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User: Urza9814

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  1. Re:Did Fluke request this? on $30K Worth of Multimeters Must Be Destroyed Because They're Yellow · · Score: 1

    I've got a yellow RadioShack meter too.

    Last I checked, Fluke didn't sell much in the $15-$20 price range, so I highly doubt it's rebranded. And I doubt they'd pay just to use a freakin' color on something that cheap.

  2. Re:obvious reason on Routing and DNS Security Ignored By ISPs · · Score: 1

    Where the hell do *you* live?

    I'm in freakin downtown Providence, RI and I have exactly two options: Cox or FiOS. Been here two years, already been screwed over by *both*.

  3. Re:This isn't an xbox on Oculus Rift Developer Kit 2 Ready For Pre-Order Today · · Score: 1

    I don't game. I can't think of a single good use for this.

    But for $300? Shit I'm thinking of buying one anyway!

    I'm mostly curious about the possibility of using it for some very heavily augmented reality...the tech that eventually ends up making that kind of thing mainstream will probably *look* more like Google Glass, but much of the internals and software will probably come from systems like the Rift.

  4. Re:Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? on Church Committee Members Say New Group Needed To Watch NSA · · Score: 1

    100% correct.

    Continue this pattern as far as possible. Eventually everybody is government and everybody is everybody else's checks and balances. An interesting pathway to the same effects as just abolishing the whole damn thing!

  5. Re:Backups on A Call For Rollbacks To Previous Versions of Software · · Score: 1

    Windows restore points, Time Machine, or simply syncing your Android or iOS device before you install new software

    Right, because when I want to downgrade a single application, the sane strategy is to revert *the entire operating system and every application and all user data* rather than just that one single application?

    Sure, that works fine if you update the app and decide five minutes later you don't like it...but what if you don't run into that deal-breaker bug until next month?

  6. Re:OS Backup and restore... on A Call For Rollbacks To Previous Versions of Software · · Score: 1

    ...at which point Apple shows the judge that the user couldn't possibly have downgraded without checking the box saying 'yes, I know this will expose me to security issues' and the case gets thrown out of court.

  7. Re:Feed the beast on A Look at the NSA's Most Powerful Internet Attack Tool · · Score: 4, Funny

    They'll probably just think you're another 13 year old kid about to get himself killed doing something incredibly stupid....

  8. Re:Charging solutions on What If the Next Presidential Limo Was a Tesla? · · Score: 1

    even if you have a second vehicle following with an any-combustible-fuel generator, it takes too long to refuel.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...

    More torque (probably pretty important with all that armor), more reliable, possibly even more fuel efficient...more expensive too, but I doubt they care too much for "The Beast".

  9. Re:Emergency Scenario on What If the Next Presidential Limo Was a Tesla? · · Score: 1

    To back up the parent post, let's say in a single day a sudden coup brings down the government of a development country the president is currently visiting. In i's place is an extremist government that's extremely hostile to the US made up of a lot of recently former terrorists who would love nothing more than hold the US president hostage (or worse). The president is nowhere near Air Force One, and The Beast has to drive 800 miles across hostile territory to reach a SEAL extraction team in a friendly country. The route has to go through very rural areas where Secret Service agents have to do things like hold up gas stations, spending only five minutes pumping before moving on. And where gas stations are sparse, forget even about electric fast-charging stations, the agents have to sneak up to parked cars and steal gas quickly with specialized pump-driven siphons, relying on the fact that gasoline can easily transferred from one car to another quickly. Far faster than any kind of scheme with jumper cables. In this nightmare scenario, you want something ridiculously ubiquitous and instantly replenishable.

    Has anything like that ever actually happened?

  10. Mandriva/KDE on Ask Slashdot: Linux For Grandma? · · Score: 1

    Should be a piece of cake. My mother was using Linux for a while on one of those little Dell netbooks they used to sell, and she didn't even know. Just gotta set up Firefox and Thunderbird and you should be good to go. Maybe Libreoffice too.

    The old Dell netbooks had a somewhat interesting interface, which was quite easy to use (particularly for such a small screen) -- but if you're not buying a new machine I'd suggest Mandriva or OpenSUSE. Definitely want KDE -- once you start up, just set it to use the classic launcher, and she should feel right at home!

  11. Re:Tor? on Tor Is Building an Anonymous Instant Messenger · · Score: 1

    Let me remind you that the Silk Road mantainer was tracked by an inpected postal package, not through tor.

    ...as far as we know...

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...

