Slashdot Mirror


User: HangingChad

HangingChad's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
2,935
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 2,935

  1. Re:All we really know so far on Malaysian Passenger Plane Reportedly Shot Down Over Ukraine · · Score: 1

    I was just showing up to ask if anyone else first thought this story was about the original Malaysia Airlines plane? It was seriously confusing for a few seconds.

  2. As we suspected on Sony Forgets To Pay For Domain, Hilarity Ensues · · Score: 4, Funny

    SOE's president, John Smedley, has admitted that the expiration notices were being sent to an "unread email" address.

    The same one used for customer service inquiries.

  3. They're not a corporation on Meet the Muslim-American Leaders the FBI and NSA Have Been Spying On · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Until they incorporate they're not entitled to free speech or religious exemptions.

  4. Re:As a Quebecer... on Tesla Aims For $30,000 Price, 2017 Launch For Model E · · Score: 1

    Our billionaires mostly do things like wearing clown noses in space or union-busting convenience stores.

    Not all our billionaires do things. We have a pair from Kansas who thinks they can buy themselves a government. So far they're winning.

  5. Everybody skips the interesting bits on Site of 1976 "Atomic Man" Accident To Be Cleaned · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Not only did Harold get a dose that was way beyond the LD50 for humans, he lived for 11 more years and died of unrelated causes. His pastor had to convince people he was safe to be around.

    Harold was far from the only Tri-Cities nuclear celebrity. There were also stories about guys who would drop their pants and squat over reactor vents until their balls got a little burned. Think of it like a nuclear vasectomy. I never documented any of those stories but there were a lot of them and worse.

    One thing I did personally document was that, adjusted for age, the cancer rate for people who worked at Hanford was not statistically higher than that of the general population.

    I achieved my own personal notoriety there by accidentally leaving my dosimeter in my shaving kit and leaving that on an orange Fiestaware platter that was so hot it would light up a pancake meter on three scales. A few weeks later I get a panic call from Rad Services asking if I'm okay. Hehe. God, I hated that place.

  6. Bigger than a tiny house on Chinese Company '3D-Prints' 10 Buildings In One Day · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Those structures are bigger and sturdier than a tiny house with the added advantage of being made from recycled building materials.

    The real question is structural strength and integrity and what agents are they using to make the mix dry fast. The Chinese could be using some nasty chemicals that wouldn't fly in building materials over here (Chinese drywall anyone?).

    Still, if the units end up being even roughly equivalent to poured concrete, I could see living in a printed house, no problem.

  7. Not news for anyone in the business on Happy Software Developers Solve Problems Better · · Score: 1

    Talk about a headline from the No Screaming Shit Department, of course happier programmers are going to do a better job. There's no motivation to do your job well when you're miserable. That's why the team dynamics are more important than individual skill. I've seen one hot-shot programmer with great coding skills and horrendous personal skills totally undermine the team dynamic. No amount of skill makes up for being an arrogant ass.

  8. About time on Federal Judge Rules US No-fly List Violates Constitution · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It's okay having a no fly list but not having a way to appeal being on it is an abomination. The irony is that sometimes actual terrorists are allowed to fly so they don't get tipped off the US is watching them. That's downright brilliant there. If the US is going to ban someone from traveling, they need to admit it and provide an appeals process.

  9. Useful Technology on Smartphones To Monitor Schizophrenics · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As someone who used to answer the 911 psych calls for our volunteer FD in a rural area, a voluntary app like this could be really useful. Where we lived back then first responders were the only regular checks a lot of the psych cases ever got. By the time someone called 911, they were way off the sanity reservation. Then law enforcement got involved and packed them off to primary care. They'd stabilize on their meds, the hospital would cut them loose because they didn't have insurance, sometimes with a couple days worth of meds, and we'd start the cycle all over again. Anything that would alert medical personnel that someone was having a problem and find a way to get them some help before we got a call that they were chasing cows around in the pasture bare ass naked would be a good thing.

