone can potentially generate many, many times our current energy demands. To get an idea of just how little land would be needed to generate our current needss with even junk solar cells check out this page which has a handy graph showing 6 solar farms in desert areas that would work. Now granted, that's approximately twice the area that we currently occupy with road and parking structures, but it would be completely possible if we were to set it as a goal like we did with reaching the moon, put 5-10% of global GDP for the next few decades to work on converting to 100% renewables and we could get there easily. The problem is not the technology, or the availability, it is the will to do what we know must be done, because it is harder than the current path which we know leads to problems.

  9. Re:And now why this can not be done in the USofA on Costa Rica Goes 75 Days Powering Itself Using Only Renewable Energy · · Score: 0

    Nuclear has by far the lowest, but for the same reason that many environmentalists are still opposing the Keystone pipeline despite the reality of more incidents of environmental damage from the alternative (inefficient rail shipping with nearly 100x the rate of environmental exposure), it's all about emotion for many in the movement, not about what's truly, measurably better for the planet.

  10. Liability? on Chevy Malibu 'Teen Driver' Tech Will Snitch If You Speed · · Score: 2

    I wonder how much this opens the owner up to additional liability when there's an accident and the opposing council subpenas the records of the vehicle and shows a pattern of reckless driving?

  11. Re:Postgres hands down on Why I Choose PostgreSQL Over MySQL/MariaDB · · Score: 1

    As someone who's used many, many DBMS engines MySQL is by far my least favorite. Even engines that are completely different from ANSI SQL like Intersystems Cache make more sense to me than the half standards compliant, half brokenness that is MySQL.

  12. Re:Unfortunately, it's still on piano on "Open Well-Tempered Clavier" Project Complete; Score and Recording Online · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I had the exact same thought when I went to the site. I went to Bach's childhood home and they have a number of his harpsichords including at least two in playable condition and I was lucky enough to be there on a day when they were actually playing one of them! It's a very different sound from a modern piano, though through stylized play the artist on this recording has made a modern piano sound as close as I've heard to the actual instrument that the piece was written for.

  13. Re: Jobs already said why on Why Apple Won't Adopt a Wireless Charging Standard · · Score: 1

    Yup, or replace your phone due to water, my S5 with Qi charging is waterproof.

  14. Re:Doubtful on New Crop of LED Filament Bulbs Look Almost Exactly Like Incandescents · · Score: 2

    It's almost certainly the electrolytic cap causing the issue, and it's where people that claim LED's have a longer life than CFL's are wrong unless they're talking about a DC environment because the weak link in both LED and CFL construction is the enclosed electrolytic capacitors. If you tear down either type of bulb and look at the spec sheet for the cap and compare the rated life at the actual operating temperature you'll see that almost every manufacturer is lying about expected lifetime (often by a factor of 10 or more).

  15. Re: A few embedded strings and timestamps? on New Evidence Strengthens NSA Ties To Equation Group Malware · · Score: 2

    I was about to pay the exact same thing, only Newfoundland and a few Caribbean islands are UTC -3. It was those canuckistani's I tell you.

  16. Re:External video devices for laptop? on Does USB Type C Herald the End of Apple's Proprietary Connectors? · · Score: 1

    There are external TB2 enclosures for desktop graphic cards, but due to complexity and niche use they run in the $500+ range and that doesn't include the cost of the video card.

  17. Re:there's a dongle for that. on Does USB Type C Herald the End of Apple's Proprietary Connectors? · · Score: 1

    AptX Lossless works fine, it will do losless compression until it runs into a something that it can't compress for the available bandwidth (most likely due to interference causing the real bandwidth to be lower than 721Kbps) and then it switches to a high quality lossy mode comparable to AAC-HD or similar.

  18. Re:It's a bit late, but 1984 is here on Scotland Yard Chief: Put CCTV In Every Home To Help Solve Crimes · · Score: 2

    He did read it but he missed the part where it was supposed to be a cautionary tale and not an instruction manual.

  19. Re:how much it took on Laser Takes Out Truck Engine From a Mile Away · · Score: 3, Informative

    Even near perfect mirroring makes damn near zero difference to a cutting laser so I doubt this attack laser would be any different.

  20. Re:how much it took on Laser Takes Out Truck Engine From a Mile Away · · Score: 2

    $159,279,888 in 1973 or ~$837M is 2015 dollars for the A-10. The GAU-8A develop cost was $49.7M in 1974 or $235M in 2015 dollars for a total system development cost of just over $1B.

  21. Re:Polycom on Ask Slashdot: Wireless Microphone For Stand-up Meetings? · · Score: 1

    Personally I'd go with the CX3000, it does POTS, SIP, and USB connectivity and you can use the expansion microphones which is huge if you have more than a few people on the call.

  22. Brain drain on Marissa Mayer On Turning Around Yahoo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How did cutting telecommuting across the board and thus forcing many talented engineers to go elsewhere stop the brain drain?

  23. Re:The big thing that is missing on FCC Approves Net Neutrality Rules · · Score: 1

    Local loop unbundling isn't a panacea, working through a clec who has to lease lines from the ilec is often painful when something goes wrong.

  24. Re:Too CPU hungry on Google Now Automatically Converts Flash Ads To HTML5 · · Score: 1

    Most rendering engines aren't single threaded, and most browsers use GPU acceleration. However, on mobile adding a bunch of animations will surely lower battery life, so I just switched from Chrome to Firefox on my Android device as animated and sound filled ads are evil and Chrome mobile lacks extension support.

  25. Re:Google had Flash ads? on Google Now Automatically Converts Flash Ads To HTML5 · · Score: 1

    In Chrome Menu -> More Tools -> Developer Tools -> click on Resources tab and you can get the individual URL for each image, script, or style sheet for each frame.