Slashdot Mirror


User: StripedCow

StripedCow's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
2,032
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 2,032

  1. Loophole on Why the Latest FISA Release By Google Et Al. Means Squat · · Score: 1

    They could publish the data per "division".
    Then invent a new division per, say, 10 or 100 requests.

  2. Re:STOP beta.slashdot.org ALREADY! on Ask Slashdot: What Online News Is Worth Paying For? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Until they stop support for classic.

  3. Re:Service packs? on HP To Charge For Service Packs and Firmware For Out-of-Warranty Customers · · Score: 1

    Mod parent up!

  4. Dynamics on Government To Require Vehicle-to-vehicle Communication · · Score: 1

    If each vehicle just acts as a "bubble" with fixed radius, and each vehicle can brake such that its bubble cannot completely compress, then in principle no collisions can occur.

  5. Re:Picasso on Why Games Should Be In the Public Domain · · Score: 1

    "Unsuccessful artists pay royalties, get broke and end up flipping burgers. Great artists steal."

    me

  6. Privacy on Now Published: Study Showing Pirate Bay Blockade Has No Effect · · Score: 1

    The torrent monitoring technique also shows that if you are downloading a public torrent, anyone can find out

    That's why I run a bittorrent client that downloads torrents at random, even illegal ones.
    If anybody has a problem with that, I just mention privacy is the reason I'm downloading them.

  7. You are not allowed to do that with this new DRM.

  8. Re:Apple tests everything on Apple Reportedly Testing Inductive, Solar and Motion Charging For Its Smartwatch · · Score: 1

    From wikipedia:

    The most efficient mass-produced solar modules[disputed – discuss] have energy density values of up to 175 W/m2.

    Let's say Apple uses a big solar panel of 5x5 cm behind a screen. This corresponds to an optimistic 175/400 = 0.44 W output.

    For comparison: a typical idle phone uses about 50mW of energy, while a phone in "talking mode" consumes 2 W of energy.

  9. And of course, 30% of all harvested energy belongs to Apple.

  10. Re:Replusive on The JavaScript Juggernaut Rolls On · · Score: 1

    Well that's what I meant actually.

    Also note that some aspects of the target intermediate languages may limit the actual programming language in certain ways.

    For example, the language from which you are compiling may support some primitive types that the back-end languages do not support. Then, to stay efficient, it may be necessary to find a common denominator of primitive types in ASM.js and NaCl, and introduce these as new primitive types in the original language.

  11. Re:Replusive on The JavaScript Juggernaut Rolls On · · Score: 1

    The problem with PNaCl and NaCl is that it is not really portable to platforms like Firefox and IE.

    Sadly, I don't believe even that Mozilla will ever adopt NaCl, judging from these responses (wikipedia):

    Mozilla's vice president of products, Jay Sullivan, said that Mozilla has no intention of running native code inside the browser, as "These native apps are just little black boxes in a webpage. [...] We really believe in HTML, and this is where we want to focus."[31]
    Mozilla's Christopher Blizzard criticized NaCl, claiming that native code cannot evolve in the same way that the source code-driven web can. He also compared NaCl to Microsoft's ActiveX technology, plagued with DLL hell.[4] Mozilla currently employs the inventor of JavaScript, Brendan Eich as chief technological officer.

    The best approach, therefore, is to build a compiler back-end that targets *both* ASM.js *and* (P)NaCl.

    The performance benefits of NaCl will, in time, become clear, and hence other platforms will be more or less forced to either improve their Javascript implementation, or adopt NaCl.

  12. Re:The hipsters need to go. Now. on The JavaScript Juggernaut Rolls On · · Score: 1

    But Node.js allows only threading without a shared address space.
    This means that in order to communicate between threads, you must serialize all your data (!)
    Think about the overhead...

  13. Re:Replusive on The JavaScript Juggernaut Rolls On · · Score: 1, Interesting

    You are modded funny, but if this really is a joke, then there certainly is some melancholic undertone to it.

