Slashdot Mirror


User: BlackHawk-666

BlackHawk-666's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
1,563
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 1,563

  1. Re:Because you need to solve a goddamn problem on PUBPAT Challenges Microsoft's FAT Patent · · Score: 1

    Just don't use the MS Swarm 1.0 series. They have some nasty bugs, tend to crash (and eat your scrotum - or other unexepcted side effects), and have remote exploits that allow hackers to execute code of choice ;->

  2. Re:Because you need to solve a goddamn problem on PUBPAT Challenges Microsoft's FAT Patent · · Score: 2, Funny

    I'm hanging out for a Gilette +5 vorpal blade - now that's shaving the smart way!

  3. Re:South Park Season 8 (and other topics) on Futurama: Can it be True!? · · Score: 1

    You just made my day :-)

  4. Re:South Park Season 8 (and other topics) on Futurama: Can it be True!? · · Score: 1

    I'd settle for just having IZ released on DVD to love and cherish forever, filthy human child.

  5. Re:Hooray for Zoidberg on Futurama: Can it be True!? · · Score: 2, Funny
    I blame Fox's crummy programming for that poor chaps inability to use English. In an unrelated note, a Fox internal memo leaked today:

    Dumb down tv programming

    ?

    Profit!

  6. Re:GPS? on Finding Yourself With Photo Recognition · · Score: 1
    Would you seriously think of piloting a space craft that had no way to determine it's current speed? It shouldn't even need to be measured in theory, since your course would be calculated you can just check where you should be given the current time. And as you say, a couple of nearby objects is all you need to keep relatavistic tracking of your trajectory/vector.

    Finally, as far as I am aware (physicists please feel free to correct me here) Einstein's theory of relativity is still that...a theory, not currently proven. They should know if it's true or not for sure by the time we're casually launching into space, but best not to be factoring it in until it is proven. In any case, they will be able to calculate this and factor it in as required.

  7. Re:Ideally on Finding Yourself With Photo Recognition · · Score: 1
    Solar flares will only affect the side that is facing the sun and only for a very short duration. Goldeneye is a film, not reality. The millitary won't knock out their own communications and positioning system since it provides them with a massive tactical advantage. They may downgrade the system so it's accuracy is lower, but they won't wipe it out. A near asteroid miss is really clutching at straws.

    There's no reason not to move towards a better working system, but this image recognition is not it. Any new technology that provides a *better* solution than the current one will tend to replace it over time.

    You seem pretty keen on this stuff, do you have any affiliation with the company bringing it out?

  8. Re:What if... on Finding Yourself With Photo Recognition · · Score: 1

    You wouldn't be hungry, but you might die of malnutrition before finding your way again ;->

  9. Re:Better than GPS . on Finding Yourself With Photo Recognition · · Score: 1

    Most of these cameras have a fixed lens roughly equivalent to a 50mm lens. This is approximately the view seen through a human eye, which is why it is so popular. Given the very high cost of a 20mm lens I'd find it unlikely you'd be getting one of those with your camera phone. NOTE: 50mm lens with 35mm film is the reference point I am working from. APS cameras have different lens lengths for the same effective image...i.e. a 35mm APS (IIRC) is the same as a 50mm lens on a 35mm SLR.

  10. Re:Finding Yourself With Photo Recognition on Finding Yourself With Photo Recognition · · Score: 1

    They also speak English in Quebec two since it is in a country with two national languages. Most foreigners over here in Europe are at least bi-lingual, and often multi-lingual. There was not a single place in Paris, Venice or Amsterdam where I was not able to get by with English and a smattering of local words. Perhaps you need to travel a little mroe and find out about the rest of the world?

  11. Re:Ideally on Finding Yourself With Photo Recognition · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It would have to be a big act of god since GPS is a string of satellites around the earth and a good GPS reading will take in data from any number of these. I seem to recall picking up 7 or more when trying some readings in Australia. What sort of accident are you planning that will knock out ALL of the satelites? GPS would just run with reduced service quality if it lost only a few satelites.

  12. Re:Problems on Finding Yourself With Photo Recognition · · Score: 1

    Or even better, how about taking a photo of two street signs on the corner you're standing on and let it OCR that instead. With the location info already known from the cell, combined with thw two interesecting streets you're in, you can get an EXACT reading of where you are. Even in Covent Garden (London) which is notoriously winding and curvey (actually more triangular) this technique would work.

  13. Re:GPS? on Finding Yourself With Photo Recognition · · Score: 1
    Stellar travel is a fairly well solved problem, plenty software can predict what the stars look like from different locations/times in the universe and could surely be extended to take the angles of the stars and compute an exact location. Also GPS like systems work great in space

    Since you're unlikely to be wandering randomly through space without either any idea of where you are going or where you came from, perhaps the simplest idea is to make a note of your heading and speed and then interpolate where you are, just like navigators did for the earth a while back?

    e.g. Starting from Earth, headed out at x speed for y years, in z direction - got to point b. Now, if someone invented a teleporter that randomly threw you to some other point in the universe, yes, then you might need to plot your position from the stars, but you never need to do it if you simply know where you started from, how fast you are travelling, and in which direction.

