Slashdot Mirror


User: zippthorne

zippthorne's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
9,687
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 9,687

  1. Re:Costs? on Mars One Delayed 2 Years, CEO Releases Video In Response To Criticism · · Score: 1

    Actually it's much worse than "who wants to be a billionaire." A show like that actually is plausible and wouldn't need to have 1000x as many viewers as the millionaire show.

    You don't need an actual billion dollars on-hand, you need insurance for a billion dollars. The premium for which needs to be lower per episode than the revenue for each episode, but that can be arranged by limiting the number of questions per episode, raising the number of questions before reaching the grand prize, and increasing the difficulty of the questions. It's entirely possible to arrange things so that the risk of a payout is low enough to have a profitable show.

    Of course.. you wouldn't be able to have a winner most years, so that might be a negative for viewership, but all of the factors are within your control, and you could have such a show at pretty much any budget level (that an insurance company will bother with) by tweaking the conditions.

    A space mission's costs will be what they will be. If you're definitely going to do the mission, you can't get rid of them by something as simple as tweaking a number of dice rolls.

  2. Re:Didn't knew they even had computers on South Korea Begins To Deprecate ActiveX · · Score: 1

    A decade ago South Korea had had a well-publicized StarCraft obsession for years. The fact that they are stuck on ActiveX is due to them being early adopters of internet banking and government activities. IIRC, a decade ago there were already articles and discussions about being South Korea being stuck on ActiveX...

  3. Re:I must be missing something. on Windows 10 Enables Switching Between Desktop and Tablet Modes · · Score: 2

    No, they should not add an off switch.

    They should add an on switch. The default state shouldn't be "spend my money for me on something that mostly benefits you and not me."

  4. Re:R? on Valve's SteamVR: Solves Big Problems, Raises Bigger Questions · · Score: 1

    No, it was lost due to bad ratings.

  5. Re: No Internet? on Prison Program Aims To Turn Criminals Into Coders · · Score: 1

    How is this a problem?

  6. Re:HOWTO on How To Execute People In the 21st Century · · Score: 1

    It's important to note that "an eye for an eye" was a prohibition of escalation. It was a prohibition of taking more than an eye for an eye's worth of injury.

  7. Re:Life Imitating Art on Scotland Yard Chief: Put CCTV In Every Home To Help Solve Crimes · · Score: 1

    There is a book described within 1984 that was something of an instruction manual, or a warning, nobody really was sure any more.

    1984 actually does come pretty close to meeting the definition of the book described within it....

  8. Re:Marriage on Why It's Almost Impossible To Teach a Robot To Do Your Laundry · · Score: 1

    Germs? I always thought the purpose of hot wash was to increase its solubility for whatever you're trying to separate from the clothes, and also to ruin wool. More dangerously, I have heard this sterilization idea brought up regarding the dishwasher, as if it's an autoclave, I guess. (why don't we us kitchen autoclaves....)

    Soda and vinegar? Are you trying to make a laundry volcano?

  9. Re:12 in laptop != desktop on Ultralight Convertibles Approaching Desktop Performance · · Score: 1

    Comparatively low-res?

    Since the 1080p panel size won the supply-chain wars, most computer monitors are just TVs without tuners. The resolution is the same. Or it should be. Does anyone know what the hell "overscan" is and why I need to turn it on to get my 1080p desktop stretch to fill my entire 1080p LCD television screen when connecting using HDMI? (also why it stretches a little too much?)

  10. Re:The majority? on Daylight Saving Time Change On Sunday For N. America · · Score: 2

    The period where you're claiming to benefit form savings time, you're actually under standard time....

  11. Re:Fix Caller ID and monitor exchanges on FTC Announces $50k In Prizes For Robocaller Trap Software · · Score: 3, Informative

    There already is a feature for that, ANI, where the information is sent by the phone company rather than by the caller themselves over the "voice" portion of the call. It costs more than caller ID, and I'm not sure you can even get the phone company to offer it to you as an individual, but many business use this feature. Probably the spam callers themselves are using it to avoid receiving unwanted calls...

