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User: dbIII

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  1. Lynx still works on many sites, or "mobile view" on Adblock Plus Reduces University's Network Traffic By 25 Percent · · Score: 1

    Lynx (and other similar text based browsers) still works as do some for phones and tablets designed to strip out large graphical elements. That's one workaround for newsfeed sites where you just want the text (eg. news stories just in) and don't want to wait for the ads.
    "Mobile View" is your friend if offered (eg. this news page):
    http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/justin/?pfm=sm

  2. Re:I believe it... on Adblock Plus Reduces University's Network Traffic By 25 Percent · · Score: 1

    MITM at the gateway/proxy. This is mandated by the Sarbanes-Oxley act [wikipedia.org] in the US, and is likely imposed by US corporations in other jurisdictions.

    Is that really the case that it is mandated? It is a massive violation of privacy and just asking for a mountain of legal trouble when some third party walks off with your users bank passwords and credit card details because they are doing internet banking from work.
    Being one disgruntled employee or hack away from being in the sights of the lawyers for a major bank is an extremely stupid place to put yourself into just so that you can snoop on web browsing habits a bit more effectively.

  3. Re:Reasons I'm not a judge. on Vancouver Area Teen Sentenced To 16 Months For Swatting · · Score: 2

    The problem is with their masters who decided to go paramilitary for what should be a police matter instead.
    It's counterproductive because when there is the rare situation where an actual military response is desired you end up with half trained soldiers doing the job instead.

  4. Re:Reasons I'm not a judge. on Vancouver Area Teen Sentenced To 16 Months For Swatting · · Score: 1

    Yes but the US has inflated penalties for the sake of "law n' order" political campaigns. Terry Childs got three years over a workplace disagreement so ten years for repeatedly wasting police time is par for the course.

  5. Re:Now that is far beyond the specs on Bomb Squad Searches House Over Teenager's Chemistry Experiments · · Score: 1

    It's pretty hard for blobs of liquid mercury to get into your system and do anything. Vapour and some compounds - completely different story. That stuff washed down the sink ends up with some of it reacting with stuff on the seafloor and producing some of the problematic compounds - just add food chain concentration and top level fish eaters (like us or famous bouncing Japanese cats - 1:40 in https://www.youtube.com/watch?...) are in trouble.

  6. Re:Now that is far beyond the specs on Bomb Squad Searches House Over Teenager's Chemistry Experiments · · Score: 1

    There was a mention of measurements

    Measurements are only useful when you know what they mean. Some people will react strongly to any detection and others will properly ignore anything below a low limit as minor traces or detector noise.

    There's more to the story than we were told.

    It's very likely that many parts of the story are incorrect for the purposes of extra drama. However I have seen extremes of far too casual (asbestos fibres sparkle in the sun like "fairy dust" when they are blowing in the wind) and far too paranoid (refusal to carry a small bottle of 2% nitric acid in a truck) depending on the mood of people (and lack of trust of procedures) at the time.

  7. Re:Wow ... on Microsoft To Cut 7,800 More Jobs, Take $7.6 Billion Writedown On Nokia · · Score: 1

    No, but that's part of the reason why there were many apps available despite relatively few developers working on them.
    Nothing compared to Android now but it was comparable to all other platforms at the time.

  8. Re:Still don't trust SSDs on OCZ Toshiba Breaks 40 Cent Per GB Barrier With New Trion 100 Series SSD · · Score: 1

    When is the reliability and write limitation issue going to be solved?

    Either last year or the year before that.
    I'm using some as scratch disks - huge number of reads and writes. I'm ready to replace them when they die but they keep on going.

  9. Re:No local intelligence on Bomb Squad Searches House Over Teenager's Chemistry Experiments · · Score: 1

    There's normally propane and other stuff in there to give your the other three sticks.

