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User: RicktheBrick

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  1. Re:fp on Learn Linux the Hard Way · · Score: 1

    I used to program computers for a living. When I would troubleshoot the program I would deliberately do the dumbest things I could so I could ensure that the program would reject that input. I had a saying that if the computer could check the input it should do so and if the computer could determine what the user wanted than it should also do that. Linux or any other operating system should have a program to duplicate the hard drive. Once given that command it should first be able to duplicate the second partition on the second drive and than be able to boot from that second partition and duplicate the first partition to the second drive. Finally it should be able to reboot from the new hard drive with all the programs running. Hell! even if there is no second partition, it should be able to create one for this purpose. If I am able to think of this than the authors of an operating system should be too. Computers are suppose to make live easier and if some well payed programmer can not make using that computer easier, I suggest that programmer look for another job. I know why Microsoft does not do this because they would lose money from people who go out and buy another copy of widows but Linux does not depend on people buying it because it is free. It is I who think you do not have any empathy for anyone but yourself.

  2. Re:fp on Learn Linux the Hard Way · · Score: 2

    That is absolutely correct especially if one had already learned window's commands. I have been using a Ubuntu computer for several years now. I just recently purchased a SSD. I found it so difficult to transfer my programs from the hard drive to the SSD that I just ended up reinstalling all of them. In windows I could just right click on the hard drive directory and send the program to the desktop. I also tried to duplicate a hard drive to an external hard drive. The program I was using could not do that until I opened up a terminal and did some commands before executing the program. It had something to do with the root directory being ram memory. All of the devices were in the directory /dev or something like that. The funny thing about that was that I thought that a terminal was a program to communicate with another computer. I have used dos commands to get around a hard drive but commands like rd cd.. cd \, using a letter for all devices are not used in linux. I still do not know how to get how much free space there is on a device. Open up windows explorer and one can easily find that out. I recently installed Ubuntu 12.10 on a SSD. I found that it would lock my computer if it was inactive for a few minutes. I thought that was something to do with a screen saver so I tried to right click on the screen like I do in windows. After trying to search for screen saver in the help program and getting no help, I finally saw desktop locking but only after several minutes. I tolerate linux(Ubuntu) because I do not want to purchase a copy of windows(I purchase the components of the computer and made it myself so it never had windows).

  3. Re:Noooo! on Ask Slashdot: Should Scientists Build a New Particle Collider In Japan? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is like a child who has not opened all of their Christmas presents and yet demands more. The Cern Collider is not even at maximum power yet. At least wait until a couple of years of using it at maximum power before deciding that we need a new one. How about the one that is on the international space station? I thought that there were collision from particles from super nova that were much more powerful than even the new Cern Collider. At least play with the toys you have now before asking for new ones.

  4. Re:Smell sensors would be interesting on IBM Predicts the Next 5 Years of Computing · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I would like to see replacing every central light in a room with a device that would be a camera, speaker, microphone, thermometer, and a device that could smell odors This device would communicate with the home computer. It should be able to detect fire by site, heat, sound, and odor. It should be able to reduce false alarms to zero. It should be able to detect gas leaks by smell. It should be able to detect water leaks and break ins by sound. It should be able to detect the heart beat of anyone in the room by sound. It should be able to detect any problem in the house and have the ability to seek help. It could call the fire department and transmit the smell, heat, sound and picture of any house on fire.

  5. Re:Translation on UK Internet Porn Blocking Rejected · · Score: 2

    Who is to say that porn is bad? How many spouses learn a trick or two that they can use to better satisfy their partner? How many parents would rather have their teenage children watch porn rather than explaining the fine points of having sex? Why should society make a teenager satisfy his or her sexual needs with a partner rather than watching some porn? Porn has been freely available for about 20 years and their is no correlation between the availability of porn and any negative consequences such as rape, teenage sex, or divorces. These are trending down rather than a large increase that would correspond with the large increase in the availability of free porn.

