Slashdot Mirror


User: Forbman

Forbman's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
1,681
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 1,681

  1. Re:So here in the USA on 5G Network Speed Defined As 20 Gbps By the International Telecommunication Union · · Score: 1

    Well, look at Verizon. Sure, not exactly the same as Verizon Wireless, but bear with me.
    They started building out FiOS. Putting money where their mouth is.
    But some MBA along the line figures that the expected ROI on it is beyond some arbitrary, magic number, and the FiOS rollout just stops.
    Then, Verizon sells most of FiOS to Frontier. Is Frontier building out any more FiOS? Not in the area I live in.
    At least in Beaverton, OR, you have neighborhoods or blocks with FiOS, and right across the street, nada. Lucky to have Comcast service of awesome.

  2. Re:Error U.S. can't be .. on Xbox Live and PlayStation Networks Downed By Apparent Attack · · Score: 1

    seriously? only for a few. opium for the masses in the US = NFL on Sundays, Budweiser beer and throwing pennies at homeless people. (UK is probably Premier League Soccer, Rugby Union, shin kicking, and trying to follow up on what Kate Middleton is wearing today).

  3. Re:Bunch of knobs on Xbox Live and PlayStation Networks Downed By Apparent Attack · · Score: 1

    well, we had bnetd back in the day... Thanks, Blizzard. I think for more people, though, if it's horked up accessing Netflix via their XBox or PS (because you have to "authenticate" to XBL or PSN first before using Netflix), that's gonna be a bigger pita. At least it is for me.

    Short term annoyance only, I hope. C'mon, Microsoft. Is this only what we get for your $80 Billion cash on hand? Don't know what to say about Sony & PSN, except perhaps it's just a pathetic q.e.d.

  4. It doesn't use systemd. on Plan 9 From Bell Labs Operating System Now Available Under GPLv2 · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    So it sucks, right? It's not web-scale, either.

  5. Re:Bernard's Law ... on Ask Slashdot: Should Scientists Build a New Particle Collider In Japan? · · Score: 1

    The track may be, but any tunnelling doesn't have to be, although the more precise it is the less jiggering and time spent actually aligning the track for the railway and desired tolerances. Same goes for the tunnels for this proposed accelerator. Doesn't matter if those tunnels are curved or straight.
    Granted, with this accelerator (whether it be for leptons or railroad cars), they're not going to have Maintenance Of Way equipment come down and lift up the accelerator tubes, shove some new ballast and ties under it, and then tamp it down to the point it meets desired tolerances, like they do with normal railroad tracks.

  6. same uses, at least initially (Hulk-smash minute particles to make even smaller ones). Much different implementation, and much different design tradeoffs. No bremstrahlung in a linac, for one, until the beam hits the target.

  7. Re:For real BI, it's all about the views on Pentaho and Jaspersoft: Good Alternatives To Bigger-Name Software? · · Score: 1

    The problem with those, as anyone who has worked with those systems, is that the canned reports are quite generic. At best, for a decent-sized enterprise, they're starting points for the business report writers. Been there, done that, too many times. So, you either roll your own or customize what's there to fit the idiosyncrasies of your company's accounting and ways of doing business. NO company fits the Chart of Accounts exactly how it is set up in the default COA's of accounting systems. So there goes many of the canned reports out the door right there.

    Using a major ERP system (e.g., SAP), you're not going to be reinventing the wheel, but hiring various levels of contractors and consultants to do it for you, or in the case of SAP, to customize your business and systems to fit SAP, as that is usually the path of lesser resistance, but still expensive.

  8. Re:Hey Guys on Ask Slashdot: How To Make a DVD-Rental Store More Relevant? · · Score: 2

    Go check out Movietime Videos, in McMinnville, OR and tell to their owners. Part of it is figuring out how to keep in contact with and foster those people who still want the physicalness of the video store. Part of it is being in a vibrant small town with a dense-enough rural area (but not so dense as to have cable out there). Another part probably is its a college town. And their location works.
    And yes, they have quite the catalog, too.
    Believe it or not, they don't rent porn.
    Almost worth it still for me to go there from Beaverton...

  9. Re:Some benefits of big budget military spending on US Navy Admiral Questions Expensive Stealth Platforms · · Score: 1

    Dogmatic, stubborn (or psychotic) assholes breed war.

  10. Re:The scale is totally different nowadays.... on US Navy Admiral Questions Expensive Stealth Platforms · · Score: 1

    Still have cruise missiles, though.

  11. Re:Nonsense... it is 100% effective on US Navy Admiral Questions Expensive Stealth Platforms · · Score: 2

    Yes, I do remember reading an article (Air & Space?) around the time the last F14 was leaving service, that the F14 required 10 hours of maintenance for every 1 hour for the F18E/F or something like that.

  12. Re:Cut military spending. on US Navy Admiral Questions Expensive Stealth Platforms · · Score: 1

    ...all less bad, even in sum, than a large regional or even global conflict would have been. Lots of small earthquakes, while annoying, are less bad than the infrequent/rare epic ground spasm.

