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User: dutchwhizzman

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  1. Try beating an airliner turbine on Sulfur Polymers Could Enable Long-Lasting, High-Capacity Batteries · · Score: 3, Interesting


    Airliner turbines are extremely efficient at transforming energy into air movement. Because of expanding gasses in the burn process inside the turbine, roughly 9 times the amount of air being used in the burn process is being "propelled" on the outside of the engine. The mix of these at the back of the engine is also very carefully engineered. This results in an extremely efficient transformation, compared to a combustion engine as used in cars.
    Getting the same amount of efficiency from an electrically driven turbine will be a challenge. Getting the same or better amount of efficiency from the system, including the primary generation of electricity, transporting it, battery losses and converting it in the electrical turbine doesn't sound very feasible at all. It's systems that matter, not components, right?

  2. Solex made this, it eats tires on Invention Makes Citibikes Electric · · Score: 1

    A French company named Solex made these with a combustible gasoline engine. They ate tires at a rate that no Citibike exploiter would allow. Watch these get banned/prohibited in 3...2....1.....

  3. Subjective review on Open Source Brings High-End Canon Camera Dynamic Range Closer To Nikon's · · Score: 1


    Your single source is a review of subjective qualities *perceived* in JPG conversions from RAW files made by lightroom. All the review is about is what base curves and algorithms LightRoom applies to the RAW files, not about the actual quality of the RAW files itself, or the ability to make a decent image of said file with manual adjustments. Analogy: you are comparing the quality of JPG images an automatic scanner software generates from two different brands of 35mm film in a film scanner. These cameras have different requirements for making adjustments to things like colour balance, saturation, sharpening and such to get an optimal image output.
    As soon as images get rated on how "pleasing" they are, I'm out when it comes to a *technical* review. Give me objective measurable repeatable tests and results and I'm willing to take you seriously, but not this.

  4. FUD sells on Spooks-as-a-Service Swarm RSA Conference · · Score: 4, Informative


    With all due respect, but most companies don't need this, they need to get and keep their IT secured and that should be enough.
    If you *do* need this, you may not want to rely on a third party to provide you with this sort of service. Your assets are probably way too valuable to solely rely on a third party. The only reason you may want them is to keep tabs on the performance of your own resident spooks and SpookWare(tm), not to entrust the future of your company upon. While I do see a place in the market for these companies, the way they sell themselves is despicable and makes companies act lax and irresponsible towards having their security sorted out properly.

  5. Solution looking for a problem on ICANN Considers Using '127.0.53.53' To Tackle DNS Namespace Collisions · · Score: 1

    As if people haven't already made up domains and host names that didn't exist then and exist now? As if people hadn't been using public address space that wasn't assigned, but is now? Just because some "privately used" TLDs might get exposed because of sloppy system admins, ICANN shouldn't be running around in circles and cry and shout. Let it happen, it's happened before and it will happen again and again. Stop fighting the symptoms and let it ride out.

  6. not the story MtGox tells on Mt. Gox Shuts Down: Collapse Should Come As No Surprise · · Score: 1


    MtGox tells us that they don't have those lenses any more, because people claim they didn't get lenses when they wanted them from MtGox, but they did get them delivered. MtGox now says that their stock inventory program was flawed and that this, combined with a flaw in the shipping companies track and trace software resulted in people maliciously requesting double deliveries.

    This results in two observations. 1) The "flaw" in the track and trace was a long time known thing and everyone had found a way to deal with it, except MtGox. Due diligence anyone? 2) MtGox didn't do proper inventory counts and only found out that they had no lenses left when their warehouse was completely empty. Again, due diligence.

    I don't know about the Japanese law, but it seems to me that because of the lack of due diligence, the management of MtGox would be personally responsible in a lot of jurisdictions for this fiasco?

