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User: MichaelSmith

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Comments · 11,670

  1. Re:This is a defense of iPhone 6? on Consumer Reports: New iPhones Not As Bendy As Believed · · Score: 1

    Aluminum is brittle, while steel deforms.

  2. Sloppy typing in javascript on Ask Slashdot: What Are the Strangest Features of Various Programming Languages? · · Score: 1

    Pass the wrong type of object to a javascript library. The library happily accepts your crud, passing it through 14 levels of function calls and then says something useful like "a is not a function".

  3. Re:Watch out for on Saturn's F Ring Is Now Three Times As Wide As During the Voyager Flybys · · Score: 1

    I should be safe in Eastern Aus. We could get a new inland sea out of it.

  4. Re:Yeah hand signals on Hidden Obstacles For Google's Self-Driving Cars · · Score: 1

    Consider this scenario. I am merging right to make a right turn.

    1. Indicate right
    2. Wait for a car to give way
    3. Merge one lane to the right

    This doesn't work with automatic cars because they don't understand hand signals. Instead I just have to merge and hope the overtaking cars are going to give way. If this behaviour becomes common, people will start merging without indicating in the expectation that automatic systems will take care of the resulting conflict.

  5. Yeah hand signals on Hidden Obstacles For Google's Self-Driving Cars · · Score: 1

    I ride a bike to work and I indicate for right and left turns as well as stopping under some conditions. I doubt that the systems on a (semi) automatic car will understand that.

  6. Could that body have been... The Earth? The same thing happens whenever I try to look at Paris from Australia.

  7. Its clearly a trap.

  8. I wonder if it has any Earth sized moons. Maybe one close in could be kept warm(ish) by tidal heating.

  9. Re:No Kari Byron, no sale on "MythBusters" Drops Kari Byron, Grant Imahara, Tory Belleci · · Score: 2

    I liked Scottie

  10. Re:good on "MythBusters" Drops Kari Byron, Grant Imahara, Tory Belleci · · Score: 1

    Maybe she will pop up elsewhere.

  11. Re:Call out the Wildfire team and Michael Crichton on Scientists Find Traces of Sea Plankton On ISS Surface · · Score: 1

    Lets hope it doesn't start by attacking rubber seals.

  12. Re:not hard cosmic radiation on Scientists Find Traces of Sea Plankton On ISS Surface · · Score: 1

    Plenty of biological material was left on the surface in jettison bags during the apollo missions. Its going to be interesting when those bags get retrieved. In fact I wonder if it justifies a sample return mission right now.

  13. Re:This actually makes perfect sense. on Scientists Find Traces of Sea Plankton On ISS Surface · · Score: 1

    Yeah, given that launch sites tend to be on coastal areas.

  14. Re:Poor material choice on Wheel Damage Adding Up Quickly For Mars Rover Curiosity · · Score: 3, Interesting

    But the wheels aren't failing. The skin on the wheels is failing but the wheels will work fine with structure alone.

  15. Re:The private key would have to be handled locall on Yahoo To Add PGP Encryption For Email · · Score: 1

    JavaScript virtual machines have no security between applications. Any script can replace the javascript API at run time, messing with other code running in the same window.

  16. Re:It's a TRAP! on Yahoo To Add PGP Encryption For Email · · Score: 2

    Any proposal in which users hand over their private keys to a third party (such as a webmail provider) should be assumed to be done with the blessing of, or at the request of, law enforcement or intelligence agencies

    Where did it say in there that users would hand over private keys to a third party?

    At best they would give the keys to software provided by Yahoo and running in their browser. Law enforcement could compel Yahoo to provide a backdoor to that software or they could compromise the encryption in the browser. Unlike java, javascript has nothing to stop code from a different source interfering with other code running in the browser.

  17. Re:Pots and kettles on Amazon's eBook Math · · Score: 1

    Doctorow succeeds partly due to self promotion, but that will only work for a few prominent authors. Not everybody can be an editor on boing boing.

  18. Re:Corporate lies! on Amazon's eBook Math · · Score: 1

    So create your own e-book and associated infrastructure.

  19. Re:Disengenous on Amazon's eBook Math · · Score: 1

    DRM's e-books (like on Amazon) are hard to lend out or re-sell. Prices are lower but more books are sold. Taking geography out of the distribution equation means that more books can be sold, without physically shipping a supply to every corner of the planet. Simpllfying the supply chain doesn't have to mean that the producer gets less money.

  20. Re:Dirty Burn on SpaceShipTwo Flies Again · · Score: 1

    Isn't that because it is burning rubber? All the burns with that engine type are dirty.

  21. Re:Should we care about... on Amazon's eBook Math · · Score: 1

    Paper eliminates itself over time but I would agree that content from Amazon is not immune to fiddling in the back end.

  22. Bricks and Mortar? on Amazon's eBook Math · · Score: 1

    Come on. Nobody buys reading material from shops any more. The only bookshops which remain in my city sell junk. But I don't like the idea of buying everything through Amazon either.

  23. Re:Bang on Hair-Raising Technique Detects Drugs, Explosives On Human Body · · Score: 1

    Bomb belts really should have grounding points.

  24. Bang on Hair-Raising Technique Detects Drugs, Explosives On Human Body · · Score: 1

    Its also great for detecting suicide bombers.

  25. Re:popular with Americans on New Russian Law To Forbid Storing Russians' Data Outside the Country · · Score: 2

    as it gives them

    End of stream? Did the NSA not flush that last buffer they read?