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User: RicktheBrick

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  1. Re:TRS-80 - available in stores near you on Radio Shack's TRS-80 Turns 35 · · Score: 1

    Today a introductory computer should have a 20 Gigabyte flash drive on the motherboard, a Terabyte hard drive and 8 Gigabytes of ram memory and still cost less than the Trs-80. It should have at least 4 cores, built in sound, built in Ethernet and a clock speed thousand of times faster. Even with all that speed and power, I am still disappointed with what we are doing with it as I expected that the computer should have been able to monitor both me and my house for any problems. If I were asked to give up either my phone or my computer, it would be the computer until the computer can inform someone of a fire in my house or if I were to have a medical emergency. I do not see why we do not have wireless speakers and microphones around the house so the computer can be expected to monitor it. I expect they will get faster in the future but I sill do not see any good applications in the near future.

  2. Re:Bittersweet on NASA Splits $1.1B For Three Commercial Spacecraft · · Score: 0

    I can not conceive on why the private sector would do a better job at it. I have seen so much waste in the private sector. For instance there is K-Mart. I live in a small town of about 10,000 people. K-Mart's first building was abandoned by them and they had another built for them. They later went bankrupt and abandoned that building. It was later demolished and replaced by a Lowes hardware store. I do not think they made enough money in the 20 or so years of business to pay for that building. The only thing they managed to accomplish is the closing of most of the business in town and the shifting of those jobs to them. Of course a lot of them lost money they had invested in the corporation and had to start over after 20 years of labor. We have already seen the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs so why do we have to start over with the private sector. I can just see 10 years or so from now. There will be several programs that will be cancelled and we will see unused buildings and equipment. All of which could have been avoided if we had decided on a winner much earlier. I see this with electronic equipment. Many of which are being abandoned not because they do not work but because they need a new battery or a small part. One finds that buying new cost just a little bit more than repair so it does not pay to repair. I just hope that they demand a standard launch vehicle so one does not have to abandon it because of a loss of the launch site or the loss of some other hard to repair or replace part.

  3. Re:Cui bono? on US Navy Admiral Questions Expensive Stealth Platforms · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I joined the Navy in 1974. My first ship was the USS Virginia (CGN-38). Almost everything to me was a joke. My training in combat was almost nothing. I was a fire control man(FC). At first I was a FTM but that was dropped and FC was my designation. I was expected to maintain and operate the combat MK-74 weapon system. The computer did not have a hard drive and the program was loaded by using a tape system. Nobody really expected that the ship was going to be used in combat even though the ship was an expensive ship since it was nuclear powered. If I could get the weapon system to pass a daily test, I was good. It would throw some fake targets at the ship and if the radar detected them and generated a solution and if the launcher would load up a fake missile and point it, I could fire it and the test would be successful. Never at any point was there any training on what to do if we were really attacked by a real enemy. It was just like my duty to be on the quarterdeck. I was given a 45 and 10 rounds of ammunition. Of course the ammunition was never in the 45 as it was never fired on anyone. Once a year we would be taken to a firing range where we would be told to fire on a target. It did not matter how close we got to the target since they always told us the Navy could not afford to train us to fire accurately and besides if they failed us it would make us happy since it would mean that they could not assign us to the quarterdeck watch. Everything was a joke since several times, I would be assigned to walk on a deck with a shotgun but was never given training on when to shoot it. Or how to defend myself if there was an attack. I really do not know what would have happened if some pirate would have tried to board us on the fan tail. There would have been a watch there but he would have been unarmed and the only weapon would have been on the bridge. It would have been in the custody of someone with no training along with some officers with again no combat training. The armory would have been locked up at night and the key would probably be with a gunners mate who would have to get there unarmed to pass weapons to again other sailors with no training on how to use them. I did this on three other ships and my total experience was that it was a very big joke as I at no time felt I was defending this country from any enemy as I was given no training.

  4. Re:Avoid Unity on Ask Slashdot: the Best Linux Setup To Transition Windows Users? · · Score: 1

    Lets first talk about hardware. One must first see if a printer is compatible with Ubuntu before buying it. See a cheap printer at a store or garage sale and most likely it will not work with Ubuntu. The same goes with a web cam. Now lets talk about software. I like windows explorer as I just have to press two keys and it is up and running. I click on my computer and I see all the drives and their capacity and remaining space. Copying from drive to another is very easy. I have yet to see anything close to it on Ubuntu. I am now having a problem with the screen freezing on me. The mouse will still work but when I click on a icon nothing happens. I believe that there is a problem with compiz as after I reboot it will tell me that it has closed and will ask me if I want it to remain closed. I suspect that the problem lies in the video interface driver. Drivers will remain a problem until hardware makers have enough incentive to write an maintain a driver for Ubuntu. Ubuntu has been around for a decade and their has not been much progress. I have tried to boot with a linux OS to just backup my computer but the program was difficult for me and even finding a help file was not easy. The root directory is ram memory and drives are in dev folder and these have to be set up before one executes the backup program as I guess it is too difficult for them to access the drives in the program. For a long time I thought that a terminal program was a program to connect one computer to another usually using a phone modem. To my surprise it was a program to get me into command mode.