  6. Re:Isn't this economic without DARPA funding? on Nvidia Wins $20M In DARPA Money To Work On Hyper-Efficient Chips · · Score: 1

    A 75x increase is absolutely needed if they are going to continue to make faster supercomputers. IBM is trying to make a 1,000 Petaflops supercomputer before the end of this decade. That supercomputer would require a Gigawatt of power to run at a Gigaflop per watt. Now one is talking about a nuclear power plant to generate enough power to run the computer. At a dollar per watt one is also talking about spending a billion dollars on the power plant which is a lot more money than they plan on spending to build the supercomputer. United States is not the only one trying as so is China, Russia, India, European Union, and Japan. So someone will probably invent a way to reduce power needs. It would be nice if it were invented in the United States.

  7. Re:Isn't this economic without DARPA funding? on Nvidia Wins $20M In DARPA Money To Work On Hyper-Efficient Chips · · Score: 1

    There is no way anyone can make an intelligent decision on what to purchase today. There are way too many variables so one can only guess. I am sure that a Gigaflops per watt is much better than the computer I am typing on now. So if they can go to 75 Gigaflops per watt why would anyone buy a computer again since a dump terminal could be better. But that decision would take a lot more knowledge than I have and I know a lot more about computers than the average person. I contribute to a project sponsored by IBM called world community grid. They send work to volunteers who in return send back results. Now IBM is the leading contributor to this cause. I look into their stats and I find that they have over a 100,000 computers. I would think that the cost in electricity to run so many computers would be more than the cost of running a supercomputer and giving everyone a dump terminal. Since they contribute about 50,000 results a day, I would think that they would prohibit this program on personal computers and use the money that they would save in electricity to run a supercomputer. I do not know why they are doing this but I can only assume they have an intelligent CEO who would make the right decision. So until they centralize their computer needs, I guess purchasing a new personal computer is the correct decision. Maybe Google will allow chrome users to upload all of their cpu intensive programs to a centralized computer so no one will need a fast computer. So again how do I make an intelligent decision?

  8. Re:Alien Civilizations on Draft of IPCC 2013 Report Already Circulating · · Score: 1

    I am not going to go into all the solutions that have been proposed just on /. in the past two years as it seems that there is at least one a day. I really believe that someone who is being born today will be almost totally bored in their twenties. Most everything will be done by robots for them. One will talk to a computer like one talks to another human. Sex will not make it into the top 10 things to do so reproducing will be a very hard chore that most people will avoid. We will find ways to lower our energy needs. Before 2100 we will probably find a way to keep our brains alive and provide a complete artifical world for everyone. In that case people will exist while using very little energy. Just look at our television today. A 19 inch will use just $4 a year in energy cost. I have my doubts that it has not already happened and I am already in that artifical world.

  9. Re:I find this statement amusing... on Nationwide Google Fiber Deployment Would Cost $140 Billion · · Score: 1

    I find it amusing that they can claim 1Gbps speed. I just tested my internet speed and was told that I have 21Mbps download speed. So I tested how long it took me to get to this article. It took about 5 seconds to download /. and 3 more to download this article with all the comments. So a total of 8 seconds times 21Mbps or a total of 168 million bits or 21 million bytes. I did not come close to downloading that amount of data so my effective speed was much lower than that. I bet even if I did have the Gbps internet speed I would still have to wait for the upload speed on the /. side. It just seems to me if 1000 people were on the internet at the same time than the ISP would have to have a terabit per second speed to keep that speed going. Maybe they can download a Gbps but I am sure that everyone has a time slot that they are downloading to us and that would be a small fraction of each seconed we are waiting for our download to complete.

  10. Re:I'm usually hard for privacy but you know what on RMS Speaks Out Against Ubuntu · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    I recently purchased a ssd for my Ubuntu computer. I searched for a means to copy my hard drive to the ssd. The results I got was a hardware device to copy one drive to another. I was looking for a software solution so I gave up and installed a new copy of Ubuntu to the ssd and reinstalled all of my programs. It took me hours to accomplish since I had to download Ubuntu and all of the upgrades and all of my programs. I now have a terabyte hard driven that will probably never be used since I doubt that the ssd will ever be filled. I do not know if Ubuntu is smart enough to store a lengthly file such as a movie on the hard drive rather than the ssd.