  13. Re:Cut military spending. on US Navy Admiral Questions Expensive Stealth Platforms · · Score: 2

    Hmm... well, the US rewrote the Japan constitution forbidding them from having an (obvious) offensive military capability. With the Cold War, the US didn't need to be this heavy-handed about it. But West Germany was divided up into 3 zones for the US, GB and France to "defend" in case the Warsaw Pact forces decided to invade through Germany.

    It also worked good enough for European countries as well. They only had to maintain plausible military forces to "help" fill in with NATO if necessary, as the US took on the role to backstop them if the USSR attacked them. This freed up GDP in these countries for other uses. Same with Japan. The US benefited from this as well, as we then had viable economic partners that were favorable to US economic interests. The US kind of demonstrated a potential industrial capacity for military production that only the USSR and now China can really come close to matching.

  14. Re:Cut military spending. on US Navy Admiral Questions Expensive Stealth Platforms · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This is kind of a dead argument, really. It's been kicked around for...oh...the last 60 years or so. The US does it because it's been good economically for the US corporate interests, as well as the corporate interests of most of the countries we "police" for.

  15. Re:Cut military spending. on US Navy Admiral Questions Expensive Stealth Platforms · · Score: 1

    What good is diplomacy without something to back it up? Switzerland is a bad example. No resources pre-WWII, not a strategic location. There wasn't really a good reason for Germany to attack Switzerland.

    The US military is a subsidy for US economic influence. The US learned this lesson the hard way with the Barbary pirates. And, probably learned more than a little bit about how military might can influence economic decisions internationally as well. The US learned however that it's better to keep it visible, just don't need to make it so obvious or brandish it like the British did in the 1700-1800's. The strong military lying in the background lets the businessmen be bigger dicks in their trade negotiations.

    The Marshall Plan would not happen today, as it would be seen as both too leftist for our "allies" we'd be trying to bring back up or our recent enemies.

  16. Re:Neutrinos? on Possible Supernova In Nearby Spiral Galaxy · · Score: 1

    Yet, I felt a disturbance in the Force. It was as if billions of souls were suddenly...illuminated.

    In other news, that space station is now operational.

  17. Re:Hosting @ Tokyo? on $1.5 Billion: the Cost of Cutting London-Tokyo Latency By 60ms · · Score: 1

    LSE & TSE are both 24-hr electronic trading exchanges, right?

  18. Re:Like War on All Video Games Cause Aggressive Behavior, Say Two US Congressmen · · Score: 1

    no, "those damned hollywood/liberal "special interests" and their stoogies worked against this wholesome legislation".

    Not sure it's the paycheck they want, but the built-in pension plan once they're out of office, and the cushy lobbyist or corporate executive jobs (where they do lots of lobbying) they're probably banking on getting.

    Unfortunately, the IT job maxim probably more justly applies to politicians..."your current job is training for your next job".

  19. Re:don't buy the fucking thing then on iFixit's Kyle Wiens On the War On DIY Electronics · · Score: 1

    Put in a new car stereo in a Ford Focus, for example. Good luck with that.

  20. Re:don't buy the fucking thing then on iFixit's Kyle Wiens On the War On DIY Electronics · · Score: 1

    Commodore 128 used the 65816. The 16-bit mode on that chip is separate from the 8-bit mode.

    The Commode 128 used the chip to have some degree of backwards compatability with C64 software.

    The Commodores used their own video chips (VIC (VIC 20), VIC-II (64), and something else for the 128).

  21. Re:Wave of the future on Wil Wheaton's New Show: Tabletop · · Score: 1

    The asocial-ness of WoW depends on a couple of things. Last place I worked at had several WoW addicts, who often raided together. Others who played also had some good wow stories to share, too.

  22. Re:GuidoVR is wrong and this is why on Van Rossum: Python Not Too Slow · · Score: 1

    ...and you can't work with the data inside the database itself?

  23. Re:Kinda digging Python on Van Rossum: Python Not Too Slow · · Score: 1

    maybe not, but how much spitting vinegar do you do when you get code that, while syntactically correct, is not indented at all, or was coded by someone using spaces instead of tabs (or vice versa) for indents, or they set up their code editor to use a non-fixed pitch typeface, and thus whatever indenting they've done is incredibly whacky, and your tool set does not have very good code indenting functionality available to fix it?

  24. Re:Does Anyone Have Lat/Long Numbers? on NSA Building US's Biggest Spy Center · · Score: 1

    Strange, I just got a new email from Amazon Web Services and how they've got some new service offerings coming on line soon for the Virginia area...Hmm...

  25. Re:Intelligence pays for itself on NSA Building US's Biggest Spy Center · · Score: 1

    In this case, then, there's a market for the NSA to send trade secrets from company X in country Y to a different company in country W, too. Maybe that's how they're funding the whole operation...