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User: Schrockwell

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Comments · 32

  1. Tin foil hat solution? on Comcast Sued For Turning Home Wi-Fi Routers Into Public Hotspots · · Score: 1

    That's kind of what I was thinking. Or, if it has exposed antennas, just terminate them in a 50 ohm dummy load.

  2. A relic of spinning rust on Goodbye, Ctrl-S · · Score: 2

    Back in the day, I/O was dreadfully slow. Think about 5 1/4" and 3 1/2" floppy disks and slow hard disks, and how long it could take to save a document. I can still hear the clunking and whirring in my head as the little activity LED blinks and the operating system grinds to a halt.

    Now, with faster HDDs and even better SSDs, making "save" a separate, user-triggered operation doesn't make much sense. And with a jillion cores, you can easily offload the CPU work to do the saving to another thread so the UI isn't interrupted. Look at iOS - how many apps have a "save" button at all? It's expressly discouraged from the Human Interface Guidelines, and iOS users have been happily plugging along without it for years.

    I think the real shocker is why applications still have a 3 1/2" floppy disk as the save icon. It's just an anachronism now.

  3. Re:and how do they track users across muilt units? on Stanford Team Tries For Better Wi-Fi In Crowded Buildings · · Score: 2

    On a university network, every networked device is usually registered by its MAC address, which is tied to that student's school-wide login for tracking purposes. The university already knows everything you do. I assume the same would be true over this public WiFi architecture.

    I tried to get around this one time by spoofing my MAC with one from a library computer. THAT didn't go over so well. Since I was using the personal WiFi in my dorm room (stupid, I know), they knew exactly which network spigot it was coming from. Alarms went off all over their monitoring tools. Luckily I had a friend in IT who saw it, laughed, and told me to not do it again.

  4. First astronauts to land in 2025 on Mars One Selects Second Round Candidate Astronauts · · Score: 5, Informative

    From TFIndiegogo: "This 2018 mission will be the first in preparation for human landing. The first Mars One crew is scheduled to land in 2025, with additional crew landing every two years. Before that, Mars One will have established a habitable, sustainable outpost via multiple missions scheduled between 2018 and 2022."

  5. As exciting as... on NASA's Next Frontier: Growing Plants On the Moon · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...watching grass grow.

  6. 7.3V? Psh! on Duke Univ. Device Converts Stray Wireless Energy Into Electricity For Charging · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I can build up a couple kilovolts by scuffing my shoes on the carpet.

    Also, sure it might be 37% efficient, but do you realize how SMALL the density of RF energy is? The Friis transmission equation gives you some idea: it decreases by the square of the distance away from the source, due to that power spreading out in a sphere. When you start off with only a couple mW of power and an omnidirectional antenna, there isn't much power left to harvest when these tiny receiving "metamaterial" antennas are even just a few feet from an access point.

  7. Who framed Comrade Rabbit? on Moscow Subway To Use Special Devices To Read Data On Passengers' Phones · · Score: 2

    And what happens when a thief steals a phone and plants it in the bag of an unsuspecting commuter?

  8. Dymaxion Mini on 3-D Printed Car Nears Production · · Score: 1

    The design for this car appears to be inspired by R. Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion car. It features a similar aerodynamic "teardrop" shape and the same three-wheel design, although his was much bigger (and more fuel-efficient than most of today's cars). I'm surprised this wasn't mentioned anywhere in the article. There is a great video of the car doing laps around a traffic guard. Bucky was in the Navy and was fond of sailing, and he said that having the single wheel in the back made it feel more like you were turning a rudder on a ship than steering a car.

  9. Urp on Fruit Flies Medicate Offspring With Alcohol · · Score: 1

    This is what I get for reading Slashdot during lunch. *looks down at couscous and pushes it away*

  10. A problem for satellites, too on No Wi-Fi Around Huge Radio Telescope · · Score: 2

    This is also a huge problem for spaceborne radiometers that observe the Earth's surface (example paper). A radiometer is essentially a very sensitive receiver, and there are portions of the UHF and microwave spectrum reserved specifically for scientific research so that terrestrial stations don't interfere with the measurements. Unfortunately, interference may occur from transmitters directly in the band, from adjacent channels, or inadvertent harmonics from poorly-filtered transmitters. Pinpointing and correcting these sources is a logistical nightmare, especially when you have to deal with every individual country's RF regulators.