  11. Re: Cheap on Researchers Create New Cheap, Shatterproof, Plastic Light Bulbs · · Score: 1

    Capitalism is when the market(read you & I) control the price. That is right because you & I do not care at what price that product is made. Nevermind total cost of ownership. Nevermind when the total amount of energy used in its lifetime would make the more expensive one cost far less. Nevermind when the product will break so quickly that the more expensive one would have been cheaper. Nevermind making our foods heathy because it is not our concern how much health care cost. Nevermind how many people we pay at wages far less than the true cost to them because we can not afford universal health care. Nevermind the polution that comes from making this product. Nevermind the cost of disposing the product when it becomes useless. Nevermind supporting the product in the near future so when a cheap part breaks we can sell them a new one instead of repairing the old one. Yes capitalism keeps prices cheap because everyone hopes that they can be treated fairly but at the expense of treating everyone else very poorly.

  12. Re:VirtualBox or VM Workstation on Ask Slashdot: Which Virtual Machine Software For a Beginner? · · Score: 1

    I have VMware on this computer. I just downloaded the latest version. I am running vista and have installed xp on vmware. I did this because I have several games that will not run on vista or 7. They will not even run on windows xp after a certain update. I do not know which but they will run on windows xp with no service packs. The only way I can install a program is on the cd drive since it will not access my network or any usb flash drive. It will get on the internet but like I said before the only use I get out of it is the ability to run some old games.

  13. Re:"Just 5%"??????? on Cray Unveils XC30 Supercomputer · · Score: 1

    Now lets asks how much power this computer will need? Lets say it can do a billion flops per watt. 100 petaflops is 100,000 trillion flops. A trillion flops is 1000 billion flops so a trillion flops is 1000 watts at a billion per watt. So 100,000 trillion flops would 100 million watts. So lets hope they can do at least 50 billion flops per watt so that would mean 20 watts per trillion flops or 2 million watts. At 10 billion flops per watt would mean 5 times that or 10 million watts. Now lets assume they could do the computing for 1,000,000 users at a time instead of those 1,000,000 user using 1,000,000 computers. Now lets assume that each of those 1,000,000 user's computers used only 100 watts so the 1,000,000 users would use 100 million watts. If evenly divided 100 petaflops would still mean 100 billion flops per user. Now lets say each computer cost only $500 or times a million would mean 500 million dollars. I would hope that this supercomputer would cost less than that. So I am saying that this supercomputer should cost far less than a equal number of personal computers and run at a small fraction of their power requirements. I have looked at the power requirements of a 19 inch monitor and they use about $4 a year so even 1,000,000 of them would not add to much to the power requirements. So 100 companies with only 10,000 computers each could build one of these and save money.

  14. Re:It will win soon on Self-Driving Car Faces Off Against Pro On Thunderhill Racetrack · · Score: 1

    If the FedEx truck was also self driving than it would only make one trip empty. If it delivered 100 items than it would save those people 100 empty trips to the store. Assuming there is less distance between customers than there is between each customer and the store would ensure it efficiency. There could be revolving boxes inside the truck to ensure customer only gets what is theirs. Lets consider how much this would help the store. The parking lot of each box store is usually has more area than the store so they could fit in a lot less area. If the store could predict their needs they could have a lot less inventory. The needed inventory could be stored in shelves much higher than humans could reach and with much less space between the shelves. I have already seen videos of a robot climbing to get what is sent to get in modern warehouses so that has already been invented. There would be much less inventory loss because of shoplifting and from people who have a bad habit of picking up some meat and than going to hardware where they than discover they did not want the meat and just leave it there. There would be no need for check out clerks and people to stock inventory as that would be done by robots. I think our total commercial district could fit in a lot less area thus freeing up millions of square miles of area nationwide. With a lot of experience, I would think they could get delivery times down to a very short interval.

  15. Re:The math doesn't work on Ask Slashdot: What Stands In the Way of a Truly Solar-Powered Airliner? · · Score: 1

    So a plane that flies 910 miles would only cost 10 times the cost of a gallon of fuel per passenger. Let say that is $4 a gallon or $40 a passenger for fuel. Now lets double that amount to $80 a passenger for overhead(employees and other costs) and one would still only get $120 a passenger so add 20% for profit and one would still get only $144 a passenger. I have not checked lately but I would think that would still be less than a third what one would pay to fly that distance.

