Slashdot Mirror


User: DriveDog

DriveDog's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
842
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 842

  1. Single purpose on DRM Circumvention Now Lawful For More Devices · · Score: 2

    Alton Brown once said there's only one single-purpose tool in the kitchen—the fire extinguisher. There are NO single-purpose devices in the hands of makers (yeah, I'd still say "hackers"). E-readers have been converted for all sorts of other uses. That's a rather absurd exception to the exception. For that matter, XBMC started as a re-purpose of the XBox, did it not?

  2. Re:Technology be damned! on Walmart Applies To Test Drone Use For Delivery and Inventory Checking (faa.gov) · · Score: 1

    Don't worry, if you live in Kentucky you now get to blast away at them.

  3. Inventory Checking? on Walmart Applies To Test Drone Use For Delivery and Inventory Checking (faa.gov) · · Score: 1

    Meaning watching customers headed for their cars with presumably stolen merchandise? Counting the shopping carts? Spying on RVs they allow to park there for the night?

  4. Increasing tolerance for violence on Judge: Defendant 'Had a Right' To Shoot Down Drone (wdrb.com) · · Score: 0

    Merideth and Boggs are aliases for Hatfield and McCoy.

    30 years ago I wouldn't have expected someone to blast away at an R/C aircraft just because it was over their property. Next year will it be acceptable to do that if the neighbor's jetpack hovers over?

  5. pseudoephedrine or not on The Popular Over-The-Counter Cold Medicine That Science Says Doesn't Work (forbes.com) · · Score: 1

    Nothing else taken orally works for me. PE also raises my blood pressure temporarily. That's where the warnings should lie. Making it difficult to acquire sufficient amounts to produce meth had the effect of pushing the manufacture over the border and increasing the amount of violent crime involved in smuggling it back into the US. Oh yeah, and puts me on more government lists. They'll probably put me on the no-fly list for being chronically congested.

  6. Side effect... on Mimic, the Evil Script That Will Drive Programmers To Insanity (github.com) · · Score: 1

    of a poor decision to ever allow unicode in source code files.

  7. Uh, wrong. on Does Government Science Funding Drive Innovation? (wsj.com) · · Score: 1

    Basic research is exactly what needs public funding, especially in areas where profit horizons are too far off to see. Potential profits drive private investment, so no, areas where some profit can be forecast don't need public funding. But most of these "innovations" depend on basic research that would never have been funded by those seeking profit. This guy sounds like an impractical ideologue like Milton Friedman.

  8. Too much is not yet enough on Is Too Much Choice Stressing Us Out? (theguardian.com) · · Score: 1

    In some areas, yes, there are "too many" choices, only in that the differences are immaterial and trivial. The only persistent issues I see are shipping and stocking costs for such a variety and the unlikelihood that the exact thing you might want has been reviewed by more than two people.

    I appreciate having the choices. Everyone having the same stuff, eating the same stuff, etc. gets boring. However, this isn't ultimately leading to more and more choices. Eventually, it's leading to more custom manufacturing, 3D printing, and custom mixing of very tailored goods. People will need to learn to see a few samples, imagine what they want, then describe it closely enough to have it made for them onsite, quickly.

    Consider the very simple case of house paint. There were a few places like Sherwin-Williams where you could get pretty much any color, but 50 years ago most people shopped at Sears or somewhere similar where you had a few dozen colors to choose from. It took a long time to get it perfected, but now we can easily, affordably, and quickly get any color in the spectrum.

    Don't give us less choices, give us complete control over what we can choose.

  9. Re:Best way to send out signals to other life form on Mysteriously Variable Star Causes Speculation About Dyson Sphere (slate.com) · · Score: 1

    If the signal is not an obvious message, it'll be less likely to influence the society of the recipients. Perhaps the tranmitters figure that a civilization advanced enough to interpret their message may be advanced enough to avoid destroying itself upon receipt. Or maybe the reverse—civilizations advanced enough to interpret the message are advanced enough to be a threat, so the message is a warning or designed to incite riots or something. Lesser civilizations are no threat, so no need to disrupt them by inserting information into them. The answer to the Fermi Paradox is, then, that a single civilization does exist in our galaxy, but it only takes action when it detects another to hinder the other's advance. Once we find the one, we're doomed.

  10. How many... on The Life-Saving Gifts of the World's Most Venomous Animal (newyorker.com) · · Score: 1

    ...divers does the Army have??? Maybe the Navy is running a covert jellyfish operation to get the Army out of the diving business.

  11. Re:Sharks don't kill very many people on The Life-Saving Gifts of the World's Most Venomous Animal (newyorker.com) · · Score: 1

    Over what time period? It's been trending upward lately and is higher than that, but yes, I still agree with the spirit of your statement. However, we should also be comparing the number of serious shark bites to the number of jellyfish stings with long-term consequences. There are quite a few swimmers who tangled with sharks and are now missing an arm, a foot, part of a hip, etc. So... what about the number of people who are stung and don't die but are plagued with issues for years following the sting? Does this even occur very often?

