Slashdot Mirror


User: pfafrich

pfafrich's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
226
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 226

  1. Re:Quit whaling on Jimmy on Wikipedia Gets Critical Reception from UK Press at Wikimania 2014 · · Score: 1

    Just to correct myself he is User:Thekohser on wikipedia banned since 2009. His PR company was MyWikiBiz.

  2. Re:Quit whaling on Jimmy on Wikipedia Gets Critical Reception from UK Press at Wikimania 2014 · · Score: 1

    He has been banned from wikipedia for a long time. He tried to set up a paid editing business wikipedia-PR and got banned for not respecting site policy on that issue. Since then he has been one of the most vociferous critics constantly pushing his corporate editing agenda.

  3. Re:Tenant? on Google Releases Raspberry Pi Web Dev Teaching Tool · · Score: 1

    I think the way coder works is that the Pi sits a a local (web)-server connected via your local ethernet network. You don't actually need a separate monitor or keyboard for the Pi as all control is done via a PC connected to the network.

  4. Wikipedia has a category on Ask Slashdot: Mathematical Fiction? · · Score: 1

    Wikipedia has Category:Mathematics fiction books. Of those Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture, is a great read, the life of a fictional mathematician, Logicomix a graphics novel is a good as well telling the story of Cantor and other logicians.

  5. Game Group going out of busisness. on The Consoles Are Dying, Says Developer · · Score: 1

    Wonder if Game Group's problems are related to this. As the UK's biggest high street game retailer the decline in console and PC games on disk can't be doing much for its income.

  6. Re:Tree Bog on Gates Foundation Makes Progress On Reinvented Toilets · · Score: 1

    Article on tree bogs for anyone interested.

  7. Tree Bog on Gates Foundation Makes Progress On Reinvented Toilets · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Best and simpest idea for a toilet I've seen is the tree bog. Its a raised platform over an enclosure space fenced off with chicken wire. Around the bog you plant willow or other greedy trees which rapidly consume the nutrients, effectively turning the poo into biomass. Aerobic decomposition has advantages over anaerobic decomposition and there is no smell if you use a layer of sawdust. The whole thing requires no maintenance as the poo decomposes very quickly. Not good for urban situations but ideal in rural environments.

  8. Distance between the eyes does not change much on Face-Scanning Vending Machine Denies Children Access To Pudding · · Score: 3, Interesting

    A while back I did some work looking at how people faces change with age for a medicinal application. One quite surprising thing is how little the distance between the eyes actually change, quite young children will have the the same distance as adults. On the other hand noses keep growing throughout life.

  9. Sexual Discharges on Lego Bible Too Racy For Sam's Club · · Score: 1
    Have a look at Old Testament > The Law > Sexual Discharges. NSFW. Which starts with the line, 'When a man ejaculates semen...'.

    Now in its original context I've no problem with the written version, entirely in keeping with the spirit of the book. That section was never intended to be illustrated, indeed the illustrations go against the moral spirit of book. Its intended as book of rules of conduct not as a spectacle of images to be gawped at. I'm generally in favour of using illustrations to help interpret books making them more accessible. Here its just inappropriate and Sam's Club is entirely right to ban it.

    Later in the same section Leviticus 15:28-15:30, the bibles advocating the large scale slaughter of doves. Apparently women should sacrifice two doves or pigeons eight days after the end of her period. So thats 24 doves a year. Its a good thing all christians don't follow this as we would very soon rid the world of doves. I now know what I'll ask the next time the Jehovah Witnesses come knocking on my door.

  10. Re:Geometric Proofs? on British Schoolkids To Be Taught Computer Coding · · Score: 1

    But didn't we all start by writing some spaghetti code. Before we can teach good programming design they need to experiment with a print statements, and maybe a loop and an if statement. These constructs are all translatable between languages. This is really a very early stage, they are getting to grips with basic algebra at that age, don't expect too much from the average student.

  11. Re:"Software engineers" don't do web programming on Hard Truths About HTML5 · · Score: 1

    I think you have just invented MathML.

  12. Combined heat and power on Why Waste Servers' Heat? · · Score: 3, Informative

    Combined heat and power (CHP) schemes are a increasingly common using the waste heat from some process to provide district heating. Temperatures from a server farms might be a bit on the low side but it changes the situation when you look at the heat as a resource to be used rather than a waste item.

  13. Reminds me of a security conference on DOJ: We Can Force You To Decrypt That Laptop · · Score: 1

    This reminds me of a security conference I went to. After a talk about computer forensics by someone from the UK police, I asked what they did about encrypted messages. He replied that they "normally just ask for the password", he didn't go into details about quite what "ask" involved.

  14. Terrible statistics on Average Gamer Is 37 Years Old · · Score: 1

    If you look at the PDF you see that they have grouped the ages into three categories. Under 18, 18-49 and 50+. It looks like they have calculated the average from just three data points. As the 18-50 group is so big its skews the average towards the middle value of that group 33. A finer division of groups would probably show a greater number of younger people playing games.

  15. Speaking up for literature on Revolution of the Science Fiction Authors · · Score: 1
    I can roughly divide the books I've read into two piles: those that have left a lasting impression on me and those I enjoyed but ultimately forgot about. In the first pile there in a lot of Science Fiction and a lot of the "literature", in the latter goes a fair bit si-fi and fantasy and some more mainstream stuff.