  16. Re:Probability and magnitude are both relevant on Paintball Pellets As a Tool To Deflect Asteroids · · Score: 1

    The chances of getting killed by an asteroid are orders of magnitude larger than the chances of anyone in the world thanking us if we did manage to deflect one.

  17. Re:Theocracies on Dr. Richard Dawkins On Education, 'Innocence of Muslims,' and Rep. Paul Broun · · Score: 1

    You say the bible is not a book of science. I say it also not a book of morality too. The example of removing Adam and Eve from the garden is one of the worst. It tells me if someone makes a simple mistake one can condemn them and their descendants to misery. I believe the story about them is designed to explain why their existence was so horrible after all why would a powerful and loving god not provide for all of his creation whether or not they believed in that god. Especially when that god could do it without much effort. It goes on with Noah's flood. This had to be done by a infinitely cruel god since there were a lot of other ways that god could have handled the problem that did not involve killing a lot of people. How many times in the bible have pregnant women and young children been slaughtered by god or in its name? The times we are living in now are no better than the times of Galileo because religion is now condemning science because evolution and DNA sequencing are proving that Adam and Eve never existed so ending the very reason that Jesus was needed.

  18. Re:Equating low income with democrats on Texas Attorney General Warns International Election Observers · · Score: 0

    Why are people with low income more associated with democrats? It is because the republicans are more than willing to tax and take away any money that they might have to invest and improve themselves. I live in Michigan and what are the republicans doing? They are reducing business taxes by taxing pensions. What is the first tax republicans want to reduce. It is always the progressive taxes. In Michigan they are again trying to reduce income tax. Never mind the regressive taxes like property tax and sales tax. Never give a low income person a break by for instance not having a sales tax on a vehicle that sells for less than $10,000. Never give a low income person a break by reducing property tax and thus reducing their rent. In Michigan if a person has $500,000 in excess income, never mind taxing that person $2,000 because one can take $100 from a lot more people that only have that $100 or less to spare by the use of property tax or sales tax.

  19. Re:Why change the interface at all on Are Windows XP/7 Users Smarter Than a 3-Year-Old? · · Score: 1

    The same thing can be said about a qwerty keyboard. It was designed to be inefficient. Yet most people are still typing on them. It is because there are a lot of people who would have to relearn typing. If all the new computers came out with a different keyboard than I too would have to relearn but it would be worth it in a couple of months but since they are not doing that I will stick to the qwerty keyboard.

  20. Re:cold fusion fraud again? on Scientists Turn Air Into Petrol · · Score: 1

    I sure hope you are right because in my area there is a huge pumped-storage plant and 56 wind turbines. To top it off we have a large amount of salt(Morton Salt) so there should be enough places for air reservoir plants. It would be nice if they could produce our gasoline needs here too.

  21. Re:2012 on Einstein Letter Critical of Religion To Be Auctioned On EBay · · Score: 1

    Why are we arguing about the validity of a book that makes no sense and contradicts itself. One does not need to read past Genesis chapter 3 to find several verses that do not make sense. One verse says that if one eats of the forbidden fruit one will surely die on that day or even when eating it. If one takes the later to be literal than Eve should have died seconds after the fruit was in her stomach. Adam would have not eaten it but even if they were to die on the same day than none of us should be existing since they would have had no time to produce any children. In chapter 3 god ask Adam if he ate of the fruit. Why would Adam tell god he ate of the fruit if he thought he was going to die? Why would god not have already known this fact. Why would Jesus not have known that they were going to eat of the fruit and at least tried to talk them out of it? Surely he would have known that if they had eaten the fruit he would have had to die on the cross. Besides none of that matters since it has already been proven that mankind did not descend from just two people. Second is when Jesus comes to judge us and separate the sheep from the goats. Jesus never ask if we had faith in him or if we were baptized but if we can answer yes to his question about feeding the poor, clothing the naked, visiting the sick or imprisoned than we would have a place reserved for in heaven. But other verses say we need to have faith in Jesus and need to be baptized to enter the kingdom of heaven and so they contradict each other. Jesus does not say every time either so my reading of the 25th chapter of Matthew is that if one can say that one feed the poor or clothed the naked or visited the sick or imprison even only once than one will go to heaven. This is also contradicted by the story about a woman who anoints Jesus with expensive oil. If her salvation depended on feeding the poor than surely she should have saved that money for that purpose.

