Slashdot Mirror


User: andi75

andi75's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
264
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 264

  1. Re:Standards on Is The Linux Desktop In Trouble? (zdnet.com) · · Score: 1

    Great, now you just made me feel old because I remember Motif. Actually, LessTif, because Motif wasn't free software.

  2. Re:Republican morons can't be educated this reprov on Scientists Have Reduced the Forecast of Sea Level Rise Seven Times Due To Melting of the Antarctic (maritimeherald.com) · · Score: 1

    Please read up on how CFCs actually react with the Ozone in the atmosphere, and way the ozone destruction is seasonal and very dependent on atmospheric temperature. Then you'll see why the effect over Antartica is stronger than in the northern hemisphere.

    Start with your textbooks on atmospheric science (Wallace/Hobbs probably has a chapter on it), or even easier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

  3. Re: Stop focusing on the PERSON, it is IRRELEVANT on How New, Polite Linus Torvalds Points Out Bad Kernel Code (phoronix.com) · · Score: 1

    The last frontier of the open and free? Call me back when you can do this in america:

    https://www.watson.ch/schweiz/...

  4. USB-C is really nice if you embrace it. I have literally one lead I connect to my laptop when I return to my desk. Off that I get power, my other two monitors, a bunch of USB accessories, including my keyboard and mouse.

    What's your exact setup? $$$ Thunderbolt 3 hub? USB3 capable monitors with built in USB-Hub? Can you recommend anything?

    I use a (sub $100) portable USB-C hub right now for my peripheral needs, but the thing gets quite hot after a while when I plug in an external monitor. Also, the cable is rather short and I would love to hide it somewhere near the monitor instead, not right next to the laptop.

  5. Re:Venice? Not Venice, Italy. on 'Bird Scooters Are Ruining Venice' (latimes.com) · · Score: 1

    Actually, the problem is not the water. It's super easy to get around in Venice without ever setting foot on a boat. Yes, there are a lot of channels between the houses, but the city (which is quite small, if you stand at Rialto bridge, you can walk to almost any point in the city within less than 15 minutes) has about 400 bridges, so you almost never have to make any detours when going on foot.

    What makes using a scooter *very* impractical is the cobblestones. And the steps...

  6. Re:Quickly navigate whitespace on Douglas Crockford Envisions A Post-JavaScript World (infoworld.com) · · Score: 1

    What arrow keys? I navigate using ctrl-f/b/n/p or the j/k/l/; keys

  7. Re:Got bit by this 2-wks ago at latimes.com on Scammers Bite Chrome Users With Forgotten 2014 Bug (betanews.com) · · Score: 1

    Let's see, it's either ctrl(or command)-l, ctrl-c, alt-tab-tab-tab, ctrl-l, ctrl-v, enter (six key combinations probably already commited to muscle memory), or installing yet-another-extension (and we already have too many of those to keep track of, don't need another one) AND taking your hands off the keyboard.

  8. Re:Need to be adjustable on Ask Slashdot: Have You Tried a Standing Desk? · · Score: 1

    Rock climbing & bouldering. Even indoors it's much more fun than doing exercises.

  9. Re:just because the dept of ed.... on Limiting the Teaching of the Scientific Process In Ohio · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You know what? You're right.

    These sentences, found in an internet forum, have renewed my faith in humanity! Thank you!

  10. Scratch (scratch.mit.edu) on Ask Slashdot: Tools For Teaching High School Kids How To Make Games? · · Score: 4, Informative

    Check out http://scratch.mit.edu/. It sure looks like kiddy stuff at first glance, but its awesomeness cannot be described, you have to try it yourself.

    Since scratch takes care about all the nitty-gritty details, you can focus on actually *designing* good games, which is awfully hard.

  11. Re:Not Gonna Happen on EU Debates Installing a Black Box On Your Computer · · Score: 1

    > some of them have skeletons in their hard drives

    Not if they play the Chinese Version of World of Warcraft...

  12. The *consent* will be buried in the EULA on Franken Bill Would Protect Consumers Location Data · · Score: 2

    Asking for consent is absolutely meaningless. In order to get security updates, you'll have to accept the new EULA and will be forced to agree to whatever they ask.

    The only way out is to make it illegal to store any more data then is absolutely necessary (e.g. a train time table app only needs your location *now* to find the nearest station, but has no business of retaining that data) for the normal operation of the application.

