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User: DriveDog

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  1. power-off mysteries on Big Red Button Disasters? · · Score: 1

    I was working for a state agency in the process of moving buildings. The HP mini and associated stuff in the typical raised-floor room, along with us machine servants, were the last to leave the old building. The new tenants couldn't wait to start banging around the rest of the building, creating new office spaces, etc. One day I was talking to my boss in the computer room, backing towards the door... no, she shouted before my shoulder could quite reach Big Red. Every morning for a week we came in to find the mini working fine but having been powered off for several hours during the wee hours. WTF? Turns out the construction people had been shutting off ALL power (which did not include the outlets in the computer room but did include the computer room's A/C). Soon after, the CPU would overheat and turn itself off until after the room had cooled back down. I should mention that we did have an environmental chart recorder but that it had just run out of paper and since we were about to move... Who had wired the A/C into the ordinary circuits? Dunno. Told them to stop turning off that circuit. We thought we'd be OK for a few more weeks. But we came in one morning to find everything off. We had a big line conditioner but no UPS. Cabling between the conditioner and the equipment was secure, but the conditioner was plugged into a non-twist-lock outlet on the wall. Some overzealous worker had banged on the opposite side of that wall hard enought to dislodge the clock, which, you guessed it, was positioned just above the outlet to which the conditioner was attached. Oops. Tune in next week to read about playing network Doom shortly after its release with an exec from another department, former CIA, who apparently didn't see enough action while there.

  2. Just marketing... on Comcast CEO Shows Off Superfast Modem · · Score: 1

    ...instead of lowering the price of 1-3 Mb service or extending the availability of broadband further out into rural areas. Or, as others have mentioned, allowing continuous use at the bitrate billed.

  3. no right on Verizon Claims Free Speech Over NSA Wiretapping · · Score: 1

    Let's just go back and ask "the Framers" if they intended the Bill of Rights to apply to corporations in any way.

  4. Re:Traditional Media is dieing on PC World Editor Resigns When Ordered Not to Criticize Advertisers · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yep. So is spelling.

  5. Danger. Don't do it. on UK Voters Want To Vote Online · · Score: 1

    Voting anywhere but a carefully observed polling place is bad news. It would be all too easy to sell votes if someone could look over your shoulder or receive a print-screen of your picks. Currently it is (assumed to be) difficult for anyone to verify for whom someone voted, therefore anyone selling votes can easily lie. No one will buy many votes when they can't be sure of what they're buying. Online voting: Bad.

  6. Re:Series of tubes is a good metaphor on A Succinct Definition of the Internet? · · Score: 1

    Yes, but I would propose "transportation system," including trains on railways, ships on water, aircraft in air, autos & trucks on roads, etc. since that demonstrates a wide variety of means of moving something from here to there. Or maybe FedEx/UPS/etc, where your packet could be moved via truck, airplane, ship, etc., and all you care about is that it arrives within a certain time frame, the cost, and that it arrives intact.

  7. Why let them hide? on Andersen Vs. RIAA Counterclaims Challenged · · Score: 1

    RIAA and MPAA are the teeth of the members. Why let them hide behind these fronts? It appears the major labels supporting RIAA are EMI, Sony BMG, Universal, and Warner. They understand money, and being deprived of it.

  8. Re:Cheaper than satellites on Airships to Patrol Venezuela's Skies · · Score: 1

    Lots of people are talking about seeing and shooting down blimps. Dirigibles designed to be seen and carry ads have to fly low. Airships designed as camera platforms for small areas (football fields) might as well fly low. Blimps designed for surveillance or as ISP transceivers can fly high enough that they can't easily be hit with rifles and appear very small to the naked eye. If low-flying satellites at several hundred miles can resolve down to grapefruit size, cheaper cameras on blimps at 10 miles can easily do much better.

  9. Re:Does anyone know.. on Thompson Stifled by Take Two Suit · · Score: 1

    Isn't there a nonviolent soap he could get into? Or maybe game shows--that's it! The Price Is Right!

  10. CONTROL on SCO Chairman Fights to Ban Open Wireless Networks · · Score: 1

    The cone of silence must not be working. KAOS rules! Where's the outrate over the implicit assumption that the Internet should be "in control" ?

  11. Re:Ah come on... on SCO Chairman Fights to Ban Open Wireless Networks · · Score: 1

    Banning children might fly in, say, Paris, but not in Utah, of all places. Without all the kids to chase around, wives of polygamists might have time to think about their situation. Can't have that, noooooo.

  12. Re:First Post! on Legislation To Overhaul US Patent System · · Score: 1

    Yep, have to agree also. The only thing that threatens some of the ridiculous patents now (VoIP, for instance) is that one can usually find prior art. There's no way, between pharmaceutical and telecom and megasoftware companies, that any law reforming patents in a positive way is going to pass. The most meaningful and useful things to do now are 1) increase staff and professionalism and pay at the PTO, and 2) stop granting patents for obviously stupid things like Amazon's "one-click."

