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User: sk999

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Comments · 211

  1. Re:Undetected second turn on How Satellite Company Inmarsat Tracked Down MH370 · · Score: 1

    It seems likely that the turn to the South was far enough West that it was out of range of any radar. In fact, the entire flight path has the curious property that it avoids passing over the territory of any country except Malaysia itself. Everyone want to imagine some onboard disaster cause the aircraft to turn back, but when you look at the path actually taken by the plane, it sure looks like it was calculated and premeditated.

  2. Re:Bad web design on The Rise and Fall of Supersymmetry · · Score: 1

    Web design was copied from /. beta. Surely you only read /. from an iPhone?

  3. Re:We all knew it was coming... on Bug In the GnuTLS Library Leaves Many OSs and Apps At Risk · · Score: 4, Informative

    Just downloaded the latest patched source code. Here's the summary:

    find . -name '*.c' | xargs grep strlen | wc -l
    522

    find . -name '*.c' | xargs grep strcat | wc -l
    44

    Just as flawed as ever.

  4. CR - Credibility? on Consumer Reports Says Tesla Model S Is Best Overall Vehicle · · Score: 2

    Consumer Reports has been reviewing cars forever, and I relied on them for my first two car purchases. Then I zeroed in on a Jeep (needed to get into the back country) and CR went out of its way to expressly say "DO NOT BUY THIS VEHICLE". I bought it anyway, and it was the best I've ever owned. Repair record was not perfect but still better than all those previously highly recommended vehicles, and the ergonomics were superior to anything I've have before or since. If that same model were still made today I'd buy another.

    If you are looking to buy a new vehicle, ignore CR.

  5. Just buy another on Slashdot Asks: Do You Label Your Tech Gear, and If So, How? · · Score: 1, Insightful

    We all lose stuff. The real question is what inconvenience was caused. If it is not very high, just buy another and move on. It might irk you if you think it's expensive, but after a while the cost will fade into the background. Not worth obsessing over.

  6. Re:Excellent Idea! on Naming All Lifeforms On Earth With Hash Functions · · Score: 1

    "Sorry dude, under the new naming convention you are: human.nerd.slashdot.sk999"

    I think I just said that!

  7. Excellent Idea! on Naming All Lifeforms On Earth With Hash Functions · · Score: 1

    From now on, please refer to me as "ed35073e47a38fbbcc66c1c69058b9c3"

    This system has more uses beyond categorizing life on earth. My favorite movie line: "77b0ba27c2fcfa0e02793671c27afb38"

  8. Re:Thin. on FLOSS Codecs Emerge Victorious In Wikimedia Vote · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "If you know anyone who cannot legally play an MP4 video, I would like to meet them."

    How is someone to know if they are or are not legally allowed to play MP4?

  9. Re:Beta sucks! on Designer Seeds Thought To Be Latest Target By Chinese · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Threats are one thing. Action is another Is it possible for a website redesign to be so bad that people actually stop reading it?

    Yes. I used to read Yahoo Sports every day. The latest redesign was so bad that it was just unreadable. I no longer bother with it.

    Slashdot is heading down the same path.

  10. Re:Paging Dr. Editorial Standards on Ask Slashdot: An Open Source PC Music Studio? · · Score: 1

    Dang - these are the kind of incongrenuities that I like to point out. Well done!

  11. Re:IEFBR14 - Mainframe Null Program on Ask Slashdot: What's the Most Often-Run Piece of Code -- Ever? · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This gets my vote. Ran it many times myself.

    As an aside, this program, (which did absolutely nothing and, in binary format, was originally only 2 bytes long) had the dubious reputation of being the shortest program with a bug. It failed to clear the register that returned the error code. Oops.

  12. How Long Is "Long Enough"? on Why a Cure For Cancer Is So Elusive · · Score: 1

    'Given a LONG ENOUGH life, cancer will eventually kill you ..."

