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User: slim-t

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Comments · 114

  1. Re:Agate Fossil Beds National Monument in Nebraska on Ask Slashdot: How Did You Experience The Solar Eclipse? · · Score: 1

    I was at Agate too, came from northern Minnesota and spent the weekend in Rapid City. We got there at sunrise and left quickly after totality to get ahead of the crowd. I'm wondering where you got the number 11,000. That number seems about right, I just hadn't seen any official count.

  2. It may be common but it still sounds like whining on Ask Slashdot: Are We Older Experts Being Retired Too Early? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Anytime you describe yourself as "kickass," you come off as a jerk. Then you demand to work remotely. Surely there are people out there with adequate skills, who aren't jerks and will show up at the office once in a while.

  3. Re:Calculator on Ask Slashdot: Cheap Second Calculators For Tests? · · Score: 1

    Redundancy is good. I brought my passport to the PE exam so I'd have identification in case I lost my wallet. I got my calculator at Goodwill for 50 cents. It had some broken LCD segments. I had a backup, but I never bothered to take it out of the packaging. The redundancy comes from doing the math on paper, and doing the math with a calculator and comparing. And it comes from doing the problems more than once. Don't spend too much time on a hard problem. And don't spend too little time on a problem that looks easy. And be sure to check that your answers in the test book get transfer correctly to the answer sheet.

  4. Was is a BSOD or was it "smurfed"? on BSOD Issues On Deepwater Horizon · · Score: 2, Insightful
    “It would just turn blue,” he said. “You’d have no data coming through.”

    This doesn't sound like a Windows BSOD at all. I'm not sure what DCS (distributed control system) they were using, but in my experience with Foxboro I/A is that when things turn blue it mean's there's no data coming in. The term I usually hear is "Smurfed" because somebody thought the color (cyan) looked like a Smurf.

    This would possibly be due to an analog input signal that fell out of the 4-20mA range, or a loss of communications within the DCS or from an outside controller.

  5. Re:Burning wood is not zero emission on Berkeley Engineers Have Some Bad News About Air Cars · · Score: 4, Insightful
    It releases the carbon that the tree had already taken out of the atmosphere, and the tree that grows in its place will recapture. So the net is zero emission.

    As said in great grandparent post, compressed air and hydrogen are energy storage mediums. Wood is the same thing. Trees use solar energy to convert CO2 into carbon. When you burn the wood, you put the CO2 back into the air and get the energy back as heat.

    It doesn't matter if we burn the wood for something useful, the trees dies and rots, or the tree is burned in a forest fire: at some point the carbon is coming back out of that tree.

  6. Re:Summary doesn't make it clear... on Arizona Judge Tells Sheriff "Reveal Password Or Face Contempt" · · Score: 2, Funny

    Didn't you ever see Raising Arizona? Nick Cage served a lot of time in the Maricopa County Correctional Facility for Men. He was what you call, a repeat offender. Clearly it's not working.

  7. Re:Russian Roulette Anyone? on Google Chrome Developers On Browser Security · · Score: 1

    Actually it's "Do no evil." So you can be as evil as you want, as long as you don't act on it. Even Dick Cheney could work for Google if he stopped... um, well... breathing.

    My theory is that Dick Cheney died of a heart attack in 2002. He stopped breathing, but his replacement robot kept right on being evil.

  8. Re:Give it time on National ID Cards Mandated in the US, If You're Under 50 · · Score: 1
    I had this happen already. I was at home, my wife was at her mother's and called me and said to bring some booze over. I hop in the car, drive to the liquor store and get another call - wife says we had some leftover from the wedding. I go back home and start raiding the cabinet above the fridge.

    Meanwhile, there's a domestic dispute across the street. The city cop was parked at that house. He calls the Sheriff to look for the husband, who left in a red Chevy Blazer. The genius Sheriff deputy sees my white Ford Explorer parked in my yard. Headlights on, but not running (needed the lights to see in the snow storm, but needed the keys to unlock my house).

    Sheriff deputy knocks on my door. I put down the booze. I expect the officer at my door to be the city cop, telling me my lights are on. No, it's the Sheriff deputy and he thinks I was beating my wife across the street and wants to see ID. I've got nothing to hide, so I give him my driver's license and tell him the address isn't current. Now he thinks I'm a burgler and wants me to prove it's my home. He works for the county, he could call the courthouse and they would tell him I own the house.

    So I start searching my basement. In plain sight there's a note from the electrical inspector (a state employee) with my name and address and the word "Owner". I walk over to get it for him and he comes into my house and handcuffs me. Never looked at the note, even though it was about 1 ft from him when he handcuffed me.

    He brings me outside and searches me. Finds a beer in my pocket and now he tells me I broke my probation (I've had two speeding tickets, and a few parking tickets, but I've never been convicted of breaking any law that would require probabtion).

    After about 10 minutes on the radio and computer he realizes I have no record and own the house, so he lets me go.