    Of the really great books I'd put Kafka, Orwell (1984, Animal Farm), Hermann Hesse (Siddhartha, The Glass Bead Game) and those which shaped the way I think about things. Some of these could be called science fiction, they use settings removed from the real world, but also provide some commentary on how we live now.

    So much si-fi does fall into a formulaic adventure romp. There is little to learn from these, indeed they can be dangerous - as the characters can be idealised heros, setting unrealistic role models. One exception to this was Moorcock's eternal champion, initially a hero but by the end just a slaughterer of half the population. Perhaps a truer view of conflict than most.

    Yes a bit of escape can be fun, but there are other reasons we read fiction. I like books which give me something I was not expecting, and shed a bit of light on life. Its been a while since I read a modern science-fiction book which has done that.

  16. Re:Legit. on Students Claim New Paper Folding Record · · Score: 1

    We can't actually tell it did not tear internally. It would really need to be unfolded again to ensure that.

  17. Re:Blame it on the solar cycle on Geologists Say California May Be Next · · Score: 1

    OK, taking the dates from List of earthquakes and List of solar cycles. If we limit the range to when both sets overlap i.e. 1755 - now and split the data into buckets according to how many years the earth quake is from nearest solar cycle we find -5 years before: 0; -4 4; -3 0; -2 0; -1 5; 0 3; 1 3; 2 1; 3 1; 4 2; 5 0. The data does have highest numbers in the -1, 0, and 1 buckets. We can then use a chi squared test on these as we would expect 19/11 in each bucket ie. 1.73. Doing the chi squared test gives a p-value of 0.045. Significant at the 5% level!

  18. Re:Full Report on Online Shopping May Actually Increase Pollution · · Score: 1
    Which in turn cites "Jonson G, Orremo F, Wallin C, Ringsberg K. IT, mat and miljo . En miljokonsekvensanalys av elektronisk handel med dagligvaror. Stockholm: Naturvardsverket. Institutionen fo r Designvetenskaper, Forpackningslogistik/Lunds Tekniska Hogskola; 1999. p. 102." Which is where the 3.5 traditional shopping trips figure comes from.

    So we have a 2010 press release, summarising a 2010 report which quotes a 2002 paper, which in turn quotes a 1999 paper.

  19. Re:Full Report on Online Shopping May Actually Increase Pollution · · Score: 1

    Actually the report merely cites a previous paper on the subject: Plepys A (2002), "The Grey Side of ICT", Environmental Impact Assessment Review, 22: 509-523 PDF. That is the paper with the details.

  20. Full Report on Online Shopping May Actually Increase Pollution · · Score: 1

    Full Report: "Rebound: unintended consequences of transport policy and technology innovations", page has link to the PDF.

  21. Re:Oh that's wonderful on HTTP Intermediary Layer From Google Could Dramatically Speed Up the Web · · Score: 1

    Old joke, off topic, not interesting. What are the mods playing at these days. Mod parent down.

  22. Pot and kettle on James Murdoch Criticizes BBC For Providing "Free News" · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is a bit rich coming from a Murdoch, a family have the greatest impact on British public life. Many votes are swayed according to what the sun says. And whats more the family managed to reduce "The Times" from a great pillar of the establishment to the least respected broadsheet.

  23. Artefacts on Simple, Portable Physics Simulations · · Score: 1

    The wave simulation is very nicely executed. It does also seem to generate some rather interesting artefacts. If you move the mouse to to very close to a corner and hold it down for a second or so and release. The smaller high frequency wave will interfere to produce a much lower frequency wave with one or two point peaks. This peeks then drift across the screen. I've also managed to produce a standing wave as well. Quite an interesting phenomena but I'm not sure if its really accurate or an artifact of the way the program is coded.

  24. Re:It's their own fault on Wikipedia Approaches Its Limits · · Score: 1

    But the so-called trivial elements like Star Wars universe make wikipedia a one stop shop for information. I know that I've looked up stuff and someone has flagged the article for deletion because it was supposedly trivial. If it were actually trivial, why am I as an end user looking at it?

    This is the nub of the matter. There was a time a few years back when wikipedia could have gone in one of two ways it could either become a proper encyclopaedia with a higher standards for inclusion or a vast repository of every little detail of popular culture. Either would have been good but its name led it to the more academic route. I think that shift happened about the time of the millionth article when there was a shift across the community from aiming for growth and quantity to a focus on quality.

    Yes wikipedia has now matured and has raised the barrier for entry. Tougher requirements are needed for editors and for the articles and these will deter some, and indeed anger many who have not realised that wikipedia has changed nor bothered to read what it is now is. This change has been observed many times in all sort of online and real world communities as the open free for all shifts to a more stable entity. So it should really come as not great surprise not any great worry for its long term future.

  25. Regulation of Investigatory Powers on UK Police Raid Party After Seeing "All-Night" Tag On Facebook · · Score: 1

    My first thought was has there been a breach of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 which restricts the sort of information the police can access without a warrant. If the people had just advertised the party to their friends on facebook then I suspect it become the sort of info the police would need a warrant to access. I seem to recal that the police can't just get warrents to speculative crawl for this information unless they have details of a specific crime that may be committed.

    I took a few minuites for my parinoia to subdue when I realised that they had probably listed it as a public all night party event. Which the whole world, its mother and the police can happily look through.