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User: richlv

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  1. Re:Library of Babel on Website Attempts To Generate Every Possible Patentable Invention (allpriorart.com) · · Score: 1

    i'm not so sure about it. for example, the following could sell :

    A hitch device for converting a conventional wheelbarrow into a towable trailer.

  2. Re:Meh on Presidential Candidate Lincoln Chaffee Proposes That US Go Metric · · Score: 1

    ok, this is so sad, but it sounded truthful :)

    the Fahrenheit scale makes a lot of sense for measuring weather. In Fahrenheit, 0-100 degrees is roughly the range of temperatures that is habitable for people. And I know, it's not exactly the range of habitable temperature, but if there's a climate that spends a lot of time outside of that range, then people probably won't be very comfortable there. In Celcius, that translates into roughly -18 to 38, and Kelvin is 255 to 311. Those seem stupid and arbitrary by comparison.

    this is arbitrary. habitable != comfortable, and who has a daily task of figuring out "habitable" ? in celsius, habitable does go way below the cited -18 anyway, i present nordic countries.

    Also, if you measure only in 1 degree increments, Fahrenheit degrees are smaller and provide better resolution, though I suppose I can't tell the difference between 69 degrees and 70 degrees anyway.

    and a surprisingly simple solution - you can say 21.5 degrees in celsius ! or you can add even more. for daily purposes, that is never needed, though

    But similarly, the length of feet and yards are pretty convenient for measuring spaces. Being a relatively average-sized man, my foot is about a foot long, for example. If I want to measure the size of a room, I can put one foot in front of the other and walk, counting my footsteps.

    and for an average man, a slow step is 1 metre. roughly. probably the same precision as trying to match different feet sizes...

    In the end, I have a pretty good approximation. Measuring a person's height in feet also gives a range with pretty good resolution with adults typically being between 5 and 7 when you round. With meters, when you round, basically everyone is 2 meters tall.

    which might be why nobody does that. everybody measures height in cm. which is also providing more than enough precision, for most needs

    I know some people won't quite get my point, or they'll say, "But metric is so much easier once you know it!" Really though, metric is only much easier when you're doing math. On a day to day level, most of us don't need to do enough math for it to matter.

    normal people use math daily. and it's so much easier with base 10. don't delude yourself, imperial is used in the usa just "because we don't care" - not enough external trade or other reasons to change + the normal resistance to change.
    understandable in short term, but shortsighted in the long term.

  3. Re:Meh on Presidential Candidate Lincoln Chaffee Proposes That US Go Metric · · Score: 1

    just like most inhabitants of the usa don't know/understand they're just 1/4 of the population of china... wait, what was your argument supposed to say ? :)

  4. Re:Misplaced? on Russian Space Agency Misused $1.8 Billion, May Be Replaced · · Score: 1
  5. Re:Work in the right direction on Getting Started Developing With OpenStreetMap Data · · Score: 1

    wouldn't those place properties be usually grouped by a relation like this one ?
    http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/...

  6. Re:Seriously on Getting Started Developing With OpenStreetMap Data · · Score: 1

    this site also used to have technical stories. like this one. so its actually a welcome change from "what would benet..." series.

  7. Re:Web identifiers on First Crowdsourced, Open Data Address List Launches In the UK · · Score: 1

    seriously, this is different from openstreetmap... how ?
    ok, so it's more limited (addresses only) and uk only.
    adding the missing info in osm is a much better idea.

  8. Re:Actually I was quite happy about them doing it on Marriot Back-Pedals On Wireless Blocking · · Score: 1

    The easy solution would be simply to put a card on the nightstand giving the name of the safe hotspot you should connect to. And/or name the hotspot "Mariott Internet - all other hotspots should be avoided"

    Warnings in my hotel room Do me no good in the lobby or bar or front desk when I'm trying to pull up my reservation on the e-mail.

    do you work for marriott ? :)
    most decent hotels have wifi network listed on an obvious sign in the lobby. even if not, you could ASK at the reception "which wifi network should i use?"

    (for the record, marriott is not the worst when it comes to wifi - hilton sucks ass and can go and burn in some tar pit or something)

  9. Re:Zoning laws are tyranny on Waze Causing Anger Among LA Residents · · Score: 1

    Mandatory free parking as part of any building, requiring that the development use 4x as much land as the actual building on it requires.

    underground parking ?

  10. density ? on Seagate Bulks Up With New 8 Terabyte 'Archive' Hard Drive · · Score: 0

    densities of 5TB, 6TB, and 8TB

    is that really proper use of "density" ?