  12. Re:isn't it used on violent prisoners? on The Science of Solitary Confinement · · Score: 1

    Do you know how hard it is to actually go to jail for more than 48 hours?

    I know a couple people who spent 72 hours in jail for standing in front of the fence in front of the White House. They were arrested for blocking the sidewalk.

  13. Re:When did we decide that all revenge is unjust? on The Science of Solitary Confinement · · Score: 1

    Society needs revenge for certain crimes, for the sake of all our mental health. When we see evil people going unpunished, or even rewarded, it depresses us.

    You know what? Fuck you for claiming to know what the victims families need better than they do themselves.

    http://www.mvfr.org/

  14. Re:It's just a tool I guess on Doctors Say New Pain Pill Is "Genuinely Frightening" · · Score: 1

    It's pretty rare that "self-harm" only harms the person doing it, especially with addictive substances. They may be the only one suffering the physical effects, but there's emotional, financial, social, etc, etc effects that radiate out to their family, friends, co-workers and more. It's not as obvious as second-hand smoke from cigarettes, but the detrimental effects are still there.

    That's far too vague to be of any use in determining *law* though. By that metric you could also argue in favor of banning freakin' dialysis or other life support methods, as there are certainly plenty of cases where those cause greater emotional, financial, and social damage to others by prolonging the inevitable, at an astronomical cost...

    Sure, it sucks, but these effects are the kind that other people take on *voluntarily*. They're free to walk away from the addict at any time. In a sense you can consider many of the side-effects to be forms of self-harm as well. Compare this to a *real* crime like homicide...generally nobody *chooses* to be murdered, or willingly buys a gun for a murderer....

  15. Re:Morality questions on Gut Bacteria Affect the Brain · · Score: 1

    Well, I agree with you there, but the discussion was about application to the criminal justice system. So these kinds of treatments would be much like existing psychological therapy techniques -- unless your children *kill someone* or something along those lines, nobody should force them to become "normal". Though I'd say they certainly shouldn't be prevented from doing so voluntarily either if they someday wanted to.

  16. Re:Where to draw the line. on We Can Avoid a Surveillance State Dystopia · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Money is what keeps me showing up at work five days a week. Now I'd like to think I'm doing something useful there, granted I'm not curing cancer or anything like that but still. Throw me in a "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" communist hellhole I'll do my best to be useless and needy. Or better yet, one of the people in power who decide if other people are useful or have needs. Give me the Star Trek utopia and I'll be the bloody useless guy who spends all his time on the holodeck. Which is why I think all the basic income people are on crack, because there's frankly jobs you wouldn't do if you could live well without doing them.

    Personally, I've always found that work is the thing that *prevents* me from doing things I consider useful. Gimme three or more free days in a row, and suddenly I start writing code and building things and getting stuff done. Stick me in a cubicle for eight hours, I try to do as little as possible for those eight hours, then go home and stare at the TV until it's time to sleep. The more "free time" I have, the busier I become.

    Of course, that's a different kind of work. At work I'm writing scripts for performance testing software. At home I'm building a web-based home theater system with a control console that pops up out of my coffee table. Although I do also volunteer for some community groups, and that goes WAY up when I don't have to work a 40 hour week -- from hours per month or year to hours per day. In the past, when I didn't *have* to work, I'd spend *more* than 40 hours a week volunteering for various groups.

    As for the drugs and holodeck:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...

  17. Re:Morality questions on Gut Bacteria Affect the Brain · · Score: 1

    So, in this case, if they are unable to control their actions, then either we need to reprogram them or terminate them, correct? Why feel bad killing off a bad program?

    But it's not a bad program, that's the point. It's merely been given bad input. "Terminating the program" in this case would be like deleting Photoshop because it can't improve any of your photos -- when you've been leaving the lens cap on the whole time.

  18. Re:Morality questions on Gut Bacteria Affect the Brain · · Score: 1

    Punishment is easy to administer and audit - it pairs well with the concept of "Justice." Rehabilitation is a squishy concept, hard to measure, easy to accuse of uneven administration, favoritism, corruption.

    Exactly. But if we can quantitatively measure the cause -- imbalance of gut bacteria or neural pathways or chemicals or whatever it happens to be -- then we can also determine if it has been resolved. We're a LONG way from having that capability, but perhaps someday....

  19. Re:What this is really about on Google's Project Tango Seeks To Map a 3D World · · Score: 1

    I've been waiting for tech like this, to combine with Google Glass as well -- but to do the exact reverse of what that quote suggests.

