Slashdot Mirror


User: Retric

Retric's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
1,332
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 1,332

  1. Re:Pftt on Why No Billion-Dollar Open Source Companies? · · Score: 1

    Instillation is not maintenance. I have used Linux systems that where 5 years old and had never been rebooted and you can't say that about windows.

  2. Re:Potential, still needs some work on The Arctic Is Leaking Methane · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If you are using propane for heating you may want to look into building a solar hot water heating system. http://www.energysavers.gov/your_home/water_heating/index.cfm/mytopic=12850. Assuming you target an 80% solution (aka use 80% less fuel than you did) they can useually pay for them selves in 3 to 7 years. With larger scale systems having a faster payback time.

  3. Re:What Happens When ... on Privacy With a 4096 Bit RSA Key — Offline, On Paper · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Also, if you can recover most of the digits and know which ones are missing you can probably brute force the rest.

  4. Re:Copyrights on "Patent Markings" Lawsuits Could Run Into the Trillions · · Score: 1

    The reality is there is no need to go to the game to get score information, you could easily get that same information from having a small group of people watch the game on TV. However, I was speaking of a more specific loophole, a friend buys 2 tickets and hands them over at the gate. You just show up and walk in.

  5. Re:Copyrights on "Patent Markings" Lawsuits Could Run Into the Trillions · · Score: 1

    Use of a ticket is not a binding contract with the NFL. If someone hands you a ticket which you did not buy and you show up at the game at no point did you agree to anything.

  6. Re: Left & Right Brain etc on Triumph of the Cyborg Composer · · Score: 1

    Go talk with someone with a PHD in neuroscience and they will call the Left Brain (logic) / Right Brain(art) divide nonsense or try and sell you something. There is some task specific specialization between the two sides, however learning takes place in ALL PARTS OF THE BRAIN. Unfortunately, there is also a market for books that perpetuate this nonsense so you can find a lot of sources for this crap, which is written by people that either don't understand what they are talking about or simply chose to misrepresent what they do understand.

    PS: Language is localized to more areas than you might expect, the ability to name something is a very specific skill that is separate from understanding what is named. Basically, one part of the brain learns how to name something, another part learns how to understand names, another part learns how to decode speech, another part learns how to decode written language, another part learns how to recognize sounds... etc. (However, each of the above tasks involves several parts of the brain working together so naming something when writing and speaking uses the same areas for part of the task and different areas for other parts.)

  7. Re:A Christian's take on Texas Textbooks Battle Is Actually an American War · · Score: 2, Insightful

    There are only two options you can extrapolate from what you can see, or you can live in a total dream land where everything that happens is based on a fantasy. "By suspending judgment, by confining oneself to phenomena or objects as they appear, and by asserting nothing definite as to how they really are, one can escape the perplexities of life and attain an imperturbable peace of mind." Pyrrho (ca. 360 BC - ca. 270 BC) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrho

    PS: Plenty of people chose to live their life based on a fantasy of one sort or another, but it's a dangerous path with no clear boundaries between there and true insanity.

  8. Re:Sad news on Obama Choosing NOT To Go To the Moon · · Score: 1

    SS spending has been cut in the past by increasing the retirement age for full benefits which helps because you pay for a shorter period and even more people die before receiving benefits. Medicare is harder to cut directly, but increasing premiums is an option and what is covered is also optional. Just because they keep calling it Medicare does not mean it's always costs the same amount.

  9. Re:Sad news on Obama Choosing NOT To Go To the Moon · · Score: 1

    but what is required to meet the law's requirements.

    But, the government get's to change the law, so it get's to adjust how much they cost. As to eliminating the debt, all we need to do is reduce the growth of the debt to below that of inflation, or even inflation adjusted GDP. If it's growing by 1% a year that's actually a good thing and our economy can quickly outpace that growth over the long term. As to stimulus spending that's only a problem if it lasts for several years, the real question is if we can avoid stimulus spending once things improve.

    PS: All government money comes from the same pool, US. Washington has many sacred cows, DoD, SS, Medicare, but they can all be sacrificed.

  10. Re:Sad news on Obama Choosing NOT To Go To the Moon · · Score: 1

    Tax breaks distort non governmental spending, which reduces economic efficiency so removing them can have a positive net effect on the economy while increasing revenue. SS and Medicare are just another type of spending that can be reduced like any other. However, the major cause of that 1.3 trillion $ deficit a weakening economy and two wars both of which should be short lived. It took 10 years to go from reducing the deficit to a 1.3 trillion $ one, and the trip back can be faster than you might think.

