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User: sir-gold

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  1. Weights and Measures on Ask Slashdot: What To Do About Repeated Internet Overbilling? · · Score: 1

    You definitely need to press your case further with the Weights & Measures people, because this falls squarely into their territory. At&t is clearly selling you a specific amount of product for a specific price, and the main purpose of the W&M department is to test the accuracy of commercial measuring equipment.

    If you are actually able to get a live person with relative ease, just keep calling back until you get someone that agrees with you.

    If W&M can test the gas pump, why can't they test the internet pump too?

  2. Re:Pure Marketing on Apple Begins Storing Chinese User Data On Servers In China · · Score: 1

    It doesn't matter anyway, since China will have hacked the encryption keys within minutes of generating them.

    Or the NSA will have hacked them, passed them them on to Israel (NSA gives Israel raw intelligence access), who will then sell them to China in exchange for whatever weapons they can't get from the US.

  3. Re:Overstating cat's role? on Connected Collar Lets Your Cat Do the War-Driving · · Score: 2

    Cats explore everything. They will eventually go where you want if you wait long enough.

  4. New version of an old idea. on Connected Collar Lets Your Cat Do the War-Driving · · Score: 1

    This sounds like a modern cyber-warfare version of the Soviet anti-tank dogs or the American bat-bombs.

    If a cat collar can sniff wifi, it can run an automated exploit script too.

  5. Re:Isn't it the other way around? on Do Dark Matter and Dark Energy Cast Doubt On the Big Bang? · · Score: 2

    It's not necessarily a new form of energy.

    It's possible that there is a 5th force that we don't know about, different from the 4 forces that we already know about (gravity, magnetism, strong force and weak force.)

    It could be a very weak force with an extremely long range that only manifests when the other 4 forces are beyond their effective ranges.

  6. Re:Option: Linksys WRT1900ac on Ask Slashdot: Life Beyond the WRT54G Series? · · Score: 1

    Does the WRT1900ac still use open-source code in the stock firmware?

    The only reason the WRT54G was opened up in the first place was because of the GPL requirements. If the stock WRT1900ac uses entirely closed-source code, then there is no GPL requirement to post the source code

  7. Re:Load of Horse Shit on Why Morgan Stanley Is Betting That Tesla Will Kill Your Power Company · · Score: 1

    The next Tesla model will be a big metal box full of batteries that you park next to your house, and permanently connect.

  8. Re:Until we learn how to use less ... on Why Morgan Stanley Is Betting That Tesla Will Kill Your Power Company · · Score: 1

    My first PC had a 200 watt power supply
    The next one was 400 watt
    After that it was 650 watt, which lasted until I need PCIe connectors.
    Now I'm up to 800 watts, with a PC that also doubles as a space heater whenever I play a game.

  9. Re:Until we learn how to use less ... on Why Morgan Stanley Is Betting That Tesla Will Kill Your Power Company · · Score: 1

    I'm pretty sure most of us lack the tools and materials to build a photovoltaic panel.

    However, Solar thermal (hot water solar) is well within reach of anyone who can solder pipes and use a saw.

  10. Sony is too selfish on Sony Tosses the Sony Reader On the Scrap Heap · · Score: 1

    Sony tries too hard to be completely in charge of every tiny aspect of their products, even when they lack the expertise to actually accomplish it.
    They could have partnered with Amazon or B&N right from the beginning, and they would have been a part of something big. But instead they have a tiny part of nothing, all to themselves.

    This is what happens when you don't share your toys Sony. Everyone eventually decides to get up and go play somewhere else.

  11. Counselling? on Household Robot Jibo Nets Over $1 Million On Indiegogo · · Score: 1

    How is a child raised by a robot any more traumatized than a child raised by a television (AKA the electric babysitter)?

  12. Like a Public Library on Amazon Isn't Killing Writing, the Market Is · · Score: 1

    How is renting a book for a month any different than borrowing that same book from the library for a month (as far as the publisher is concerned)?

    As long as Amazon has bought enough "copies" of the book to cover everyone who is reading that book at any given time, then the publisher has already made their money.

    It's possible that amazon IS screwing over the publishers, by either paying too low of a price per copy or by not paying for all the copies in circulation, but that has nothing to do with the legitimacy of the rental service itself.

