Slashdot Mirror


User: ClayDowling

ClayDowling's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
200
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 200

  1. Re:I miss the most important choice in that list on Facebook Debuts New Gender Options, Pronoun Choices · · Score: 1

    If there's to be fucking involved, I think it probably is their business. A more appropriate answer might be "you've gotta buy me dinner if you want to find out."

  2. Re:Super gender queer on Facebook Debuts New Gender Options, Pronoun Choices · · Score: 2

    Dude, if prison is the worst thing that happens from promising two different women that you'll never leave them, you got off light. The real horror show is when you come home and they're sitting on your couch, having coffee.

  3. Re:Canadian driving on Atlanta Gambled With Winter Storm and Lost · · Score: 1

    The northerner solution to that situation is to park our butts at home and wait it out. Hills + polished/wet ice = trapped at the bottom of the hill.

  4. Re:Canadian driving on Atlanta Gambled With Winter Storm and Lost · · Score: 1

    Sometimes, the blizzards hit late at night, and the county is cheap, so you're dealing with the roads you've got. Not every place is urbanized, especially between Fort Wayne, IN and Lansing, MI.

    If you've never dealt with black ice, let me assure you that you don't want to. What you had was visible ice. Easy to behave right because it's visible and obvious. The black kind, it looks like safe pavement, but isn't. The gentlest touch of the brakes and your traction slips. A gentle touch to the gas and the rear end of the truck wants to come around. No pre-warning it was going to happen. So you stop doing whatever you were doing when the slipping started. You downshift to slow down, or back off the gas.

    And mostly, as mentioned, you don't drive on it if you can avoid it. Because it's ice and without skates it's hard to move on it.

  5. Re:Canadian driving on Atlanta Gambled With Winter Storm and Lost · · Score: 4, Insightful

    We get black ice on the highways here in Michigan all the time. The difference is that we don't panic. My truck loses its grip, I quickly stop doing the thing that made it lose its grip. If heavy snow starts, we don't all rush out into the streets at once. We tend to stagger our leave so that traffic has a chance to clear, and we have a chance to not be in the worst of it. We check road conditions before heading out. I've driven across multiple states during ice storms and blizzards without problem, and without plows or salt trucks providing any relief.

    A million salt trucks wouldn't have saved Atlanta. The key is keeping your head and knowing what to do. Everybody in Atlanta buried their heads in the predicted snow, pretending it wouldn't happen, then lost their heads when it did. Their emergency management response was poor to non existant, and they paid the price. They're going to need a leadership change if they don't want this to happen again.

  6. Re:Promises of anonymity are greatly exagerated on FBI Has Tor Mail's Entire Email Database · · Score: 1

    Now you're not trusting a single third party, you're trusting -every- third party. That's just begging to be compromised. If secrecy is important to you, take steps to make sure nobody realizes you're communicating. Eliminate or reduce the ability of outsiders to figure out who you're communicating with, because that can be just as damning as having them intercept the communication (e.g. the phone meta data that the phone company must maintain in order to do business). Don't use untrusted third parties to facilitate the communication (like services promising anonymity), because they don't have a stake in protecting your privacy. And most importantly, don't use services or tools that advertise the fact that you're trying to hide things. That only makes people curious, and while curiosity is said to have killed the cat, the cat's curiosity ended a lot more mice.

  7. Re:Promises of anonymity are greatly exagerated on FBI Has Tor Mail's Entire Email Database · · Score: 1

    Trust that at your peril. If you think the people who tracked down Osama bin Laden and killed him in his bedroom can't get ahold of your email, I'd like to make sure I'm not near you when the inevitable very bad thing happens. Too often bystanders are considered acceptable casualties.

  8. Amen Brother! on FBI Has Tor Mail's Entire Email Database · · Score: 2

    It's like expecting your dog to ignore the roast you left on the counter while you went to work. Sure, it could happen, but there's no reason an intelligent person would expect it to happen.

  9. Promises of anonymity are greatly exagerated on FBI Has Tor Mail's Entire Email Database · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When you trust a third party, with whom you have no actual connection, to keep your data private, you are pretty much asking to have it compromised. The best encryption and anonymity schemes in the world are useless in the face of a court order or questionable system administration. Did you really think some anonymous person was willing to go to jail for your privacy? You're both silly and naive if you think so.

  10. My interest vs. Theirs on Ask Slashdot: Educating Kids About Older Technologies? · · Score: 1

    I have a significantly higher interest in older technology than my kids. But my workshop is always open to them, on the off chance that they're interested in learning hand tool woodworking. Of course, that's not really old technology. It's still the way that fine furniture is made. It's just that they're unlikely to see solid wood furniture outside of our house. Unless you've got money to spend, you'll be buying the termite vomit from Ikea or Value City.

  11. Truck got dumber on Smart Cars: Too Distracting? · · Score: 1

    My most recent vehicle purchase was a Toyota Tacoma. Because I needed a truck, and I wanted a stick shift. The truck has no optional features at all. The nice thing is, there is almost nothing that needs fiddling with. Simple gauges. A nice but easy to control radio. No funny collections of buttons. Not even electric door locks or window controls.