    I learned that rural areas are full of crazy people because the cost of living is lower and they could be crazy and not bother as many people. It was kind of surprising to find out how many of our neighbors were genuinely, seriously out there howling at the moon loony tunes (technical medical jargon).

  10. Re:Ummm on Google: Indie Musicians Must Join Streaming Service Or Be Removed · · Score: 1

    Google, how the fuck is this not evil?

    They're using very small values of evil.

  11. Re:SHeriff Michael Gayer on America 'Has Become a War Zone' · · Score: 1

    Violence has been trending down for decades

    You can't support that conclusion definitively. What's positively been changing for decades is the way police report crimes. That, combined with the sheer numbers of people we're imprisoning, might be contributing to a drop overall level of crime but until there are uniform reporting guidelines, that conclusion is, at best, fragile.

    Around here if someone shoots holes in your apartment, unless someone is hit, it gets reported as vandalism, even though most sane people would agree that's a gun crime. If someone pulls a gun on you here, unless it's accompanied by a threat or robbery, it's not considered a gun crime. There was a big stink in the paper about it a few months ago that involved dozens of local PDs. How many other PDs are playing similar games with their crime statistics? Nobody knows for sure. Since that's where the FBI gets their statistics, then garbage in, garbage out would apply.

  12. Re:Not profitable on GoDaddy Files For $100 Million IPO · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Their customer service sucks and their website (last I checked) is a hot mess.

    Slashdot moderation needs an Understatement rating. GoDaddy is to domain registrars what Comcast is to the cable industry.

  13. Re:Who gives a shit? on HR Chief: Google Sexual, Racial Diversity "Not Where We Want to Be" · · Score: 1

    What happened to hiring the best person for the job?

    I used to work for a state agency that was under-represented in black employees when compared to the surrounding population. It was a matter of some concern until HR did an audit and found the percentage of African-American employees at the agency was proportional with the number of applicants. There was no systematic discrimination against blacks, they simply weren't applying for the jobs in the same numbers. So then HR switched to having job fairs in African-American communities and encouraging more people of color to apply for jobs. That didn't work, either. HR, which was by far the most racially diverse department in the agency, finally just said the bureaucratic version of "fuck it" and went back to business as usual. All that shit storm and concern over nothing.

  14. I had my own problems with Google on On MetaFilter Being Penalized By Google · · Score: 4, Interesting

    We lost our ad account when Google accused us of hosting porn. The "porn" they pointed out were links to fairly vanilla pictures posted by some of our long-time forum members. We weren't even hosting it. I appealed, they pointed out two more links like that one. Links.

    I refused to remove content that really wasn't that offensive, posted by members and complied with our forum rules. It did open my eyes to how Google could be a giant, inflexible jackass.

  15. We should have sent blankets on Curiosity Rover May Have Brought Dozens of Microbes To Mars · · Score: 1

    If we were going to contaminate the Martians we should do it right and send them blankets laced with smallpox. Hey, it worked before.

  16. Right on US Navy Wants Smart Robots With Morals, Ethics · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Navy says that it envisions such systems having extensive use in first-response, search-and-rescue missions, or medical applications.

    Just like drones were first used for intelligence gathering, search and rescue and communications relays.

  17. Re:The best part... on Adobe Creative Cloud Services Offline (Again?) · · Score: 2

    I'm pretty sure that Adobe has had this in the works for over a decade now

    I'm sure you're right. Just amazing too how customers, who might have otherwise used the same version of software for five or six years, suddenly warmed up to the idea of paying $600 a year, every year, year after year, and not really getting much in return for it. The video editors dropping Premiere is more than a minority. Sony and Avid have been gratefully accepting that new business. Since Apple tanked FCP with FCPX that leaves Avid, Vegas and a couple others to take up the slack.

    This might be Corel's opportunity to kick up the functionality in PaintShop Pro.

