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User: TWX

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  1. Re:Will his fame last? on H.R. Giger, Alien Artist and Designer, Dead at Age 74 · · Score: 1

    I'd never heard of Vasarley by name until you mentioned him. Looked up some of his work and it's interesting, but a lot of it looks like what I see from semirandom mathematical functions from computer screensavers with no attribution or other credit to an artist or even a genre of art.

    By contrast, Giger's work is not nearly as widely replicated or copied without attribution, and it's macabre and controversial enough that it's not widely distributed without context, it's not generally polite for mixed company without the context of either the greater work (like in a movie) or for its own intent; it's not generally casual.

    Given Giger's work's inclusion in very popular movies that continue to see new developments in the franchise, I think that Giger's name will continue to be widely know, more widely known that Vasarley at least.

  2. Re:Duck and cover on Russia Bans US Use of Its Rocket Engines For Military Launches · · Score: 5, Informative

    I used to make fun of duck-and-cover too. Then I looked at what it's actually designed to accomplish.

    You don't duck-and-cover to survive being within the atomic fireball, that would be stupid. You duck and cover because you may be close enough to the blast that debris may hit you. Obviously if the roof caves in then you're probably dead, but if the ceiling breaks free from the structural roof or the structural floor above you, having a physical barrier between you and the ceiling grid, or the light fixtures, or the sheetrock panels, or other building infrastructure may well save your life or reduce the injury that you'd sustain. Same logic holds true for blown-in glass from windows, blown-in nonstructural building facades, and anything else thrown by a blast. Look at the videos from that asteroid strike in Russia, where thousands of people were hurt by flying debris. Same principle would have applied. Also holds true for earthquake mitigation, put something solid and relatively unyielding between you and the loose stuff that will rain down on you.

    If you try to explain to the average person that there's a difference between ducking-and-covering right at ground-zero for a nuclear blast and five miles out, you're going to get no practical improvement in what people do. Just tell everyone to do it, and those that happen to be far enough to not be incinerated or irradiated might survive.

  3. RIP on H.R. Giger, Alien Artist and Designer, Dead at Age 74 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Rest in Peace, creepy-as-hell man...

  4. Re: How about "no thanks" .... on Google Testing Gmail Redesign · · Score: 1

    Am I weird that I'd use a clone of the PINE interface if they'd add one to gmail?

    I was somewhat annoyed when they did-away with the "Terminal" theme in the sense that they got rid of the green-on-black with fixed-width fonts.

  5. Re:Overpopulation on Norwegian Infectious Disease Specialists Have New Theory On HIV In Africa · · Score: 1

    Don't worry. If there was ever a cure for AIDS, it would certainly be sold expensive enough that nobody but the "deserving few" will get it.

    That's not how markets work.

    First, yes, it would be hideously expensive, and only those few that could afford it would buy it. As that supply of customers is exhausted, the patent holder or manufacturer(s) would be forced to lower prices and to increase supply in order to maintain profitability through increasing volume with lower overhead. Eventually that tier of customers would be exhausted, and they'd further have to lower prices and expand manufacturing, etc.

    I do fully expect that disease treatment in poor countries would still be expensive per-capita, even after the drug companies end up with bottom-barrel pricing over time, and I do expect that the disease wouldn't be totally eradicated in these populations or even pared back to the infection levels of wealthier countries, but I do expect that the epidemic would be reduced to levels that aren't completely destructive to society. I also expect that NGOs and other third-parties would push very hard for as much treatment as possible and for prices to come down or for subsidies.

    The hard part will be convincing people to stop having so damn many kids. With an uptick in longevity it will absolutely be necessary for a reduction in new population, lest the already strained continent end up even worse off than they are now.

  6. Re:At least there's hope . . . on Why Disney Can't Give Us High-Def Star Wars Where Han Shoots First · · Score: 1

    Basically that transfer on the DVDs included the letterboxing necessary for a 4:3 television. So, if you take a movie around 2.35:1, letterbox it onto a 1.3:1 screen, then encode it, you see what you got with the DVD.

    Which is a major contributing factor as to why I won't bother to get the DVD version either, it almost looks worse than the LD.

  7. Accuracy on Foam-Spraying Quadcopter Becomes a Flying 3D Printer · · Score: 1

    Hopefully it's more accurate than Ketchupbot was...