  22. Re:Based on experience on A Day in Your Life, Fifteen Years From Now · · Score: 1

    If one doubles a penny one still is very poor. It is only after doubling 20 times one finds his wealth growing at a significant pace. It is the same with technology. We are at the time when we have doubled the penny 30 times so the comparison with the amount of change in the last 15 years is not right. I really do not see this person driving back and forth to work since most will be done right at home. I would really like to talk about what all this technology will do to our life. For instance what will this mean to the commercial district. I can see most of our stores closing their doors since most things will be ordered over the internet and delivered to our homes. So that would mean that a vast amount of area would be left with no buildings. I can even see where our own beds would be a hospital bed for almost everything but the most serious cases. Now here is my story. One wakes up at 4 am because scientist have finally discovered why we sleep and now we take a pill that will double the effects of our sleeping so we can get away with 4 hours of sleep a night. One now goes to the bathroom where the toilet does a physical on us every time we sit on it. It now plans our exercise routine as we go to our personal gym that will record every thing we do and will constantly nag us to do what we can. We will then go to our eating room where we will eat what the computer has decided for us to eat. It will be delivered to our room by an automated delivery system from a central location in the vast building we live in. Any waste and dishes will be delivered back to that location. The apartment will be designed so that it will be totally self clean when we depart for a walk in the park. After we get back we go to our communication room where we will communicate with our fellow workers and accomplish our daily work. It will take at most 4 hours. The computer then will challenge us (using the vast amount of information it has about us) to games which will keep us mentally alert.

  23. Re:Face recognition on Google Puts Souped-Up Neural Networks To Work · · Score: 4, Interesting

    How about noise and speech recognition? John lives in a house where speakers and microphones are place throughout the house. John is home alone and computer hears a loud noise. Computer "John are you alright?". Computer hears no response so computer gets John some help or computer hears John say yes and does nothing. John later decides to leave for 2 hours. When leaving the house John says leaving be back in two hours. Computer know house is empty so computer immediately reduces energy use. One hour later computer hears a noise. Computer ask what is the password. Computer hears either no response or incorrect password. Computer calls John on cell phone and lets John listen to noise. John than decides whether or not to call police. Computer hears running water but washing machine is not on so computer turns off water to that room. Computer hears smoke detector and hears the noise from fire so computer calls for help. I can think up a lot more problems a computer could help solve just by listening.

  24. Re:Practical? on A Honda Civic With no Gas Tank (Video) · · Score: 1

    Yes it is because $14,000 will get one about 105,000 miles of driving. Since most of that will be done at 30 miles a day, it will take about 10 years to drive that amount if one drives every day. That is assuming the batteries and motor and controller will last that long. I have had gasoline driven cars that have gone that long with just one change of battery and tires. I can just see one driving this car any length since one would have to stay somewhere one could recharge the batteries at least every 50 miles. I really do not see anyone doing this. So I guess that would mean that a family would need 3 cars. One each for the wife and husband and one that they could use for long trips. I guess one could rent a car for long trips but that would mean limiting the number of times one did take those long trips. If the grandparents lived just a hundred miles away than renting a vehicle would deter someone from making that trip.

  25. Re:My biggest fear on New York Plans World's Largest Ferris Wheel · · Score: 3, Informative

    Maybe the Ferris wheel will somehow get loose and start rolling and run over the prettiest female and you will safe her by grabbing her. Than she will sit on your lap and hug you until the wheel stops. By the time you are safely removed from the wheel, she will be madly in love with you. I mean if you are going to imagine something at least make it interesting. The odds of that happening are about the same as you being injured.