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User: zippthorne

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  1. Re:Another moron CEO on Salesforce.com's Benioff Disses Windows 8, Oracle · · Score: 1

    Are you hiring people to play angry birds?

    If the work should be done on a tablet, the company should provide the tablet. This allows standardization across your infrastructure, and sends the impression that you support your employees getting your work done for you.

    Don't cheap out and refuse to provide a $400 tool to a $80k/year employee just because they might bring it themselves if you do. A professional will bring in his own tools if they're not provided, because he is a professional and cares about getting the job done and done well, but on his own time he might send out a few resumes....

  2. Re:Signal isn't chaning, the noise floor is on Ask Slashdot: Why Does Wireless Gear Degrade Over Time? · · Score: 1

    Could be going from 2.4 ghz to 5ghz, though....

  3. Re:isn't this ... on Internet Providers To Begin Warning Customers Who Pirate Content · · Score: 1

    Why would they use a standard, unmodified BT client for this? All they want is the address of everyone in the swarm. You have to be able to get that from the resources in the swarm in order to be able to request blocks from them. You don't have to fully download a block, or offer a valid block in return just to see the addresses.

  4. Re:tumour due to mobile phone usage on Italian Supreme Court Accepts Mobile Phone-Tumor Link · · Score: 1

    DHMO itself is a minimizing name disguising the caustic nature of Hydric Acid, a solvent powerful enough to eat through steel, and which is found in many industrial cleaning products.

  5. Re:Hands free? on Italian Supreme Court Accepts Mobile Phone-Tumor Link · · Score: 1

    You're going to use a microwave radio that you stick in your ear to protect yourself from a microwave radio that you would hold next to your ear?

  6. Re:Scientific proof on Italian Supreme Court Accepts Mobile Phone-Tumor Link · · Score: 1

    I dunno. There are billions of people using cell phones, and even if only left-handers hold them to the left side of the head, that's still a lot of rolls of the dice before someone happens to get a tumor in just the right spot.

    First I'd want to know what the chance of getting a tumor in a particular spot is, how we're defining "a particular spot," etc - Is our definition such that 1/10 head-tumors would fit it? Or 1/10e6? Does it look like 1/10e6, but actually define 10e5 particular spots that would count as "just the right spot?"

  7. Re:Interesting, I wonder who's fault it is... on NetFlix Caught Stealing DivX Subtitles From Finnish Pirates · · Score: 1

    Foreign films' ratings are assigned weirdly sometimes. The rating could be carried over from the original culture, but contain elements that are appropriate in the importing culture, or the wrong rating could be applied due to artistic styles that in the importing culture are used to indicate appropriateness for age groups that it wasn't intended for.

    There are lots of ways it can go such that the language in the translation might not match up with the rating, and pirate subbers don't have any motivation to do anything but the most accurate (appearing) translation they can.

  8. Re:Bricked by Company? on Smartphone Mugging More Popular Than Ever · · Score: 1

    How often is the GPS transmitted?

    Does the law allow them to correlate a set of GPS points including the apartment block and other frequently visited locations (job, maybe?) to determine which one is the right one? Does it permit the police to wait outside and watch the front door until the GPS says it's moving, and note who was walking out the door at that time?

  9. Re:the customers will be asked on Internet Providers To Begin Warning Customers Who Pirate Content · · Score: 1

    Probably put it on your next bill, and by paying the bill, you acknowledge receipt of the warning....

  10. Re:isn't this ... on Internet Providers To Begin Warning Customers Who Pirate Content · · Score: 1

    I'd imagine that the monitor would have to have created the torrent for that, just joining the swarm doesn't necessarily imply that it's uploading anything.

  11. Are they using them to fight crime? on Facebook Won't Take Down Undercover Cop Page In Australia · · Score: 1

    If they're anything like the US, they're not really using the cars for fighting crime, they're using them to capriciously enforce traffic laws to generate revenue. It's quite a clever scam over here. They keep the enforcement just low enough that people get comfortable driving at a speed that is safe, but exceeds the posted limit. As long as they don't get too greedy, they can pick off a driver here and there and soak them with fines.

    If they enforced better, either people would wise up and stick to the limit, or they would clamor for more just limits - the speed limit is a tax on your time that ought to be weighed against the presumed benefits. They use a mix of marked and unmarked vehicles (though the unmarked vehicles are still pretty identifiable by their dark color, illegal (but who's going to enforce it....) window tint levels, and utility equipment mounted to the front.) to make sure that people don't notice where the enforcement is taking place.

  12. Re:And this helps the consumer how? on FCC To Allow Cable Companies To Encrypt Over-the-Air Channels · · Score: 1

    If the city owns the sidewalk, why do you get fined if you don't shovel it?