  8. Re:At least there's hope . . . on Why Disney Can't Give Us High-Def Star Wars Where Han Shoots First · · Score: 3, Insightful

    And that's why you can have my widescreen Laserdisc editions when you pry them from my cold, dead hands...

    I don't understand why the initiative to do this doesn't come from FOX, there's got to be enough interest to make it profitable. All that I want them to do is to clean up the artifacts from the editing process (where one can obviously tell that it was multiple rolls of film layered through the machines like in the space battles) and to clean up any degradation in color or texture from the film grain itself. Hell, they could even remix the audio into AC3 or whatever surround sound system people like, but they don't need to do more than restoration-type work.

  9. Re:battery weight on BMW Unveils the Solar Charging Carport of the Future · · Score: 1

    I have a house that was built in the late seventies and could accommodate full-size cars of that era. The system you describe would probably not fit with anything larger than a compact electric car in my garage.

    Battery-swap will only happen at home if people are willing and able to saw-cut the floor out to install a special machine as was pointed out, so no houses with post-tension slabs, no rental houses, no houses that have their garages used for other purposes besides parking the cars, and no poor people.

    Recharge, not replace, is the order of the day for electric car batteries.

  10. Re:Battery Swapping on BMW Unveils the Solar Charging Carport of the Future · · Score: 1

    No, but I probably could keep the power steering systems' fluids topped off, could keep the brake fluid reservoir topped off, and could recharge the refrigerant in the HVAC system.

    Any other things that you want to be smug about?

  11. Re:Battery Swapping on BMW Unveils the Solar Charging Carport of the Future · · Score: 1

    Most people won't even check (let alone change) their own oil, or top off their own coolant, maintain tire pressure, or even top off their windshield washer fluid. Hell, most people look at it like it's a major chore to change the starter battery even when it's right up front, held down with one wrench size that fits both the retainer strap and the battery terminal cables.

    Unless battery-swap is as simple as swapping batteries in those old full-sized VHS camcorders was then it's a nonstarter.

  12. Re:fp on One Month Later: 300,000 Servers Remain Vulnerable To Heartbleed · · Score: 3, Funny

    Woo - first :p

    If this is what you have to do to be happy, my heart bleeds for you...

  13. Re:It only can become slavery... on Why Hollywood's Best Robot Stories Are About Slavery · · Score: 1

    Can you offer me any evidence that you possess free will? Anything at all?

    One can argue that when someone is presented with choices, they either fail to choose entirely or else they intentionally choose badly, or they look for and define their own option on on the original slate, that they're exercising a degree of free will.

    We are all certainly 'bound' by 'rules' based on our niches in society. I personally get up in the morning, bathe, and drive in to work by a certain time on five of the seven days of the week, and do something that I may otherwise not choose to do for eight hours, because in order to do what I want I have to have the resources that my labor provides. I could choose to abandon my job but then I would have to find another way to support myself, or would have needed to set up a support mechanism to enable myself to live without regular income.

    I suppose that one could also look at the nature of free will as an ability or desire to change the rules themselves. As a child I lived under one set of rules, my parents'. In my teenage years I found their rules to be unacceptable and I fought against them, and moved out when I was legally old enough to do so, to define my own rules. When I got married I chose to accept new constraints, new rules, that are necessary for living in a monogamous relationship.

  14. Re:I wonder about man hour figures... on The Man Behind Munich's Migration of 15,000 PCs From Windows To Linux · · Score: 5, Informative

    Any large-scale deployment takes significant man-hours to achieve, but can be made easier through the use of imaging and common platforms. If I standardize on only a handful of models of computers then I can load-up the OS and build everything that I need for that OS on each model, then simply duplicate the drive over all of the others of that model, change the few things that need to be changed (name, network credentials, possibly some security hashes) and I'm done.

    This is arguably even easier in Linux than in Windows because there are no particular licensing issues with just copying a Linux installation or with how many Linux installations are deployed. One's backend servers are now for updating and package management rather than for licensing.

    And with Microsoft deciding to change their UI every few years now, coupled with competing UIs from Apple and Google, it's much easier to change people to a diffrent platform when they have to learn a new UI anyway. Had Microsoft kept variants of the Windows 95 UI going past Windows 7 then it would be harder, but with the Metro debacle it's a lot easier to make that change, and since most users won't go deeper than the UI anyway it's not so bad.