  12. Suggestion... on Volkswagen Seeks To Repair Its Image By Focusing On Electric (wired.com) · · Score: 0

    Try making reliable electronic systems. I know of no one who's bought a VW made in the last 10 years who hasn't fought with electronic engine control system gremlins. From a consumer standpoint, that's a much bigger issue, and the reason for the growing number who won't consider buying a VW.

  13. criminal charges on Volkswagen CEO Issues Apology Over Emission-Cheating Software · · Score: 1

    Criminal charges (and convictions and prison time) are the only real deterrents to such misbehavior. And not just for a scapegoat or two.

  14. reactions on India's Worrying Draft Encryption Policy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This'll just drive the use of steganography, and then the government won't even know when there ARE messages.

  15. Says they on AT&T Says Malware Secretly Unlocked Hundreds of Thousands of Phones · · Score: 1

    One man's insurgent is another man's patriot.

  16. No, no, not how it works on Apple's 16GB IPhone 6S Is a Serious Strategic Mistake · · Score: 1

    Apple doesn't satisfy its customers by providing satisfying products or services, it satisfies them by convincing them they're satisfied with whatever products or services it sells them.

  17. And it concerns... on Trademark Trolls Stops University Nicknames · · Score: 1

    ...both people who might possibly care what the nickname of UND is?

    Excellent decision by the bands who refused to vote.

  18. Re: Why not stop making new shows on Is There Too Much New Programming On TV? · · Score: 1

    Exactly. Several good shows lately have ended after a single season—not enough time for me to even tell my friends how good it is. Put people who understand and appreciate the shows in charge and dump the generic MBAs.

  19. Late late on Ask Slashdot: Storing Family Videos and Pictures For Posterity? · · Score: 1

    ...late to the party. But here's what I'd do today: Keep the S110. There's not much out there that does what it does as well while being tough and fast (to power on and shoot). Get a compact inexpensive SD-card based video camera with a reputation for reliability and durability (Canon R300 etc). Carry the pocket camera. Use the videocam when conveniently accessible or when you know to take it along. Storage, I still haven't figured out. I have a lot of analog Hi8 tapes which I'm slowly getting on DVD. I'm doing this for backup and convenient viewing. Although the tapes will deteriorate, they'll very likely outlast DVDs burned today and will deteriorate mostly gracefully (except for flaking, which so far occurs on only the lower quality blanks I used), so I will be keeping them. Copy the media on hard drives to an external every once in a while and store it in someone else's house that's kept at reasonably temperature and humidity.

  20. Not again on Amazon Proposes Dedicated Airspace For Drones · · Score: 2

    This is in some ways similar to what happened to the radio spectrum. Large swaths are only licensed to commercial enterprises to broadcast trash while amateurs got squeezed into narrow slices here and there. No. Reserve 200-300 ft along well-defined corridors for commercial delivery services and leave the rest for amateurs.

    The stuff I want from Amazon isn't going to be in stock within a 500 mile radius anyhow. I don't need tacos delivered by air.

  21. You're a little late on Ask Slashdot: Everyone Building Software -- Is This the Future We Need? · · Score: 1

    It's not going to get worse. The planet is already flooded with terrible code from both professionals and amateurs.

  22. to whom? on Netragard Ends Exploit Acquisition Program After Hacking Team Breach · · Score: 1

    "selling their technology to questionable parties" as if there were any other kind of customer paying for such.

  23. "...mimic the act of driving..."? Look down/sideways/backwards/just not ahead, yap on phone, read newspaper, & eat breakfast simultaneously? Pretend to swerve out of lane? Flip people off? Sleep? Oh, wait, UK, sorry... I'm thinking of us in the US.

  24. Wrong phones on Apple Watch Still Waiting On App Developers · · Score: 1

    Apple's (and most other "smart" watches) watch works with smart phones with pretty displays. So, exactly, why bother with a watch? Where it would make sense is paired with a compact tough smart phone with maybe an E-Ink display and no fancy GUI. Keep the phone on your hip, in your shoe, on top of your beanie. Stick a Bluetooth bone-coduction headset on, control everything with the watch, and it's now a semi-hands-free wearable system. Everyone seems to think the iPhone/Android direction is the future path. Maybe it's not. It certainly has not been for me. Problem 1: How to sell people a high-performance phone for $500 that has a minimalist and low-power display/UI + a watch for $300 to interface with it. Problem 2: Apple doesn't want to cannibalize phone sales, so they're not willing to make the watch work with other than their high end phones.

  25. Pffft! on Does Elon Musk's Hyperloop Make More Sense On Mars? · · Score: 1

    Chump change! Seriously, $6B LA to SF? Bargain! Start adding up what was and is spent on aviation infrastructure and 6B will soon look like a drop in the bucket. Such vehicles, however, only make sense on routes where there's a LOT of travel. Explains why there are fairly quick and on-time trains in the Northeast and pretty much nowhere else in the US.