  13. Re:OTA on FCC To Allow Cable Companies To Encrypt Over-the-Air Channels · · Score: 1

    If you had a HAM license, the bylaws might be subordinate to other regulations allowing antennas.

  14. Re:Anyone notice... on Endeavour Arrives At California Science Center · · Score: 1

    It's just you. This is just the funeral celebration. The shuttle endeavor is now interred at its california mausoleum, a bit of ceremony is to be expected.

    Frankly, the shuttles weren't that exciting as a space vehicle. At first, they were an interesting experiment, but the experiment showed that they were more costly than imagined and then they set us back by decades by taking funding and manpower that could have been spent on research into things that could actually work.

  15. Re:IF YOU HAND THEM OVER IT WILL TAKE THEM !! on How Facebook Can Out Your Most Personal Secrets · · Score: 3, Interesting

    They are robust for facebook's purpose. They are robust against your attempts to use them to secure your privacy!

  16. Re:Bad idea on Ask Slashdot: Dedicating Code? · · Score: 2

    That's not the bit I would have clarified....

    She got mad when I went on about how he got scammed. It's a good thing she's gone.

  17. Re:Bad idea on Ask Slashdot: Dedicating Code? · · Score: 1

    Is it any more of a scam than a pet rock? They only claim to register a book with the copyright office. Surely that is not too difficult or expensive to do....

  18. Re:Unexamined Lives and All That on As Gas Prices Soar So Does City Biking · · Score: 1

    On a bike I can see, hear, feel, and smell the world around me. I feel as though I'm part of the world. If I see something interesting, I can stop and check it out without worying about traffic flow or parking.

    I can do the same thing in a convertible, and can speed by the dump and manure processing facility before I get too grossed out.

    Not as healthy, though, and with the car I have to park further back in the parking lot - the bike racks are usually right up by the front entrances to things, so in a sense, biking is sometimes the lazier option...

    Anyway, cycling is good. I'm not sure I like the presumption in the summary that the increased cycling is a benefit of higher gas prices, though.

  19. Re:Just Think on As Gas Prices Soar So Does City Biking · · Score: 1

    That only works if the supply of oil and natural gas can be provisioned by decrees of the federal government. Otherwise, you either get sub-optimal utilization with great profit for a select few, or you get shortages and hoarding.

  20. Re:Polar ice NOT temperature! on A Supercomputer On the Moon To Direct Deep Space Traffic · · Score: 1

    the only way to lose that heat is via radiation which is not very fast (this is why thermos flasks use vacuum as an insulator).

    Actually, the thermos relies on two features, either of which being compromised would significantly degrade the entire system. You got the first one, vacuum, which is great at not conducting. The second one is to choose a material that does not emit well - vacuum is practically transparent to radiation...

    Reflective coatings are great for this, Black coatings.. not so much.... What you pick depends on the temperatures and the temperature difference you want to maintain.

    LN2 dewars tend to be steel - it's ok to vent a little gaseous nitrogen, but you wouldn't want gallons of LN2 pouring over the lab after your container shatters from thermal stress. Coffee containers tend to use glass with mirror coatings - the temperature difference is smaller, and the most important thing is that your coffee must still be hot when you open the bottle 6 hours later.

    But depending on the material and temperatures, vacuum alone might not suffice. Which is good news for space craft designers looking to dump waste heat - it's possible to design a system to do so.

  21. Re:Biking is better on As Gas Prices Soar So Does City Biking · · Score: 1

    How does it do on hills?

  22. Re:And your point is? on Libertarian Candidate Excluded From Debate For Refusing Corporate Donations · · Score: 2

    I'm not sure you understand libertarians at all. You seem to have confused them with anarchists...

  23. Re:laws in space ? on The Great Meteor Grab · · Score: 1

    If you're already in LEO, you don't need Orion. You can just use your nuclear material to generate power for electric propulsion with even higher Isp. Where you need Orion is where you can't ever use it - to climb out of the earth's gravity well in the first place - it's a relatively high Isp, extremely high thrust solution, but you can't use it on a populated planet with an atmosphere, because you're setting off thousands of nuclear bombs in an atmosphere.

  24. Re:Pandora's Problem is repetition on Pandora Shares Artist Payment Figures · · Score: 1

    You want to use a few specific songs from that band as your jumping off point. Otherwise it will base it's song types on the band's entire collection of works.

  25. Re:10,000 feet limitation on Apple Quietly Releases New iPods · · Score: 2

    Perhaps it is a leftover spec from when they did have spinny hard drives....