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User: tygt

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  1. Re:Any Memory?? what judge will go on just that? on Police Using Dogs To Sniff Out Computer Memory · · Score: 1

    In further news, stock in the Crescent Wrench company skyrocketed shortly after techies started carrying lots of USB sticks...

  2. Re: What about mechanical failure? on California Opens Driverless Car Competition With Testing Regulations · · Score: 1

    My point precisely.
    The car must be designed such that it can continue to function without a driver until the driver is actually capable of taking over - it should get the car to the shoulder in a resumable fashion, etc.

  3. What about mechanical failure? on California Opens Driverless Car Competition With Testing Regulations · · Score: 1

    I'm curious as to how they handle various types of mechanical failure - what does the car do if:

    • tire flat
    • tire blowout
    • brake failure
    • power steering failure (I had a hydraulic hose pop once in my F350... very tough to steer!)
    • engine overheat / low oil pressure
    • Unexpected out-of-fuel (fuel tank puncture / unreported battery failure) - does the car attempt to get to the shoulder in an orderly fashion?
    • occupant emergency - passenger may just want to pull over suddenly for whatever reason (nausea, or window gets broken and rain is pouring in at 50mph, etc)

    In addition, do these cars handle unexpected road conditions:

    • Unannounced road closures/detours
    • Tree blocking part or all of roadway
    • Large sinkhole ruins part of all of roadway
    • Potholes
    • Road maintenance requiring speed reduction (chip&seal)
    • Dirt or gravel road
  4. Copyright or no, it's trouble on McAfee Grabbed Data Without Paying, Says Open Source Vulnerability Database · · Score: 2

    Doesn't matter if the data is free or not - if you're circumventing access restrictions, it's effectively breaking in (not like most of us haven't done it, but still).

  5. Minimap on Will Cameras Replace Sideview Mirrors On Cars In 2018? · · Score: 1

    Just give me a minimap of my surroundings, preferably in a HUD.
    While you're at it, mark cars with active cellphone connections (conversations) in red.... don't care if they're hand-held or not.

  6. Re:Warning Shot on Russian GLONASS Down For 12 Hours · · Score: 1

    after all, most people already think "definitely" is spelled "definately"

    I'm afraid that I most commonly see "definitely" written as "defiantly", which leads to some strange initial interpretations before I fix things up:

    "I am defiantly hungry!"

  7. Re:This is one thing I love about it on 60 Minutes Dubbed Engines Noise Over Tesla Model S · · Score: 1

    I prefer manuals, but my wife has had a CVT automobile for 9 years now and absolutely loves it - even when driving she dislikes the variance in acceleration due to gear shifting (and definitely hates it as a passenger!).

    Given that the Tesla is out of our price range, when she was recently car shopping to replace her aging car, she decided he needed another CVT car - and the only one she could find that she liked was the same she had, and luckily found one with only 30k miles on it

  8. Re:Some fixtures need incandescent on Incandescent Bulbs Get a Reprieve · · Score: 1

    When we used mercury thermometers (which were replaced by somewhat safer alcohol-based or spirit thermometers), you shoved them in the kid's butt until they were old enough to safely have them in their mouth. Then, you acted like a good parent and watched over your child until the reading was complete.

    Are you watching your kids - probably older ones - as they run around the house and roughhouse and potentially knock over lamps? Probably less than you were watching that kid who needed a temperature read.

  9. Re:Never be popular. on Tesla Planning an Electric Pickup Truck, Says Elon Musk · · Score: 1

    And if you have a battery pack large enough to provide the duration of use you'd need for a truck... Well there's your weight limit right there.

    Right, because there's nothing heavy in the gas/diesel truck, is there.

    Oh, wait... a diesel engine weighs over1,000 pounds - not counting accessories?

    I'm sure replacing that would leave a bit of room in the budget for batteries....

  10. How to profit on Security Breach Forces Bitcoin Bank Inputs.io To Halt Operations · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Not that this is what's going on, of course, but this came to mind:

    1. open bitcoin "bank"
    2. get lots of deposits
    3. "get hacked" and close up shop

    There is no step four, the profit's in step three.

  11. Re:More details please on Ask Slashdot: Good Satellite Internet For Remote Locations? · · Score: 1

    Peru is at the same longitude as the Eastern US. I'd guess that using an Eastern US address to get service would get you assigned to a satellite that's useful up and down the globe from there.