  11. Re:Creating more victims on MIT Removes Online Physics Lectures and Courses By Walter Lewin · · Score: 1

    i haven't met a woman like that personally. i haven't had terribly bad experience with women, either.
    but there's this crusade which is getting more and more crazy. while it is lead by a crazy minority, there seems to be no opposition to that assholish behaviour.
    well, here's some :)
    http://9gag.com/gag/avZ65AW?ref=t

  12. Re:Uh huh on In Iowa, a Phone App Could Serve As Driver's License · · Score: 1

    ah, indeed - and some look like drop-in replacements for atms (quality matters, though) : http://www.sunsoninput.com/pid...

  13. Re:Uh huh on In Iowa, a Phone App Could Serve As Driver's License · · Score: 2

    good point about the fingerprints... but at least there are ways to avoid that.

    and i guess the idea is that people are less likely to forget their phone these days.

    overall, seems like a silly idea with so many drawbacks that are being ignored...

  14. Re:Creating more victims on MIT Removes Online Physics Lectures and Courses By Walter Lewin · · Score: 1

    it seems like it's actually bullying by crazy females (not really women, they have stopped being such).

    they can't bully rockstars or sportists (see what is their attitude to women...), so they just choose a soft target that will not fight back - it people, scientists.
    and then somebody whines why in some circles geeks see women with suspicion - after rejection and ridicule in school, after bullying later...

    and the normal women don't speak up.

  15. Re:Uh huh on In Iowa, a Phone App Could Serve As Driver's License · · Score: 1

    have a pin pad. officer hands the pad to you in/on your vehicle, you enter the pin (make sure to hit all buttons in a random order afterwards).

  16. Re:transfer the ID information to the police on In Iowa, a Phone App Could Serve As Driver's License · · Score: 2

    around here, police verifies all data you give them (licence, vehicle registration, insurance) with the hq. if they can't communicate, they are not allowed to perform any of those checks (and i think the internal guidelines say that they must "return to base" or something like that)

  17. Re:I don't get it on Is a "Wikipedia For News" Feasible? · · Score: 4, Interesting

    and there seem to be quite a lot of other projects like this, for example - https://grasswire.com/

    one issue might be that news are more interesting for various parties to push their agenda. a wikipedia article can be used to shift perception, but it is likely to be corrected. a fake news item, even if later corrected, will have impact on the perception of the viewers.

    as an example, grasswire covers russian-ukrainian war, and it gets very slanted messages through every now and then.

  18. Re:I wish them good luck. on Debian Forked Over Systemd · · Score: 1

    Uselessd shows that systemd's parts are not as tightly coupled as people suppose.

    or more like "systemd's parts don't have to be as tightly coupled as they are"

  19. Re:Wow... on Debian Forked Over Systemd · · Score: 1

    rhel 7 (systemd one) just came out. for enterprise shops, it's not even out yet. they will look at it once it has been out for a couple of years. maybe redhat expects systemd to be in shape by that time, screw the early adopters

  20. Re:Standing on Harvard Students Move Fossil Fuel Stock Fight To Court · · Score: 2

    the publicity alone might be worth the effort.
    it's one thing to say "they complained" or "the yes men got them" - "sued" seems to capture news-entertainment people in the usa a bit more

  21. Re:Opposition is from a small elite on Longtime Debian Developer Tollef Fog Heen Resigns From Systemd Maintainer Team · · Score: 1

    Lets say you have a laptop that is on one network and goes to sleep when you close it and arrives in a hotel room on another network? How would you do this with init without some serious hacks?

    this seemed to be handled w/o systemd just fine for years. was it networkmanager ? probably. don't care. but it was never tied to the init system, login or anything else. having it all in a single, hairy ball of code is quite scary.

  22. Re:Opposition is from a small elite on Longtime Debian Developer Tollef Fog Heen Resigns From Systemd Maintainer Team · · Score: 1

    those times are almost never caused by the os - usually it's this disk controller, that out of bounds controller, this firmware, that timeout.
    even when it is the os, it's not the init system as such, it's a database, which is needed for some app and so on.

    where have you seen up to 30 minute bootup time where init system would contribute in a whatsoever notable way to that time ?

  23. Re:kph? on Japanese Maglev Train Hits 500kph · · Score: 2

    it's not normal. seems to be used by americans only - it's one way to identify an american :)

    km/h - try to remember that.

  24. Re:Call Comcast? on Ask Slashdot: How To Unblock Email From My Comcast-Hosted Server? · · Score: 1

    never even researched dkim or spf properly, my mailserver can send mails to google just fine

  25. Re:Desparate Microsoft pulls a "Sun Microsystems" on Microsoft To Open Source .NET and Take It Cross-Platform · · Score: 1

    The answer, my friend, is bobbing in the wind.

    there, fixed that for you