  10. Re:"You have to thrust the authorities." on Bomb Squad Searches House Over Teenager's Chemistry Experiments · · Score: 1

    The workplace health and safety stuff now pushes the line that anything weird has to be treated like a bomb. Politics intersected with reality and the cops had to call it in as a possible bomb or face disciplinary hassles later. It's not good enough for the cop to be certain it's not a bomb, it has to be something a political crony with a degree in drinking and cheerleading can be certain it's not a bomb.
    If you don't mind a bit of prison time you could write stuff on the outside of a toaster to make it look slightly different and leave it unplugged in a public place if you want to see a pointless bit of security theatre. Some horse judge in a job other than judging horses will insist that it is a serious security threat and make the cops go through the motions - or if they hear about it after the fact they will look for someone to fire because "it could have been a bomb".

  11. Enough formaldehyde to choke a horse on Bomb Squad Searches House Over Teenager's Chemistry Experiments · · Score: 2

    What is he building in there?
    http://www.metrolyrics.com/wha...

  12. Pinball machines are too cheap on Bomb Squad Searches House Over Teenager's Chemistry Experiments · · Score: 1

    The pinball tilt switches I've seen are just a hole with a thing hanging down in the middle that only contacts when tilted - cheaper, provides two dimensions and manually adjustable. There may be other brands that do it differently.

  13. Now that is far beyond the specs on Bomb Squad Searches House Over Teenager's Chemistry Experiments · · Score: 1

    Back in the day, or in professional run places today, there would just be a cleanup and proper ventilation but in the case above it looks like things got political and someone without a clue went full retard to cover their backside.
    Mark Twain (ok then, Samuel Clemens) had mercury washing over his hands while gold mining and lived to old age with no mental impairment because the problem is the vapour not the liquid. Hatters went insane from it. Those who boiled off mercury to recover gold went insane from it. Those who touched the liquid without ingesting it didn't (though there is always that risk that something that gets on your hands can end up in your mouth so don't do it kids). A spill cleaned up properly should leave no traces since it's actually very easy stuff to clean up - it doesn't "wet" most surfaces and acts like a big drop of water skating over a hotplate.

  14. Re:Wow ... on Microsoft To Cut 7,800 More Jobs, Take $7.6 Billion Writedown On Nokia · · Score: 1
    Yes but the sold all the volume they had, and then built some more to sell and sold all those, on pretty well nothing but word of mouth.

    I agree that Nokia might have had a real winner with the N900 if they could have gotten the devs and apps

    Due to it being mostly Debian they had that. I even had manual focus and high definition range with camera software long before it turned up on android.

  15. Re:Apart from in very rare cases, yes it does on Ask Slashdot: If You Could Assemble a "FrankenOS" What Parts Would You Use? · · Score: 1

    Grow the fuck up. What are you, 16?

    When you were playing junior football in the late 90's I was running prac classes for engineering students (since I was taking a break after a few years in the power industry due to jobs being short) and doing a bit of consulting work before getting involved with using clusters to solve heat transfer problems then going full time into IT.
    What is it with these stupid bullying bluffs? Besides, from your childish posts I was far more mature at 16 than you are now Peter Pan.

  16. Re:I have some doubt about this on EPFL's CleanSpace One Satellite Will "Eat" Space Junk · · Score: 1

    Yes but the above poster was going on about a big strong net without matched speed INSTEAD of the net system described in the linked article which is similar to your suggestion.

  17. Maybe I have to be even clearer on Ask Slashdot: If You Could Assemble a "FrankenOS" What Parts Would You Use? · · Score: 1

    It only enable the possible use of swap - if the system runs out of RAM

    Yes it gets used when the system thinks it needs it and not when it doesn't. So never come close to running out of memory and don't have the system up for months caching stuff and eventually dumping some of it into swap and it will never get used at all. I've go no idea why you want to argue against the obvious that we both agree on.
    Is that dumbed down enough or do I get another pile of deranged hillbilly shit thrown in my direction because you've been having a bad day or something? WTF is your problem and why are you taking it out on me?

