Slashdot Mirror


User: blincoln

blincoln's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
2,350
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 2,350

  1. Re:Management != Techies on Large Tech Companies Moving Beyond the Cubicle · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What's stopping you from bringing your own noise canceling headphones?

    I have adult ADD, and work in a cube. It's a lose-lose scenario. I used to listen to music on headphones all of the time to keep from being distracted, and was told that it was giving everyone the impression that I didn't want to talk to them.
    Of course, it's still better than some ridiculous open seating plan where I couldn't customize anything. I have three monitors at my desk that I scavenged when everyone else was getting rid of their CRTs. Being able to have so much simultaneously-visible working space is great for my concentration. I use it kind of like the display in Minority Report - moving various windows around depending on what makes sense for any given moment. I had to use a single screened laptop for 2-3 weeks when my PC died and it cut my productivity in half.

  2. Re:Interesting about the shadowrobot.com hand... on Robot Hand Learns How To Learn From Babies · · Score: 1

    I notice by the relative ratio of the length of the index finger to that of the ring finger that the hand is modelled on a male hand (the index digit is shorter than the ring digit).

    On my left hand, the index finger is shorter than the ring finger. On my right hand, the ring finger is shorter than the index finger. The index fingers of both hands are the same length. Does that make me a hermaphrodite?

  3. Re:However you have to remember the other side on How Best Buy Tried To Whip The Geek Squad Into Shape · · Score: 2, Interesting

    CastrTroy at www.kibbee.ca wrote:

    How many people really go into debt for $250,000 to go to university?

    Just to give you some perspective on how much more expensive university can be in the US than in Canada, I am an American who went to SFU. My non-citizen tuition there was about the same price as in-state tuition at the University of Washington would have been. My roommate, who had Canadian citizenship, paid closer to what community college costs here in the US.

  4. Re:Why get so fancy? on Maglev On the Drawing Boards · · Score: 1

    Second, nobody "wanders" in front of a train and gets smeared. We don't live inside a Roadrunner cartoon, tracks are very obvious and at least in populated places have barriers around them. You don't exactly end up on one by accident.

    This may be true where you live, but it's not in the US (or parts of it, at least). I live in the Northwest, and while it may be obvious when you come to a set of tracks, the hilly/mountainous terrain and trees greatly reduce the distance at which you can see an actual train. There is a beach here in Seattle with some tracks nearby, and there is a fairly ominous sign about how many people have been killed there because they tried to cross them and didn't hear the freight train around the corner.
    In the midwest, I can see animals and rock falls and whatnot being a problem for a high-speed train of any kind. There are large stretches of the country which are essentially wilderness with an interstate cutting through it.

  5. Re:Do the volume knobs count? on 10 Great Snake-Oil Gadgets · · Score: 1

    Unless these knobs make some idiotic claim, they are just overpriced toys.

    The site where they were sold claimed that they would improve the sound coming out of your stereo. You can probably still find some reviews if you google it.

  6. Re:Tornado Fuel Saver!! on 10 Great Snake-Oil Gadgets · · Score: 1

    Similarly, I've seen magic clothes-washing balls for sale that "break up the water molecules" so you don't need to use laundry detergent. I figured you would know right away if they worked or not, due to all that hydrogen and oxygen potentially floating around near the motor.

  7. Re:Where are the HiFi Speaker Wires? on 10 Great Snake-Oil Gadgets · · Score: 1

    Clearly you haven't heard speakers where the electrons are flowing the wrong way through the wiring...

    I found a Monster coax cable in with the surplus cables at work a couple of weeks ago. It has arrows on it that mark the direction the signal is supposed to flow. I'm torn between keeping it (it *is* a 12+ foot coax cable) and cutting it open to see if there is an inline diode or something.

  8. Re:Exceptionally Simple? on A New Theory of Everything? · · Score: 1

    Subalgebras, lie algebra!!! What class do you get that math?

    That level of math class is not identified by the standard three-digit code, but instead an n-dimensional Riemannian manifold. The prerequisite for taking any of them is that you have to be able to figure out how to represent the class' identifier on your sign-up sheet for the quarter.

