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User: kilodelta

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  1. I can't wait on Could Betelgeuse Go Boom? · · Score: 1

    Never got to see a bright supernova but I do lament the loss of Orion. I chose Orion as part of my business name, and the logo even includes the three central stars: Mintaka, Al Nilam and Al Nitak. Got to love the old Arabic names of things.

  2. Good luck on How To Manage Hundreds of Thousands of Documents? · · Score: 1

    When I worked for the state Attorney General's office as I.T. Director a request came into I.T. that immediately gave me an upset stomach. The request was for all documents on the server that contained the word "lead" as in the chemical element Pb. The issue was that the word lead and the element share the same spelling.

    I kicked in and wrote an app that generated a web list on the fly and had clickable links so the documents could be examined and then marked as part of discovery.

    I also brought in three Xerox 490's. Those were the hardware part of the document management system. I don't know if they ever got the servers for it but at least they had the gear. In the meantime I suggested using meta-data in filenames.

  3. Re:Cue postgres fan bois on Has MySQL Forked Beyond Repair? · · Score: 1

    Nah, it was MS-SQL 7. State government is notorious for using old software.

    I agree on Oracle though - it's why I embrace MySQL and am very concerned by the current turbulence in ownership of the product.

  4. Re:Cue postgres fan bois on Has MySQL Forked Beyond Repair? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I do not trust a study done by Microsoft. I'd much prefer an independent agency. Granted, their newer product (MS-SQL 2008) might have solved some of the issues had with older.

    My fundamental issue with MS and databases is that it's just too expensive in terms of money and hardware.

  5. Re:Cue postgres fan bois on Has MySQL Forked Beyond Repair? · · Score: 2, Informative

    Say what? In my experience an MS-SQL server could NOT keep up with heavy hits for a corporate database. We had to replicate the MS-SQL tables to MySQL in order not to have to restart a server every 30 minutes.

  6. Re:Why should we care? on Voyager Clue Points To Origin of the Axis of Evil · · Score: 1

    It means we need to push both optical and radio telescopes out past the termination shock for distortion free imaging.

  7. Re:Shit on Cola Consumption Can Lead To Muscle Problems · · Score: 2, Informative

    No kidding. Even at my heaviest consumption I went through less than a liter a day. Now I don't drink commercially produced soft drinks all that much, it's one maybe once in a very great while. I've gotten adept at making limeade, iced tea, etc. using real sugar instead of HFCS.

  8. Interestingly enough on Top 10 Disappointing Technologies · · Score: 1

    My Dell XPS M140 has a FireWire port on it (IEEE-1394 in the non Apple world).

    I've never, ever used the port. It also has an S-Video input port but never used that either. Only thing I use is the XD/SD/MMC card reader.

  9. Only proves on Why Linux Is Not Yet Ready For the Desktop · · Score: 1

    Linux is indeed not ready for the desktop/laptop without. Let me qualify that a bit. Unless you've got a boat load of money behind the project, you'll never get a Desktop Linux worth anything.

    This means there would have to be a nominal charge for a Linux distro that is PROFESSIONALLY written.

    But until such time the closest thing we get is the Mac OS-X which uses a highly customized BSD kernel.

    On the server side Linux rocks. On Debian apt-get and dpkg are awesome. But servers do vastly different things, like email, web, authentication, etc. And I note, most of the packages are thoroughly vetted on the server products.

  10. Hasn't Guatemala been a shithole for decades? on YouTube Video Sends Guatemala Into Crisis · · Score: 1

    Growing up a neighbor and his family had recently emigrated from Guatemala to the U.S.

    Nice family, I was friends with their son Jorge. Even as a kid he told stories of what went on in Guatemala. Not nice.

    Latin America in general is a shithole by U.S. design.

  11. What a shock on Dormitory Turned Into Huge Color Display · · Score: 1

    This puts the students at Brown University turning the SciLi into a giant tetris game to shame.

  12. At this point on Baby Monitors Killing Urban Wi-Fi · · Score: 1

    I think 802.11 based devices outnumber the analog uses of the 2.4GHz band. The only things that should be in that band are 802.11, microwave ovens and ISM and that's all.