  11. Re:Sad news on Obama Choosing NOT To Go To the Moon · · Score: 2, Informative

    I don't think increasing taxes would increase revenue as much as you might expect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve

    We could remove tax breaks, or reduce spending, but long term the tax rate is about as high as is feasible.

  12. Re:What about my stress level on Antitrust Case Against RIAA Reinstated · · Score: 1

    True when you share your physical toys you can't use them. But, when you share your digital toys nobody loses anything.

  13. Re:It's Worse Than You think! on $4,400/Yr. Coders May Work On Dept. of Labor Project · · Score: 1

    Sadly, no.

  14. Re:IPv4 doesn't die on IPv4 Will Not Die In 2010 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    IP's are given away and there is no reason to give them back so of course there is a lot of demand and we are "running out". But don't think just because IANA runs out of IP's you will be unable to get new ones. They will just come with a price tag. It's a classic land grab, and people that got large chunks of IP space are going to start selling them as soon as there is no free competition.

  15. Re:IPv4 doesn't die on IPv4 Will Not Die In 2010 · · Score: 4, Informative

    One of the quick and dirty ways to continuing to use IPv4 is to have some of the huge chunks of the address space given back. Do FORD, MIT, Apple, IBM, etc each need 256^3 addresses? (http://xkcd.com/195/) IPv4 has almost 256^4 or around 4 billion IP's that's almost one IP per person on the planet and plenty to last a *LONG* time.

  16. Re:What a great idea! on Netflix Will Delay Renting New WB Releases · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Wait two weeks and go at an off time and their might be 3 people in the room, assuming you brought two friends.

  17. Re:Seriously? on Slovak Police Planted Explosives On Air Travelers · · Score: 1

    It is a near certainty that the average person will eventually have access to nuclear-scale weapons.

    Consider, for the last several years the average doctor in the US is capable of making bio weapons that could kill millions of people. Yet, more people have been killed by lighting than said bio weapons over that time period. Capability != Threat.

  18. Re:Really? on The Last GM Big-Block V-8 Rolls Off the Line · · Score: 1

    In high tech fields it's less about the pay than the work rules. Unions tend to require people to have vary specific job roles and pay people during down time. That's ok if you are working in a coal mine, but a CPU fab requires a lot of flexibility both in how long you work and what you are doing from day to day. Building cars might be somewhere between those points, but the inability to let people go in the bad times makes the extremely expensive to grow in the good times.

  19. Re:Really? on The Last GM Big-Block V-8 Rolls Off the Line · · Score: 1

    The wage differences in the developing world are far less significant that the union rules GM needs to deal with. In a highly automated factory the machines and materials become a far more important cost component relative to the workers. Honda has started several US factories and pays a decent wage without the overhead of a unionized workforce.

  20. Re:That's why I have a problem with the comparison on FASTRA II Puts 13 GPUs In a Desktop Supercomputer · · Score: 1

    There are also a fair number of Cell based supercomputers and even one hybrid out there. And even some pure custom solutions used by the NSA. (There is a reason they have their own chip fab.) And, if you include folding at home type applications, then GPU's represent a reasonable percentage of the worlds supper computing infrastructure.

  21. Re:Fired him first? on The Trial of Terry Childs Begins · · Score: 1

    Information is not physical property. Otherwise you could call up an old sys admin 5 years from now and ask him how he solved a problem. It's information he gained on the job, and he still has it so clearly he needs to go to jail if he does not tell you how to fix the problem.

  22. Re:Where have I heard this before... on Five Top Publishers Plan Rival to Kindle Format · · Score: 1

    Precise layout is a sign of poor webpage design.

    HTML was designed so the clent decides how to present information to the user. A good HTML desgin can work well on an iPhone or 30" monitor at the same time.

  23. Re:For example... on NASA May Drop Ares I-Y Test Flight · · Score: 1

    Tarp has a high chance of making the government money, because they are charging significantly higher interest rates on the loans than they are paying to borrow that money. At this point it's still just IOU's being tossed around but wait ten years and you will probably be surprised.

  24. Re:To be fair? on Tesla Roadster Breaks Distance Record For Electric Car · · Score: 1

    You could build a 99% efficient regenerative breaking system. Now it's true that thermodynamics limits will eventually come into play, but once you stop dealing with heat engines thermodynamics becomes far more gentile.

  25. Re:He's not a fucking troll on Arrested IBM Exec Goes MIA On the Web · · Score: 1

    vast majority of art and culture we produce a tiny fraction of the worlds art and culture. However, as you only speak one language out of thousands are obviously stupid it's easy for you to forget that simple fact.