  13. perhaps they'll discover on The World's Longest Tunnel · · Score: 1

    ...remnants of the Cold War spy/defector transit tunnel the US built (for many $Billions) back in the 50s. It had narrow guage rails (18") and electric power, and was "upgraded" during the Reagan era, becoming a means for delivery of TLBMs (tunnel-launched ballistic missiles) utilizing a special version of the dense-pack doctrine known as cl*st*r-*u*k. The only part still operational is the communications-intercept relay, whereby CIA obtains from the NSA conversations captured from Russians who know they're bugged saying things a particular former NSC member has requested to justify policies whose other rationales have long since been debunked. Ironically, the potential for public disclosure of the old tunnel and its current use will ultimately "derail" plans for a new trans-Bering tunnel, because General Lockhallichtel Corporation staffs and equips the state-of-the-art Alaskan-side listening station, and the new tunnel would be operated instead by the energy concern Bam-Exom, the respective Boards of Directors' makeup being slightly different.

  14. they're pulling farther ahead on Only 244 Genuine Windows Vista's Sold in China · · Score: 1

    No wonder it costs less to make stuff in China. Not only do they pay workers peanuts and trash the environment, but they refuse to expend resources on counterproductive software. US employers should get a clue and stop spending money on shrink-wrapped software.

  15. Re:nerd factor on CS Programs Changing to Attract Women Students · · Score: 2, Funny

    Wouldn't shifting the emphasis away from programming skills in the CS program begin to crowd the MIS program?

  16. lack of DRM's not a good excuse, but maybe art is on Return of the Vinyl Album · · Score: 1

    DRM, from a CD? Take the analog output from a good CD player, digitize it, there's no DRM or anything else but music, and it's a lot better recording than the output from any machine playing vinyl. Unless we're all implanted with digital receivers to replace our ears, there'll always be some point at which the analog output from any recording medium can be captured. Records are fun and interesting. So are wax cylinders, magnetic wire recorders, Lear Jet stereos (8 track tape players), and even clay cylinders (jugs, pots, whatever), some of which could theoretically be encoded with ancient sounds. Fun doesn't equal performance. Try learning some old Mesopotamian language from spinning pottery. We've lost a lot of art (covers) since 1981. Perhaps retailers (are there still any?) could find a niche selling CDs in special LP-sized covers. Give them some funky fold-outs so they're not convenient to reproduce by scanning and downloading, and there you are.

  17. Re:Canada? Why not anywhere else in the world? on Internet Radio May Stream North to Canada · · Score: 1

    Why not the Bahamas or Mexico or some other place in Central America or the Caribbean? I realize that many don't have the infrastructure and/or connectivity, but some surely do...?

  18. Slashdotters are not representative... on Dealing With Venom on the Web · · Score: 1

    of the population. People here are more likely to listen to dissenters and read comments from the outliers, embrace them even, than the general population. Yet still I see complaints about what seems to me the "tyranny of the majority." Sure, the /. system would work fine for discussions among more typical groups, so long as you never want to hear a minority opinion or pesky facts that sink the majority conclusions.

  19. Re:ARGH! on Solar Power-Cell Breakthrough · · Score: 1

    What?!?!??! And create a shortage of matter? Are you MAD???

  20. Re:ARGH! on Solar Power-Cell Breakthrough · · Score: 1

    Au contraire. The sooner the improvements, the lesser the damage. No one with any sense claims we can turn it around in a few years. But global warming wasn't caused by passing some sharp "tipping point." Less CO2 tomorrow means less effect later this century. And exactly because the effect is so long-lived the payback will occur for many years. Payback for either our sins or our virtues TODAY.

  21. Re:Off. The. Grid. on Solar Power-Cell Breakthrough · · Score: 1

    When a significant percentage of "customers" are producing power, they may still receive credit for what they feed into the grid, but the power company will charge separately for electricity and grid usage. I suspect some already do, but I don't know. Part of the service they'll provide will be energy storage (electrolyze water, pump water back behind a dam, etc). People in population-dense areas will pay the company for energy they stored, while people with extra space may decide to store their own.

  22. this finding explains... on 48% of Americans Reject Evolution · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    why the current administration almost won two elections.

  23. Re:Completely Offtopic on RIAA Can't Have Defendant's Son's Desktop · · Score: 1

    You forgot one... between being happy and being homosexual it meant being a drunk.

  24. fair use and parts of works on Students Sue Anti-Plagiarism Service · · Score: 1

    Some people will do anything for a buck, and then defend whatever sleaziness it entails. I bet these guys' parents work for Macrovision. Not that I think plagiarists should get away with it. Unfortunately, those with the means can just buy a term paper rather than copy one. Where's the Gestapo cracking down on that business? GWB paid them off? Or is that another service offered by the paper-copying detectives? It would make sense, profit-wise, to lower the boom on copying, drive more cheaters to buy papers, and then sell to them.

    I suspect that such a "service" as TurnItIn would fair better claiming fair use if they merely kept bits and pieces of works submitted for future comparison than if they used the whole documents. Still sounds like shaky ground, if my understanding of fair use is reasonably accurate.

  25. product? on Microsoft Segments Linux "Personas" · · Score: 1

    Perhaps a general solution would be to improve the product. S'pose they'd pay me to let them in on that secret?