  14. Re:GPS? on Finding Yourself With Photo Recognition · · Score: 3, Funny

    If you're the sort of imbecile that flies to Portugal for a meeting, then tries to drive/walk there yourself without bothering to use a street map or taking a taxi then you're the sort of imbecile who won't have bothered to check the phone number for this service in Portugal. Surely a GPS reading is going to be more sensible? Frankly, people who are this stupid can stay lost in a foreign country for all I care.

  15. Re:So rather than send out... on Finding Yourself With Photo Recognition · · Score: 1

    Why not move to Europe then? It's got exotic cities a-plenty and cheap flights are typically only 30 each way to the major cities. You can fly even cheaper if you're willing to look around or fly late at night. A friend took a trip to Germany from London for 4 return...that's about 6 USD. Moving to London was the best thing I ever did :-)

  16. Re:Java eh? on Can You Spare A Few Trillion Cycles? · · Score: 1
    I'm pretty sure the IDE in question was Forte from Sun. Now, if Sun can't get their IDE running nice and snappy on their own language, what hope is there for others?

    You may be right of course, Java might hate me ;-) I think it can smell the Windows PC scent on my fingers when I get home from work cause it always plays a Skunk Anansie track when I turn it on ;->

  17. Re:Java eh? on Can You Spare A Few Trillion Cycles? · · Score: 1
    One of the Java IDE's I tried to use was so slow it would drop keystrokes on my machine. Whenever I hit f s it dropped the f part and would just insert the letter "s" into my document. Not quite the effect I was after.

    I might give Java another shot at server related tasks since you're so confident it is fast enough for these tasks. The premise of Java is just so tasty, it's the implementations that have been left wanting in my experiences.

  18. Re:Java eh? on Can You Spare A Few Trillion Cycles? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If this is true then why is Java so goddammed slow still? Why is it every medium sized or above Java app I've used performs like crap compared to a similar one compiled in C++ or simlilar languages? It just seems to me there is a major disconnect between what the Java adherants are claiming and the reality I am faced with every time I use a Java app.

  19. Re:Superior attitude on Those Eureka Moments · · Score: 3, Funny

    And all our brains are wired in exactly the same pattern of neurons so we all experience thinking in exactly the same way. We are Borg, you will be assimilated.

  20. Re:What kind of distribution? on Gigabit Networking for the Home? · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Those figures are provided as a standard point of reference to the max speed my disk can sustain on a read operation. I'm fully aware that the max speed expected from a standard read operation is going to be less since it has drive head seek times, buffering and a dozen over variables to contend with. There's no single figure value that can be given for mixed read operations since these will depend on filesystem complexity, fragmentation, file sizes, disk driver efficiency, and a myriad of other factors. Since the operation I wait on the most often is transfer of tens of gigs from one drive to another, and the files are each quite large, I get reasonably close to that idealised drive transfer speed at the times when I am most aware of how long a copy is taking.

    P.S. I know writes take longer than reads and that is the limiting factor generally in copy speed.

  21. Re:Really hard to understand for someone on Probable Solution Found for ECC2-109 Challenge · · Score: 1

    I'd be willing to go out on a limb and say that financial corporations and games developers are hiring the majority of math grads these days. Finance institutes need lots of quants and hardcore math guys to get their funds and investments as profitable as possible. Games companies need physics and math grad for the environmental physics in the latest games.

  22. Re:Is that reading or writing? on Gigabit Networking for the Home? · · Score: 1

    Try the hdparms command as well to help fine tune your drives up. Make sure to switch on -M16 if you can since it can lead to quite decent improvements. Also worth checking out all the other options and do a -tT run each time to see the difference in speed.

  23. Re:What kind of distribution? on Gigabit Networking for the Home? · · Score: 1

    My hard drive can pull 60 mega bytes / sec, which is closer to 600 megabit than 100 megabit. Even my crummist old HD would do 20MB/s.

  24. Re:Sure, Why Not? on Code Copying Survey for Developers · · Score: 2, Insightful
    This is pretty much spot on. The libraries I personally hold are getting quite old and new techniques should be investiated before using one of the templates. That's why I investigate the appropriate tech prior to starting a project and will write new template routines as required to stay fresh with modern innovations.

    As for using anything more significant than code snippets, I wouldn't do that. Standard libraries are available either freely (thanks GNU) or at a reasonable price in comparison to a project. I usually get a purchase order for any significant library which we will require to develop a project. For me, my library is all about saving keystrokes and reducing simple errors, rather than dropping in 10,000 lines of code that rightfully belongs to another company.

  25. Re:Good reason... on Code Copying Survey for Developers · · Score: 1

    Do it for a few more and you become a true hacker again, and I mean that in the old sense of the word :-)