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User: jridley

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Comments · 1,840

  1. Re:25 years is permanent? on 15-Year-Old Boy Fitted With Robotic Heart · · Score: 1

    Where does it say that the heart is only good for 25 more years? It says that he can expect to live another 25 years. That's how long until they estimate the rest of his body will give out.

    Also, there's nothing to stop them putting in another heart.

    When they say "permanent" they are mainly drawing a distinction between this and early artificial hearts, which were only stop-gap measures to last until a real transplant heart could be found; typically people on them only had a few days or weeks until they died without a transplant. It was extraordinary the first time someone lasted 6 months on one, and I don't think he ever left the hospital.

  2. Re:old hardware, probably on 66% of All Windows Users Still Use Windows XP · · Score: 1

    I just built a new machine last fall. Quad core, 4GB, pretty decent graphics card, a few TB of hard drive. It runs Windows 7 just fine. After a month I gave up trying to get used to it and installed XP. They made changes to the GUI that made it impossible for me to do the sorts of thing that I do as efficiently, and XP will (just barely, I admit) run 4 cores and 4GB of RAM (close enough anyway).

    I also try each new Ubuntu that comes out. I'm hoping that pretty soon I'll be able to switch, though right now there are still a few things that I can't do under Linux. My scanner will probably always need Windows (or Mac) because one of its main features (which I absolutely need) is Digital ICE and that's proprietary and they have zero interest in releasing a Linux driver.

    In any case, I expect to move from XP to Linux some day. I'd just as soon avoid any Windows newer than XP, partially due to my dislike of the GUI, and partially due to my dislike of integrated DRM.

  3. Re:Dont hate, educate on Could Anti-Texting Laws Make Roads More Dangerous? · · Score: 1

    True. I think in most surveys, 90 to 95% of drivers feel that they're above average. What a country this is. We thought it was only in Lake Woebegon that everyone was above average.

  4. Re:Can't you simulate a chemistry set with softwar on Safety Commission To Rule On Safety of Rulers In Science Kits · · Score: -1, Troll

    whoosh

  5. Re:Dont hate, educate on Could Anti-Texting Laws Make Roads More Dangerous? · · Score: 1

    Also, nobody cares. Most people really don't give a crap if they're driving dangerously, they just want their entitlements. And they're entitled to do whatever the hell they want to. Just ask them.

  6. A great way to take shitty pictures on Apple Patents Directional Flash Tech For Cameras · · Score: 0

    Great, another innovation in direct flash. Direct flash is the best way to take crappy photos. If you want your subjects to look utterly washed out and flat, be sure to use direct flash.

    I admit, I use it if my options are extremely limited, but it's not my first choice.

  7. Re:...huh? on Security Lessons Learned From the Diaspora Launch · · Score: 4, Informative

    I work HfH construction once in a while. They hire professionals to do the important bits and the large stuff; excavating, pouring the foundation, wiring, plumbing, and often the finish carpentry. If you happen to have someone relatively skilled there, they may assist the pros; I've helped with all; wiring, plumbing, finish carpentry. But you don't let someone who is enthusiastic but doesn't know what they're doing do finish carpentry, they'll probably just wind up wrecking a lot of material. And if you let them do plumbing in an area where code requires copper pipe, you'll probably wind up with a mess that will take a pro 3 times longer to fix than if he'd just done it himself to start with.

    I think the latter may be the case when it comes to this project. I really, really hope this project comes together, but as a programmer I fear that if they've built this thing from the ground up without a good basic understanding of web security, the thing may have to be gutted and rewritten to get to where it needs to be.

    Lots of people can write web apps. Heck, I pretty much write web apps all day long, but I write them for intranet use, they're not accessible to the internet at large. If my stuff had to be hardened against the kind of general attack Diaspora is going to have to endure, I'd have to learn a lot more than I know now.

