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User: dyftm

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  1. Useful for more than just navigation on Galileo Navigation System Gets Go-Ahead From EU Parliament · · Score: 1

    Galileo/GPS are useful for so much more than just navigation. Being able to get a very accurate time signal anywhere in the world is very useful too. In my line of work we deploy seismometers to the bottom of the ocean, and the clocks on these instruments to be accurate to microseconds. We can get this kind of accuracy in the middle of the atlantic with nothing more than a 2U rackmount GPS clock and a small antenna. With chip-scale atomic clocks becoming widely available, having Galileo available as an even more accurate time source will be very useful.

  2. Re:Denial. on 2011 Was the 9th Hottest Year On Record · · Score: 1

    That graph shows a general trend for warming since 1979, the last dip in the graph can hardly be treated as heading into a cooling phase as it has only been sustained for a very short period of time. It is hard to draw meaningful conclusions from anything less than a decadal timescale, especially considering that the sun's output varies on an approximately 11 year cycle (Solar Variation).

  3. Re:Denial. on 2011 Was the 9th Hottest Year On Record · · Score: 1

    Just a quick one as I'm drunk and tired; but our most accurate climate models so far (as quantified by starting them in approx 1870, running them to the present, and comparing results with reality) show that in the absence of anthropogenic forcing (i.e. CO2, aerosol and methane input by humans), we should have in fact experienced cooling over the last decade or so. The fact that we have experienced warming is then even worse than it initially appears.

    Also, I am sick of people trotting out 'correlation does not imply causation' argument all the time. Yes, it is true, but in this case there is a clear and proven causal link: increased greenhouse gas emissions enhances the greenhouse gas effect which leads to more radiative energy being trapped in the Earth's atmosphere.

  4. Some clarifications on Is Climate Change the New Evolution? · · Score: 4, Informative

    As someone working in this field, I would just like to make some clarifications. The term 'Climate Change' is better viewed as two separate questions: is climate change occurring, and if so, is it due to human influence? The first question is effectively settled; temperatures are increasing and extreme weather events are occurring more frequently. The second question is more complex, although the vast scientific consensus is that it is indeed due to human influence. In particular, the greenhouse effect has been conclusively proven. The slightly-informed seem to misinterpret scientific uncertainty (a very specific term referring to statistical probabilities) with a much more general 'scientists aren't sure if this is true or not'.

    It is true that there is a long way to go in climate science. However, this is no reason not to teach it in schools. There are many unknowns in the science (as with any field of science); these should not be understated, but neither should they be overstated - it would not be helpful for teachers to spread yet more excessive doubt. Finally, it is of particular importance that climate science is taught in school - the consequences of climate change are likely to be extremely grave for mankind and will impact the next generation much more than this one.

  5. Re:Badly written firmware. on OpenSUSE Beta Can Brick Intel e1000e Network Cards · · Score: 1

    Yes, GEB is awesome. But it doesn't have anything to do with this. You can check every input, it may just take a while.

  6. Matrix Online? on The Future of Persistent Worlds In MMOs · · Score: 1

    I haven't actually played it, but AFAIK, the Matrix Online is somewhere between stateless and persistent, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_Online#The_continuing_story

  7. Re:A great idea but bound to be executed badly on Smart Self-Service Scales · · Score: 1

    Traditional check out style ones with the conveyor belt work much better, with those it can normally keep up with me.

    Also, with the bag style ones, you don't actually have to bag the items, you can just put it down on the shelf below the bags.

  8. Guide to getting flash working perfectly on hardy on Why Is Adobe Flash On Linux Still Broken? · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=5587712&postcount=472. This guy has for a long time been working on getting flash working perfectly in ubuntu 8.04 and following the linked guide makes it work perfectly for me.

  9. A sign that the community is maturing? on Moving Toward a Single Linux UI? · · Score: 1

    To me, this is just a sign that the community, and the software that has been built, is maturing. Rather than endless throwaway projects, things are starting to come together and less work is being duplicated.

    And as long as the separation in the stack is maintained (so kernel, window manager, applications etc are interchangeable), I don't see this as a problem. 'Linux' as an OS will become more defined, and easier to support which can only be good. At the same time, all the customizations that geeks love to do will still be possible, possibly even easier than now.

  10. Performance problems, and a possible workaround on Google Earth 4.3 Offers a Number of New Features · · Score: 1

    I found that the performance of 4.3 vs 4.2 was terrible, until I turned atmosphere off (View > Atmosphere).

    Atmosphere was never a problem in 4.2, but I guess this is something to do with the new day/night features.

  11. could work in a corporate environment on Open Source DRM Solutions? · · Score: 1

    The typical arguments about DRM never working make a lot of sense when you're talking about the decoding device (xbox, blu-ray player etc) in the hands of a consumer who can modify hardware/software etc.

    In a corporate environment, it's completely different. Machines should be locked down enough so that you can't just use the source to bypass the DRM - because you won't be able to create/run your own binaries.

    I see this as just a slightly higher level of UNIXy permissions - instead of read,write,execute, you have read,write,execute,print,send etc. etc. Obviously this would require extensive work, probably kernel patches and things, but I'm sure it's possible.