  9. Re:No experimental basis for a theory of everythin on A New Theory of Everything? · · Score: 1

    Ok, just to toss this out there, but, why do you need a theory that links gravity into the standard model when there is, as of yet, no known force that actually effects gravity. There's no battery operated anti-gravity machine, so, why unify something that isn't?

    I believe the idea is that if there can be a valid theory developed which linked gravity in with the rest of physics, it *would* be possible to build a device which had an effect on gravity. Sort of like now that we know how particle entanglement works, we can build quantum encryption systems. Just because no one in the 19th century could build a quantum encryption device didn't mean that there was no point in researching quantum mechanics.

  10. Re:Ok, on 'Gamercize' Cardio at Our Desk · · Score: 1

    Remember, the size of the vehicle you use doesn't matter

    Actually, large SUVs are a significant hazard to smaller vehicles (e.g. normal passenger cars and bicycles) because they completely block the view of the other drivers/riders. This is a problem whether the SUV is in motion or is parked - I often encounter situations here in Seattle where someone has parked their giant-ass SUV right at a street corner, so when I get to the intersection, I can't see the oncoming traffic without edging so far out into the intersection that I am partially blocking the closer lane.
    Station wagons weren't a problem, and most other large vehicles aren't either because they only partially block the vision of other drivers (e.g. a big truck's cab will block my vision, but the bed is almost always low enough that I can see over it).

  11. Re:What happens when... on Stopping Cars With Microwave Radiation · · Score: 1

    so why not nail the guy's trunk and drag him to a halt

    I imagine that the trunk lid would tear off pretty easily, rather than dragging the car to a halt. I also imagine that piercing enough of the car to do what you're describing would be very likely to seriously injure the occupants or damage the car so severely that it becomes a hazard to other people on the road (e.g. the gas tank or knocking off an axle or something). Hurting the occupants is less of a concern if they're car thieves or bank robbers, but not if they are hostages (who could conceivably be in the trunk as well as the passenger compartment).
    The right thing to do is what others have suggested - hit the car with a tracking device, and follow it with a helicopter.

  12. Re:Danger to eyes on Multitouch Without Touch Using Wiimote · · Score: 3, Informative


    This thing gives off IR in a different frequency than the human body of course, but if in general IR light is "dangerous", then we'd all be blind years ago.


    The near-IR light given off by this type of device has very little to do with thermal IR. It is much closer to visible red light, just a bit lower frequency (a couple of hundred nm or less difference, versus thermal IR being closer to ten times lower frequency).
    Human eyes are also opaque to thermal IR, which is related to what the GP was getting at - near-IR is potentially dangerous because your eyes are transparent to it, but your retina has very little sensitivity to it. I doubt the amount of NIR illumination here is very significant, but imagine the equivalent of having a bright flashlight stuck in your face, except without the ability of your pupils to contract in response.

  13. Re:Actually... on Predator-Style Helmets Allow Pilots to See Through Planes · · Score: 1

    ...or the liquid-nitrogen-cooled (?) VR helmets that the pilots of the stealth fighters in Interceptor (1992) used. "I can see you, but you can't see me!" Poor Jurgen Prochnow.

  14. Re:I hope they do away with the tunnels on First Image Taken With an Ultra Low Field MRI · · Score: 1

    Why not use a cloth eye cover?

    I imagine that wouldn't work - the person with the eye cover on would know that the MRI machine was still out there... waiting to constrict them like an enormous metallic python.
    I had an MRI a few years ago. Having to lie unmoving for so long was a bit surreal, and I got into a kind of self-hypnotized state which made the time seem to go faster. I'm not claustrophobic, but one thing that sort of creeped me out was the tiny mirror that was right in front of my eyes. The effect reminded me of looking at someone - myself in this case - looking out from an iron maiden, or the cryogenic capsules containing dead astronauts in 2001.

  15. Re:The importance of this race cannot be overstate on Carnegie Mellon Wins Urban Challenge · · Score: 1

    I think the eventual progression is to automated and efficient public transportation, where no one owns their own car, nor needs to.

    ...and no one can use it to go any real distance without the government knowing where they've been.

  16. Re:Full Circle? on Move to a Mainframe, Earn Carbon Credits · · Score: 1

    Virtualization is the wave of the future there is no reason for me to have a computer on my desk, truly a waste of resources.