  13. Re:Your Intelligence Quotient. on What Does IQ Really Measure? · · Score: 2

    Actually, it is quite correct. But it's also inefficient. Better is:

    14 * 16 is (15 - 1) * (15 + 1) is 15^2 - 1^2 and since you probably have all the square numbers memorized anyway (yes, those tables ARE useful), so 15^2 - 1 = 225 - 1 = 224 comes easy :-)

  14. Re:Not a new idea, and not a good idea. on Garry's Mod Catches Pirates the Fun Way · · Score: 1

    > I don't see how you can say that this piracy detection fails occasionally. What is your reference?

    Some games refuse to install when CD emulation software is installed on the computer. Some games refuse to run when the CD has minor scratches. Some games refuse to run if they can't reach the authentication server. Some operating systems want to be 'reactivated' when they detect one too many hardware changes.

    I don't know enough about Steam to tell you where its failure points are, but it's far from the only DRM system in town.

    If, in any of those cases, the software stopped throwing an error (which is already quite annoying) and instead started to sabotage me quietly, I'd consider legal action.

  15. Not a new idea, and not a good idea. on Garry's Mod Catches Pirates the Fun Way · · Score: 1

    The piracy detection fails occassionally, and a honest paying customer gets hurt (and probably buys less in the future, because he feels (and rightly so) that he got cheated).

  16. Re:To expensive on Europe Plans To Ban Petrol Cars From Cities By 2050 · · Score: 2

    > Google lightbulbs and mercury and see that the result comes at a (possible unacceptably high) price though.

    After following my own advice I come to the (certainly not expertly derived) conclusion that the benefits far outweight the drawbacks..It'll probably turn out very similiar for the electric vs. petrol fueled cars...

  17. Re:To expensive on Europe Plans To Ban Petrol Cars From Cities By 2050 · · Score: 1

    Google lightbulbs and mercury and see that the result comes at a (possible unacceptably high) price though.

  18. Re:Here in Europe, it's on a different day on Happy Pi Day · · Score: 1

    That would be nice, except for the annoying fact that April only has 30 days...

  19. Re:Interview on An Interview With C++ Creator Bjarne Stroustrup · · Score: 1

    There are certainly a lot of competent C++ programmers out there. But there's also a lot of less competent ones. And sometime you get one who appears to be compotent, but actually isn't. With C++, these guys can do A LOT MORE damage to your project than they could do with simpler languages, and after a few years, the project becomes an unmanageable mess that's far more expensive to maintain and extend than it should be.

  20. Re:Modern world has its priorities wrong on Tevatron To Shut Down At End of 2011 · · Score: 4, Informative

    I think it was the famous 18th century mathematician Laplace who once said "there is no military application for number theory", and less then 150 years later, its applications (cryptography) where probably one of the deciding factors for the outcome of World War II.

    I don't think we can rule out that high energy physics will give us cool stuff to play with eventually.

  21. Re:I can't wait to buy things!!! on Mac OS X 10.6.6 Introduces App Store · · Score: 1

    Actually, some people (e.g. me) already removed the CD/DVD drive from their Macbook Pro and replaced it with 2nd harddrive (because the primary SSD is maybe a bit small, especially if you're using Bootcamp as well).

    So far I'm doing just fine (I even bought MS Office as a download).

  22. Re:Cross Promoting on How Zynga's CityVille Drew 70 Million Players In Less Than a Month · · Score: 2

    Why hasn't Blizzard thought of this? Having a Protoss Carrier drop a "Bpne Fragment of the Queen of Blades" (item level 359 dagger) will instantly generate 5 million more SC2 sales...

  23. Generally awesome, transparency sucks though. on Browsing the Body · · Score: 3, Interesting

    While I think this is awesome, and biology teachers all over the world will love it, the transparency rendering is quite terrible.

    The problem is that some surfaces are rendered, while others are not, which looks very wierd. You can reproduce the effect by only displaying the skeleton and setting transparency to 50% or so.

    There are two generally accepted solutions:

    1) To a topological sort and render all triangles back to front
    2) Use a so called depth-peeling algorithm to render the scene in multiple passes

    Unfortunately, they do neither right now, but there's always hope for the next version.

    Personally, I favor 2) since you can offload all the work to the GPU. I had to implement this once for a CAD/CAM system for hearing aids (they are often custom-built, and you want to render the exterior semi-transparent so you can place the battery and electronics inside perfectly, before sending the thing to the manufacturing machine).

  24. Bah... on NASA Finds New Life (This Afternoon) · · Score: 1

    If it's based on Arsenic, it's probably not edible...

  25. Re:Rip-off on British Aircraft Carrier For Sale On Auction Site · · Score: 2

    Mod parent up. I was wondering why this article isn't tagged 'snowcrash'.