    So how long is that? It seems that Ming the Clam wasn't there yet.
    http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/worlds-oldest-clam-killed-scientists-507-years-old
    "World's oldest clam KILLED BY SCIENTISTS at 507 years old"

  13. Re:There are a lot of people eating their hats on Chromebooks Have a Lucrative Year; Should WinTel Be Worried? · · Score: 1

    "The original idea of netbooks was something closer to what Chromebooks are."

    The original "netbook" (which wasn't called that at the time), the eee PC 700, was a breakthrough in many areas - small size, SSD, low price, innovative interface. Once energy-efficient Atom chips became available, it also could boast long battery life. Most "apps" involved simply launching a web browser with a particular URL, which is similar to what a Chromebook aspires to. As far as I could tell, the most compelling feature was "CHEAP", also a feature of most Chromebooks.

    A weakness of the original eee PC was its choice of the Xandros Linux distribution, which was descended from Corel Linux and had no mindshare amongst Linux users in general. Ultimately that may be a weakness of Chromebooks as well, even though Google is a much bigger company.

    As far as why the original netbook market shrank, it was probably a combination of factors, but there is one thing we should not lose sight of - at the time netbooks first appeared, small mainstream notebook computers (a.k.a. ultra-portable computers) were sold at premium prices. Think $1K-$2K and above. Netbooks shattered that pricing strategy and are at least partially responsible for all the much more affordable computing devices (tablets, Chromebooks, whatever) that we now have today.

  14. No complaints here on A Year After Ban On Loud TV Commercials: Has It Worked? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    My analog TV died just before the switch to all-digital. I never replaced it. Been CALM ever since.

  15. On Admitting to Screwups on Ask Slashdot: To Publish Change Logs Or Not? · · Score: 1

    The OP asks "Can you provide PUBLICLY AVAILABLE REFERENCES on the pros and cons of open and honest communication of changes and bug fixes, especially in commercial environments?"

    Do any such references exist? I don't know of any.

    However, I can attest to having watched one vendor who screwed up multiple times [not a software project] in some pretty major ways, and even though we gnashed our teeeth and wrung our hands, the up-fornt honesty of this vendor to admitting to mistakes (which were ultimately fixed) was actually a big positive in its favor.

    Honest communications, no matter how negative they might seem at the time, do wonders in building confidence between a vendor and a customer.

  16. Rotary Phones on The Dismantling of POTS: Bold Move Or Grave Error? · · Score: 1

    My POTS is much more reliable than the electric power - can't remember the last time, if ever, that it was down. It even continued working when a large tree fell on the line. However, if the power is out, the only phone that works with it is my rotary phone. That thing is even more indestructible than POTS and will survive any natural disaster.

    However, I'm still waiting for the Picturephone, http://www.corp.att.com/attlabs/reputation/timeline/70picture.html

  17. Re:They should be much more paranoid. on How Big Companies Can Hamper the Surveillance Infrastructure · · Score: 1

    "They should be encrypting the data on disk, on network connections ..."

    Let's see how that paranoia thing works in practice.

    "Microsoft's Azure service hit by expired SSL certificate"
    http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9237076/Microsoft_39_s_Azure_service_hit_by_expired_SSL_certificate

    Hmm, needs more work.

  18. Re:Horrible mess on Microsoft To Can Skype API; Third-Party Products Will Not Work · · Score: 1

    The SKYPE API was a HORRIBLE MESS, I bet at Microsoft they did not want to touch it, just let it die.

    Good point. MS would never create anything so ... oh wait.

    http://www.gamedev.net/topic/289219-api-basics/

    "The WINDOWS API is technically referred to as Win32, and is a HORRIBLE MESS ..."

    Never mind, move along, nothing to see ...

  19. CNCDA - Pure as Driven Snow on Car Dealers Complain To DMV About Tesla's Website · · Score: 5, Informative

    It is really shameful that Tesla is misleading customers with deceptive advertising about its electric cars. Here is a part of the complaint:

    "... the Association says that purchase prices on Tesla's website routinely include a $7,500 federal TAX CREDIT, despite the fact that the Congressional Budget Office states that only 20 percent of shoppers qualify for the alternative vehicle credit."