  18. Re:Apart from in very rare cases, yes it does on Ask Slashdot: If You Could Assemble a "FrankenOS" What Parts Would You Use? · · Score: 1

    It only enable the possible use of swap - if the system runs out of RAM

    Obviously. That is the major reason to have it in the first place!
    WTF is your problem and these "saddle down bumpy hills" streams of shit? WTF is your problem and the platform hate from nowhere when I don't even use the other platform? Why are you so intent on mixing personalities with facts and blaming me for your own stream of shit?

  19. Re:I have some doubt about this on EPFL's CleanSpace One Satellite Will "Eat" Space Junk · · Score: 1

    A net is not going to be able to handle something hitting it at a few kilometres per second.
    Also a lot of junk is small stuff in similar orbits, for instance lots of lumps of sodium that used to be coolant for a reactor but are now floating side by side like very large shotgun pellets.

  20. Re:Very needed on EPFL's CleanSpace One Satellite Will "Eat" Space Junk · · Score: 1

    Only if you move around a lot. Getting junk in very similar orbits still have value, and there is a lot of that due to some items ending up in many pieces. Trying to get it all is just a paper exercise in demonstrating to people how much deltaV is needed to treat a spacecraft like an aircraft.

  21. It's all dangerous stuff on EPFL's CleanSpace One Satellite Will "Eat" Space Junk · · Score: 1

    It's all dangerous stuff and there is value in cleaning up the easy to get to stuff.
    With all the deltaV needed to get around there is no way to get all of it with one device anyway, so getting everything was never the plan.
    One thing I was reading about this morning was all the solidified large drops of liquid sodium coolant from decomissioned satellite reactors - not so hard to get to and clean up but dangerous if you get in their way going at a very different velocity. A lot of those are gathered relatively close to each other, so you could get a bunch of junk without having to move around much.

  22. Re:Wow ... on Microsoft To Cut 7,800 More Jobs, Take $7.6 Billion Writedown On Nokia · · Score: 1

    What happens in a lot of large companies is that somebody has an epic plan they are fanatical about, they put it in motion, leave and then nobody else has a clue what to do with the results of the plan or even if it was a good plan to start with.
    Somebody probably had an idea of what to do with Nokia and they unleashed the Elop, but years later having a gutted low price bargain in what is left of the raided Nokia what do you do next with the broken shards of a company that used to make phones but doesn't even have an assembly plant any more?

  23. Re:Wow ... on Microsoft To Cut 7,800 More Jobs, Take $7.6 Billion Writedown On Nokia · · Score: 1

    While I really liked the idea of a Linux phone from Nokia I have to wonder if those sales where just the faithful.

    Considering the N900 sold mostly on word of mouth and had almost zero advertising dollars pushing it you may be right, but they still sold quite a few, selling out quickly when available, despite that.
    I don't think it would have been anywhere near iPhone level sales if they had pushed the N9 but I'm pretty sure it would have hit full digit percentages of the global market.

  24. Re:Wait a minute... on Microsoft To Cut 7,800 More Jobs, Take $7.6 Billion Writedown On Nokia · · Score: 1

    The old Nokia died completely independent of Microsoft

    They were number one in market share when Elop signed on.

  25. Blame the masters not indentured servants on Microsoft To Cut 7,800 More Jobs, Take $7.6 Billion Writedown On Nokia · · Score: 1

    I presume that those on a H1B visa will be let go first, of course?

    For a variety of reasons, some of them good ones - no.
    Put yourself in their position, you've come halfway around the world to take a job you can't back out of, even if you get treated badly, or you get deported. You really want it to be a two way street and it to be hard to be fired from such a position.
    Of course such indentured servitude should never have been allowed in nearly every case but that's a different story. There's a lot of skilled people looking for work despite the pretended "shortage" where the confected story is that there is no choice other than to bring in cheaper people from overseas.