Slashdot Mirror


User: dave1g

dave1g's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
534
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 534

  1. whoa! on Expert Wants to Decertify Global Warming Skeptics · · Score: 4, Insightful

    whoa whoa whoa, if anyone should be scolded its this guy. While I truly believe the evidence points towards man made global climate change it would be dumb o make skeptics into outcasts. This is science not religion, we shouldn't be excommunicating scientists, at best we should drown out "bad" research with more "good research". its the same argument of censorship of bad speech versus offering more good speech

  2. Re:Are AdWords unobtrusive? on The Debate Over Advertising on Wikipedia · · Score: 1

    Wikipedia is not a corporation with a single point of failure at the CEO selling out to the highest bidder. Wikipedia is us, the editors. We provide the content with almost no control except those in the wikipedia charter about NPOV and such. If Wikipedia were to somehow change the rules then anyone could start a competing version. With the exact same content with or without the ads.

  3. Re:End justifies the means on The Debate Over Advertising on Wikipedia · · Score: 1

    But the difference with wikipedia is that the "people in charge" have no control over what gets put in the wiki. If an advertiser gets screwed over in an article they can stop advertising.

    And when you do something like google adwords, the individual advertisers have almost no power at all. The algorithm picks the relevant ads based on the text in the page.

    The other feature I would like is to simply make advertising optional. I have occasionally clicked on google adwords and found something I was looking for. Other might not think its worth it. so default the ads to being off, and allow the visitors who choose to see them make a change in their setting on their user account.

    In the mean time I suggest people donate, I donated $10 while Virgin was matching, every little bit helps.

  4. Re:Brilliant! on Wal-Mart Is Pushing Compact Fluorescent Bulbs · · Score: 1

    I used to have some of the crappy CFLs that took a while. My solution was to have one incandescent bulb in the room. Usually this only mattered in the bathroom. Wake up in the middle of the night/morning turn on the light and then stumble in because of the delay. but since the vanity had 4 bulbs I unscrewed 1, had 2 CFLs and 1 incandescent, best of both worlds.

  5. Re:Will every player key be cracked? on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray AACS DRM Cracked · · Score: 1

    Known Plaintext Attack - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Known-plaintext_attac k

    Related Key Attack - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Related-key_attack

    Is AES not susceptible to these attacks?

  6. Will every player key be cracked? on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray AACS DRM Cracked · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So the player key is hard to get at, so this guy worked around it and just copied the title key from memory, which is encrypted on disc with every player key. Since you have the plain text (of the title key) and each of the cypher texts(the encrypted title key), aren't there attacks to figure out all the player keys? And actually its worse since you have many(possibly all?) title keys and all their corresponding encrypted versions that has to extremely limit the search space for the player keys. This would be an even worse problem since they cant just revoke every key. All the hardware would break! Lawsuits galore!

    Seems like the whole house of cards will fall down.

  7. Re:Umm... on Gaming Gets a 'Crossfire' · · Score: 1
  8. Re:Your math is totally f*cked up on David Pogue Takes On Vista · · Score: 1

    while your version is much more concise I don't see how mine is fucked up. We got the same numbers. When I used 2 million writes I got 25 years (rounded). Divide 25 by 2 (1 million writes instead of my 2 million) and see what you get. (hint it's close to 12.68)

  9. Let's Do The Math - Re:What??? on David Pogue Takes On Vista · · Score: 1

    So 2 million write cycles * 4 GB flash drive = 8,000,000,000 MB of total writing capacity. Typical throughput to a flash stick is on the order of 10 MB/s. 8,000,000,000 MB / 10 MB/s = 800,000,000 second lifetime. 800,000,000 second / 60s/min / 60min/hr = 222,222 hours / 24hrs/day = 9,259 days / 365days/year = 25 YEARS! If you were writing to the drive at a constant 10MB/s the entire time!!

    1 million writes, and 1 gig flash = 3.125 years of CONSTANT usage to wear out the drive.

    And either the OS or the flash stick can ensure that writes are evenly spaced around the physical drive while appearing logically just like a normal disk.

    I think you will do just fine.

  10. pwned!!!! on Tiny Particle With No Charge Discovered · · Score: -1, Redundant

    GeffDE just got pwned! hahahaha. I've taken maybe 2 years TOTAL in my life of physics courses and even I knew what the poster was refering to by the EM force causing the wake.

  11. Re:Oil companies on Should Google Go Nuclear? · · Score: 1

    In the video he talks about how his plant could produce ethanol. That why he talked about it destroying oil companies. Also interestingly enough his plant could eat up all the old nuclear waste from fission plants and produce something that was only radioactive for "40-90 years"

  12. Re:Oil companies on Should Google Go Nuclear? · · Score: 1

    In the video he talks about how his plant could produce ethanol. That why he talked about it destroying oil companies.

  13. Mario Kart 64 on Best 2+ Player Video Games? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    That game was one of the best especially since im not too great at fighting games, making smash bros less attractive to me.