    Also no cruise control, but it seems like a small price to pay for having a truck that is otherwise simple, reliable and doesn't suck fuel like a three year old with a big gulp.

  12. Re:As a mechanical engineer... on A Makerbot In Every Classroom · · Score: 1

    Amen to that. A Makerbot is a huge maintenance load. They need a lot of fiddling and constant maintenance and replacement parts that a school teacher isn't going to have time or money to do. These machines will sit in a corner collecting dust and frustration. Much like the one we have here, in an office full of engineers.

    I'd be fine with a shop class full of nothing but hand tools. Cheaper for the school, lower liability costs, and the students will learn the same set of problem solving and building skills. Johnathan Starr published an excellent book back in the 1970s about the program he ran.

  13. The Cat is Still Not Trustworthy on Dell Fixes Ultrabook That Smelled of Cat Urine · · Score: 1

    Dell's taking the blame, but the cat still isn't trustworthy. First the mouse is gone, then the track pad smells like wee.

  14. Re:Killjoy never gets invited out with the cool ki on Gravity: Can Film Ever Get the Science Right? · · Score: 1

    I am very familiar with who he is. I also hold a degree in Physics. At the same time, I recognize the difference between a film made for entertainment purposes, and a film made for educational purposes. Gravity was the former, and I choose to evaluate it for what it is. Likewise, I don't criticize my cat because she can't repair a motorcycle, and hopefully she doesn't criticize me because I'm bad at catching mice.

  15. Re:Killjoy never gets invited out with the cool ki on Gravity: Can Film Ever Get the Science Right? · · Score: 1

    Having actually had to calculate intercept orbits without benefit of a computer to do the heavy lifting, I assure you that it would not have improved the movie. Takes about half an hour, assuming that all of your information is accurate.

  16. Killjoy never gets invited out with the cool kids on Gravity: Can Film Ever Get the Science Right? · · Score: 3, Informative

    This is why nobody ever invites Neil deGrasse Tyson to the movies. It was a great movie. If your biggest quibble is that they made navigation line of sight to avoid tedious scenes full of calculating orbital mechanics, you're a killjoy.

  17. Djin and bottles on 'Eraser' Law Will Let California Kids Scrub Online Past · · Score: 1

    It's cute that the Assemblyman thinks he's getting that Djin back in the bottle. Sadly, he has failed entirely to understand how distributed information systems work.

  18. Re:Yes. on Ask Slashdot: Are We Witnessing the Decline of Ubuntu? · · Score: 1

    You do know, don't you, that Canonical and the KDE/Gnome teams are separate entities, right? This isn't a case of Ubuntu cramming software down anybody's throat. Two window managers did things you didn't like. Blaming it on a third party doesn't seem like a reasonable conclusion. I'd also point out that there are other, equally easy to install window managers available.

  19. Re:Yes. on Ask Slashdot: Are We Witnessing the Decline of Ubuntu? · · Score: 1

    Not seeing your point here. Installing new software is trivially easy, especially under Ubuntu. Switching between desktop managers is likewise trivially easy. That's not ramming it down somebody's throat. That's giving people and choice and making it easy to exercise that choice. Pretty sure that's what is wanted.

  20. Re:Yes. on Ask Slashdot: Are We Witnessing the Decline of Ubuntu? · · Score: 1

    It's selectable at the login screen. The login screen remembers whatever your last chosen desktop was and uses that as the default. It's really very nice and well thought out.

  21. Re:Yes. on Ask Slashdot: Are We Witnessing the Decline of Ubuntu? · · Score: 1

    What restriction of choice has there been so far? Without having to jump through any hoops other than installing them through the app center, I can log in to Unity, KDE, Fluxbox and XBMC on my laptop. All of them are fully functional desktops (or in the case of XBMC, functional for its specific narrow usage). That looks like more choice to me, not less.

  22. Re:Yes. on Ask Slashdot: Are We Witnessing the Decline of Ubuntu? · · Score: 1

    Did you try one of the obvious solutions, like installing KDE (which has worked flawlessly for me), or another desktop? Fluxbox was a brain dead simple install for me. I don't use it that often, but on a netbook it really made my machine a lot zippier.

  23. Re:Yes. on Ask Slashdot: Are We Witnessing the Decline of Ubuntu? · · Score: 2

    KDE installed on ubuntu is quite nice, and is definitely not a second class citizen. I still have all of the easy GUI config tools, and I have the desktop that I prefer. So Right On, Brother! After all, it's Linux. If you don't like the desktop, it's trivial to install another one.

  24. Re:Indicative of a need in young men? on Why Are Japanese Men Refusing To Leave Their Rooms? · · Score: 1

    It doesn't seem like an unreasonable hunch though. Certainly the structure of a military or monastic life would provide a safer environment for people with social anxieties, which is what this sounds like from the article.

  25. Very fast on DoD Descends On DEFCAD · · Score: 2

    A couple of hours ago i downloaded and printed a design from that site. I also proved why this is a gigantic non-issue: getting a good print from a 3d printer is very involved. The machines need a lot of fiddling to get them working right. My magazine, which was supposed to be flat bottomed, had a distinctive curve to it that did not make for a good working part.