    None of the members of the California New Car Dealer's Association would ever stoop so low. Especially GENERAL MOTORS dealers. Especially since, according to this report: http://cncda.org/resources/10-20-08_CNCDA_Ltr-GMAC_CEO_Alvaro_deMolina.pdf GENERAL MOTORS dealers represent over 25% of CDCDA's members. Surely none of them would ...

    Oh wait.

    http://www.chevrolet.com/volt-electric-car.html

    "Chevrolet 2014 Volt"
    "Net price shown includes the FULL $7,500 TAX CREDIT"

    Never mind, move along, nothing to see.

  20. Re:Retain your lawyers now on IBM Promises $1B Investment In Linux Development · · Score: 1

    From SCO's original lawsuit:
    ---
    94. Over time, IBM made a very substantial financing commitment to improperly put SCO’s confidential and proprietary information into Linux, the free operating system. On or about May 21, 2001 IBM Vice President Richard Michos, stated in an interview to Independent Newspapers, New Zealand, inter alia:

            “IBM will put US $1 billion this year into Linux, the free operating system.

            IBM wants to be part of the community that makes Linux successful. It has a development team that works on improvements to the Linux kernel, or source code. This includes programmers who work in the company’s Linux technology center, working on making the company’s technology Linux-compatible.”

    That team of IBM programmers is improperly extracting and using SCO’s UNIX technology from the same building that was previously the UNIX technology center.
    ---

  21. Eliminates clutter on All-in-Ones Finally Grow Up, With Fast Graphics, SSDs, and CPUs · · Score: 3, Informative

    I bought an HP all-in-one a few years ago to replace a traditional floor tower, monitor and external speakers. With most things being built in, plus the integrated wireless, I eliminated 10 cables, 2 external boxes, and one power brick. A full-featured laptop could also have worked, but it is nice to have the big screen, and I leave it on all the time anyway.

  22. Re:Uh huh on The Steady Decline of Unix · · Score: 1

    One should probably classify BSD as "Legacy Unix" as well, since it is derived from 32V (which is AT&T Unix version 7 ported to a VAX). For several years, BSD (at Berkeley) and System V (at AT&T) were developed in parallel (part of the "Unix Wars"). Thus, Ultrix and SunOS were BSD based, while AIX and HP/UX were System V based. There was sort of a merger of System V and BSD with the release of SVR4, which begat Solaris, among others, and which soon led to Certified Unix(tm).

  23. So these must be the clowns ... on Researchers Release Tool That Can Scan the Entire Internet In Under an Hour · · Score: 1

    ... who are behind the machines hosted at umich.edu which have been attacking port 443 on my router with bogus requests and clogging my log files with messages like "peer did not return a certificate".

    Go away. Just go away.

  24. Help Editing? on Fidus Writer: Open Source Collaborative Editor For Non-Geek Academics · · Score: 2

    Help with editing your thesis?

    For my thesis I did have help - wrote everything out longhand, then had three department secretaries typing up various chapters. (This was all on IBM Selectrics with acid-free paper. Figures were outsourced to the Graphic Arts department, where professional artists did a much better job than the computer-generated junk of today.) Editing was done with liquid paper and glue.

    What is this "Latex" thing?

  25. Works OK on Limitations and All, Chromebooks Appear To Be Selling · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I picked up an Acer C7 to keep at a second office for occassional use. For what I do, Chrome OS doesn't cut it, so I installed the Chrubuntu distro in a separate partition. The only real complaint, I guess, is that the keyboard is cheap and doesn't have much "feel" to the keys. Lots of other minor complaints (Unity stinks, Gnome 3 stinks) but managed to work around them all. Wired ethernet and VGA connector for external display were used heavily (sorry Samsung, you don't have either - a big negative.) Biggest surprise was that the Celeron processor actually has decent performance.

    Having said that, my intent was actually to see if Chrome OS could be tweaked so as to do all the things I need, and the chroot'ed version of Linux may be the way to go to get new software installed. A project for the future.