    The web is being developed for "the average" developer that just wants to get things done. This is a pity. Because if the web were developed for the advanced developer (read: computer scientist), those developers could lift the web to a higher level, and there would be much more traction.

    We just have to wait until Javascript gets sufficiently powerful to function as an intermediate language.
    From that moment on, we can have other languages targeted to the web. E.g., Python, Haskell, you name it.

    Right now, it is possible to use Javascript as an intermediate language using the ASM.js subset (what a name, what a concept), and there are actually projects that do stuff along these lines, but still, performance suffers a lot in this area. Perhaps a better approach is Google's NaCl, where intermediate code is translated more directly to native code, while putting security guarantees in place. But here, of course, cross-platform support is an issue.

    Perhaps then a hybrid between NaCl and ASM.js would be the best approach. That is, a compiler back-end that can target both NaCl *and* ASM.js.

    Time will tell...

  14. Re:If only Guido hadn't blown it with Python. on The JavaScript Juggernaut Rolls On · · Score: 1

    IMHO, Python is a complicated mess compared to Javascript.
    And a complicated mess is only warranted if at least it adds type checking.

  15. Earth's magnetic field, atmosphere on World's First Magma-Based Geothermal Energy System · · Score: 0

    If the magma near the surface cools down, and becomes solid, this may have implications for Earth's magnetic field. (Because, according to wikipedia, it is generated by the motion of molten iron alloys in the Earth's outer core).

    Now, in turn, Earth's magnetic field is the reason we have an atmosphere.
    So the conclusion is, if we use all of the energy in the core, we lose our atmosphere.

  16. Re:OPERA!? on Former Dev Gives Gloomy Outlook On Linux Support For the Opera Browser · · Score: 1

    I was thinking the same about "Outlook"...

  17. Looking at this another way... on Judge Rules BitTorrent Cases Must Be Tried Separately · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This judge just assured himself and his lawyer friends of income for the rest of their lives...

  18. Car analogy on Kansas To Nix Expansion of Google Fiber and Municipal Broadband · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Imagine every transport company building their own road system, and what that would do to competition, and prices.

    In other words, companies should not be able to have direct control over basic infrastructure. That's what we (should) have a government for.

  19. Re:Better idea on Google Poised To Settle EU Anti-Trust Probe · · Score: 2

    Seriously: why don't we talk about creating a start-up ?

    This could be a proposal for Kickstarter. It may be the first crowd-funded project that requires a significant amount of preliminary research though.

  20. Better idea on Google Poised To Settle EU Anti-Trust Probe · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The EU should increase funding of research into open search technologies.
    It is unacceptable that the world's searching and data-mining technology is for the better part originating from one country.
    (Yes, this means more projects like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q...)

    I'm still waiting for a P2P search engine that is efficient, secure, and returns useful results.

  21. Re:First sentence sums it all up on The Human Body May Not Be Cut Out For Space · · Score: 1

    Aha! So we expect it to be true because it is more convenient.

  22. Growing specs on Google Planning To Remove CSS Regions From Blink · · Score: 1

    If only CSS was Turing complete, we wouldn't need these hairy specifications. CSS is slowly becoming a behemoth.

  23. Fork Chromium on Google Planning To Remove CSS Regions From Blink · · Score: 1

    . If Google does remove the Regions code, which looks highly likely, this would leave Safari and IE 10/11 as the only two major browsers to support Regions.

    Why not fork Chromium then?

  24. Re:Write once? on Facebook Puts 10,000 Blu-ray Discs In Low-Power Storage System · · Score: 4, Funny

    When you delete your account, somebody will go and get the corresponding disk, copy it (except your data), and destroy the old disk.

    It's write-once only if you don't consider "destroy" a write-operation.

  25. Re:First sentence sums it all up on The Human Body May Not Be Cut Out For Space · · Score: 1

    The human body evolved in Africa.
    Why do we expect it to function normally, say, in North America?

    Why do we even expect the laws of physics to be the same in two different places?