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User: Lawrence_Bird

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  1. Also on N side of a mountain on Ask Slashdot: Holding ISPs Accountable For Contracted DSL Bandwidth · · Score: 1

    an local small teleco has been unable to reliably deliver advertised speeds to me. I finally got teed off enough to start arguing about it and basically got no where. I wanted a reduction in price or dropping the landline and doing dry dsl but they would not do that. The end result is they lowered my rated speed from 4 to 3 Mbps and at least now the thing is fairly reliable (Ironically when it was set at 4 the best I was getting was around 3.4). It still pisses me off as they continually advertise 6 and in fact even have run fiber into some new developments (no doubt due to payola from the developer) but until they do another town wide upgrade cycle I am stuck paying outrageous prices for crap service. So I guess the point of this rant was that you should see about dropping your speed down and if that at least gets you a stable connection 24/7. You should check your rooter for up and down margins and attenuation when it goes bad. Mine was especially prone to do so between about 4pm and 9pm, basically at times of high electric use.

  2. Re:Star ship Enterprise? on Engineer Thinks We Could Build a Real Starship Enterprise In 20 Years · · Score: 1

    And if Armstrong had not been on board we would have saved hundreds of billions. What has been the return on the moon rocks that Apollo brought back? Is there anything which was done on the moon that could not have been done by automated machinery?

  3. Re:plasticLogic == vaporware on Plastic Logic Shows Off a Color ePaper Screen · · Score: 1

    not sure about the ch11 stuff but you are definitely right, they are vaporware with no products really ever reaching consumer hands.

  4. Great but need other front ends on FreeBSD 10 To Use Clang Compiler, Deprecate GCC · · Score: 1

    I think the move to llvm/clang is great and glad to hear that most packages now build with it (I had already found that to be true.) However, the one downside is that there is only C/C++ available. No Fortran (and a few others) that are available as front-ends to gcc. I do realize that LLVM can be used as a replacement backend to gcc but you are still left with the GPL.

    Does anyone know if there is work on a native Fortran front end for LLVM?

  5. Re:Star ship Enterprise? on Engineer Thinks We Could Build a Real Starship Enterprise In 20 Years · · Score: 1

    you are a fucking idiot you know that right? How about Cassini, a 'mega' probe cost about $3.5B and many smaller automated probes cost in the low hundreds of millions. How many of those could you do for $1T over 20 years? So many that you wouldn't use all the money up. There is NO REASON for manned exploration of the solar system. The environment is hostile to man and trying to accomodate the needs when there is nothing to be gained is the height of foolish burning of money.

  6. Re:Funding? No on U.S. In Danger of Losing Earth-Observing Satellite Capability · · Score: 1

    Replying to a few comments at one time

    First, ISS cost, per wikipedia: "As of 2010 NASA budgeted $58.7 billion for the station from 1985 to 2015, or $72.4 billion in 2010 dollars. The cost is $150 billion including 36 shuttle flights at $1.4 billion each, Russia's $12 billion ISS budget, Europe's $5 billion, Japan's $5 billion, and Canada's $2 billion. Assuming 20,000 person-days of use from 2000 to 2015 by two to six-person crews, each person-day would cost $7.5 million, about 60% less than the $19.6 million per person-day on Skylab"

    Hardly trivial and with little to show for it with no major scientific or technological breakthroughs.

    As to 'technological incubator' - there is nothing which has been done in the space program which would not otherwise have happened here on planet earth. Did the very large outlays on the Apollo program speed up the delivery of some? Perhaps. Could all the money have gone to other things with a positive effect on the lives of US citizens? Probably. Then again most of you probably were not alive in the 60s and 70s to remember just how great things were back then.

    As to the 'exploration' argument for wasting trillions to try to do manned Mars missions.. pardon the pun, but what plannet are you on? Exploring the Earth had immediate benefit to people on Earth. Not just in terms of scientific understanding of our surroundings but also in material gain (ie, getting new and more resources found in the then unexplored Earth.) None of that holds for Mars. A man on Mars is the equivalent of climbing Everest or skiing a double diamond - you did it because you wanted to and could, not because it advanced your life or anyone elses.

  7. Haskell on Ask Slashdot: What Language Should a Former Coder Dig Into? · · Score: 1

    as you said, for personal reasons as there aren't all that many jobs in it yet. But you'll learn functional programming which is pretty neat.

  8. Funding? No on U.S. In Danger of Losing Earth-Observing Satellite Capability · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    This is a perfect example of wasted funding. Tens of billions wasted on ISS. More on manned mars extravaganzas. More on developing their own heavy lift capacity (for what I don't know) instead of letting industry figure it out. NASA has and has had more than enough funding.

  9. Re:guess thats why you cant bring yourself on The Math Formula That Lead To the Financial Crash · · Score: 1

    FYI, greed is not illegal.

  10. Re:Guessing is the problem on The Math Formula That Lead To the Financial Crash · · Score: 1

    BS is not about predicting the future. BS, binomial,etc models enable you to establish a 'fair value' for an asset such as an option, based on various input parameters. Along with the fair value come various metrics which allow you to predict how that price may change for small moves in each of those parameters and to attempt to hedge, if desired, against said small moves.

    And just as in the housing market, 'fair value' does not necessarily equate to 'market value'.

  11. Bollocks on The Math Formula That Lead To the Financial Crash · · Score: 3, Informative

    BS had zero to do with any of the problems which led to the various market meltdowns. What did? Ignorance of liquidity (more precisely, lack of liquidity), counterparty risk, seriously flawed assumptions about various correlations (think gdp, unemployment, geography, subprime mortgages), significant excess leverage financed at exceptionally low interest rates, creation of intstruments which allowed some holders to game the system (credit default swaps) and lastly, ignorance and greed. There are, of course, myriad other contributors but BS is not one of them.