    Make the baby monitor makers either shift to DECT, or drop down to 900MHz again. I don't get the shift up, 900MHz has reasonable propagation characteristics compared to 2.4GHz.

  13. Re:Perfect! on Warrantless GPS Tracking Is Legal, Says WI Court · · Score: 1

    Good point! The reality is many of the police vehicles and even radios already have GPS in them.

    I was watching Southland and it struck me, when they'd call in they'd say "I need backup at my location". Then it dawned on me, dispatch knows where they are but they also get a GPS fix too.

  14. Re:New law? on Warrantless GPS Tracking Is Legal, Says WI Court · · Score: 1

    But your vehicle is private property. Is it that the inside of the vehicle only is yours?

  15. My first apartment on Tata Building $7,800 Apartments in Mumbai · · Score: 1

    In North Providence, RI was about the size of the RK 1. Not terribly small for one person or even a couple. Now I'm in a 900sqft place. Two rooms that we really don't use much but full kitchen, dining and living rooms.

  16. Meetings: The Bane of my existence on IBM "Invents" 40-Minute Meetings · · Score: 1

    When I worked at the RI Sec State's office meetings were an inevitable waste of time. We utilized project management software, blogs, wiki's, intranet pages, full telecom systems, etc. But we still had mind numbingly boring meetings.

    It got to the point where I'd arrange to be somewhere else when I knew a meeting was scheduled.

    If there is one thing I absolutely abhor it is organizations where seat time matters.

  17. Re:My costs on Your Commuting Costs By Car Vs. Train? · · Score: 1

    Ooops, add $61. I only included the one way trip on fuel costs. Still though, since there's no real I.T. work left in the Providence, RI area I'm forced to trek to Boston.

  18. My costs on Your Commuting Costs By Car Vs. Train? · · Score: 1

    Providence to Boston both ways.

    Car note per month: $300
    Insurance per month $100
    Fuel per month (Car gets 37MPG and gas at $2.11): $61
    Maintenance $50 per month
    Lost time due to traffic: 2 hours per day, 43.3 hours per month at a billable rate of $80/hr = $3,464

    Total monthly: $3,975

    Train pass: $250 a month.

  19. The best way to steal money on Pentagon Lost Billions, Pennies At a Time · · Score: 1

    Is a penny or fraction of a penny at a time. Look at how many banks got hit by that scheme.

  20. In esssence on "Miraculous" Stem Cell Progress Reported In China · · Score: 1

    Under the Bush administration U.S. trained the scientists but restricted the availability of stem cell lines.

    The Chinese then walked in and stole the talent.

  21. Garbage Collection on Old-School Coding Techniques You May Not Miss · · Score: 1

    The big problem with Windows applications today isn't so much garbage collection as it is bloated applications.

    Those advanced coding platforms might wipe the snot from your nose, but they still can't build tight code.

    E.g. Firefox with a number of add-ons consumes 123K of memory. Google Chrome - 19K. And lets not talk about the top RAM consumer on my system, iTunes.

  22. Still using IE6 on IE8 Released As Critical Update For XP · · Score: 0

    Why, because IE7 sucked! And to be honest I use Firefox or Chrome for almost all my web browsing.

  23. A better way to do it on Handmade vs. Commercially Produced Ethernet Cables · · Score: 1

    Just put T568A jacks on either end of the solid strand cable, and use smaller length patch cords to tie things together.

  24. Here is the scary part on Drug Company Merck Drew Up Doctor "Hit List" · · Score: 2, Interesting

    There are tons of drugs out there where pharma has suppressed negative research. Recall if you will the drug phenylpropanolamine aka Dimettap. Worked great on me, but I'm male. It had a nasty habit of killing women who were in that age bracket where they were most fecund. How many years did it take for that drug to get yanked off the market?

  25. Re:wrong on Gamefly Complains of Poor Treatment From USPS · · Score: 1

    I've participated in the Price Waterhouse study of mail accuracy of delivery. So I'd get reports on how accurate my region was compared to others.

    Turns out the New England region in general is something on the order of 94% accurate on first try. That's pretty amazing when you think about it.

    The study involved sending and receiving test pieces of mail (from #10 envelope to large envelopes and packages) and logging send/receive dates with PW.