  7. Publishing mafia is the real problem on Publishers Withdraw More Than 120 Fake Papers · · Score: 1


    The real problem is that universities demand publication of your paper in a "renown" magazine. These magazines know you need to get published and thus are willing to publish anything, as long as you pay the hefty fee required. These magazines have no incentive to check for the quality of the submissions, since relatively very few people actually read the magazines and skip the publications that don't interest them. Give your publication an uninteresting title and people will most likely skip it.

    If Universities would set up a peer reviewed web site system themselves and allow their students to publish there free of charge, these magazines have no other way to survive than to pay for good submissions. Students wins and science wins in that case. Even better, getting copies of your paper to interested people does no longer require you to purchase expensive prints of the magazine, since *they* hold the copyright and you can't even publish anywhere else. The few magazine publishers that won't be able to get a third home in the Caymans and won't be able to get a bigger yacht might complain, but they brought it on themselves with their greed.

  8. Did they finally date them? on Confirmed: Earth's Oldest Rock In Australia · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'm sure AC/DC will be delighted with their new title of oldest rock on the planet.

  9. Actually, no on Delayed Fatherhood May Be Linked To Certain Congenital and Mental Disorders · · Score: 3, Informative

    Mortality has only been the case for about 90% of humans ever born. Statistically speaking, you have a 10% of living forever.

  10. But sexism is totally okay? on Why Your Online Impersonation of a 16-year Old Girl Won't Last Long · · Score: 1

    Really, these people need their dick sizes predicted by comments on SlashDot. Maybe then they'd understand that any form of profiling is equally bad, regardless of what you profile on.

  11. I want to know on Ask The Linux Foundation's Executive Director Jim Zemlin What You Will · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    I want to know what he thinks of the new SlashDot beta

  12. TL;DR, paragraphs? on Slashdot Tries Something New; Audience Responds! · · Score: 1

    You'd expect that people working for SlashDot would know how to write a simple comment. How about using paragraphs that are just about one thing? This looks like incoherent blabbering and after a few attempts to parse it, it still does.

  13. So price accordingly on HP To Charge For Service Packs and Firmware For Out-of-Warranty Customers · · Score: 1

    Don't nickel and dime customers after they bought the product. You already paid for the "life time" updates when you bought the equipment years ago. Now they want you to pay *again*? Sorry, you may want to do that for new purchases and announce it 6 months ahead. People already budgeted and bought stuff and now all of a sudden you're messing with their budget after the money is spent?

    If it's one thing I hate it is a vendor on which I can't rely after I made a commitment to them. HP sold this equipment with "free" downloadable supportpacks and firmware upgrades. That deal has been made in the past and now they're coming back on it? Sorry, you just made my blacklist HP, I'd rather buy Lenovo or Dell if you don't come back on this decision really fast.

  14. There is no free market on James Dyson: We Should Pay Students To Study Engineering · · Score: 1

    Since only EU citizens can apply for these jobs and there is a EU shortage of said professions. A lot of work was shipped out to "cheap labour" countries but is now coming back because team work and quality control have proven to be too cumbersome to warrant the lower price. The people capable of doing these jobs don't exist in the EU, since these jobs often require experience with new technologies and if there was no work in it, nobody learned or got experience with the new stuff. As far as the free market goes, that means that restricting these jobs to EU only people and the big myth that off shoring would be so much cheaper have killed the market and wages are rising again for certain professions. The price will go up so much, that most companies won't be able to afford it and either they will not hire and struggle, or outsource longer, delaying the economy and not solving anything for the local job market on short term. So, no free market and the EU governments have to step in to fix this.

  15. Certain hints in medival texts on Astronomers Investigating Unknown Object That Hit the Earth In 773 AD · · Score: 1

    Medieval texts are both full of truth and full of utter bollocks. History and especially scientific history from around that era is scarce and subjective at best. Unless they can give actual examples that are clearly interpretable only one way, I don't think it should be taken seriously.

