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User: davids-world.com

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  1. Re:zotero on WebODF: JavaScript Open Document Format Editor Deemed Stable · · Score: 1

    Generally, something like Dropbox and LaTeX work fine - unless you have two people editing the same file at the same time. Then, any VCS or something like Dropbox fail miserably. I have tried https://www.writelatex.com/, but of course I'd like to keep using my local Aquamacs instead of a web-based solution. Maybe I'll write a synchronization tool for Emacs. The issue is then that we need to integrate people who don't use Emacs...

  2. Re:Wow! on WebODF: JavaScript Open Document Format Editor Deemed Stable · · Score: 1

    No "track changes", as it seems. :-(

  3. Wow! on WebODF: JavaScript Open Document Format Editor Deemed Stable · · Score: 2

    This is fast and responsive. Does it avoid long-standing Word problems, such as figures that jump away from captions, paragraphs that adopt the adjacent style just because you're moving them around, and the like? For professional writing, I'll stick to LaTeX for now. For collaborative writing, something like this could be nice (and improve on half-baked solutions like the editor in OneDrive (very slow) or Google Doc (not word-compatible). So, I think this would have to be able to export / import Word docs seamlessly, due to business pressure everywhere...

  4. Air hardware falling behind... on Microsoft Wants You To Trade Your MacBook Air In For a Surface Pro 3 · · Score: 1

    If it wasn't for the operating system, the Air would be losing quickly this year against its competitors. It's about time that Apple released a Retina version, or an "Air" style version of the MBP.

  5. Administration: regulation and legal exposure on Teaching College Is No Longer a Middle Class Job · · Score: 1

    It is true that many universities world-wide are run more my administrators and their helpers, sucking up resources that are not spent on the universities core mission. In the U.S., anyway, a good bit of that has to do with two things: (a) regulation forces universities to check and double-check compliance with a complex set of rules imposed by federal and state governments and other sponsors. (b) Exposure. A larger university is much more likely to lose large sums of money (and public credibility) as a result of litigation when things go wrong. The system over-reacts because the stakes are high. In science, empiricism means that we do not conclude anything from anecdotal evidence (sample size: one). "Learning from experience" in policy-making means that when one person messes up one thing, everybody else will have to fill out more forms for rest of their lives.

  6. evaluation? on Wikipedia Mining Algorithm Reveals the Most Influential People In History · · Score: 1

    I wonder how this is evaluated, if at all. As others have been pointed out, the fact that Carl Linnaeus means that they define "influence" in a fairly poor, counter-intuitive way. Many mentions might make someone famous, but not influential in a deep sense. Deep influence, to me, affects the answer to a simple question. If the contributions of person A hadn't been made, would our world be a fundamentally different place? This will work for largely fictional figures (such as Jesus), as for evil people (Hitler). It will, IMHO correctly state that Mary (as in mother of Jesus) or Queen Elizabeth weren't all that influential.

  7. Re:The hard part on Building an Open Source Nest · · Score: 1

    If you think of a thermostat as a device that closes a switch when the temperature is below or above a set point, you're certainly right. But if you had some vision, you would see a new generation of devices, "smart homes", real-life ubiquitous computing, energy sustainability, and opportunities for data-mining or even networked intelligence. That's why I have two Nests - right now it's just good-looking and convenient (remote control!), but I'm adopting technology that, in a few years, may change the way I live.

  8. Re:Visa requirements - above-average salary? on Lawsuit: Oracle Called $50K 'Good Money For an Indian' · · Score: 1

    I see, that makes sense, thanks!

  9. Someone disagrees - and gets fired? on Lawsuit: Oracle Called $50K 'Good Money For an Indian' · · Score: 1

    Is this what corporate America is, these days? Someone disagrees in an e-mail with the head office and gets dismissed for that? Oracle would be unethical, but also downright stupid if they fired everyone who didn't share the views of their superiors. I can't believe that...

  10. Visa requirements - above-average salary? on Lawsuit: Oracle Called $50K 'Good Money For an Indian' · · Score: 1

    That guy from India presumably needed a visa, such as an H1B. In order to get this, a company needs to demonstrate to the Dept of Labor that the person in question can command an above-average salary. How do they do this if they undercut people in comparable jobs?