  5. Re:Worst. Game. Ever. on Startup Turns Fixing Your Grandma's PC Into a Game · · Score: 1, Funny

    A few night ago I was on my computer using firefox browser. It was late so when I saw a pop up message stating I had a virus and I should download a program called windows web commander to get rid of it, I did. Since I was running microsoft's security essentials, I thought I was protected. But after seting up the program, I soon discovered that the program windows web commander was the virus. It would not let me do anything. I would start a browser up to look up information about the program and it would close my browser before I could get much information. It would tell me to send some money to them and receive a program to esentialy get rid of itself. I just rebooted and went into safe mode where I restored the computer to a date prior to that date so I did not lose much but it is frustrating that microsoft essential did not protect me. It is also frustrating that my spelling checker is not working and that I can not get my firefox browser to use answer.com by right clicking on a word. I guess it because of a new update to firefox but it would be nice if those things would work.

  6. Re:how 'bout some gun control... on 12 Dead, 50 Injured at The Dark Knight Rises Showing In Colorado · · Score: 1

    Scene 1. Shooter A starts shooting at audience. Police arrive to find shooter A shooting so they know right away who is at fault and can shoot the shooter without warning. Scene 2. Shooter A starts shooting at audience. Person B in the audience starts shooting at shooter A. Police arrive to find two persons shooting at each other so they must somehow figure out which one of the two is the criminal. I would assume in this case the police would have to identify themselves and ask both people to lay down their weapons. Policeman arrives at door behind shooter A. Shooter A. turns his weapon toward policeman. Shooter B sees this and attempts to shoot shooter A but misses him. Policeman interprets this to mean shooter B is the criminal and shoots shooter B. The only safe way is for the only shooters to be either the criminal or the police. A lot of these shooters are suicidal so if there were armed people in the audience, it might just encourage the shooter to shoot. I can not figure this out as I have several paragraphs now but when I press preview everything just runs together.

  7. Re:And this is bad why.... on Al Franken Calls for Tight Rules on Facial Recognition Software · · Score: 2

    A voting district has a history of supporting a particular party. A rich organization sets up a camera outside the voting building and lets it be known that if anyone votes they will pay for it. Therefore the party that would have gained a number of votes from that district in fact does not. With elections being so close today an election could be won or lost with this technology.

  8. Re:Simple on Why Ultra-Efficient 4,000 mph Vacuum-Tube Trains Aren't Being Built · · Score: 1

    Let use your figures and assume an average of 26 light years between stars. Now lets assume a speed of just a half of the speed of light so it would take an average of 52 years of travel. So lets assume a civilization built just two of these vessels and they built them a million years ago. They each traveled to just one star where they settled one planet. Now those planet would already have the technology to build a star ship but lets give them 896 years to build two more star ships. Now they each travel another 52 years to get to four more stars. So in a 1000 years there is 7 inhabited planets(the first, the two from the first, and four from the two). So what this would do is to double the number of inhabited planets every 1000 years. This assume the original planet and each subsequent generations only travels that one time. Even with these constraints there would be trillions of inhabited planets in only 40,000 years since 2 raised to the 40th power is over a trillion. It works and there is no need for a speed of 1000c because in 20,000 years there would be over a million inhabited planets and at 30,000 years there would be over a billion planets and over a billion new star ships to travel the Milky Way.

  9. Re:Simple on Why Ultra-Efficient 4,000 mph Vacuum-Tube Trains Aren't Being Built · · Score: 1

    If mankind ever does become able to travel the stars, even 10's of thousands of years in the future than some one on another planet should have already have accomplished it. There are trillions of planets in the Milky Way and some of them should be millions of years more advanced than we are. If there are more than one than there should be some competition to contact us first. Since it has not happened there must be a reason and that might be that it is impossible. Or maybe we will become so advanced that we will not have any incentive to travel the stars.

  10. Re:Congradulations China on Chinese Crew Completes Manual Docking With Orbiting Module · · Score: 2

    Just out of curiosity, what would happen to the ISS if Russia decided that they would transport only Russian back and forth from the ISS? Could NASA somehow make it unusable to the Russian? I would think that we would want the Chinese to be capable of taking astronauts to the ISS only so we are not totally dependent on the Russians. It will probably another 3 years at least before any astronauts are taken up from the US. A Russian general has called for a preemptive strike on a ABM system in Poland. I can not see any cooperation with the Russian if they are militarily striking one of our allies.

