Slashdot Mirror


User: countach44

countach44's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
70
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 70

  1. Re:Start here on White House: Use Metric If You Want, We Don't Care · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Actually, there are limited places in the US that do this: Metric Road Signs in the US I think this is something that could be voted on at the municipality/state level and could eventually work its way nationally.

  2. Logical Conclusion on Bitcoin's Success With Investors Alienates Earliest Adopters · · Score: 0

    As many posters have pointed out, this definitely seems to be the logical conclusion of bitcoins being recognized as having real economic value. I wonder how far off bitcoin futures are from being listed on a major exchange, especially considering the CFTC is interested and has taken notice

  3. Re:Who owns Congress? on Did Internet Sales Tax Backers Bribe Congress? (Video) · · Score: 0

    I'd like to add a litte more along these lines:
    As suggested, taking a look at Opensecrets shows that big money in politics does come, in a large part, from unions: http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php
    So, a lot of big money in politics comes from unions and goes mainly to the Democratic party (at least the top 15 or so), which may be contrary to the only big corporation and Republicans thing most of us expect (especially from all those Obama campaign emails I get about "grassroots").
    What the big unions do is strongarm you as a young person into becoming a VIP member (whose fee is eligible for political contributions) and then don't give you a say. Also, when layoffs happen, you're the first to go since the ONLY thing that matters is seniority. Sadly, when it comes to many things, the big unions don't look too different from the big businesses.

  4. Re:wtf on DoD Descends On DEFCAD · · Score: 0

    ITAR is from the Dept. of State and according to the article it was the DoS and NOT DoD that acted from the header in the letter sent to DEFCAD: "United States Department of State Bureau of Political-Military Affairs Offense of Defense Trade Controls Compliance"

  5. Hmm... on Let Quantum Physics Officiate Your Wedding · · Score: 0

    Regarding the line from the article: "gently entangling their flesh by the photoelectric effect" Part of this just sounds fishy to me - I might be wrong, but the emitted electrons won't be entangled... The only things that might be entangled are the photons, before they hit the bodies, right?

  6. Re:Blah on Unique ID In India Causes 'Fear of the Beast' · · Score: 0

    Whoops... sorry I misread your reply. My original post said "shooting at" - but the quote had "shouting at" An unfortunate part of the pro-life movement is that as in any cause fueled by activism, people can get excited. Many people don't realize that yelling at people won't make them change their minds. However, I would think that most pro-life people would rather spend their time trying to find ways to get rid of abortion instead of try to silence other people who make them look bad. Whether or not that's a wise strategy, I really don't know. One could argue that getting rid of loud crazies can really help your cause.

  7. Re:Blah on Unique ID In India Causes 'Fear of the Beast' · · Score: 0
  8. Re:Blah on Unique ID In India Causes 'Fear of the Beast' · · Score: 0

    Only takes a few bad apples to spoil the bunch, huh? Not all Christians I know run around shooting abortion doctors and tell everyone they're going to hell. Actually, none of them do... Also, Re: rights - a lawyer once told me "If you feel like someone is passing a law that's forcing their beliefs on you, that's too bad - because that's what law is." Regardless of what your stance is, he does have a point there. When someone passes a law regulating a business - are they impeding on your right to do business? If someone passes a smoking ban - are they impeding your right to smoke? And if those aren't their rights, are you then forcing your beliefs on them regarding what rights their rights are? Just some food for thought.

  9. Missed Marketing Opportunity on Verizon Hints At Scrapping Unlimited Data Plans · · Score: 0

    I think that if they did this, Verizon would lose out on a great marketing opportunity. By keeping an unlimited data plan, they can taunt AT&T for scrapping theirs. Verizon was somewhat late to the game since they didn't have an iPhone competitor for a while, so why not use this to gain an edge?

  10. Sun Ray for classrooms, labs with PCs on Best IT Solution For a Brand-New School? · · Score: 0

    Sun Rays are a nice, lightweight solution perfect for an in classroom workstation. They do have great performance and I've seen them do some pretty heavy loads. (http://www.sun.com/software/index.jsp?cat=Desktop&subcat=Sun%20Ray%20Clients&tab=3) For more intense applications, maybe a lab with windows PCs would be good. That way you can expose students to both Linux and Windows, as well as applications such as Photoshop, etc...

  11. Depends on the brand on Forget Math to Become a Great Computer Scientist? · · Score: 0

    I think he means without calculus based mathematics. Discrete mathematics has obvious applications to computing, there are, of course some cases when you may need calculus (experience with power series may help to solve a recurrence relation, for example). But overall, computer scientists really don't need differential calculus or above (in general). I mean, ask a CS person the last time they needed to solve a differential equation or take a line integral. If anything, their answer would be when they took physics (if they had to take anything above general mechanics), which again, doesn't make a whole heap of sense.

  12. no IDE on Should Students Be Taught With or Without an IDE? · · Score: 0

    The upper level CS classes (300+) at my school are all taught with no IDE restrictions and we turn in code via a svn repository. I'd say that's the way to do it, that way people can use what they are comfortable with. If they don't know where to start, have them use vi or emacs, that way they can learn the skills early on.

  13. Re:huh? on How Schools Can Get Free Software · · Score: 0

    I do IT work at a school, we run microsoft stuff, with some linux backends. It's hard to teach teachers new systems...

  14. huh? on How Schools Can Get Free Software · · Score: -1, Redundant

    Free software for schools? OSS? No shit...

  15. Well on Internet Movies Before DVD · · Score: 0

    Kind of strange for an actor to be pushing this...

  16. HA! on Our Brains Don't Work Like Computers · · Score: 1, Funny

    Take that skynet!

  17. ironry on Through The Steve Ballmer Looking Glass · · Score: 0

    It's encoded in wmv, oh the irony.

  18. increase.. bleh on US CD Sales Increase in 2004 · · Score: 0

    I think even the RIAA knows that the CD sales have been slumping not because of piracy, but because they need a scapegoat...

  19. Re:what about the other leachers? on Mobile Users Plug-in Anywhere They Can · · Score: 0

    They don't have to pay for air, light (not sunlight at least), or gravity...

  20. tsk tsk on Australian Computer Museum Needs a Saviour · · Score: 4, Funny

    On top of closing their site is slashdotted, must we kill their bandwidth also?