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User: Herve5

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  1. not specially an iphone on 'Stagefright' Flaw: Compromise Android With Just a Text · · Score: 1

    Even without counting non-smart phones (you know, these funny things you put a simcard in and then use to place phone calls), you get for instance Jolla phones, based on Sailfish OS, Blackberry phones, even the (somehow fossil) Openmoko device...

    The main issue I feel here is most people want things to be solved, but without losing any comfort, nor even changing OS.
    In such a case you are doomed. But not me.

    Those around calling for class action etc. are near ridiculous -the answer will simply list the devices above, to dismiss the case...

  2. Re:I hate it already! on A Month With a Ubuntu Phone · · Score: 1

    I have been a mac user from day one up to when Apple evolved into a closed ecosystem (through their central store), which means some 25 years anyway.
    I still *perfectly* remember the main horror when my company forced windows onto us was indeed the need to "carefully aim" the cursor at a window border, rather than ramming it onto the screen ege.
    Because, mind you, contrary to your hand when rammed the cursor doesn't hurt itself. "Look at it this way".

  3. french Citroën cars did this 40 years ago... on Ford's New Smart Headlights For Tracking Objects At Night · · Score: 1

    or maybe 50 indeed.
    I for one have seen, and have driven, Citroëns geared with small headlights that just were mechanically associated with the wheel (or, at least, so I expect), this resulting in the next bend fully lighted each time one would rotate the wheel
    Full mechanical system without GPS nor camera -way more reliable, I'd say ;-)

  4. Re:State the Obvious on Gmail Spam Filter Changes Bite Linus Torvalds · · Score: 2

    Yeah, like Microsoft or Apple!

    No.
    Like any national, free, reasonable email provider (in my country, the post office does this).
    Like *all* our hosting service providers do, too, at no delta-cost, and in a well controlled manner if you chose an associative hosting. Many come to mind in Europe, like the belgian All2all, the french Ouvaton
    Sorry for the bluntness, that's not you but the mere idea of Torvalds registering at Google that shocked me...

  5. other providers on Gmail Spam Filter Changes Bite Linus Torvalds · · Score: 2

    I for one am extremely shocked that the above post ('use other providers') be flagged as funny.
    Torvalds is the last person I'd imagine registering an email address @ Google.
    Wise as he may have been, sorry, but to me he's a moron now just because of this.
    I just hope I won't evolve his way when getting older.

  6. rear-facing safer on Simple Geometry = More Seats In an Airline · · Score: 1

    No, really. I have been for years in the aircraft business, and it is perfectly clear that in case of crash, rear-facing is much much better.
    None of the study considered the present swap patent though, and for a global swap generally the conclusion would be, 'rear-facing passengers won't appreciate during takeoff and landing, so let another company propose this first'.
    That's probably what'll happen here too, in spite of the better compaction. But maybe they'll prepare a low-grade compact class at the back of the plane.
    Which is, btw, the place of choice to survive a crash -another clear output of all real-size crash-tests done these last 10 years (yes there have been a couple of them)

  7. Re:OwnCloud / Seafile on Ask Slashdot: User-Friendly, Version-Preserving File Sharing For Linux? · · Score: 1

    While most of the nifty features are linked to the paying version Seafile seems quite cool, but I see basic users like me cannot install it as a php script on a shared server
    I'm still using Owncloud, even not the last version, for daily syncs of a dozen machines from desktops to phones and tablets, and it has "just worked" for a couple of years now. Its only downpoint is, contrary to Dropbox no local-loop transfers are allowed (everything must transit through the server). This is related to the way Owncloud handles versioning; which is heavily discussed in their forums (https://github.com/owncloud/client/issues/230), but if this feature does not bother you I see no other drawbacks.

  8. Re:passive insubordination on Kim Jong Un Claims To Have Cured AIDS, Ebola and Cancer · · Score: 1

    Remember, in NK even the radio receptors are controlled. (what they call a 'radio' indeed is an amplified loudspeaker connected to a *wire* coming to your house and bringing the only one state channel allowed. And possessing a real radio set ==> jail)
    So, this leads to a situation where you really control everything known to your popuation.
    Nobody in NK can even suspect we are having this discussion at this moment. Their only information channel tells them Cancer just has been cured, by a NK recipe, in african testings.
    That's all they have, and yes, probably no reason to believe there is something else, and absolutely no reason to find it fantastic alas. Since the 'radio' tells them...