    I wrote a letter to the Sheriff because I wanted to see the report the deputy filed saying he went into somebody's home, handcuffed them, put them in a squad car, and accused them of burglary and violating probation. The Sheriff sent back the report about the domestic dispute across the street, but there was no record he came into my house. I gave up trying to get answers from the Sheriff, and now I just plan to campaign against him when it comes time for reelection.

  9. Re:Jazz can't be taught on Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code · · Score: 1

    Jazz is simple, you must be thinking of the Blues. The Blues must be a part of you, unless you sell your soul to the devil. God is the ultimate bluesman, of course.

  10. Re:Culpability on GM Says Driverless Cars Will Be Ready By 2018 · · Score: 1

    Ideally, the car would stop at the light. If my automated automobile ran any red lights, I would return it, assuming I didn't die in the crash.

  11. Re:$8000/Gal? on HP & Staples Collude On $8,000/Gallon Ink? · · Score: 1
    Did they include the price of the cartridge that the ink comes in as well?

    Customers don't want to pay for the cartridge, it's just a way of diving up a cheap quantity of ink to make it expensive.

  12. Re:My rant. on UPS Using Software To Eliminate Left Turns · · Score: 2, Informative
    My senior EE project was in conjuction with the MNDot Traffic Management Center. They take a lot of factors into account when setting the metering time. If the freeway is clear, the metering should be shut off. If you don't think they are working right, call the Traffic Management Center and tell them.


    This page tells a little about them.

  13. Re:1.8milions on Nintendo May Pull Wii Ads To Avoid Hype · · Score: 1
    It's 41 wii per minute

    Wiii [weee]
    - noun
    Pl. of Wii.

  14. Re:Is this a story ? on Massive Cave Found on Mars · · Score: 1

    It's a slashdot story because it proves Mars is a cleverly conceiled Death Star type spacestation, constructed by George Lucas. This hole is where the hostile alien ships enter and leave the interior. Somebody forgot to close the door, now Earth has a photograph of it, and they are surely on their way to destroy us.

  15. Re:hmm on Reiser Murder Case Gets Stranger · · Score: 1
    Mr. Sturgeon, the ex-lover of Hans' wife, has confessed to eight murders. It wasn't Hans doing the confessing.


    I read it that the person who confessed was Hans' ex-lover, so I assumed it was a woman. Then I reread it and saw it was the wife's ex-lover - but I still had it in my head it was a woman - and it was a little more interesting to think there was a lesbian serial killer out there. The reality doesn't seem very strange at all.

  16. Re:Can you say... on Daylight Savings Time Puts Kid in Jail for 12 Days · · Score: 1
    "Timezones get British man wrongfully extradited to US for threatening E-mail"

    He must be a terrorist if he can send emails at noon that arrive at 6am. A terrorist from the future.

  17. Re:car menu on Death of the Button? Analog vs. Digital · · Score: 2, Funny
    Main Menu:
    a: Accelerator (30%)
    b: Breaks (0%)
    c: Steering (+23 degrees)
    d: Extra menu

    Please select a control: [abcd]

    It's good breaks are at 0%. You don't want anything broken on your car. I'm not sure how safe it is to have to operate the brakes with the Extra menu though.

  18. Re:Shouldn't this be the "iTV"? on David Pogue Reviews the Apple TV · · Score: 1

    I just wish they would have made http://www.apple.com/itv/ redirect to http://www.apple.com/appletv/. Would have saved me a few seconds in decided I didn't want it.

  19. Re:Windows clone? Why not go for OS X? on ReactOS Revealed · · Score: 1

    It's not the interface that matters, it's the application compatibility. Make it compatible with OS X and windows, then comes up with a unique interface that's better than either.

  20. Re:Another case of academia vs. the real world on Is Daylight Saving Shift Really Worth It? · · Score: 1

    We should make the standard work day midnight-8am in the winter... change the clocks so it matches up with 9-5, call it winter saving time (WST). We'll still be going to work in the dark, but we'll have so much more time after work to use the sun.

  21. Re:powered fencing? on Wind, Solar & Biofuels to Power Remote Cell Towers · · Score: 1
    Let's put it this way, even in the stable country of Iraq, entire towers which hold up electrical wires are toppled and sold for scrap.

    a. Iraq is stable??

    b. This happens in the US. About 15 years ago (I can't find anything on the web about it) some people who started taking supports off a huge tower holding up power lines supplying an iron ore mine in Hibbing, MN. The plan was to sell them for scrap, but the tower fell down and they were killed.

  22. Re:APPLE HAS NO MID-END HEAD LESS DESKTOPS! on Can Apple Take Microsoft on the Desktop? · · Score: 1

    MID-END? Does not compute.

  23. Re:From the Dept. of Redundancy Dept. on Mass Market DS Homebrew Cart Released · · Score: 2, Funny

    What are you saying, that it comes with a 25 game CD?

  24. Re:Tagged: excessive on China Treats Internet Addiction Very Seriously · · Score: 1

    That's an awful lot of education just to make crap for Walmart.

  25. Re:Over kill on Astronaut to Attempt Spacewalk Record · · Score: 1

    I've had problems with duct tape sticking at low temperatures (trying to cover a broken car window with plastic in a Minnesota winter). Doubt it would be much use in space.