  12. Re:Old news on Mathematicians Solve the Mystery of Traffic Jams · · Score: 1

    Yeah, like anyone obeys motorway speed limits in the UK? Not only are they far too quick in changing the limit to 50mph, but they put 30mph limits on roadworks even at night, when you could safely do 3x that. Not saying that 50mph limits wouldn't help, just that almost no one will actually obey them.

  13. Re:Guarantee of Reliability is not Free on NYSE Moves to Linux · · Score: 1

    Or you could download the patch and recompile it yourself. While this is not for most people, a lot of people running linux could do it, and it wouldn't be hugely expensive to pay someone to do it for you.

  14. Specific tasks / generality on Toyota Unveils Violin-Playing Robot · · Score: 1
    "Are we merely struggling to hard code each human activity as we strive for an all purpose android? "

    No. While working towards this specific task, I'm sure they will have solved problems that exist more generally in AI/robotics. It's like when Fermat's last theorem was proved - the fact that it was proved itself was relatively insignificant, the problems solved and the maths generated along the way were of huge value to mathematics.

  15. Why just shaking? on Shake a Secure Bluetooth Connection · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Why just limit yourself to shaking, when you could use:
    • Sound - put both devices together, speak into both of them at once
    • Rhythmic button pressing - hold a device in each hand, tap out a rhythm on the buttons at the same time
    • Sound pairing - put devices together, they use their speaker/mic to handshake
  16. Geography is a factor on Does the UK iPhone Plan Add Up? · · Score: 1
    From wikipedia:
    USA Population density: 31/km^2
    UK Population density: 246/km^2

    Just another reason why it's so difficult to compare pricing plans from across the pond - UK providers must need a lot less phone masts per person than in the USA.

  17. aka 'Some guy realises Ubuntu!=Gentoo' on A Gut Check On Gutsy Gibbon · · Score: 2, Interesting
    This guy seems very confused. He wants a balance between usability and configurability? Fair enough, but he cites this as a negative point when talking about front ends to apt!
    • Basic user - add/remove, updater
    • Medium user - synaptic package manager
    • Advanced user - apt-get/aptitude/dpkg etc in the terminal
    His issues with the security groups are similar - a basic user is not going to mess around with those, whereas a medium user might, and an advanced user would configure it however they want to.

    For what it's worth, I recently moved to Ubuntu, and its balance between usability and configurability has allowed me to learn a fair bit about using Linux systems without throwing me in at the deep end like other distros do.

  18. Use with caution! on Effective Use of Technology In the Classroom? · · Score: 1

    Please, use this tech with caution. I've sat through calculus classes where the teacher has just got an interactive whiteboard. She rushed through presentations, annotating the slides and moving on so quickly there was no chance to take any notes. The other less obvious issue in a matrices class was that frequently if we had trouble visualising a transformation, she would quickly bring it up on the whiteboard using graphing software. This meant in the exam, when we had no access to this software, we found we hadn't had enough practice of just sitting there and working it out.

    I'm sure there are some very good uses, although I've found myself very skeptical. My advice as a student would be to use this tech as a more convenient way of doing exactly what you were doing before - writing up notes on the board, displaying pictures/graphs, showing videos. Don't use tech for the sake of tech.

  19. Re:Are People Really Libetarians? on Why Are So Many Nerds Libertarians? · · Score: 1

    Maybe so, if you think in absolutes. You cannot take the supposed behaviour of extreme libertarians and apply it to everyone that call themselves libertarian.

  20. Re:MSN does some weiiiiiird things... on MSN Censors Your IM · · Score: 1

    A real kick in the teeth is that method will delete MP3s, but not WMAs, which have much more potential to do harm (eg to open up a website of the attacker's choosing). Political decision? No way...

  21. English IT teaching on School District To Parents — Buy Office 2007 · · Score: 1

    Living in England, for my GCSEs (end of compulsory schooling exams for 16 year olds), the IT exams/courseworks were very very strict on not using microsoft names. Eg you couldn't say Excel, you had to say spreadsheet package, or presentation package instead of Powerpoint. However, when it came to submitting my work, they would only accept the Microsoft format. I tried ODFs, HTML, PDF, plain text, but they refused to accept any of these.

  22. In other news... on Patents Don't Pay · · Score: 1

    In other news, insurance policies often cost people more than they claim from them. To my mind, patents are just a form of insurance - against other companies, that would otherwise be allowed to compete fairly with the patent holding company.

  23. Dirac on Anti-DRM Activists Take On the BBC · · Score: 1

    Note that the BBC are creating a free (MPL/GPLv2/LGPL, patent unencumbered) video format called Dirac. Presumably once this is developed sufficiently they will start using it for their content.

  24. Re:Not Alpha on OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X Alpha Released! · · Score: 1

    In my experience, that's just not true. Take Mozilla, who have released/are releasing alpha versions of the next version of Gecko. I frequently test them and I'm most definitely not involved in design and/or implementation (and I'm not alone in that).

  25. again, but with formatting... on No Wine for Dell Ubuntu Users, Says Shuttleworth · · Score: 1
    andy@andy-desktop:~$ apt-get install wine
    E: Could not open lock file /var/lib/dpkg/lock - open (13 Permission denied)
    E: Unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/), are you root?

    (I can fix this but an average new user will have no idea)