  12. Internet of things on Daylight Saving Time Change On Sunday For N. America · · Score: 2

    I try to make sure that the only clocks I have are connected to the internet other automatically adjusted sources - computer, cell phone, DVR, "atomic" radio clock, etc. If it's not connected to the internet or some other source for updating time zone data (because, not only do we need to change the time twice a year, we need to change when we do it, too, and differently depending on location), then I try to buy one that doesn't have a clock so I don't need to bother.

    The only clock I still need to adjust that I don't just ignore is my car radio. Do new cars have internet-connected clock/radios?

    Despite this great convenience of automatically adjusting clocks, DST is still stupid.

  13. Re:Keep it as is on Daylight Saving Time Change On Sunday For N. America · · Score: 1

    So, now they have to have special "summer" and "winter" hours, which they may or may not have needed to bother with without DST. Exactly what is the benefit of monkeying with everyone else's time?

  14. Re:The majority? on Daylight Saving Time Change On Sunday For N. America · · Score: 1

    Yeah, most people don't care. Or think they don't. They still have to waste time adjusting to it, though.

    Only morning people actually like it, because they get to be extra smug for the following week while their co-workers, friends, and neighbors adjust.

  15. Re:50% wrong or 50% right? on El Nino Has Finally Arrived, Far Weaker Than Predicted · · Score: 1

    Which is a good question to ask, completely separate from any global warming debate... Where can you go for statistics on how the normal weather percent-chance predictions match to the actual record?

  16. Re:Regulation on Come and Take It, Texas Gun Enthusiasts (Video) · · Score: 1

    Grape juice came with a warning that was also complete instructions for the thing it was warning against?

  17. Re:stream machine on Valve To Reveal Virtual Reality Dev Kit Next Week At GDC · · Score: 1

    I'm not sure that that 20% is accurate. At least a few of them are really just wrapped in Wine, rather than actually made to run natively under Linux or OS X. This does, however, suggest some potential options that they could take when a vendor can't or won't offer a native version of their game:

    • Some Games: Try to run the game under a vendor-supplied Wine wrapper
    • Some Games, if vendor doesn't supply a wrapper: Try to run the game under a steam-supplied, somewhat optimized Wine wrapper
    • All Games: Try to run game under a default/user optimized Wine instance
  18. Re:stream machine on Valve To Reveal Virtual Reality Dev Kit Next Week At GDC · · Score: 1

    It's a great metaphor, as long as the context is dice gaming rather than leaf burning - you pick a bunch of components (or a complete machine where someone else picked a bunch of components), install SteamOS*, and hope that they all work well and work together well

    *and a second machine with Windows installed on it so you can play windows games.

  19. Re:Best defense is not to care on Blu-Ray Players Hackable Via Malicious Discs · · Score: 1

    Looks like samsung solved the problem by convincing you to use a different device...

  20. Re:I have no problem explaining this on Mysterious Siberian Crater Is Just One of Many · · Score: 1

    And yet, the War Room is the inspiration for overpriced conference rooms in bureaucracies the world over.

  21. Re: Note that this is a little different from sof on Wired On 3-D Printers As Fraud Enablers · · Score: 1

    If they're selling them as realistic copies, then is there even a problem? Is there copyright on 100 year old paintings?

  22. Re:Thousands? Really? on Jeb Bush Publishes Thousands of Citizens' Email Addresses · · Score: 1

    Why? Florida has only one Governor, not one for each party. After the election, people who didn't support whoever made it still have needs and opinions on policy.

  23. Re:I owned dozens upon dozens from all three on The Man Who Invented the Science Fiction Paperback · · Score: 1

    You first edition kindle has wifi AND a cell phone....

  24. Re:Clicks vs Bricks on Radioshack Declares Bankruptcy · · Score: 1

    If those are ideas that would've saved radio shack, then they're still good ideas after radio shack is gone...

  25. Re:Expensive on Telomere-Lengthening Procedure Turns Clock Back Years In Human Cells · · Score: 1

    "Xylem" sounds like a trade name. Was it called something else before it was patent-captured, or was it actually always patented, but the price went up after it was introduced?