  11. Re:DRM in a calculator? on TI vs. Calculator Hackers · · Score: 1

    "Oh no, a virus has replaced all my Fourier transforms with Laplace transforms!"

    You'd be surprised. These types of viruses are spreading at higher frequencies. It's only a matter of time.

  12. I don't like the sound of this... on Radar Could Save Bats From Wind Turbines · · Score: 2, Informative

    The rise of wind farms has already led to complications with current NEXRAD weather radars, and these radars don't even scan that close to the surface â" 0.5 degrees is the lowest tilt. I can only begin to imagine the complications of wind farms interfering with military radars which scan much closer to the Earth's surface.

    Now they want to point some sort of radar at a complicated source of ground clutter that's already difficult to detect and remove? I don't see how that's going to fly (no pun intended).

    For more information: http://www.roc.noaa.gov/windfarm/how_turbines_impact_nexrad_user.asp

  13. Re:I, for one... on Lego Mindstorms NXT Robotics Announced · · Score: 1

    I stand corrected, but "snot robot overlords" just doesn't have the same ring to it...

  14. I, for one... on Lego Mindstorms NXT Robotics Announced · · Score: 0, Redundant

    I, for one, welcome our new studded-brick-robot overlords.

  15. Re:Punctuation check. on BART Outfitted With Wireless · · Score: 1

    Am I allowed to correct a corrector's corrector? You should use single quote marks when putting quotes nested in other quotes.

  16. Re:CVS 'disposable' digital cameras and camcorders on Refilling Ink Cartridges Now a Crime? · · Score: 2, Informative

    I assume this will effect the hacked disposable digital cameras and camcorders?

    Hardly. To quote this article:

    "CVS bounced my inquiry to San Francisco-based Peer Digital, which makes the disposable camcorders. Spokeswoman Wynne Ahern chuckled when she learned that Peer's super-secret technology had been tampered with. [...] 'Do-it-yourselfers,' she said,'are not our target audience. It's sort of a nonissue.'"

  17. Hacking is what you make of it on Everyone Is A Hacker In Training · · Score: 1

    I think that you can consider yourself a hacker based on lots of things. You could throw together a quick software hack to help you get something done, or you could embark on a reality hacking campaign to play with the minds of thousands of people. You can beat out the man by hacking your CVS camcorder for fun, or you could attempt to make your own nigh-vision scope.

    Hacking is what you make of it; it's as simple as that.

  18. Re:Quick! on Terrorists Move to Cyberspace · · Score: 1
  19. Obligatory H2G2 reference on When Microbes Ate the Ocean · · Score: 1

    "I have got to tell you the most important thing you've ever heard. I've got to tell you now, and I've got to tell you in that pub there."
    "Why?"
    "Because you're going to need a very stiff drink."

    The only difference is that, instead of Vogons, now it's algae (not that the two differ in many ways).

  20. Re:AAAAA on CAFTA Treaty Exports DMCA · · Score: 1

    ROFL, WTF? OMG BBL, BBQ!

  21. You know you're reading Slashdot when.. on Why Bill Gates Wants 3,000 New Patents · · Score: 1

    You know you're reading Slashdot when three completely separate posts with "return false" jokes get modded +4 and +5 Funny.

  22. Re:Logic on Butterfly Unlocks Evolution Secret · · Score: 1

    Sorry, but bats aren't blind.

    Mod parent -1 Takes-Idioms-Literally.

  23. Re:Colorblindness on Tracking the IT Job Market with a Bot · · Score: 1

    How'd you know the colors of the first two choices, then?

  24. Re:SIlicon eh on In SIlicon Valley: Profits up. Employment Down. · · Score: 1

    Er, wouldn't that be OK2, since Oxygen has a charge of -2, but Potassium is +1?

  25. Re:WOOT! on Megafauna Extinction Due to Climate · · Score: 2, Funny

    When this match is over, could we PLEASE change the map?