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User: jbengt

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  1. Re:Meh on Presidential Candidate Lincoln Chaffee Proposes That US Go Metric · · Score: 1

    It wasn't enough partially because Reagan pushed the other way, against the metric system.

  2. Re:This makes me feel safe on US Airport Screeners Missed 95% of Weapons, Explosives In Undercover Tests · · Score: 1

    What a lot of attempts could do is drain the budget of the TSA and of airlines: overwhelming the staff with hundreds or thousands of false positives over a day or a week would cost the TSA and the airlines many millions of dollars

    And, yet, my company is involved in upgrades to a few (checked) baggage screening systems where one item of contention is the new EDS (Explosion Detection System) design criteria that have more than double the number of alarms requiring rifling throu - - I mean, requiring manual screening of the luggage. (This is a problem because it requires at least double the number of workers and workstations, and they won't really fit in the existing space available.)
    Anyway, thousands of false positives a day is already par for the course in busy airports.

  3. What you are both missing is that in those times "virgin birth" was used as an acclamation of greatness for other people as well.

  4. Re:Hymen has an opening, a virgin could get pregna on Scientists Discover Sawfish Escape Extinction Through "Virgin Births" · · Score: 2

    If you look at stories from the times, many great men were called son of god or son of man and many were heralded as having been born of virgins. Jesus of Nazareth was not unique in that respect.

  5. Re: RAND PAUL REVOLUTION on Patriot Act Spy Powers To Expire As Rand Paul Blocks USA Freedom Act Vote · · Score: 1

    We only have permanent bases in countries that have welcomed us, with open arms, to build those facilities.

    The Germans and Japanese certainly welcomed us with arms, but I wouldn't call the the welcome "open", more like "open fire".

  6. Re:Windows XP, not Linux on Attackers Use Email Spam To Infect Point-of-Sale Terminals · · Score: 1

    Who says it was the cash register receiving e-mails? It may well have been the back-end server, which, for small businesses, could easily be a regular PC, maybe even dual purposed as the owner's workstation.

  7. Re: stable on Linux 4.0 Has a File-System Corruption Problem, RAID Users Warned · · Score: 2

    I can routinely cause a BSOD (about 1/3 of the time) on my HP laptop running Windows 7 Pro if I use the touchpad at the log-in screen on start-up. It's apparently a known bug in the touchpad driver that will not get fixed.

  8. Re:Security challenge on Ask Slashdot: Best Way To Solve a Unique Networking Issue? · · Score: 1

    Somehow, many people are reading the question as "How do I create a permanent network for these pumps" where I believe he's asking "How do I hook up temporary cables from my laptop to multiple pumps in a way that lets me update them all at once?"

  9. Re:wow, that makes me feel good on Ask Slashdot: Best Way To Solve a Unique Networking Issue? · · Score: 1

    A station has only one pump per grade of fuel (although in some rare cases of multiple tanks even when they are connected together they may have 2 pumps per grade of fuel).

    Actually, it can go either way. You can buy dispensers with built-in pumps - one pump per dispenser per fuel type, with suction piped to the tanks, or you can drop a pump into each fuel tank, with discharge piped to the dispensers. You do have to be careful about minimum positive suction head if you go with a dispenser-mounted lifting gasoline from an underground tank. Cost and complexity can make the fewer tank-mounted pumps a better solution for large installations with a lot of dispensers, anyway, but it is not unheard of to have pumps installed within the dispensers for small installations.

  10. Re:In other news... on Energy Dept. Wants Big Wind Energy Technology In All 50 US States · · Score: 1

    On the commercial/industrial side, it is quite common to use demand-limiting software to help reduce energy costs taking into account time-of-day and demand charges. Sometimes energy storage is used for those purposes, also, though that requires a bit more thinking ahead and may be more difficult as a retrofit.

  11. Re:In other news... on Energy Dept. Wants Big Wind Energy Technology In All 50 US States · · Score: 1

    You're right when you say that the idea of pre-heating a clothes dryer is stupid. But I have to make a correction on the refrigerator: Most of the "cold" of a refrigerator is not lost when the doors are open (unless left open forever), even if you exchange 100% of the cold air in the refrigerator with room temperature air. Most of the "cold" is held by the mass of the food and other things inside the refrigerator.
    That said, you can't really pre-chill an off-the-shelf refrigerator without having a lot of issues with frost and freezing. And the main energy consumption of an efficient, well insulated refrigerator is the work done when you put warm things inside to it cool them down.

  12. Re:Won't someone think of the birds. on Energy Dept. Wants Big Wind Energy Technology In All 50 US States · · Score: 2

    domestic cats . . . are biggest cause of bird death . . .