  9. European spacecrafts don't have muclear power! on Philae's Lost Seven Months Were Completely Unnecessary · · Score: 2

    After gulping the ad, you see a bunch of fossil photos from Philae, then a very basic pledge for embarking a small radioisotopic thermal generator (i. e. nuclear power).
    This is silly twice.

    First, because Philae is an entierely European craft, and there are just no space nuclear generators in Europe. You can call it wrong, but even on the European Huygens probe the much simpler nuclear *heaters* were US-provided.
    Second, because the only available US RTGs are very big and heavy, and mass on this very light craft would totally have prevented to reuse an existing design. You can advocate one could have developed a miniature thing outputting just some watts. You would have been *wildly* out of budget.

    So, well. A basic pledge for nuclear power in space, yes, be it good or bad.
    But taking Philae as an example is a very wrong way to do get it. Self-deserving even, maybe.

  10. Re:Wow brilliant move on Is BlackBerry Launching an Android Phone? · · Score: 1

    I agree -tiny minority, and I am not among them.
    Blackberry in the first place wasn't some phone with a keyboard. The reason I bought mines was to keep safe from Google and Apple intrusions.
    At this moment I'm using a Fairphone, whose android OS is rooted by default: well even with this flexibility and the walls and preventions it allows, I daily see how Google remains intrusive there.
    But my next tablet, ordered, is a Jolla, and probably if the next Fairphone doesn't allow Jolla OS I may well switch to Jolla phones too.
    I'd just never buy a Blackberry related to Google, even remotely.

  11. Re:There is no such thing as non-empirical science on Have Some Physicists Abandoned the Empirical Method? · · Score: 1

    Er, I think no indeed: you have to consider both space and time, and the black hole inner mass does deform the surrounding space (indeed that's how we do measure black hole masses)
    It remains true that matter or information cannot escape, although some consider that for info the powerfull emissions happening when matter is torn just before the horizon does send back information...
    H.

  12. Re:maybe it is the ternary logical world changing on Have Some Physicists Abandoned the Empirical Method? · · Score: 1

    Ah, I found the reference: colloque de Cerisy, l'auto-organisation ('self-organizing'), presentation from the mathematician Maurice Milgram about the formalisms of randomness, and the associated discussion. 1981. I was a cool young student at the time ;-)
    Milgram probably elaborated more on it since then; but I remember he indeed draw the three-zones diagram, in a very cool manner...

  13. maybe it is the ternary logical world changing too on Have Some Physicists Abandoned the Empirical Method? · · Score: 1

    I think the ternary world you describe, with its "not yet decided" area between the fully checked and the fully disproved zones, is something perfectly reasonable. I remember seeing it described in a french 'colloque de Cerisy' about complexity in the 80's.
    The not yet decided zone is the most interesting territory, because its frontier is permanently moving, people continuously creating paths through it to 'extract' new verified or disproved items.
    It's the main activity of Science to create these paths.
    What is more worrying in the op, or at least the way we discuss it here, is the consideration of a part of the undecided zone as a 'will never be decidable but still so nice it sounds convincing', and the items in it becoming truths just because of that.
    What is questioned here is the way you circulate around and through the frontier: up to now, the only vehicle was verification.
    Now for some cosmologists, or so we are told, being a simpler or nicer idea would become enough.
    This, if true, is a concern to me.
    Not really because of Cosmology, btw : I can still remain sceptical there -more because, as some remarked, then any religion will postulate similar truths.

  14. Re:Yup on Technology and Ever-Falling Attention Spans · · Score: 1

    () I've found my group appreciates my coming by once a day to go through a list rather than multiple drop by's in a day.

    I do agree with this, and prefer working with lists (action items, whatever).
    But there are areas like emailed questions where you're almost certain if you ask two separate questions in the same text, you'll get only one reply, and even worse : your correspondent will be honestly certain he *did* react, no?

