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User: giafly

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Comments · 562

  1. GOOD troll! on Senate Majority Leader Takes On File Sharing · · Score: 1
    Both these statements are true. Live with it.
    1. the world doesn't owe you or me a living
    2. the world doesn't owe the RIAA and MPAA a living
  2. Schrödinger's Kitten on Testing Einstein's 'Spooky Action at a Distance' · · Score: 1

    I suggest an extension to the Schrödinger's Cat thought experiment to investigate this situation. In the original experiment, you lock up a cat, along with food and a gun that fires when a radioactive atom decays. In quantum theory, the cat is both alive-and-dead, until the box is opened and an observer looks in.

    Now suppose the cat is pregnant and the box has a door big enough for a kitten to escape. In quantum terms, the kitten is entangled with its parent, because a dead cat cannot have given birth. So if the observer looks in and sees a long-dead cat then the kitten will vanish!

  3. Re:Where's the provision for any federal police sq on FBI Remotely Installs Spyware to Trace Bomb Threat · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Show me one terrorist who would dare to threaten hijacking on a plane where half the passengers are armed and trained and protecting themselves.
    • You have apparantly never heard of suicide bombers?
    • Also who needs real terrorists if half the passengers are trigger-happy amateurs? Just 'phone in a hoax and hope they panic.
  4. Solution to: Color changes with viewing angle? on Chameleon Liquid Could Replace LCDs · · Score: 1

    The variation in color around the tubes shown in the photos seem to suggest that the color is angle-dependent
    1. Exactly. The color would be angle-dependent unless they take steps to prevent this. BTW but you have the color-change backwards - it should be bluest from straight ahead.
    2. I would get around this by illuminating the screen by a laser, from exactly behind, and then putting a sheet of frosted glass in front of the colored liquid. You would then see the image on the glass and not the liquid.
    3. For the mass-market, I'd replace the laser with conventional LCD illumination and lots of math. You just have to allow for the pattern of directions at which the backlighting passes through the layer of liquid and adjust the spacing of the particles to compensate. Fortunately computers are good at this sort of thing.
    4. I would replace the frosted glass by something translucent. I can't do better than OP's idea of microlenses (same sort of thing as a fresnel lens but millions of tiny lenses on one plastic sheet in front of the liquid).
    Would-be patenters, please note #3 and #4.
  5. Death to Fly-tippers? on First Robotic Drone Squadron Deployed · · Score: 1
    Previous posters who claim this is the solution to roadside bombs underestimate the difficulty in distinguishing, from fifty thousand feet, between a black plastic bag containing a bomb and the majority which contain ordinary rubbish. Littering is a crime, but hardly deserves the death penalty.

    Also do not underestimate the animal cunning of people who secretly dump stuff beside the road.

    A MASSIVE £342,798 was spent by the council cleaning up after fly-tippers last year, but no one was caught and punished, figures reveal - Bromley Times
  6. Re:M. Webster's Explains on Warning On Office 2007 "Try-Before-You-Buy" · · Score: 1

    Oh give me a break! how can you add new features to a product without changing the format, and rending it unreadable by OLD software?
    Actually I think this is pretty much routine with Web software. I've doing it for years.

    You don't want to risk updating your entire server farm at the same time, so you make sure that data-formats remain readable by both the old and new versions of your software and phase-in the installation of the new version. I don't see why the same principle wouldn't work with desktop apps.
  7. Re: Someone else failed the math class on Microsoft's OOXML Formulas Could Be Dangerous · · Score: 1

    Errata: There are 2pi radians in a circle. F*ing copy-and-paste deleted the pi symbol. I wonder if anyone else will notice?

  8. Someone else failed the math class on Microsoft's OOXML Formulas Could Be Dangerous · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Someone failed the math class where they explained that an angle is a "dimensionless derived unit".
    If you must quote Wikipedia, please read it first. This article refers to the "SI system of measurement units" which measures angles in units of radians: "The unit of angle is the angle subtended at the centre of a circle by an arc of the circumference equal in length to the radius of the circle. There are 2 radians in a circle."

    Other measurement systems use different units for angles, for example degrees.

    In short, a thing being dimensionless does not mean no units are used to measure it.
  9. Mod Parent Up on Groklaw Explains Microsoft and the GPLv3 · · Score: 1

    Please

  10. Block the United States on Have Spammers Overcome the CAPTCHA? · · Score: 1

    Yahoo! and Hotmail are both USA companies, which is also where most spam originates, so the solution is simple.

    Route-around the United States, and the problem is solved for most of us. They can rejoin the world when lawmakers take spam seriously.