    The hardest part is training the support staff if they've been Windows-centric their whole careers. Somehow just reiterating that everything-is-a-file isn't enough, and many professionals struggle to understand UNIX-style paths.

  15. Re:It only can become slavery... on Why Hollywood's Best Robot Stories Are About Slavery · · Score: 1

    I'm curious what could happen if an AI ever is truly created in the Hollywood sense of AI, coupled with the Citizens United ruling that basically allowed corporations more rights along the lines of personhood...

  16. It only can become slavery... on Why Hollywood's Best Robot Stories Are About Slavery · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...when the technology is given free will. It's not even artificial intelligence, it's true free will.

    Look at science fiction like Blade Runner/Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, I, Robot, the Matrix universe, etc. The problem is that the artificial mechanisms in these all have developed to the point that they are, for all intents and purposes, life forms looking ot exercise free will. Especially in Blade Runner, the replicants are so close to being human that they seek out how to understand the emotions that they're experiencing, and they go through the dangerous period of an adolescence of sorts when they're equipped and trained to be soldiers. In that sense they're really not a lot different than the humans that were artificially engineered for the Kurt Russell vehicle Soldier.

    If you give something free will and the ability to comprehend itself then you can expect it to stop following your rules if you do not give it opportunity. The solution is to not build machines that are so complex that they have free will. Make a machine do a specific job as a tool and this won't ever be a problem.

  17. Re:Um... on Richard Stallman Answers Your Questions · · Score: 1

    Another advantage of Free Software is that, if we like, we can examine the source code for back doors and the like.

    When I get done with the kernel we'll compare notes.

  18. Re:Where's Waldo? on Skepticism Grows Over Claims That MH370 Lies In the Bay of Bengal · · Score: 1

    it also doesn't help that the news organizations have managed to frame it as a classic, "whodunit," with bad-actors in the forms of the regional governments that wouldn't disclose what they knew, the failure of cooperation by the airline and its poor behavior regarding the families of the passengers, the contrary evidence for what happened, and the rather large number of employees of Freescale.

    The problem isn't that the questions are being asked, the problem is that conclusions are being drawn, which are either outrageous and poorly-supported or later demonstrated to be incorrect.

    We know that a plane disappeared when transitioning between airspaces controlled by different, somewhat antagonistic governments. We know that the plane's transponder was shut off at just this moment, requiring knowledge of the route and the procedures to turn off the transponder. We know that the plane continued to fly for some time based on the engine reporting systems the parties disabling the transponder neglected to turn off. We know an approximate distance from the satellite that the engine reporting systems reached before not reporting anymore. We think that, several days later, indications of the cockpit voice and data recorders were picked up in the vicinity of a very, very deep part of the ocean, a place that is close to, but not exactly where the engine reporting systems last reported the plane's position.

    That's all that we know. We can speculate that the plane may have ditched there and sank mostly intact, or that the hijacker(s) may have figured out that the engines were still talking and found a way to disable that, before heading on to a different destination, then landed, pulled the blackboxes, and dumped them in this deep spot to make it difficult to impossible to determine what happened.

    There you go, that's all the speculation that we need until they actually find something conclusive. Now we can go back to our daily lives.

  19. Re:Apocalypse, Really? on The Upcoming Windows 8.1 Apocalypse · · Score: 1

    In some countries this would possibly enter consumer protection territory. In the UK possibly the 1979 Sale Of Goods Act.

    Buh-buh-buh-but the EULA!

  20. Re:If not... on Did the Ignition Key Just Die? · · Score: 1

    Including in a car with an automatic transmission?

  21. Re:If not... on Did the Ignition Key Just Die? · · Score: 1

    Think of the key as a lever. It's tugging on the cylinder regardless of the size of the hole in the key as long as there are other keys hanging off of it, and the key can damage the cylinder itself over time.

    Certainly the slotted key design makes it worse as now it's possible for the keyring to bounce up and down to add more force to the key in spurts, but it's not the only way that such wear can occur.

