Slashdot Mirror


User: claygate

claygate's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
104
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 104

  1. Re:Since looking farther = further in time on "Dark Flow" Outside Observable Universe · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    Do posts on sigs count as "on topic"?

    That's interesting. I'm going to see if I can mod this post.

  2. Re:Known to cause cancer... on California Classes LED Component Gallium Arsenide a Carcinogen · · Score: 1

    A lot of the GDP growth was influenced by inflated real estate prices. Budgets at the state and local level were planned around asset wealth which didn't exist then and doesn't exist now. Calculated Risk: California City Nears Bankruptcy and a follow up article.

  3. Re:How I yearn for the days on Teens Arrested For Motorized Office Chair · · Score: 1

    As cool as dying from prescription medicine poisoning, clogging of arteries by trans-fats or diabetes brought on by a sedentary, sugar-filled lifestyle. Choose your poison, keyword being choose.

  4. Re:Science Superheroes on Entertainment Weekly Bemoans Lack of Great Science Books · · Score: 1
    Ahh... semantics. I said into education and I mean into EDUCATION. I'm not speaking of the political meaning of education which is socialization. I mean pay teachers more and shrink class sizes. Those are the only two things needed. It would bring intelligent, thought provoking people from industry into teaching roles who would engage students in critical thinking. Smaller class sizes would also remove the disruptions and pitfalls of an unmanageably large number of students with disparate abilities in one class. No more lowest common denominator teaching.

    I accidentally replied to my comment instead of yours first! :) As you were.

  5. Re:Science Superheroes on Entertainment Weekly Bemoans Lack of Great Science Books · · Score: 1

    Ahh... semantics. I said into education and I mean into EDUCATION. I'm not speaking of the political meaning of education which is socialization. I mean pay teachers more and shrink class sizes. Those are the only two things needed. It would bring intelligent, thought provoking people from industry into teaching roles who would engage students in critical thinking. Smaller class sizes would also remove the disruptions and pitfalls of an unmanageably large number of students with disparate abilities in one class. No more lowest common denominator teaching.

  6. Re:Science Superheroes on Entertainment Weekly Bemoans Lack of Great Science Books · · Score: 1
    Not ALL current Americans. But we have lost the majority of a few generations. If we took 10% of our defense budget and put it into education I believe we would solve a lot of our problems.

    The general population wouldn't be as xenophobic, thus less willing to go after the "evil doers" as our current leader labels them.

    There would be fewer "evil doers" because we wouldn't run around the world in a ignorant haze spewing American propaganda without realizing that, perhaps, we're lucky to be where we are. It is not a eternal right. The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers

    we're becoming so busy trying to protect what is already here we have become myopic. The world changes. Everything changes. If you're not changing then entropy sets in and the end product is disorder. And the more I travel around this country the more it tends to look like it is falling apart slowly. Bridge by bridge, neighborhood by neighborhood. The gentrification process is slower than the sprawl and subsequent dilapidation that occurs.

    The US is still a country of immense wealth, both intellectually and in natural resources. But there is a fundamental issue where the culture is becoming one of fear rather than optimism. This is not sustainable or productive. It's up to us to change where we're going. Family member by family member. Friend by friend. And even, stranger by stranger. You have to build it piece by piece even when misguided leaders break it down so quickly.

  7. Re:solved within 7hrs... on Breaking the Fermilab Code · · Score: 1

    *Begin Stimpson J Cat voice*

    The only significance I see is the number 24.

    "25 columns in the last row of Stanza 1, 21 columns in the last row of Stanza 3" will need to be parsed somehow.

    25-1=24

    21+3=24

    24 symbols

    With the digits reversed, 24 = 42. One less than a non-cola or a Jim Carrey movie.

    Ok, that was a bit tongue in cheek. It's cool how this has been partly decoded already. I wanted to play as well. Nothing to see here.

  8. Is this why? on Colleges Being Remade Into "Repress U"? · · Score: 2, Interesting

    A friend of mine who disagrees with a lot of my opinions described this situation very simply. He said, "If either of us were less intelligent we wouldn't be friends but enemies".