  11. Re:How long do metastatic cancer cells remain in t on New Treatment Kills Metastatic Cancer Cells · · Score: 2

    Would it be possible to replace or filter a patient's blood after excision of the tumor?

  12. Re:Yet another great argument... on D.C. Awards Obamacare IT Work To Offshore Outsourcer · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm not sure you're familiar with the facts. First, the number of H1B's given to this company indicates precisely that they are _not_ an offshore, outsourcing enterprise - the place of employment (and where taxes are paid by the employer and employees) is the US. Second, H1B requires that employers "Pay the nonimmigrant workers at least the local prevailing wage or the employer's actual wage, whichever is higher; pay for non-productive time in certain circumstances; and offer benefits on the same basis as for U.S. workers;" (http://www.dol.gov/compliance/guide/h1b.htm) Of course, there is some wiggle room, but that is natural and appropriate for a free market society. The H1Bs I know are getting paid far above what certain US nationals make in similar jobs, because they're worth it. Their job hunt is international, and so are their careers. For other H1Bs - well, don't forget that this country was founded based on immigration. I agree that there are problems though - see Moryath's comment below. The bigger question for me is why it takes $50M to make a website backed by a database, to serve a tiny state in which most potential users will have employer-provided healthcare anyway.

  13. Re:lateral transfer / evolution on New Links Found Between Bacteria and Cancer · · Score: 1

    Perhaps because the classic evolution model typically involves vertical transfer? But, of course, the selection process continues to work very well, so you're right from that perspective. "HGT has been shown to be an important factor in the evolution of many organisms." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_gene_transfer

  14. lateral transfer / evolution on New Links Found Between Bacteria and Cancer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Oh, thanks. I've just learned something. I have used resistance to antibiotics as an example of real-time observable evolution. If it is actually lateral transfer, then this example won't hold. Good to know!

  15. Re:INS has been around... with shortcomings on DARPA Develops Non-GPS Navigation Chip · · Score: 2

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_navigation_system There are even a whole bunch of ways to build them.

  16. INS has been around... with shortcomings on DARPA Develops Non-GPS Navigation Chip · · Score: 1

    Inertial navigation systems have been around for a long time - certainly predating GPS. Commercial aircraft fly with them (to be independent). They are small enough to be added to small drones - though they are not "chip-scale". Precise, robust ones are very expensive, and perhaps addressing the price is one of their goals, though the blurb doesn't state that. They also need to be re-calibrated regularly (ever seen exact position information at locations where aircraft park?), but again, I don't see how the DARPA project addresses it. It would be nice to have a miniature-INS for indoors navigation, but only if it's a chip for less than $10 or so...

  17. Simplify your life on Ask Slashdot: Starting From Scratch After a Burglary? · · Score: 1

    I live perfectly well without TV. Netflix provides ample entertainment on a nice large flat-screen or a projector. You will save time and energy (it'll be quiet). AppleTV is useful. I have a laptop (a top-of-the line Macbook Pro with SSD etc etc), but no desktop (not even at work). That way I don't have to synchronize data, and I have everything with me. If you need another iMac at home depends on your family, I guess. An iPad or a cheaper Android tablet are useful for reading the news during breakfast, etc etc. Someone here suggested to simply wait and see what you miss the most. That is a wise suggestion.

  18. Independent gas station chains? Scalability? on CNN Replicates John Broder's Drive In the Tesla Model S · · Score: 1

    If I only had one gas station every 200 miles, I'd get quite nervous in my car as well. (It does 300 miles per re-fill.) The solution would be a joint-venture with a chain of gas stations, or perhaps for Musk to buy a 50% share in one outright. Are all the gas station chains in North America owned by big mineral oil companies, or are there independent ones? If these chains installed sufficient charging stations, one could get rid of this problem. Once there are more EV on the road, a problem of scalability will crop up. You'll need many more power points at a station than you have now (for gas) if it takes an hour to re-charge. That takes some real estate...