  8. Re:Remember? on Introducing the Invulnerable Evercookie · · Score: 1

    It's pretty much impossible to use the modern web without cookies.

    Heck, it's pretty difficult to use it without Javascript. Try disabling Javascript and see how far you get. Many sites simply don't work without JS turned on.

    Cookies in and of themselves are not necessarily evil. You really need them to do shopping baskets, for instance. The problem is that they can be used for evil.

  9. Re:Not hard to beat at first glance. on Introducing the Invulnerable Evercookie · · Score: 2

    I also run NoScript + BetterPrivacy. Also CsFire, though it's difficult to leave that enabled, since so many sites (like PayPal) won't work with it enabled.

    If all that ever fails, I'll just start running PortableFirefox and restoring all the files from a read-only master image on every browser startup.

  10. Re:Hunters who don't hit much? Seems to be common. on Hunters Shot Down Google Fiber · · Score: 1

    According to a friend of mine who belongs to a local rod & gun club where I grew up, the worst shots around are cops. The local police don't have their own range and rent the rod & gun club for an evening twice a month so the officers can get their required range time in.

    When it was just the members and guests shooting, a 4 foot high backstop (at 30 feet) was plenty. When the cops started using the range, they had to add backstops top and bottom because they were putting bullets out the back of the building. Heck, they even started noticing bullet holes in the CEILING.

    I'm assuming that the cops were just screwing around, trying trick shots or something, because it's impossible for me to believe that anyone could miss a friggin 4 foot high backstop at only 30 feet, even with a snub nosed revolver (this was 30 years ago, before standard issue switched to semi-auto pistols). I'm not that good of a shot, and even with a pistol I've never held before it is unusual for me to even miss the paper target (12 inches on a side or whatever).

    There are exceptions; most counties have sniper teams and they're usually quite good.

  11. Re:I don't understand on Online Shopping May Actually Increase Pollution · · Score: 1

    DHL, Airborne plus thousands of independents. Also, Fedex Ground is a separate company from Fedex, sharing just the name. (Also, Fedex rocks, Fedex Ground sucks.) But that gets it up to 6 majors, and there may be more.

    OK, DHL and Airborne aren't as big as the others but they're not small.

  12. Re:I don't understand on Online Shopping May Actually Increase Pollution · · Score: 0

    I think a lot of it is shipping. When you order online, a single item gets stuffed into a box and shipped hundreds of miles, passing through many vehicles and hands. Very inefficient, especially given the packaging talents of some companies that put a SD memory card into a cubic-foot-sized box.

    By contrast, items in stores are shipped surface using more optimal routes (less time pressure) and in bulk packaging. It's a lot cheaper in gas and everything to ship 1000 items at a time from a warehouse in a truck that's full of stuff going from that warehouse to that store and then have 1000 people come a few miles to a store and pick them up than it is to ship 1000 items from a warehouse to 1000 people's houses.

  13. Re:Begs the question. on Online Shopping May Actually Increase Pollution · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I've got better advice. Stay the hell away from Best Buy. What a hole. Moronic salespeople, highest prices around, bad selection, worst technicians on the planet, and a corporate policy to intentionally drive off people who are actually shopping for a good deal.

  14. Re:Begs the question. on Online Shopping May Actually Increase Pollution · · Score: 1

    I do. But I think I may qualify for one of those exemptions. On the rare occasions that I do go out to buy something, it's at least 40 kilometers if I just go somewhere and back again, and usually it's more than 50 kilometers.

    But I also shop online to save my own time. It's at least an hour, more likely two of my time to go out and buy something. Translated into working overtime instead, that shopping trip cost me $50 or more just in time wasted.

    Also, I have access to much better information and can make a more informed purchase when I'm online. In a store, I just have to go by what the thing looks like in a plastic coffin, and I don't have nearly the choice I do online.