    I seem to remember back when I had service that I lost my line-of-sight due to vegetation encroachment, and I pointed my dish at a different satellite - one that was in a different longitudinal band; I'm pretty sure I still had service. I know this will work with Dish TV as I've done it within better memory (there must be a major alpha particle source near my desk as my memory is getting corrupted more and more quickly...).

  12. Re:More details please on Ask Slashdot: Good Satellite Internet For Remote Locations? · · Score: 1

    First you need to mention where you are exactly. Internet service over satellite is usually sold through local providers. Furthermore, different satellites have different coverage areas.

    As long as you can see a satellite in geostationary orbit, you should be able to get service one way or another - you may need to purchase the service in USA and then set it up yourself, but that's pretty simple. If you've got a remote research station, my guess is there's tougher things involved in your existence.

    Forth, above 70C latitude it is not possible to provide Internet over satellite with geostationary orbit since there isn't enough visibility of the satellite on the horizon

    People still use Forth? ;)
    If you'll consult a map of South America, you'll find that it is entirely above the Antarctic Circle - it doesn't even touch 60S. Still, depending on your location, even 50S could cause issues if you've got a hill to your north.

  13. High latency is unavoidable; my experience on Ask Slashdot: Good Satellite Internet For Remote Locations? · · Score: 1

    Considering that geostationary orbits are 22,236 miles above the equator, that's your minimum distance to the satellite. If you're as far south as the Tropic of Capricorn (23.5 south), the satellite is a minimum of 22,906 miles away - assuming that it's at the same longitude that you are. If you're a ways off east or west, the distance to the satellite may be higher... so let's go with 23,000 miles - one way to the satellite.

    To calculate your round-trip ping, realize that your ping packet has to travel:
      - your station to the satellite (23k mi)
      - satellite to network link (my guess is that's in North America, probably a minimum of 32 north; this is definitely over 23k mi)
      - network link to ultimate destination (google.com?) - call this 10ms, though it'll be noise in the end
      - google back to net link - 10ms
      - net link to satellite (23k+ mi)
      - satellite to your station (23k+ mi)

    So what's that? 20ms + a minimum of 92k mi at 186k mi/sec... this will give you a minimum of 520msec ping round trips.

    I used to have satellite up/down in Northern California - about 39N120W (2002-2006) via StarBand (don't know if they're around or not and too lazy to check)... I don't think I ever saw a ping rtt below 650ms anywhere in the net.

    My experience with it at the time was that it was fine for casual use... click a link, a second later you had the page. It streamed fine at its given capacity (768k at the time). Interactive use was horrible, I had to replicate part of a testing lab at my location to be able to do development because typing remotely to a console was an exercise in predictive error correction. Upload was horrible at the time, I think it was 64kbps. That's plenty for web surfing, but sending binaries of any sort is prohibitive.

    The high latency of course makes something like interactive gaming very challenging. Of course, I've seeing people playing WoW from OZ or South Pacific islands at 1500ms ping, so it's possible, but you do need to realize what you're getting into.

    I assume that data rates have improved; of course, data files have increased as well.

    Don't forget also that there are some serious data caps. StarBand at the time used a leakybucket approach; if you empty your bucket, you're not shut off, but if you keep pulling data non-stop, at some point you'll be limited to the resupply rate (which was 64kbps at the time....).

    Given that you're going to be completely remote and far from any other possible internet connection, the caveats probably don't affect you - you don't have a choice. Satellite *will* work, but understand what you get.

  14. I claim it's just bogus statistics on Tech's Highest-Paid Engineers Are At Juniper · · Score: 1

    Because Glassdoor only includes companies where at least 50 engineers have submitted salaries

    It's my understanding that Juniper does pay pretty well overall. However, I doubt it's pay advantage is so huge - I'm guessing that there's a different sort of person submitting salaries at Juniper (maybe bored long timers ;)) vs somewhere like Facebook...

  15. Re:Exaggerates? on Owner of Battery Fire Tesla Vehicle: Car 'Performed Very Well, Will Buy Again' · · Score: 2

    I can almost verify this; I was riding along one day (2003 BMW K1200GT) and suddenly my pant leg was saturated with cold fluid.
    I quickly pulled over, and yep, it was gasoline... luckily, luiquid form and rapidly evaporating without a ready ignition source.
    The bike has never been in an accident, it's been well taken care of - but the fuel lines were obviously not up to the task of carrying gasoline!