  16. Never mind the questions, mind the initial test on Half of US Nuclear Missile Wing Implicated In Cheating · · Score: 1

    Why bother what the questions are if half of the people taking them are cheating? Why did they get the job in the first place? What tests did they have to pass to get the job? How is it possible that half of the people that are supposed to be 100% honest and dependable get implicated in cheating? We can't afford to have this happen with the people that are supposed to handle such a responsible job. Until this is absolutely clear, new test methods have been devised and retesting has been done, world peace is in trouble.

  17. Can MicroSoft guarantee compatibility then? on LibreOffice 4.2 Busts Out GPU Mantle Support and Corporate IT Integration · · Score: 2

    MicroSoft can't guarantee compatibility with a lot of formats either, including older versions of their own formats. Any major upgrade or change is going to give compatibility and training/skill issues, regardless of what vendor you had or will go to. Sure, it'd be really nice if OpenOffice and/or LibreOffice would actually be able to fully work with at least current MicroSoft formats without messing up some of the formatting some of the time, but if you're looking beyond that, you'll be fine once you've migrated.

  18. Not for Solaris on Oracle Broadens Legal Fight Against Third-party Solaris Support Providers · · Score: 2

    Solaris isn't open source anymore. I doubt they download Solaris sources from RedHat?

  19. Duh it's Chicago on Open Data Tells NYC Residents Where the Rats Are · · Score: 1

    Did you know even some *humans* live there in the wilderness? Even though it looks like a ghost town, if you look carefully, you can sometimes still find a home that still has someone living in it.

  20. It's not just reading, it's writing too on Sniffing and Decoding NRF24L01+ and Bluetooth LE Packets For Under $30 · · Score: 2

    If you can intercept the traffic, you can also take over control over the peripheral and write. Once you control someones mousepointer, you suddenly have a lot more power, no?

  21. Illegal in some countries on Mozilla Is Mapping Cell Towers and WiFi Access Points · · Score: 1

    I do hope they realize this isn't legal in quite a few countries. Since combining WiFi AP mac addresses, SSIDs and geographical location can be used to locate people that make use of these APs, some countries legally treat this information as private, even though it can be "freely acquired from a public road". Google has been having legal trouble in several European countries for this already and I don't think Mozilla would want to have the same thing happen to them.

  22. Not based on hashes on BitTorrent's Bram Cohen Unveils New Steganography Tool DissidentX · · Score: 1

    Hashes are *always* one way. So you can't ever decrypt something that you only have a hash from. The best you can do is compare the hash to a hash of something you have as well and see if the hashes are the same. Unless you've chosen an algorithm that is known to have a lot of collisions, you can be fairly certain that your original text is probably the same thing as the other person's original text if the hashes are identical. Encrypting something with hashes so others can read it therefor doesn't work and this can't be based on "cryptographic hashes"

  23. That's not how it works on Man Jailed For Refusing To Reveal USB Password · · Score: 1

    It is up to you to decide if you may or may not be incriminating yourself. You are presumed innocent until proven guilty by a court of law. Anything you say can and will be used against you. Therefore, saying nothing is *always* the best defence. Ask any lawyer about that.

    Unless they can prove without a doubt that that USB sticks holds evidence, they can't prove you are obstructing justice. If they can already prove without a doubt that there's evidence on that stick, they don't need the contents any more and they already have their proof, so you're not obstructing either because they already have the evidence.

  24. not mag stripe data on Target Admits Data Breach May Have Up To 110 Million Victims · · Score: 2

    They got full data, much more than was on the mag stripes. The whole database of customers including their address data and all that has been stolen. Mag stripes don't hold all the information described here so there must be a database that has been broken in to.

  25. Bull crap on Australian Team Working On Engines Without Piston Rings · · Score: 1

    Model airplane engines don't have piston rings because those would be cost prohibitive, not because it's better technology. Model airplane engines wear extremely fast, have a low efficiency when you compare the burn energy to the output of motion and are extremely polluting.