    Disclaimer: besides having a masters degree in computational finance I worked in the industry for nearly two decades.

  12. Little Science on The Crisis of Government-Funded Science · · Score: 1

    blah blah blah BIG SCIENCE blah blah blah waa! waa! That is all we hear. The vast majority of research is not big science and small scale science makes the biggest contributions to society. Not the Space Torch. Not Hubble. Not FNAL or CERN. The bottom line is we are well past the point of diminishing returns with particle physics, cosmology, astrophysics, etc. They cost way too much and what is learned is of minimal value. Does it really freakin matter if they find Higgs (or not) in 2 years, 20 years or 200 years? Will it spell doom if we don't know the answer to 'does dark matter really exist' for another thousand years? Just because the answer might be interesting does not justify putting thousands of scientists on the government dole for decades on end.

    We pour astronomical amounts of money into a very few areas where the only 'return' is some degree of speed up in technological innovation necessary to process data from said projects. This would happen on its own for other reasons in short enough order.

    If we must spend money that we really do not have, spend it on all the thousands of other science projects which only get a pittance of money because they aren't sexy enough to make the news.

  13. Helicopter Researchers on Brain Scan Can Predict Math Mistakes · · Score: 0

    Great.. as if helicopter parents aren't bad enough now researchers want to make it so we can replace the 'hard' questions with easy ones Johnny will get right. You learn by making mistakes, not by testing the ability to do a simpler problem.

  14. Re:Mod parent up! on Software Engineering Is a Dead-End Career, Says Bloomberg · · Score: 1

    The people doing the work are paid a wage/salary and (usually) benefits. The typical cost of even lame benefit packages add 10K or more to your cost. If all of that is unacceptable to you, leave. The shareholders - who are the OWNERS of the company are entitled to the as much profit as is possible given whatever operating and capital EXPENSE the firm must pay. If you feel you are worth more money, leave as the firm does not feel the same way. The firm fully believes it can hire somebody else with identical abilities to do the same job at the same cost.

  15. Re:FORTRAN? on Julia Language Seeks To Be the C For Numerical Computing · · Score: 1

    Well you beat me to the post but yes Fortran 90 and beyond have all the features of "modern" languages and quite a bit more that are not found in other languages du jour. Instead of mocking people might do well to familarize themself with the current language and not keep talking about IV or 77.

  16. Re:Younger coders usually think they know best.. on Mosh: Modernizing SSH With IP Roaming, Instant Local Echo · · Score: 1

    Hmmm.. I think you are fibbing.. the next step up from 110 baud was 300... and I surely date myself with that knowledge. I miss my LA-120.

  17. Re:Are cars next? on US Carriers Finally Doing Something About Cellphone Theft · · Score: 1

    Perhaps you dont understand the difference between a carrier who shuts off service to your phone and one who disables your phone. Disabling is purely vindicative and I pity the person who has a 'stolen' phone miracously found or returned to them.. dead.
    Good luck getting Verizon/ATT/TMO to unbrick it.

  18. Are cars next? on US Carriers Finally Doing Something About Cellphone Theft · · Score: 0

    After all, GM, Ford etc must have a responsibility to me to disable my stolen vehicle right? And what about thte company that made the boombox I had that was stolen? Why aren't they doing more?

  19. Re:Because Hybrids Don't Pay For Themselves on Hybrid Car Owners Not Likely To Buy Another Hybrid · · Score: 1

    And neither are all electric cars. Over a 100,000 mile lifespan @27mpg average (not too difficult with sedans these days) you will buy 3,700 gallons of gas over about 7 years. Estimates for the Nissan leaf indicate an electric cost of about $400/year (15K miles) at 11c/kw which is a rate not seen in most major metro areas which are order of 20c. Split the difference and call it $500/year for $3,300 over 100K miles compared to $18,500 for gas @$5. Thats about $15K difference in 'fuel' costs and ignores present values. If you are buying the car you pay up front so the price difference must be less than $15,000 to be indifferent.

    And then there is the big unknown. What will the ongoing maintenance and repair costs be for electric vehicles? You are pretty much stuck going to a dealer ($$$) and there certainly seems a lot that can burn out or break compared to a traditional car.

  20. Treaty is not needed on New Tech Makes Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Verifiable · · Score: 1

    and unduly constrains the US (and others) in the future. How many tests have there been since the late1990s? Other than NK nothing since the tit for tat Pakistan/India tests in 1998. That was... hmm.. 13+ years ago?

  21. 1968 on FBI Says American Universities Infiltrated by Spies · · Score: 1

    In other news today the FBI said that other nations are using our academic institutions to recruit spies. Thank you and have a good night.

  22. er.. usenet? on Online Services: The Internet Before the Internet · · Score: 1

    surely I'm not the only one who did a uucp newsfeed back in the day.. I think I used uunet and the psinet. Back then a full feed was like 2 or 3 MB per day..

  23. Ponies on Slashdot Coming Attractions · · Score: 1

    but unfortunately I think I'll only get more dupes

  24. UK off the tourist list on UK Man Jailed For 'Offensive Tweets' · · Score: 1

    and proabalby AU too... really you guys are beyond out of hand these days. About the only person I can see enjoying it there now is Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld.

  25. Google and Others on UK MPs Threaten New Laws If Google Won't Censor Search · · Score: 2

    should block access from the UK and Japan for a week. Sure the stock price might take a brief hit but uncle with all this whiny BS. Let them go back to the internet stone age.