  19. Information Sciences on Ask Slashdot: Best Alternative To the Canonical Computer Science Degree? · · Score: 1

    One of the degrees we offer here at Penn State is "Information Sciences and Technology". While there are many CS aspects to it, which are taught (Databases, Programming, Mobile and Web Development, etc.), there are more aspects of humanities and "big data" involved - learning how to interpret and visualize quantitative measures, and learning to process large-scale data (e.g., CiteSEER was created here), and some aspects of software development, project management, business management. We also have a strong cyber security group and teach cyber law. We want our students to be strong computationally (e.g., understand scalability, algorithms, data structures), but theoretical computer science, as interesting as I find it personally, takes the back-burner. From what I understand, our graduates have among the highest average starting salaries among the BSc-level programs here. Other schools have iSchools as well, whose programs are worth considering. (There is a spectrum from "library science" to business or CS. Choose wisely.)

  20. When did I last buy X? on Cooking Up the Connected Kitchen · · Score: 1

    Actually, having remote access to an inventory is a killer application. Of course, we don't want to scan every item added or used up. The implementation is the problem. RFID might be a solution, though it isn't cost-effective at this time, and more importantly, RFID tags won't be attached to single eggs or pieces of broccoli in my fridge. A simple webcam in the fridge might go along way (the devil is in the details - light - positioning?), but it wouldn't capture the pantry or the spice rack... "When did I last buy X?" might be a pretty good proxy for all of this, without all the kitchen technology.

  21. Re:Too little, too late on Firefox 18 Beta Out With IonMonkey JavaScript Engine · · Score: 1
    I tried switching from Chrome (using the Canary build), because it kept crashing on me. I had to use Firefox nightly builds, because the standard Firefox looks fuzzy on my Retina display Macbook Pro (high-res Retina display have been out for almost 6 months, IIRC).

    Unfortunately, Firefox turned out to have problems with providing a cursor in the location bar after opening a new window (you had to set it by mouse!), and the privacy mode is broken: it removes all other windows and switches to anonymous browsing globally. Autofill did not work as well as I expected: user names often weren't filled in. Speed was not an issue.

    Enough little issues for me to switch back to Chrome. It's sad that they haven't managed to make FF fully useable. To make anonymous browsing apply to a single window appears to require deeper architectural changes according to the bug thread, which does not bode well for their overall design. Making it per-tab appears to be yet another story, which seems even more strange to me.

  22. T-Mob on Ask Slashdot: A Cheap US Cellphone Plan With an Unlocked Phone? · · Score: 1

    I have been using various unlocked iPhones on T-Mobile US for the past four years. There are two drawbacks with that approach. You can't use 3G (only EDGE) data, which makes for somewhat slower and less reliable data service. The second is coverage - T-Mobile just isn't great. Cost is $50/month, plus about $400 for the phone itself (found on Craigslist, had to look one that had an older baseband firmware). One advantage is that I can pop in a European SIM card whenever I go to Europe. When the new iPhone comes out next month, I'll probably switch to Verizon with a regular plan. Total cost of ownership (over 2 years) is much higher and my data will be limited to 2GB/month or so, but at least I'll have reliable service. If it is dual GSM/CDMA (and I expect it to be), I should be able to use it in Europe without much trouble.

  23. Re:Allow NO 2nd class citizens! on Ask Slashdot: Reasonable Immigration Policy For Highly-Trained Workers? · · Score: 1

    See the comment above ("It's not immigration"). I can relate to what you're saying - I'd rather be a part of this country (at least while I'm living here) than to be treated as a guest.

  24. Re:One benefit planes have over cars on Electric Airplane Ready For Production · · Score: 1

    (Note - I'm saying this because we're originally talking about a small single-engine plane intended for private passenger operation - and not some of the largest jets you can find.)

  25. Re:One benefit planes have over cars on Electric Airplane Ready For Production · · Score: 1

    Actually, that's not true. You can load a lot into a regular-size family sedan, and usually even add a trailer. With a full fuel tank and 3 or 3.5 passengers that all want to take some light luggage, you're quickly up against max gross in a typical 150HP or 180HP Cessna.