  13. Re:Reason I installed addblock. on Dealing With 'Advertising Pollution' · · Score: 1

    I have seen video advertisement captchas as well, where you actually have to watch the video (or atleast most of it) to answer a question.

  14. Re:Remote areas? on Harvesting Energy From Humidity · · Score: 1

    It's easier to fix alien tech if you are living in an alien junkyard.

    I don't know about those areas specifically, but there are many extremely poor areas of the world that are drowning in 1st world waste like plastic bottles and broken electronics.
    Maybe the solution could use those "resources"

    Some of this already exists, like the 20oz-bottle skylight (fill bottle with water and 2 cap fulls of bleach, drill hole in tin roof, stick bottle half-way through, and seal it somehow) The end result is a bright light that fills the area like a light bulb, and lasts pretty much forever.

    If this new hydrophobic layer could be cheaply painted onto bottle plastic, it would take care of a large part of the raw material cost, especially if the hydrophobic layer could somehow also be made from whatever chemicals are in those old electronics.

    It's cheaper to make lemonade if life hands you free lemons.

  15. Re:Completely useless for me. on Rocket Scientist Designs "Flare" Pot That Cooks Food 40% Faster · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Where do you live that they ban gas-flame cooking?

  16. Re:Long time to boil? on Rocket Scientist Designs "Flare" Pot That Cooks Food 40% Faster · · Score: 1

    Wouldn't a standard pressure cooker set to sea level pressure solve this problem?

  17. Secret Copyright on "Internet's Own Boy" Briefly Knocked Off YouTube With Bogus DMCA Claim · · Score: 1

    How can you make a DMCA claim, while withholding both the name of the copyright holder and the particular copyrights involved?

    If there is zero burden of proof, then what is to stop someone from sending a DMCA takedown notice for EVERYTHING on youtube?

  18. Only copyright on Tor Project Sued Over a Revenge Porn Business That Used Its Service · · Score: 1

    Since she herself created the images in question, and shared them with at least one other person, does this not count as the creation of an artwork for private distribution?

    By this standard Pinkmeth (and by extension Tor) are guilty of, at most, copyright infringement.

  19. Re:more leisure time for humans! on Foxconn Replacing Workers With Robots · · Score: 1

    I went college for a technical degree, not a liberal arts degree, so I haven't had any courses on the subject at all.

    I wasn't sure exactly which "94 million" you were referring to, and assumed you just meant all the people killed by the USSR in general.

    Stalin might have have killed more people, but it was Lenin that started it all. That's why I called it Leninism.

  20. Re:more leisure time for humans! on Foxconn Replacing Workers With Robots · · Score: 1

    The world wasn't (and still isn't) ready for communism. Any attempt to establish communism before the means of production can support it is doomed to spectacular failure.

  21. Re:more leisure time for humans! on Foxconn Replacing Workers With Robots · · Score: 2

    All of the people displaced by automation now have jobs in the "service" industry, but that can't continue indefinitely, especially as automation begins to creep into that field as well,

  22. Re:Misused? Murder is intrinsic in communism. on Foxconn Replacing Workers With Robots · · Score: 1

    You can't find it anywhere (other than in a book), because it requires mechanization beyond what is currently possible.

  23. Re:It's working so well in Venezuela on Foxconn Replacing Workers With Robots · · Score: 0

    Then there is a rising need for communism.

  24. Re:Misused? Murder is intrinsic in communism. on Foxconn Replacing Workers With Robots · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There is no real communism...

    True, there is no such thing as real communism yet.

    and there never will be.

    That's a pretty bold statement, especially considering that the industrial revolution (the thing that originally inspired the invention of communism) hasn't actually ended yet.

    It's impossible to increase efficiency indefinitely without causing rampant unemployment at some point. Communism is a solution for a problem that hasn't quite happened yet (but it's silly to think it won't happen eventually).

  25. Re:more leisure time for humans! on Foxconn Replacing Workers With Robots · · Score: 2

    Basic income means that everyone lives at the same economic level, retirement accounts allow you to live at a higher economic level than everyone else, depending on how much you save.

    Some people just aren't happy unless they are better-off than everyone else, no matter how comfortable the "average" might be.