  22. Re:If not... on Did the Ignition Key Just Die? · · Score: 1

    Some (maybe all?) of the Nissan sedans already ditched ignition keys a few years ago for a push-button, and not like some GM models which have a key override. The ignition buttons seem to work fine, never had a problem.

    That there wasn't a problem with it is PATENTLY FALSE. Drivers that experienced "unintended acceleration" had no way of turning off their vehicles because there was no mechanical way to disable the engine electrical system. The software running the car ignored inputs from the brakes and from the gearshift selector since it would have been unsafe to engage those with wide-open throttle, which was triggered by a faulty subroutine. The last-ditch effort to turn a key to shut off the engine was not possible.

    The Nissan model was about the worst possible way that it could have been implemented, bar-none. There should always be a simple, reliable, easy way to disable the engine if necessary, and Nissan completely failed in their design.

  23. Re:If not... on Did the Ignition Key Just Die? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Dad's '40 Buick Super had an single-sided ignition cylinder (key with teeth on one side only) that was mounted to the metal dash. Hard to get at it to hot-wire it, but provided no steering lockout while the vehicle was off. That worked perfectly even when he sold the car around 1998.

    Dad's '72 Plymouth Barracuda has a single-sided ignition cylinder mounted to the column, so that it could lock the column when they key wasn't present. Worked fairly well, but occasionally if the front wheels were pressed against a curb when shutting off the engine it would be difficult to get the key to turn next time as there was excessive pressure on the steering lockout parts. Column is metal, still difficult to hot-wire, but not quite as hard as the '40 Buick

    The '93 Ford Thunderbird that I used to have had a double-sided ignition cylinder (key with same teeth on both sides) embedded in a plastic-coated steering column that was easily forced open, allowing one to reach the wires for the ignition and to defeat the already worn and not-really-working steering lockout.

    The '01 Dodge Ram 3500 Maxiwagon that I drive has a double-sided ignition cylinder, I can remove the key once the vehicle is started. This vehicle has all of those steering-wheel-mounted controls for cruise, so it has a much more complicated clockspring in what ironically is a much older tilt column design.

    The '95 Chevrolet Impala that I drive has a single-sided ignition cylinder with a couple of electrical contacts in it, which interface to "GM Passkey II" resistors located in the keys. This is supposed to make it harder to steal the car, but inevitably the contacts in the column or the gossamer-thin wires connecting those contacts to the computer will break, and the vehicle has to have the whole thing bypassed.

    To me, the problem isn't the key, it's the placement of the cylinder and the technology used to make special features of that system work. Put the cylinder back in the dash, make the steering lockout a function of the dash more than the column, embed the wiring behind a metal panel so that it's impossible to quickly hot-wire the car, and if you're going to have any special electronic stuff, build it to spec, not crappy. Do all of this and the keyring can be very heavy without making the cylinder wear out, and it's still simpler than using fancy electronic "keys" that have a tendency to have security vulnerabilities.

  24. Re:Happy to see it. on Pirate Bay Sports-Content Uploader Faces $32m Lawsuit · · Score: 2

    The only issue that I take with what you say isn't with your numbers of downloaders of the pirated content, rather that the availability of the pirated content has a 1:1 relationship with lost revenue.

    As has been rehashed over the years, there are lots of people that will download content that is free to them that would never have paid for it in the first place. There are also lots of people that will download content and never really play that content.

    So basically, if one wouldn't have paid for the content had it only been available for-pay, then it's not really lost revenue.

  25. Obvious on For the First Time Ever, the FAA Is Trying To Fine a Drone Hobbyist · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The operator, who is a hobbyist, flew a drone carelessly or recklessly and violated air traffic rules as well. He ran the drone into a couple of buildings and it crash-landed 20 feet from a person.

    If I engaged in reckless behavior that posed serious threat to others or to their property then I too would expect to be fined if caught.

    The FAA probably figured that the press and the paparazzi would be all over the use of drones if they were allowed to, and the ban was to prevent a bunch of people that had no interest in the technology itself from attempting to poorly use it. Hobbyists, on the other hand, are by definition interested in the technology, and are more likely to learn how to master its use. This particular hobbyist obviously wasn't in control, hence the fine, but he was also dumb and used the device where he shouldn't have been, ie, a congested urban environment with bystanders.

    Play with this stuff where there's room and a lack of people to hurt and one should be ok.