  9. Re:they're not limited to two evils on Google's Shadow Over Firefox · · Score: 1

    It is like the gauge on a railway. If you have the same gauge then everyone can build and use whatever rail cars for whatever "stuff" they have to move. You code some functionality in house and that gets adopted by other people. Then when they layer on top of that, you can use their added functionality as well. It seems very hard to get that point across. Computers are still a novel enough idea that they are viewed as an entity to themselves rather than tools to simplify other tasks.

  10. On a Limb; Consumption and Population Growth on The Dying PC Market · · Score: 1

    http://www.stat.go.jp/English/data/handbook/c02cont.htm In 2005 this shows a growth rate of -0.01% and no growth in 2006. Added to the fact that the population is aging and adults already own functioning computers the decline of the PC market seems a little fallacious. How are the PC markets of developing nations doing? What about 20 or 30 years down the line when, hopefully, the economies of the markets OLPC have targeted mature and need to stock offices, homes and schools with PCs? Unless PCs are gone by then or are replaced by tablet-esque learning and business PCs then I think the computer industry can sleep quite calmly.

  11. Re:Optical Elegance on Matrox's Extio Reviewed · · Score: 1

    I will add another question, this tangent made me curious. We have B - the light in the fibre optic cable and C - the light needed to display, what about A - the light needed to create the digital stream on the CCD to begin with? So far we have B less than C. Can I assume A less than B?

  12. Re:The Return of REAL Cover Art on Analog Revival Means Vinyl Will Outlive CD · · Score: 1

    My brother painted my CD cover over the course of a few days while I was recording some overdubbed guitar parts for a few songs and mixing a few more. On major label releases you'll never see that anymore because everything has to be PERFECT sounding and looking. Boring if you ask me.

  13. Re:The last straw on AT&T Forwarding All Internet Traffic to NSA? · · Score: 1

    Welcome to the home of Nex-Tech Internet. 2005 was a busy and exciting year for us and 2006 looks to be even better. We upgraded our Internet connections to both Sprint and AT&T to OC3's to maintain our goal of having the largest Internet backbone in western Kansas. We lowered our web hosting pricing and added some additional features to each plan also.

    The issue goes deeper as many smaller ISPs send their data directly to the big guys anyway.

  14. Re:Lets hope they open source it on Google to Buy Opera? · · Score: 1

    They have a lot of cell phone tech that might be very profitable for a now public Google that has to show signs of future revenue streams in order to keep equity holders happy.

  15. Flexible should use a measurement on Apple iTunes to End Flat Fee Pricing? · · Score: 1

    I have arguments for pricing to go both ways.

    Argument 1 - The price should be variable by size of the file. It costs more bandwidth to download a longer file. $0.99 for a 4 minute song is a rip off though. We all know that is not almost a dollar of bandwidth.
    Argument 2 - The price should be variable based on the cost of the recording. Cost of recording is coming down, especially with the advent of non linear editing jumping to a new level in recording. BFD and drumagog as drum replacers are ubiquitous across all spectrums of the recording industry. D.I.Y. to professional. Pitch correction saves time in the studio trying to hit the take. Software interfaces literally lets bands record a song by copying and pasting a bar over and over. No need to hit the take straight through. I don't agree with these as a musician or when I'm engineering but it would be naive to say that they aren't used on 99% of the recordings you hear on iTunes or that EMI wants to sell.
    Argument 3 - The price should reflect the quality. As was stated in the story, all industries have flexible pricing. When you go into HEB to buy cereal you have Hill Country Fair Fruit Os or Kellogg's Fruit Loops. I can tell you which is pricier, the brand name. So which is brand name and which is independent label, Fruit Os or Fruit Loops. I see the major label as being generic, sometimes Hill County Fair makes a better tasting cereal just like the major labels do sometimes. But I highly doubt the majors would take any one seriously if they told them that the song was of low quality price it cheaply.

    Don't forget, some bands just copy themselves. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?story Id=4258547 Shocking.