    Instead of using Glass to scan reality into a digital model, *use it to project a digital model into reality*. This will allow MUCH better augmented reality than we currently have. Perhaps to the point where you can change the color of your bed sheets with the press of a button. If you could achieve that, there's a whole lot of manual labor that suddenly becomes pure information. Information that is infinitely reproducible. That could damn near take us post-scarcity...and what exactly do you need? This, plus something like a mix of Google Glass and the Oculus Rift. No radical new tech, just incremental improvements on products that are already available. How many (or how *few*) years do you think that will take...?

    Am I missing something huge here? I don't expect it today or even this decade...but I'm 23 right now, so barring an untimely death or global catastrophe, it seems all but certain that I will live to see this happen. Which is by far the most exciting and outright crazy thought I've ever had...

  20. Re:Robotics on Google's Project Tango Seeks To Map a 3D World · · Score: 1

    Think bigger. Pair this with some Google Glass/Oculus Rift hybrid (ie what that tech could become in the next decade or two) and some advanced augmented reality software. If you can map your world accurately, then you can project what you want on top of it accurately.

    Anything you use but don't usually touch no longer has to actually exist -- it can be projected into reality. No TV. No screens of any sort really. Might be nice to have books, but you can just have one full of blank pages. Don't need artwork on your walls anymore. Don't need to buy fancy designer products either -- you can just "skin" the crap Walmart version. Broadcast the changes over wifi or bluetooth to anyone in the vicinity. Have security settings so your mom sees one set of decor, your friends see another, and your girlfriend sees a third. Even when they're all in the room together.

    Even things you do interact with could be simulated somewhat. Map your hands as you project a keyboard below them. Wouldn't be ideal, but might be nice for when you're sitting on a bus or something. Then again, your "desktop computer" is now just an unplugged keyboard, so you might as well bring it with you. The monitor is projected, and the processing done on your portable device.

    I doubt we'll ever have true holograms in any kind of widespread use -- because we're only a decade or two away from that idea being totally obsolete. Easier to calculate how the image *would* appear to each individual and show them that than it is to actually project the full image into the physical world.

  21. Re:since when is the FBI a spy agency? on Schneier: Break Up the NSA · · Score: 1

    However, NSA is not domestic, and to be honest, doesn't care what Americans are doing stateside.

    The original intent of the PRISM type systems was that they would be installed at the landing points of overseas cables or satellite links.

    Instead, they were installed on domestic backbones.

    The only possible reason for that is because they fully intended from the start to monitor both domestic and international traffic. Maybe they aren't *supposed to* care, but they certainly *do*.

  22. Re:Could we be so lucky? on FCC Planning Rule Changes To Restore US Net Neutrality · · Score: 1

    If we're paying the same amount, why should my neighbor always receive a better connection simply because he uses VoIP while I'm browsing the web? Within your network, your QoS is your own problem (and it's not that hard these days -- the router Verizon provides me for free has sufficient QoS options). Beyond that, QoS by the ISP should only be used to ensure all subscribers receive equal service during peak hours.

  23. Re:Probably the home router... on Whatever Happened To the IPv4 Address Crisis? · · Score: 1

    I too still get a publicly addressable IP from Verizon FiOS and my account is only about a year old. I run a number of servers from an old laptop off that connection. I know my parents still have one on their Comcast connection too, although they've had that connection over a decade.

  24. Re:Guarantee on Ask Slashdot: Should Developers Fix Bugs They Cause On Their Own Time? · · Score: 1

    ...and all of these proposals are entirely irrelevant, as they cannot be implemented by the software developer alone. Which goes back to the original point in this thread -- *a programmer* cannot guarantee that their software will never malfunction so long as there is the possibility that the hardware underneath will. Until you find a way to produce such CPUs (and motherboards and monitors and everything else similarly bug-free) efficiently enough that nobody owns anything else, you can't possibly guarantee that no software will ever fail.

    The builder is trying to build a wall on quicksand. You are suggesting that he build it on concrete. Great idea, until he doesn't get paid at all because he built the wall on someone else's property..... :)

  25. Re:Has anybody even LOOKED at a jumbo jet lately? on FBI: $10,000 Reward For Info On Anyone Who Points a Laser At an Aircraft · · Score: 1

    Yet the feds want to fine everyone 10K because someone, somewhere, someday might actually use something that acutally does fuck someone up.

    No, they don't. They're REWARDING up to $10k, not fining people $10k. The reward is only if they make an arrest. This is not a new prohibition, and they have enacted no new penalties.