  11. Kaboom! on NH Signs Bill That Rejects Federal Real ID · · Score: 1

    Such a federally approved ID card or document would be required for people entering a federal building, nuclear power plant and commercial airplane.
    Surely "or" not "and"? If a criminal entered all three, next second there would be nothing left to prosecute.
  12. It's perfectly safe on Explosives Camp · · Score: 1

    How do I get selected?
    Send the following:
    1. One page resume
    2. 250 word essay on "Why I am interested in a career focusing on the application of explosives"
    3. A letter of recommendation from a high school teacher or counselor
    They'll use the answer to question 2 to weed out terrorists, by banning anyone interested in planting explosives but not landing a salary.
  13. Re:we need universal health on Massachusetts Makes Health Insurance Mandatory · · Score: 1

    The law should mandate health insurance like it does car insurance. It's not necessarily for the protection of the driver but for other drivers on the road.
    Do you know what you just wrote? That mandatory health insurance should not cover the individual who buys it, but only the other people they might injure, e.g. by coughing on them? Wow. Just wow.
  14. Prior Art on Sony Develops Fluid-Filled Bags For Hard Disks · · Score: 1

    I already have these in my spine and synovial joints. Also British railway carriages look like they use a larger version in their suspension.

  15. I suggest "DynaRant" instead on Recognizing Your Own Handwriting As A Password · · Score: 1

    With Dynahand, users simply identify their own handwriting
    I suggest a system that recognizes your political views. It would display "Iraq", "Immigration" or "Global Warming" etc., you would react furiously, and it would recognize your personal opinions.

    This would be much simpler than the proposed scheme, as no real Internet user ever writes by hand, but most are expert at spouting loony political gibberish.
  16. Speciation is good because it helps Specialisation on Freeman Dyson On Open Source Biology · · Score: 1

    If you're a cactus in an arid desert you really don't want your offspring to include "water-loving" genes from the plants in the oasis next door. And visa-versa.

    Likewise, if you're working on the Linux kernel, you don't want your next release to include half the functionality of Open Office. And visa-versa.

    The original article is very amusing science fiction.

  17. You are impersonating a lawyer on Slashdot on CallerID Spoofing to be Made Illegal · · Score: 0, Flamebait
    Hi node 3,
    • You just said impersonation is fraud, so please turn yourself in to the police.
    • Still here? Then clearly you were lying
    • You just said lying is fraud, so please turn yourself in to the police.
  18. Re: Blame Cuba on No OLPCs for Cuba, Ever · · Score: 1

    Let's not talk about lack of freedom of speech, executions without trial, or with fake trials, because that is not inherent to Cuba and its regime.
    I think you'll find the Castro "regime" doesn't run Guantanamo Bay,
    even though geographically it's in Cuba.
  19. The security implications of this are horrific on Microsoft to Offer Free Online Storage · · Score: 1

    Microsoft Corp. is giving computer users up to 500 megabytes of online storage for their documents, music, photos and video.
    Basically you're putting your life on the line. Allegedly, early this June, *chan took down subeta by hacking an admin's GMail account (using social engineering to get the password). Having gained access to the 1GB+ of emails stored online at GMail, the hackers then used this information to cancel Subeta's domains, servers etc. and destroy the business. Allegedly.
  20. /r/ pun about back door access on BBC Chooses Microsoft DRM Platform · · Score: 1

    gf, sex tapes, drm, and backdoor access to FBI agents.

    I got nothing. Need Benny Hill.

  21. Needs Slowpoke icon on Top Irritating Words Spawned by Internet · · Score: 1

    Srsly, gb2 1990s

    My most hated word is gaiafag.

  22. Re:Crash tested? on The Quest for the Car of the Future · · Score: 1

    The problem is never the small car smashing into something ... The problem is always something else smashing into the small car. The aforementioned SUV is a good example.
    So reduce the speed limits for SUVs to a safe level, or return to the old law of having a man walk in front with a red flag.
  23. Re: woodland living on How Long Could You Live Without Your Gadgets? · · Score: 1

    I could walk off into the woods today and live there for months and be perfectly happy.
    Ditto, but I'd need about a dozen gadgets, starting with a good knife and some string.
  24. Use Long Exposure Times on Google Street View Could Be Unlawful In Europe · · Score: 1

    Then anything that moves will be blurred, including people. Sorted!

  25. Ban GMO Grops Immediately on Human Genome More Like a Functional Network · · Score: 1

    The new data indicate the genome contains very little unused sequences and, in fact, is a complex, interwoven network. In this network, genes are just one of many types of DNA sequences that have a functional impact. "Our perspective of transcription and genes may have to evolve," the researchers state in their Nature paper, noting the network model of the genome "poses some interesting mechanistic questions" that have yet to be answered.
    If this research is right, it would be naive to assume it only applies to human DNA, and clearly the way that genes function has been significantly mis-understood. While this remains the case, for the forseeable future, only a reckless fool or a criminal would sell genetically modified food for consumption by humans or farm animals.