  11. Re:Link to the service itself on Oracle's Ellison Vows "Most Comprehensive Cloud On Earth" · · Score: 1

    I guess cloud is mainly for business as for an individual it doesn't make much sense. I keep seeing an add for backup that advertise it cost $.25 a gigabyte per month. That would mean it would cost $250 a terabyte per month. One could buy two usb 2 terabyte hard drives for that amount so one could store locally a lot more. The only thing I could see that would be worth backing up would be home videos, music, and pictures and one would have to do a lot to generate that much data. I can see a day soon when the motherboard has a ssd on it and the operating system would be on both the ssd and the hard drive. One would boot from the ssd and would have the hard drive for backup. One could purchase an usb3 external hard drive. I would thing that backup to that drive would be fairly easy for all personal data. Even if they could offer backup for a penny a gigabyte it would be hard for me to justify that cost. I guess if my house would burn down, I would lose all of my personal data but my insurance for it is not even close to that of backup cost.

  12. Re:Fresh Water submarines? on Remembering America's Fresh Water Submarines · · Score: 1

    I live in Ludington, Michigan There is a car ferry that crosses Lake Michigan to Manitowoc. I took my granddaughters on that ship. There is a submarine there that we took a tour on it. I think the submarines were taken to Chicago where they got on some canals to get on the Mississippi river to transit to the Gulf of Mexico and there to the Atlantic Ocean. It was an interesting and educational trip for both me and my granddaughters.

  13. Re:All well and good on NASA Counts 4,700 Potentially Hazardous Near-Earth Asteroids · · Score: 1

    Develop and build underground cities around the world. Develop and build nuclear fusion plants and place them close to the underground cities. Store enough fuel for a couple of centuries. Develop and build huge mirrors and place them in orbit around the sun either thousand of miles in front of Earth or behind it. I am sure we could not save all of Earth's population but we could save enough to continue our species after the effects of the strike pass. The mirrors could be used to concentrate sun light on a path that is tangent to the Earth. This would be used to burn up all the matter that would be thrown into the atmosphere.

  14. Re:US and UK, best friends forever on UK In Danger From Electromagnetic Bomb, Says Defense Secretary · · Score: 1

    Let's see:

    * Syria hasn't started any wars that I know of. It is, however, being threatened with war by the US, UK, and France. * Libya didn't start any wars, either. It was attacked by the US, UK, and France. * North Korea is ruled by a dictator who oppresses his people but hasn't started any wars. * Iran hasn't started any wars but has certainly been attacked by a US proxy.

    So what does that tell us about which countries want to live in peace, and which ones don't?

    Syria and Libya did start wars but they are called civil wars. I guess just because they try to limit the killing to themselves it makes it better. Syria did start wars when they attacked Israel. North Korea did attempt to start a war several times. The last two were when they sunk the South Korean ship and when they shelled the South Korean island. It was only the restraint of the South Koreans that prevented a war. As for Iran they support terrorist in other countries so I guess hiring some one else to do your killing doesn't make on guilty of murder. The only thing it tells me is how far you will go in ignoring facts to support your conclusions.

  15. Re:Keep it coming! on Warmest 12-Month Period Recorded In US · · Score: 1

    I live in Michigan and March was the hottest March on record. But the only thing it did was to encourage the fruit trees to bloom too early. April and continuing into May have been well below average. There have been plenty of freezing nights. Last night was the latest. So much that it destroyed most of our fruit and probably our asparagus plants too. So March will have cost our fruit farmers well into the millions of dollars in lost revenue which I am sure will effect a lot of workers around here too.

  16. Re:Ahhh that explainsPhilips' LED bulb on Researchers Conquer "LED Droop" · · Score: 1

    Anyone can buy a CFL at dollar tree for a dollar. So anyone comparing leds should compare them to those CFLs. If they save money in a reasonable amount of time I would consider buying one. By reasonable, I mean 5 years at most.

  17. Re:Legality? on North Korea Jamming GPS Signals In South Korea · · Score: 1

    North Korea is nothing more than a proxy and a test facility for both the Russian and the Chinese. If the North Korean ever do launch a nuclear strike, it will be ordered by either the Chinese or the Russian. I am sure the Russian did not gain too much profit by selling those jamming devices to the North Koreans so one can only conclude they are allowing the North Koreans to test them. Lets put the blame where it really lies.

  18. Re:Obama knows how to play politics if anything. on GOP Blocks Senate Debate On Dem Student Loan Bill · · Score: 1

    Lets say there are three candidates a,b,and c. Candidate c agrees with your opinion on an issue and a and b do not. One votes for candidate c. After the election a and b are the top two but no one get more than 50% of the vote. Now you have no choice since both disagree with your top priority issue so you do not vote. I would think the legalization of marijuana could be that issue. If one only considers those who vote, the winner will again be only a winner of a minority of all the citizens. So the runoff will gain almost nothing.