    Small songbirds, yes. Bald eagles, not really.

  13. Re:Won't someone think of the birds. on Energy Dept. Wants Big Wind Energy Technology In All 50 US States · · Score: 1

    "exacerbated" - look it up. (not that I think GP makes such a great point)

  14. Re:Bridges Are Not Static Structures! on Using Satellites To Monitor Bridge Safety · · Score: 1

    The author of TFA doesn't have a clue. This idea is useless as bridges, particularly suspension bridges, deflect by much more than 1 cm under traffic and wind loads.

    I think the aouthor of TFA knows that:

    Bridgemaster Barry Colford observed: “This information is extremely useful for understanding how much the bridge can move under extreme weather conditions. This allows us to decide to close the bridge based on precise deformation information.
    "For example, I knew that the bridge can move significantly under high winds but for the first time I know that bridge moved 3.5 m laterally and 1.83 m vertically under a wind speed of 41 m/s."

  15. Re:somewhat agree on Microsoft To Teachers: Using Pens and Paper Not Fair To Students · · Score: 1

    Forget cursive handwriting (after 15 years of manual drafting in all caps, followed by 15 years of using CAD at work, I certainly have) pencil & paper still works much better than a tablet or laptop for writing out problems & solutions in algebra, geometry, trig, calculus, etc.

  16. Re:A complete crock on Microsoft To Teachers: Using Pens and Paper Not Fair To Students · · Score: 2

    She highlighted Office 365 and OneNote as Microsoft products well-suited for the classroom.

    Case closed.

  17. Re:Salespeople making salespitch on Microsoft To Teachers: Using Pens and Paper Not Fair To Students · · Score: 1

    When I did some work for a financial company, the head of operations told me that the department handling collections of bad debt was the most profitable - because by the time the account got to them, the money was already written off and anything they collected counted as pure profit.

  18. Re:Autopilot? on Feds Order Amtrak To Turn On System That Would've Prevented Crash · · Score: 1

    I must be missing something.

    Aircraft operate in 3 dimensions, trains operate for the most part in one - which implies that there is much less of a chance of 2 planes being at the same place at the same time than 2 trains being at the same place a t the same time. The airplane autopilot flies at certain altitudes depending on the path, and if the plane stays at the assigned altitude, there is almost no chance for crossing paths. Trains going in different directions share tracks in a lot of places, and they can't move out of the way of each other - timing is everything in train safety (hence we have a few time zones rather than hundreds of local times)

  19. Re:What I don't understand on Feds Order Amtrak To Turn On System That Would've Prevented Crash · · Score: 1

    Well, if you couple the gps to the odometer, that should work most of the time, even with brief gps outages.

    Most of the time isn't considered good enough for train safety. Unlike the interstate, there aren't dedicated lanes going each way - there are a lot of single tracks sharing traffic going in both directions.

  20. Re:and dog eats tail on Feds Order Amtrak To Turn On System That Would've Prevented Crash · · Score: 1

    Hell, they've dug up and rebuilt a 12 mile stretch of four lane highway in front of my neighborhood, including new bridge work in 4 different places for only 12 million.

    I call BS on this one.
    If I'm wrong, I'd recommend against driving across or under those new bridges.

  21. Re:No self driving trains? on Feds Order Amtrak To Turn On System That Would've Prevented Crash · · Score: 1

    Apparently.

  22. Re:What I don't understand on Feds Order Amtrak To Turn On System That Would've Prevented Crash · · Score: 1

    The signalling and controls for trains are much more reliable than GPS and the simple programming exercise you envision. The issue is that automatic failsafes being installed for that section of track were not yet tested and given control of the trains, not that they could not be done.

  23. Re:No absolute speed governor? on Feds Order Amtrak To Turn On System That Would've Prevented Crash · · Score: 1

    Planes are faster bro, even with loading/unloading time, which is why they [sic] can actually make money on their own . . .

    Which is why every major airliner (except Southwest) has gone bankrupt in the recent past?
    (Also, planes are not always quicker for short distances, if there are actually trains going where you're going.)

  24. Re:No self driving trains? on Feds Order Amtrak To Turn On System That Would've Prevented Crash · · Score: 1

    Regulations most likely require that someone is on the train to oversee operation and help in emergencies anyway.

    This is true.

  25. Re:No self driving trains? on Feds Order Amtrak To Turn On System That Would've Prevented Crash · · Score: 1

    I dislike driving.
    Still, I probably couldn't stand being in a self-driving car, and would much prefer to drive it myself.