  18. Re:Tech isn't there yet on A Look at Smart Gun Technology · · Score: 1

    the tech to make a "smart gun" just isn't there yet.

    That's not what the manufacturers say, even companies that make both types of guns. They're well aware of what the stakes are when you need a firearm to work. Like you said, a lot of people are dismissing the technology without any actual data or experience with it.

    I used to shoot competitively and any gun can fail, even my Sig. When they test those system they put thousands of rounds through those guns under highly variable shooting conditions. Yet people who shoot maybe once a month can somehow divine from a distance that the technology isn't good enough. Amazing that we have complete rubes with such astounding insight.

  19. At least they can't screw up the Android app on Google Testing Gmail Redesign · · Score: 1

    I've been trying to teach my dad how to use email on a tablet and the Android app is an exercise in frustration. It will present two different ways and dad gets confused. It's not like an interface that looks the same every time you approach it, so the less technically inclined can learn where the function buttons are located. It's a nightmare.

  20. Re:This may be crass but... on Percentage of Elderly In Japan Continues to Grow as Number of Children Drops · · Score: 2

    This may sound crass, but this is a problem that'll solve itself in a couple of decades

    It's not crass, it's just a biological fact. That's what pisses me off about people attacking social security and medicare, that problem will solve itself over time. Expenses will climb to a peak and then level off as the population declines. By 2035 that big, fat swath of baby boomers will start running into the meat grinder of old age.

    Focus on cost control and the actuarial tables will take care of the rest.

  21. Not in trouble for hacking... on Feds: Sailor Hacked Navy Network While Aboard Nuclear Aircraft Carrier · · Score: 5, Insightful

    “Essentially I am in trouble for posting all of the stuff on Twitter,”

    You're in trouble for bragging about it. It's amazing how many criminals get caught because they can't keep their mouth shut. To me that seems like Crime 101. The first rule of black hat hacking is you don't talk about black hat hacking.

  22. Re:Buggy whips? on The Koch Brothers Attack On Solar Energy · · Score: 0

    When ever there is a radical shift in a large employment industry, there is economic devistation for a lot fo families

    That's been true with every economic shift in history. The steel industry, automotive industry, that's just life. The transition to clean energy is going to devastate coal country. Too bad coal country wasn't working on developing a broader jobs base during the transition. Instead of building for the future, they wanted to score political points for keeping taxes low. Can't have it both ways.

    If people stick with the coal industry when it's apparent to anyone with two neurons left to make a spark that it's a dying industry, then whose fault is that? We should hold up the march of technology and green energy for a handful of rubes living in the butt-crack of civilization? Yeah, we're not doing that.

  23. Game theory in action on Microsoft, Google, Others Join To Fund Open Source Infrastructure Upgrades · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Team up to create the pie, then fight for your pieces. I'm actually shocked Microsoft is participating. It's a good move and I'm not used to seeing Redmond do the smart thing. Maybe their collective IQ went up now that Ballmer is out of the picture.

  24. Scalia Never Met An Unreasonable Search on Supreme Court OKs Stop and Search Based On Anonymous 911 Tips · · Score: -1, Troll

    Scalia never met a search he considers unreasonable. Assuming 911 calls can be tracked and callers identified assumes the caller is not actively avoiding identification. There are lots of ways to game the phone system but Scalia seems pretty ignorant when it comes to technology. The biggest favor he could do the country is choking on his lunch.

  25. Something's not right on Biofuels From Corn Can Create More Greenhouse Gases Than Gasoline · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If they're counting the carbon to harvest the stalks, then the comparison for gasoline should include the carbon from oil extraction, transportation and refinement. The article also doesn't state if the carbon reduction from plant uptake is offsetting the carbon emissions of burning biofuels. Sounds like they're saying, look at the carbon you get from burning ethanol, add in the diesel to run the tractor, worse than gasoline!

    I remember a study by the airline industry trying to claim air transportation was more efficient than high speed trains. This study reminds me of that kind of science.