    Right, because a system where a network outage can prevent anyone on/in a particular floor/building/etc from doing any work is a great approach for any situation that requires computing resources. Especially in non-office environments like retail.

  17. Re:Eh? on The Spy in Your Server Room · · Score: 5, Funny

    Is this an ad or an article?

    According to TraceSecurity, advertisements on Slashdot often masquerade as articles. That's why many Slashdot members hire TraceSecurity to validate their contents before reading them. This message brought to you by TraceSecurity: Tracing your Security so that you can be secure in the knowledge that your Security is Traced.

  18. Re:Either way... on MS, Mozilla Clashing Over JavaScript Update · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And hopefully that arbitrator tells them all to just STFU up and use python :).

    Yes, a language that parses whitespace like Python does would be great for client-side scripts run from a web browser.

  19. Re:For around the same budget... on Open-Source 3D Printer Lets Users Make Anything · · Score: 1

    Here's something simple that I found selling on ebay for less than $500 right now.

    "A Fireball M90... is a basic machine that comes unfinished. No electronics, motors, spindle, or software is included."

    I did some research earlier and it looks like the cheapest you can get a decent, complete, working CNC mill package for is about the same price as the device from TFA - ~US$2500. Still, that's a lot cheaper than I would have expected, and it would (IMO) be more useful too.

  20. Re:New Analog Format on Vinyl To Signal the End for CDs? · · Score: 1

    My anecdote trumps your anecdote.
    I have ~17 years' worth of CDs (something like 700-800 discs). Most of them I bought new, others were used. Earlier this year I ripped them all to mp3 before putting them in storage, and the only time I ran into read problems was when I wore out a couple of CD drives (they were old, and wouldn't read data CDs anymore either afterwards).

  21. Re:Of course it's slow on A Run Through Windows Server 2008 · · Score: 1

    I'm a developer, and I work on code that needs services that are only available on the server version (multiple web sites, for instance).

    Yeah, I don't think you can do things like set up application pools and change their identities on the XP/Vista version of IIS. Doing development related to SharePoint is another big one.

  22. Re:UK? on Comet Unexpectedly Brightens a Millionfold · · Score: 1

    "more than one-half of the days are overcast". Is this unusual in the rest of the world?

    It varies. Is it unusual for Seattle or Vancouver, BC? No. In Vancouver it actually rains on more than one-half of the days every year. Is it unusual for the southwestern part of the US? Probably. I have never seen so much unclouded sky and bright sunlight as I did in southern California and Arizona. I assume Mexico is the same way, since it's even closer to the equator.

  23. Re:Not surprising... on Eight PS3 'Supercomputer' Ponders Gravity Waves · · Score: 1

    Thanks to economies of scale, unless you are mass-producing Cell-based clusters, it is almost certainly cheaper to buy a bunch of PS3s. You might be able to get individual Cell processors for less, but then you'd have to design and manufacture the rest of the hardware, build your own custom Linux package, etc.
    By using commodity game hardware, they've gotten Sony to take care of all of that for them.

  24. Re:Maybe this stems from... on Vista Runs Out of Memory While Copying Files · · Score: 1

    But tell me, when was the last time you copied 16,400 files using XP's built in copier?

    mp3 collections? I ripped all of my music CDs to mp3 awhile ago and at least came close to that figure. I imagine people who have a bunch of downloaded tracks would have even more.

  25. Re:3 ideas on Best Way To Teach Oneself Math? · · Score: 1

    Community colleges are mostly filled with people who couldn't hack it at a regular college.

    I'm sure it depends on where you go.

    A few years ago I was taking a course or two early in the morning at a community college (Seattle Central) before I went in to work (I originally went to university to study music, and wanted to brush up on math and science). There were a lot of students in the lower-level math and chemistry courses that were in the nursing program and so were not as invested in the subject as other students, but I wouldn't say they "couldn't hack it". The teachers were really good, and I learned a lot.

    Maybe it was the early classes (7/8AM) that kept out the slackers?

    Anyway, it was a considerably cheaper than university classes, and IMO the quality of the material was comparable even if the setting was a lot less fancy.