  16. Re:OT: where'd all the 4/5 comments go? on Xbox 360 for $300 · · Score: 1

    I more or less constantly have mod points. And I had them while reading the MS Linux lab questions on page one. I went to page two and they disappeared and I haven't seen them since. Maybe a slashcode update gone wrong? Or maybe the moderation criteria has become more stringent.

  17. Re:I can't see any reason to complain about the pr on Xbox 360 for $300 · · Score: 1

    Have you and three friends buy the four games together. Each one takes a game home and beats it then you pass it on to the next. Now you paid $15 for a game. I know this is "file sharing" or "pirating" and the big bad men will come and eat you for doing it. So in order to stop you from illegally sharing your games they will install copy prevention on humans now. You are not allowed to talk to anyone unless you are a Trusted Soul(TM). Then using DRM you may interact with other people.

  18. Re:DST is BS anyway.... on Impact of Daylight Savings Time Changes? · · Score: 1

    Except we will use a lot of oil manufacturing new goods to make up for all the embedded systems that now work off of incorrect calendars and need to be replaced.

  19. Re:Good! on Hot Coffee Cooling Off · · Score: 1

    I wanted to mod this guy but there is no "-1:Bad Parent" rating. You do realise if you bought the game as rated "M" and gave it to your kid that complaining that actually it should be "AO" and not appropriate for him is an absolute contradiction? The "M" rating is not appropriate for 12 year olds if you really feel the ESRB ratings are so correct. I shouldn't feed the trolls. Maybe I laced these crumbs with poison.

  20. Re:-1 Troll on Who Cares if Analog TV Goes Dark? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I (we) don't have cable, I (we) don't have satellite, I (we)don't have a digital ready TV or a new TV and I (we) don't plan to. In Houston, TX you get at least 12 channels over the airwaves. There might be others which I'm not receiving. Two of them are garbage rent-a-religion TV, 7 are Networks + PBS and the last 3 are Spanish speaking. I know /. is a captive/biased audience and they will tend to want specialty channels (Sci Fi). But I hardly find the justification to spend $50/mo. to replace TV that already has "funny and entertaining", enlightening (PBS), and sports. On cable you can watch more games, more shows and more PBS-like TV (discovery, history). But is it really worth $50? I'm definitely not disenfranchised, I grew up as an expatriate travelling the world. Some people just don't gain enough utility and benefit, whether it is intellectual or pure enjoyment, from TV to justify going digital.

  21. Re:Ballistic trajectory? on Jeff Bezos's Space Company Reveals Some Secrets · · Score: 1

    "Bezos flew into this West Texas town a few weeks ago to tell key leaders how he planned to use his newly acquired 165,000 acres of desolate ranch land."

    http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/ap_bezos_sp aceport_050315.html

    Would that be big enough? It's 257 sqaure miles, I'm not sure how large of a surface distance an arc at 325000 feet above sea level would cover.

  22. Re:The Fickle Slashdot Opinion on Google Map Hack & Chicago Crime Data · · Score: 1

    I think they might not be reading anything here and actually working on wonderful tools to make freely available.

  23. Re:Anyone notice this tidbit? on The Nintendo Conference In-Depth · · Score: 1

    It could be used to get people interested in homebrew or to talk about it. We might not get 100% homebrew but something along the lines of personal companies (or two roommates) creating games that don't cost $10 million. If you take the physics and graphics calculations out of the equation and just have the stylistic approach to game design you remove a lot of development costs. You won't have new game engines designed this way but you might have new genres designed this way.

  24. Re:Failover on Software Glitches Stall Toyota Prius · · Score: 1

    How much did that cost on eBay? =)

  25. Re:Building Architecture on Green buildings, Green Server Farms? · · Score: 1

    Instead of NIMBY that is NIMB "Not in my Building". We're still creating the heat in the atmosphere eventually. That puts the burden on someone else instead of you. We need to create less heat in the first place. However, your idea does work for older buildings where running ancient AC systems well outside of efficient levels is causing a ton of heat and pollution of a different kind.