  16. "Kiddie porn"? on Arrest Made In Webcam Highjacking Extortion Case · · Score: 1

    He took pictures of a 17 year old.
    I'd expect that there are child pornography charges involved too, no?

  17. Re:Lazyness on What's Causing the Rise In Obesity? Everything. · · Score: 1

    I'm not doubting that my 4oz "serving" of ice cream contains 300 kcal - I'm just saying that my body isn't getting anywhere near the same amount of energy out of the ice cream as the bomb calorimeter does, so eating 300 kcal doesn't require nearly 300 kcal of energy expenditure to compensate.

  18. Re:Lazyness on What's Causing the Rise In Obesity? Everything. · · Score: 1

    He's burning 400 kcal, and you claim that that would be erased by drinking 2 bottles of Gatorade - presumably because the nutritional information panel claims that it's got 400 kcal?

    Well, I for one doubt that ingesting 400 kcal of food causes you to *keep* 400 kcal that needs to be burned off fully. I don't know how much you do keep, but I'm sure it's not 100%, and it probably varies a ton by the food type.

    You do know how food calorie content is measured, right? They use a Bomb calorimeter, which burns the food in a high-pressure pure oxygen atmosphere, and measure how much heat comes off. Something tells me that your body's not getting nearly as much energy out of the food it ingests as that calorimeter does.

  19. Re: Why pay Red Hat on Red Hat CEO: Bring On the Clones · · Score: 1

    Not on purpose but I've been forgetful a number of times in the past.

  20. Re: Why pay Red Hat on Red Hat CEO: Bring On the Clones · · Score: 1

    I've never had anything go missing overnight at the office - and that includes wallets with cash and cell phones. Personally, I trust cleaning staff more than the typical office drone...

  21. Re:How do you breathe in it? on Elon Musk's 'Hyperloop': More Details Revealed · · Score: 1

    I don't doubt he's considered the issue; my point was that it's not mentioned in TFA. However, there's a lot of minor points not mentioned as well, because, well... they're minor.

    An airplane flying at 30,000' has plenty of air available to pull in (about 0.3 atmospheres), and the composition of that air is similar to the air at sea level. The action of the plane flying through it, and the people respirating the O2 and producing CO2, basically doesn't affect the air.

    The hyperloop tube on the other hand is about 0.01 atmospheres, and unless they're deliberately exchanging what little air is in the tube with outside air, it's essentially a closed tube, so using that air (pressurized by the front-end compressor presumably) for respiration will eventually deplete the O2 content.

    Obviously it's a fixable problem - but it is nonetheless a problem.

  22. Re:How do you breathe in it? on Elon Musk's 'Hyperloop': More Details Revealed · · Score: 2

    Sure, it's pressurized - but pressurized with what? GP says it's like an airplane; but passenger jets are flying in pretty thick air compared to these tubes - the tube is almost a vacuum. As soon as your capsule is loaded, they essentially evacuate the airlock, and we've got to wait until that front-end compressor is sucking enough of that almost-vacuum to pump air through the capsule? So we're going to just accumulate CO2 and hope that somehow there's enough exchange somewhere (not mentioned) to replenish the O2 in the partial vacuum of the tube? I can't consider this one answered yet. I don't doubt it's a fairly simple problem (bottle a bit of air), just that it wasn't really talked about. If you were going to fly a hypersonic plane, I kind of doubt you'd be relying on external air for breathing, and this is basically the same deal.

  23. How do you breathe in it? on Elon Musk's 'Hyperloop': More Details Revealed · · Score: 1

    As far as I can tell, TFA doesn't mention breathing air. Do we assume that there is bottled air provided on-board?

  24. Re:Cool but probably not feasible... on Elon Musk's 'Hyperloop': More Details Revealed · · Score: 1

    I suspect they'll have the craft rotate in the tube for turns. Passengers will still experience acceleration, but it'll be in the direction of their seat, not to their sides.

  25. Re:Cool but probably not feasible... on Elon Musk's 'Hyperloop': More Details Revealed · · Score: 1

    No, they'll use Emminent Domain like they've always done in USA.