  14. Re:Passive solar heating... on Solar Power Becoming More Affordable · · Score: 1

    sorry for the confusions, Im talking about the ceiling fan in my bedroom thats attached to the bathroom. not the exhaust fan in the bathroom.

  15. Re:Passive solar heating... on Solar Power Becoming More Affordable · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Being a frugal college student I hate to run the horrible electric heater that my apartment comes with. So what do I do? I take showers with the ceiling fan on to draw out the steam( heat+humidty feel very good in the dry/cold winter months in Austin Texas...yes i know it doesn tget extremely cold cut we still get below comfortable.) I also shower with the drain plug closed. I dont drain the bathtub until either the next shower or until I have noticed the water has returned to room temp. Thus assuring me that I didnt waste any of the heat used by the electric water heater either.

    This can have the effect of making showers alittle uncomfortable sometimes a cold draft will make it into the shower stall but for the most part it stay really warm in there.

    And of course the normal dress is pants, possibly sweaters or sweat pants to keep warm.

  16. Re:Beta 4 on A First Look At Gaim 2.0 · · Score: 1

    um no it is not working great. for one it goes to 100% CPU during some yahoo network functions. CPU is brought back to 0% by right clicking on the gaim icon... what a weird bug. this exists in both beta3 and beta4

    also I added someone to my yahoo buddylist on gaim and that person doesnt show up as online, even though I can talk to them just fine.

    i turn on the yahoo client and they they werent added to my buddylist onthe server. once i added them they showed up. I switch back togaim, and it still doesnt show that person as online.

    right now Beta 2 is better and more stable than beta3 or beta4 in my opinion. And what happened to the promised gaim-vv voice and video support that was supposed to be folded in for the 2.0 release?

    btw i think it can be skinned or atleast can use different gtk themese

    I am using the windows port of gaim.

  17. Yes and No on Google Subpoenas Microsoft & Yahoo · · Score: 1

    While im not in love wiht the current state of copyright in this country. You understanding that the money goes into the bank is correct, however that does not imply that that money doesnt go back into the economy. Banks are not the space between the matrees and boxspring to shove your money there for later. Banks take deposits, and in return give out interest to the owners of those deposits. In return the banks get to loan out the money or invest it in some other way, and give the little guy(who is not rich) who needs a car loan, home loan, or a small business loan a chance to make it in the world by amortizing those start up costs of car/home/business capital over the course of the loan + some interest. That money is very much in the economy. Unless of course the rich actually put their money under their bed. Something tells me that they dont do that.

    So you are right and wrong.

  18. Re:Suggestion on House Approves Warrantless Wiretapping · · Score: 1

    Let it be known that all House of Representative seats are up for election every even year. That would include this one. :-)

  19. I used this back in 99 for HS on 2D Drawing To 3D Object Tool · · Score: 1

    we used it at the Design and Technology Academy in San Antonio, Texas as part of our 3d curriculum.
    http://www.neisd.net/data/

  20. Re:Cameras dont need more MP, they need better CCD on Top 10 Digital Cameras on Flickr · · Score: 1

    I know about all that, however you still would have to use a tripod to keep the camera still enough. Otherwise the exposure time would be so long that your hands will make the image blurred.

    I want point and shoot in low light. If you get a sensor that is sensitive enough it can be done.

  21. Cameras dont need more MP, they need better CCDs on Top 10 Digital Cameras on Flickr · · Score: 1

    mega pixels in 100-300 cameras are already past the needs of the average consumer, but the quality of the sensors suck! I want to be able to take a picture at night, and get back the exact same image I see with my eyes, not just a black box with a bunch of noise in it. Digital cameras still pretty much suck for anything but outside full sunlight conditions.

  22. Re:120 MW a day ?? on Vaporizing Garbage to Create Electricity · · Score: 1

    Sure it is ;-)

    120 MW /day just means that everyday the power output of this plant will increase by 120 MW. This alone makes it the greatest invention ever! Since it will last 18 years. The final power output will be. 120*365*18 = 788400 MW or in a more useful unit, about 651 uses of the Delorean time machine from Back to the Future.

  23. Eyeball tracking for focus on The Future of Human-Computer Interaction · · Score: 1

    I want the windows I'm looking at to gain focus so if I start typing while looking at it, it appears where I am looking. This of course should be easy to turn on/off for instance it would be bad when looking at one window and paraphrasing it in another.

  24. Re:even wikis have forums on On the Changing Role of Online Forums? · · Score: 1

    I dont like that the discussion pages on wikipedia are themselves wikis. These should be plain old forums.

  25. Re:The other white meat. on Bloggers 1, Smoke-Filled Room 0 · · Score: 1

    Congrats you just discovered the old constitution, The Articles of Confederation. Last I checked, one of hte main reasons it failed was the inability of the national government to collect taxes. Instead it had to ask states for funding. You can guess that few states saw it in their interest to pay up when others might pay less, or not at all. So none gave much money at all to the national government.

    And how would state legislators be more responsive to the needs of the state than the common citizens of that state?