Slashdot Mirror


User: Sockatume

Sockatume's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
5,843
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 5,843

  1. Re:Kessler Syndrome on Possible Collision Between Cube-satellite and Old Space Junk · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Kessler syndrome is a self-sustaining chain reaction, I really don't think that deliberate collisions count towards it.

  2. Re:Kessler Syndrome on Possible Collision Between Cube-satellite and Old Space Junk · · Score: 0

    Why post that?

  3. Re:I love this show on AT&T Quietly Adds Charges To All Contract Cell Plans · · Score: 2

    I'm picturing the Congressperson doing the Fonzie two-thumbs-up stance in the last line there.

  4. Re:Kessler Syndrome on Possible Collision Between Cube-satellite and Old Space Junk · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Surely it's not Kessler syndrome until you have debris from one collision causing a further collision? In each of the incidents described above, an existing piece of debris not originating in a collision was the cause of the incident.

  5. Re: Is it evolution, or survival of the fittest? on Cockroaches Evolving To Avoid Roach Motels · · Score: 1

    Where do you think the differing genes in the population come from?

  6. Re:What would it take? on A Cold Look at Cold Fusion Claims: Why E-Cat Looks Like a Hoax · · Score: 1

    I'm ashamed that I accidentally gave Geller the same first name as Gagarin.

  7. Re:Thermal Hysteresis on A Cold Look at Cold Fusion Claims: Why E-Cat Looks Like a Hoax · · Score: 4, Informative

    There were two experiments. In one, 360W was applied continuously, and in the other, 930W was applied on a 35% duty cycle. Of course, that's assuming there's no trick wiring. The other assumption is that their baffling method of estimating the power output was working properly. It certainly looks fine (assuming the IR camera didn't go over 50C, which is all it's rated to without active cooling) but Rossi doesn't like people to do actual calorimetry and I can't help but read that as an indication that the positive results would immediatley disappear.

  8. Re:What would it take? on A Cold Look at Cold Fusion Claims: Why E-Cat Looks Like a Hoax · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'll settle for less: let the same people perform the experiment again, but don't have Rossi setting up the experiments in his lab on his terms. You don't invite Yuri Geller into the lab then let him set up the spoon-bending experiment.

  9. Re:Need to Be Careful on A Cold Look at Cold Fusion Claims: Why E-Cat Looks Like a Hoax · · Score: 2

    NASA are looking at a possible mechanism for how a similar reaction might go. NASA have not, and probably will not, touch Rossi with a barge pole.

  10. Re:Sad legitimate researchers on A Cold Look at Cold Fusion Claims: Why E-Cat Looks Like a Hoax · · Score: 4, Informative

    There's plenty of reseach into legitimate low-temperature, low-pressure fusion, going under names like muon-catalysed and antimatter-catalysed fusion. It's very well accepted work. The trouble is that most research going under the name "cold fusion" would better be described as "I have invented a machine that makes energy from nowhere and am postulating fusion as its mechanism of operation".

  11. Re:Impossible? on One-Time Pad From Caltech Offers Uncrackable Cryptography · · Score: 1

    If I'm reading it right (which is a shaky assumption) one pad is sufficient to decipher messages sent to that recipient, but both would be necessary to read messages going both ways.

  12. Re:Impossible? on One-Time Pad From Caltech Offers Uncrackable Cryptography · · Score: 1

    I suppose my error here is letting the title's "uncrackable cryptography" override the summary's "invulnerable to electronic attack", which is absolutely true.

  13. Re:Impossible? on One-Time Pad From Caltech Offers Uncrackable Cryptography · · Score: 1

    Right, it's difficult, not impossible. You need a sufficiently large time window to steal both pads and duplicate them.

  14. Re:Not too long until an iceberg attack is reveale on One-Time Pad From Caltech Offers Uncrackable Cryptography · · Score: 5, Informative

    That's not the case with a properly used one-time pad. Normally you break a cipher by finding correlations due to the repeated use of a finite encryption key on different parts of a comprehensible plaintext. If either the message is random, or the encryption key is random and nonrepeating, then the message cannot be deciphered.

    Unless you steal the pad, or force the user to repeat it.

  15. Re:Impossible? on One-Time Pad From Caltech Offers Uncrackable Cryptography · · Score: 1

    Yeah, that's supposed to be what this problem solves, though, if I'm reading it right. Haven't they just taken a step back to having a physical OTP on your desk/in your shoe?

  16. Impossible? on One-Time Pad From Caltech Offers Uncrackable Cryptography · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Couldn't you just steal the plate?

  17. Re:"Arch rival"? on Hollywood Studios Use DMCA To Censor Pirate Bay Documentary · · Score: 1

    That's a lofty expectation for a squirrel.

    Listen, the way I pack for a picnic, they could take biscuits for years and I wouldn't even notice the reduction in quantity.

  18. "Arch rival"? on Hollywood Studios Use DMCA To Censor Pirate Bay Documentary · · Score: 4, Funny

    Rivaly implies entirely the wrong kind of relationship between the two, a competitive one. You don't have a rivalry with a squirrel that's lifting biscuits from your picnic, you have an irrational obsession with destroying it while it carries on with a kind of benign codependence.

    I may have stretched that metaphor.

  19. Re:A win for me on Web of Tax Shelters Saved Apple Billions, Inquiry Finds · · Score: 1

    That's an excellent point, at some point or another the tax just gets passed onto a human being, with differing degrees of elasticity.

  20. Re:A win for me on Web of Tax Shelters Saved Apple Billions, Inquiry Finds · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You understand that the government offsets lost or unavailable corporate tax revenue by increasing the taxes it does collect, i.e. yours, right?

  21. Re:Improperly worded summary on Dark Matter, WIMPS, and NASA's Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer Data · · Score: 1

    NASA didn't even want to launch it, they had to have their arm twisted to schedule an extra Shuttle mission so it wasn't just left on the ground to rot.

  22. Re:Bad Google on Google Drops XMPP Support · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Fuck rights, you both have the responsibility to learn to act in a way that doesn't offend either of you, because if you're causing offense, you've failed to communicate properly. Be conservative in what you do and liberal in what you expect from others.

  23. Re:Or on Uptick In Whooping Cough Linked To Subpar Vaccines · · Score: 1

    Chicken pox isn't particularly dangerous to any given individual but it's spectacularly contagious. Low risk times large prevalence (if it wasn't controlled by vaccination) equals large harm.

  24. Re:The most needed upgrade on NWS Announces Big Computer Upgrade · · Score: 1

    I guess I'm saying that it's pretty easy to come up with a nice, round number based scale on celsius.

  25. Re:The most needed upgrade on NWS Announces Big Computer Upgrade · · Score: 2

    Don't think of -18 celsius to +38 celcius, which really is clumsy; think of -20 to +40 celcius.

    -20 to -10 is a deep freeze

    -10 to 0 is freezing

    0 to 10 is cold

    10 to 20 is warm

    20 to 30 is hot

    30 to 40 is danger