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User: DrChandra

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Comments · 46

  1. Re:Standard practice on Faster-Than-Light Particle Results To Be Re-Tested · · Score: 1

    Yes, but due to the nature of the experiment, the announcement arrives BEFORE the confirmation. It's already about to be confirmed, just wait for it.

  2. Re:Time for your head to explode. on Floating Nuclear Power Plant Seized By Court · · Score: 1

    Wait, you forgot the part where the oil spill is RADIOACTIVE. Can't leave that out.

  3. Re:Wait, what? on Massachusetts Lottery Broken · · Score: 1

    But it involves handing around money, which is a game that tends to reward people who are good at math.

  4. Ebola Next on New Virus Jumps From Monkeys To Lab Workers · · Score: 1

    Wow, yeah, gene therapy, that's great. Who is going to need it if we are all dead? Read "The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston, and you'll then know why this is terribly bad news.

  5. Going, Going ... on Netflix Deflects Rage Over Price Increase · · Score: 1

    'To most people, it's a latte or two,'

    I don't drink latte, and that's two per month, not just once. This could have been done gradually. Sixty percent is too much on one step.

    I cut back from three disks to one to make up for the last price hike. Now they leave me no alternative but to cut off streaming or DVDs. I think I'll just cancel the whole thing, since I've found that I have a hard time being interested in their content, lately."New Releases" is full of yawn most of the time.

  6. Dead on arrival on Google eBooks-Integrated E-reader Out On Sunday · · Score: 1

    No audio, so it can't double as an MP3 player like Kindle. You can't use it to read audio books, which is a great thing to do while driving the car. Amazon downloads Audible.com books directly via Wifi into Kindle.

    I like the better display, and the Wifi download, and the SD card slot.

    I'd like it more if I could be sure it's running Android, like the Nook, so I can maintain the OS after they stop doing so. I see some GPL, but can it be built and installed on the device?

    Sorry, but it's missing some of the key things that Kindle has, so it doesn't compete well, at least not for me.

    If I'm wrong about any of these facts, blame the website, where they don't seem to like going into much detail. Oh, and buy an 's' once in a while will you? A plural word like "Products" is what we expect when referring to more than one Product, Feature or Specification. Bad English isn't stylish, it's annoying.

  7. Three Hand Actions? on Future Actions Predicted From Brain Activity · · Score: 1

    So, what they invented here is an extremely expensive way to cheat at Rock, Paper, Scissors?

  8. Subject Matter on Why the New Guy Can't Code · · Score: 1

    Perhaps the new guy would be fine if he were writing code on a subject he has some experience with. It is possible to have loads of experience, to be able to pass the technical interview for legitimate reasons, and them be placed in a position that requires a lot of specific subject knowledge that they don't have. For example, you can hire a good embedded engineer into a place like Ford motors, and watch them fail to write anything useful because they don't know the engine control subject matter. Put them on networking issues, developing network routers (where they came from), and they are OK. Same embedded experience you asked for, completely different subject matter.

  9. Re:i call bullshit on The Stanford Class That Built Apps and Made Fortunes · · Score: 1

    Try to look at the bright side: At least there is one classroom full of students who are now less likely to wind up on the welfare roles after they graduate.

  10. Fails Basic Math Smell Test on Star Wars MMO Estimated To Cost $100M · · Score: 1

    Breakeven possibly as low as 350,000 subscribers? Spending $100M, that means they expect each user to spend an average of $285.71 on the game. Wha? Even at 500,000, it's $200 per player.

  11. Better Efficiency on Greenpeace Says the Internet Emits Too Much CO2 · · Score: 1

    Did they subtract the amount of CO2 that doesn't get emitted because people are sending emails, planning better driving routes, shopping online and telecommuting?

  12. Murphy's Law on Elderly Georgian Woman Cuts Armenian Internet · · Score: 1

    In the continuing worldwide game of rock-paper-scissors, backhoe beats cable every time. Thanks go to Georgia for reminding us how wide the definition of "backhoe" is.

  13. Tinfoil Hat Time! on Nuclear Crisis Stopped Time In Japan · · Score: 1

    OK now we know why Al Qaeda set off their nuclear bomb under the Pacific Ocean to start the earthquakes to begin with: They wanted to take the nuclear power plant offline so they can skew the system clocks to perform a COMPUTER HACK ATTACK on all the computers in Japan! See how it all lines up? I HAS to be a plan!

    Next the people in Japan will be rioting in the streets, calling for the ouster of the Emperor, just like Mubarak! See how this all works?

    I knew this technology stuff was a bad idea. :)

  14. Re:Know your reader on Japan Earthquake May Have Shifted Earth's Axis · · Score: 1
  15. Re:am I the only one? on Sun Produces First Cycle 24 X-Class Solar Flare · · Score: 1

    I'm with ya bro. I used to work on a product called the "Lunar Flare", so I was thinkin hardware too.

  16. Real Men on 'Death By GPS' Increasing In America's Wilderness · · Score: 1

    Real men do not stop and ask directions, we trust our maps and our navigational equipment. Our task is to muddle through, no matter how bad it gets. Turning back after having invested so much time and energy to get to the end of this road we are on is to admit defeat. This road we travel may start out looking good. It may give every indication that it will lead to where we want to go. Its features may dwindle as we go along, like our relationship to our spouse tends to, but we cling to our plan, our course, our commitment, because it is our duty. Our vehicle is our trusted war horse, and will take us through any terrain. The fact that we eventually wind up in a situation we cannot cope with is of secondary concern. Too bad if we drive over the cliff. We will make camp at the bottom, and sally forth again in the morning, refreshed anew. Cowboy up!

  17. Re:Oldest file? on What's the Oldest File You Can Restore? · · Score: 1

    This isn't even a challenge. Microsoft Windows is constantly producing damaged files that are only minutes old. I should use it as a source of entropy.

  18. I don't get it on Google Earth Used To Predict Electrical Problems · · Score: 1

    So I can use google earth to find out why my power is out?

  19. Re:A 'leap-hour' in about 600 years on Vote To Eliminate Leap Seconds · · Score: 1

    The size of the problem is only part of the problem. The amount of time we spend adjusting the clocks and checking them
    is the other part of the problem. A leap minute means we don't have to monitor and adjust so often, yet we are never
    more than a minute away from celestial time. A leap second means too much adjusting. I leap hour means our clocks will eventually irritate us with their inaccuracy relative to the sun.

  20. Re:Wait on Vote To Eliminate Leap Seconds · · Score: 1

    Wait a minute! Wait a minute, I have an idea ... Gimme a minute here ...

  21. Re:Don't just take this lying down, IMO on DJB Announces 44 Security Holes In *nix Software · · Score: 1

    I don't think twenty-five is unreasonable. Perhaps the students really didn't understand the subject matter. Look at the problem in the jpegtoavi notice letter. It was an array overflow bug. The question is: Is it possible to write a program which will find these problems in software automatically? How many overflows does the program find per hour? Can it be improved? It seems to me that a requirement of 25 holes is high enough to fail anyone who tries to do this assignment manually.

    I remember when the Samba group received such a notice. Not only did they fix the problem, but they searched the rest of their code for similar patterns. They found other overflows, and fixed them. Parts of the search were done with automated tools.

    Look at it like the setiathome search. Collect raw data. Search it for possible hits, and write better qualifications for them. Keep refining the filter until the required number of solid hits are found.

    The key to security is the speed which holes are found, and whether that rate is higher than the hole-finding rate of the exploiters. If the students didn't focus on that, use automation, and try to maximize the rate, they should fail. It's the heart of the problem.