  15. start important things on paper? on Technology and Ever-Falling Attention Spans · · Score: 1

    I know it may sound absurd, but whe I have a really important synthesis to prepare, be it the mail-to-CEO, strategy-in-six-slide-for-the-team, last-time-to-convince-this-guy I start it with a pencil on paper.
    How many points, in which order, oh I need to mention that there, no, earlier
    And when my draft has become reasonably illegible, I can trash it and start typing, I know exactly what to do.
    ((in fact, to be honest, Idon't trash the paper before I'm done typing ;-) but I almost never come back to it))

  16. Mod parent up, please! on Can High Intelligence Be a Burden Rather Than a Boon? · · Score: 1

    That's not to say the study was totally useless, but the objection is fairly striking. Today. Oh well, indeed the decision to run the study was taken 80 years ago -and really it shows...

  17. Re:I can kiss my Newton Messagepad goodbye? on Google Adds Handwriting Input To Android · · Score: 1

    I have a Samsung Galaxy Note that definitely accepts handwriting reasonably (and that, not being capable to gain root control, I'll abandon as soon as I find a reasonably open alternative).
    On android you don't need Samsung techno anyway, you already have apps like Myscript Smartnotes (closed source but no Gapps) working as well...

  18. Re:Question still remains on Google Adds Handwriting Input To Android · · Score: 1

    Maybe it will work from within the android wrapper in Jolla Sailfish OS?
    I'll try it as soon as I receive the tablet (not having their phone)...

  19. Re:Holy Crap!! on SuperMario 64 Coming To a Browser Near You! · · Score: 1

    yes, slashdoted at this time :-)

  20. Re:The content of this article was lost in the noi on What Happened To the Photography Industry In 2014? · · Score: 1

    Now this indeed may become possible, thanks to the current boost in sensitivity in DSLRs 8-)

  21. Re:Diminishing Returns on What Happened To the Photography Industry In 2014? · · Score: 1

    Indeed I see no must-have. Even worse, most of the time the evolution is some ah-yes-now-they-added-a-GPS-like-on-the-phones!
    Go shell out $7000 for the extra GPS...

    Show me a multispectal focal plane, leaving RGB in the dust forever: there I'll bring you $10K.

  22. Re:What happened? on What Happened To the Photography Industry In 2014? · · Score: 1

    Exactly. And if the 'ordinary' DSLR do become a niche too, all those here now saying 'my good old camera X is enough' just won't find any replacement, not a single one, in a couple of years, for all the DSLR costs will have rocketed to Leica or even Hasselblad levels.
    Anyone with a Hasselblad here? For years these have been a dream for me, and now its one of the very first dreams I know I'll never realize.
    Even more, Hasselblad now has lost pace with a number of supporting accessories, like memories, and, one would even say, proper zooms.
    That is what is feared, at least by the OP.
    Compare that with the situation just a couple of years ago, where one could imagine far bigger evolutions than 'just more pixels than last year' -multispectral imaging comes to mind, which would have just erased the mere notion of color temperature adjustment, for instance.
    This kind of future is just vanishing if the photo industry is drowning the way the OP describes...

  23. Re:Fear the Asian carp on How One Man Changed the Ecology of the Great Lakes With Salmon · · Score: 2

    Why did you post AC? I miss a /. friend now :-)

  24. Re:Calibration on Trains May Soon Come Equipped With Debris-Zapping Lasers · · Score: 1

    I think the thermal inertia of a big metallic rail must be, say,10000 times the one of a tree leaf.
    Or maybe 100 000 ?

  25. Re:Baby steps on Hidden Obstacles For Google's Self-Driving Cars · · Score: 1

    While I'm concerned about everything Google (and concerned I'm, deeply), I fear during all your years of study you just didn't allow yourself to consider the level and kind of sensors Google has thrown in: they currently restitute no less than the entire surrounding, in 3D and real-time.
    I'd dare say all other automotive OEMs preferred baselining much, much simpler sensors, à la magnetic detector following buried mag loops, or radars to follow the previous vehicle, all things giving monodimentional, extremely minimal input.
    Which is why they end in considering only dedicated expressways, etc.
    Google's bet is they'll just skip these steps.
    And, maybe you don't see it, but the mere fact Google car exists now, *prevents* them to happen. Which mayor would invest in a complex dedicated driveway when 80% of his electorate will *believe* Google cars would be better? (I intentionally stressed 'believe', because it's enough for an election)