  19. The only possible application of missile defense is to enable us to make the first strike, and defend against retaliation. I guess you assume that Americans are salvage barbarians since it would take one to even contemplate a first strike that would take out all of Russian missiles, bombers and submarines, There is no way we could use that many nuclear weapons without effecting weather around the world. Even if Russia were to get only one nuclear strike on the U.S. or any of its allies, that result would be intolerable. The only way our president could get away with this is by becoming a dictator since that president would be immediately impeached. There is no way a person with even the slightest amount of morality could even contemplate a horrific act like a massive first strike. What if Russia launched a lone missile attack on another country either by mistake or because of some insane general? I would think that even Russia would be grateful if we were capable of destroying that missile in flight. The only sane policy is to work for the total elimination of all nuclear weapons. I believe the only reason Russia maintains nuclear weapons is so they can threaten the rest of the world with them. There is no way they are a defensive weapon to them/

  20. Re:Since no one will read TFA.. on Analytic Thinking Can Decrease Religious Belief · · Score: 1

    Thinking about the existence of a god is like thinking about the existence of time. Would the use of analytical thinking lead to the disbelief in time? It is impossible that the universe has always existed since it would mean that an infinite amount of time has already passed. But the though that there was a beginning to the universe would mean that there was a cause or a force for it to happen. This would lead back to the question about the existence of a god.

  21. Re:A better question... on Indian Man Charged With Blasphemy For Exposing "Miracle" · · Score: 1

    Suppose there is a god and you chose not to make him happy, what have you lost? Everything! Suppose there is a god and you chose to make him happy, what have you gained? Everything! Suppose there isn't a god and you chose to make the non existent god happy, what have you lost? Nothing! Suppose there isn't a god and you chose not to make the non existent god happy, what have you gained? Nothing! It is like betting a billion dollars that the world is going to end tomorrow. If you are right you will not be there to collect and if you are wrong you will lose the billion dollars. There are so many questions that can not be answered if there isn't a god and there are so many questions that can not be answered if there is a god. So the question just gives me a headache and I try to think about it.

  22. Re:Hope it works out on Belfast Plots 1Gbps Ultra-Fast Broadband Network · · Score: 2

    I can only guess how the internet works. For instance when I download from /., I am sure that I am not the only one that is doing it so I would think that I would get only a few milliseconds of downloading and that would repeat until my download is complete. When the speed increases I would think that my download time would decrease since there would be more data in each of time allotments I get. But as always when the speed increases each server is just given more users to serve and therefore have to reduce everyone time allotments so that in the end the user does not see any increase in speed. I know when downloading more than 100 million bytes of data, I never get close to my rated speed. If I get over a million bit per second I am impressed and I supposedly get 12 million bit per second. The internet is like trying to get through the check out at a big box store. If I go at a slow time there is just less workers working so the time is about the same as if I went there at a busy time since there will be more workers than.

  23. Re:Well that and if your lucky like I am on Millions of Subscribers Leaving Cable TV for Streaming Services · · Score: 1

    If one subtracts the opening theme song and the closing credits the real show is probably less than 40 minutes. The very first thing I do when watching is to memorize the last scene in the opening theme song so I can fast forward to that point. I also fast forward the second I see the credits come on. This means I never get to know who is starring in the show but since there are so many today I do not miss much.

  24. Re:Trick question? on Ask Slashdot: Shortcuts To a High Tech House · · Score: 1

    I guess you think one should buy the cheaper poorly insulated house rather than purchase a more expensive but better insulated house. I guess you think one should buy a cheap car that gets poor mileage instead of one that get better mileage but is more expensive. There are devices that will save money over 5 years such as a programmable thermostat. CFL are now only a dollar at dollar tree so filling the house with those might save a buck or two. One can also purchase incandescent light bulbs at 4 for a dollar so one must look beyond the immediate costs. There are smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors that just might save money as well as one's life. Maybe if the energy cost of a building were included in the mortgage so that the total cost of ownership was known, than one could really choose which purchase is better.

  25. Re:In other news... on Blind Man Test Drives Google's Autonomous Car · · Score: 2

    The problem is this is just another nail in our coffins. Human are not the best chess players. Humans are not the best Jeopardy players and now humans are not the best drivers. The list is only going to grow until we find there is nothing we do better than computers. This technology will eliminate millions of jobs. It will even change buildings. What will happen when Wal-Mart finds out that it is cheaper to deliver goods than it is to build huge stores? How many square miles of land are now just parking lots that will not be needed anymore? I am glad that I am over 60 years of age because this and other computer advances will eliminate so many jobs that a person born today will find it extremely hard to find a job or a purpose for living.