  15. Re:Wow an adult recieving an average 10 etxts a da on Texting On the Rise In the US · · Score: 1

    I have one. With the antenna on the roof and carefully pointed at the nearest tower (about 5 miles away, behind lots of trees) it did improve the performance a bit; now you can usually make a voice call that you can usually understand and probably will not drop more than once a minute, and texts now make it through in 30 to 45 minutes.

    I only got it because my daughter came home from college and "couldn't live" with no coverage at all. Personally I don't really care. I use Google voice so as long as I'm near SOME phone, it doesn't really matter which one. If I'm at home, I use that phone, if I'm not, I use the cell.

  16. Re:Oh Yea? on Intel Threatens DMCA Using HDCP Crack · · Score: 1

    Well, since Intel owns HDCP and gets a piece of every device using it, be sure not to buy any blu-ray player, game console or TV with an HDMI connector.

  17. Re:Wow an adult recieving an average 10 etxts a da on Texting On the Rise In the US · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Hell, I sometimes go 2 or 3 weeks without even turning my phone ON. I don't think my send and receive together add up to 10 a YEAR.
    'Course, there's essentially zero coverage at my house. Texts CAN get through there, but it takes up to 2 or 3 hours by my tests.

  18. Re:Print More on Pentagon Aims To Buy Up Book · · Score: 1

    This way, once both editions are OCR'd, a simple DIFF will tell us what the government considers to be critical data. The bad guys (if there are any who care about this and don't already know it) don't even have to read the whole thing now.

  19. Re:Do those you correspond with agree to profiling on Best Way To Archive Emails For Later Searching? · · Score: 1

    Email is not a secure format and never has been. If you have anything you don't want to be public knowledge, don't use email, or encrypt it. This has been true since SMTP was invented. It's simply not secure. Everyone using email should know this.

  20. The odd thing? on Sony Breathes New Life Into Library Books · · Score: 2, Insightful

    That's how all of the library loan systems I've used work. They can only have the number of files that they purchased out at once. Otherwise they could buy one copy and lend it to a million people at once. One service could buy one copy of everything and loan it to everyone for practically no cost.

    Audiobook downloads work the same way.

    How the heck else could it work, if authors are to ever get paid anything?

  21. Re:An Advertiser's Fantasy ... on Best Way To Archive Emails For Later Searching? · · Score: 1

    Yup, I'm really highly concerned that an advertiser might learn that I like electronics and am a huge computer geek. Because there's no other way they could know that.

    Seriously, this is what I did; I pushed everything to GMail, like the OP, tens of thousands of emails, going back to the 90s.

    Email is not and has never been a secure media, so if you've been putting sensitive data in emails, you're not being really bright anyway.

  22. Re:Cars Don't Cause Accidents... on Gubernatorial Candidate Wants to Sell Speeding Passes for $25 · · Score: 1

    It's ALWAY driver error, since one of the responsibilities of being a driver is keeping your vehicle in proper operating condition.

    The only time it's not driver error is when completely unforseeable incidents occur, like someone jumping in front of a car from a blind location like from behind a parked truck or something.

  23. So is he saying... on Gubernatorial Candidate Wants to Sell Speeding Passes for $25 · · Score: 1

    A) The speed limits are actually BS and speeding enforcement is simply a way to make money
    B) He's willing to sell the lives (safety) of other road users for $25
    C) They're actually going to put that money into a trust to be used to pay for property damage or personal injury of people hurt by a driver on the program?

    ISTM that it has to be one of these, or some combination of them.

  24. Re:News flash on 25% of Worms Spread Via USB · · Score: 1

    In the case of Vista, "upgrade" is a matter of definition.

    I had 7 on my machine for a couple of months but it drove me crazy, they made some GUI changes that I just found highly irritating and slowed me down too much, so I went back to XP.

  25. solution on Retargeting Ads Stalk You For Weeks After You Shop · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Firefox with noscript and CsFire, and don't save cookies.

    When even this fails, I contemplate running Portable Firefox and having it reload from a scratch image every time I start it up.