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User: justthinkit

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  1. Re:And the NSA is grabbing it as we speak ... on Mobile Spy Software Maker MSpy Hacked, Customer Data Leaked · · Score: 2

    Or this one:
    (x) make up most of the story.

    The math on what was taken doesn't add up. "Several hundred gigabytes" ~= 200GB. Users ~= 2M. Dividing and we find 100,000 bytes per person. What photo do you know that a modern cell phone camera can take that only uses 100,000 bytes? What other data is there? x & y coordinates of finger swipes?

    Yes, they could be transmitting things like web sites visited, but is that really a big deal?

    Or, this was a microscopic "break in" of a handful of accounts.

  2. Re:Apollo 16 Rover Awesomeness on Apollo 15 Commander Talks About Developing and Driving Lunar Buggy · · Score: 1

    Stabilized, huh. Is that why the Earth crescent bobs up and down like a cork? Or was that just the boom mic.?

  3. Barber or Masseuse on Ask Slashdot: Moving To an Offshore-Proof Career? · · Score: 1

    Barber or Masseuse. Something that requires your customer's physical presence.

  4. Re:I'd like to see the environmental nightmare die on Keurig Stock Drops, Says It Was Wrong About DRM Coffee Pods · · Score: 1

    So, your solutions are (1) use a different type of coffee and (2) "use more grinds than is needed", except you don't just add more grinds, you recurse to (1) above.

    (1) Using a different type of coffee is not a solution. Look, I have caffeine pills here as well. Maybe I can just throw in a few caffeine pills with my brew to make it stronger? Or how about a few chunks of charcoal? I can see you as a salesman, telling people they have selected the wrong car, or business suit!

    (2) I WAS adding "more" grounds. I was filling the cup, with my blend of coffee AND using the least water setting. As I said originally. Do you seriously think I would be half-filling a K-Cup, and then be complaining about it being too weak?!

    You have almost no control of the water to coffee ratio in a K-Cup, AND it brews a cup in 20 seconds. If you follow the directions of a French press (my normal method), you let the water sit on the coffee for around 4 to 5 minutes (I choose 5). Do you think just maybe 300 seconds of brew time is going to make a stronger brew than 20 seconds of brew time?

  5. Re:At the same time on Single Verizon IP Address Used For Hundreds of Windows 7 Activations · · Score: 1

    Thanks for the detailed and thoughtful reply.

    The main counterpoint I would make is that Microsoft made the decision eons ago to stop supporting XP. So naturally, today, it is out-of-date in many serious ways.

    The time for Microsoft to act differently regarding XP was ten+ years ago. Instead they chose the more money route of forcing us all to upgrade. Reminds me of the Keurig decision Slashdot is discussing today.

  6. Re:I'd like to see the environmental nightmare die on Keurig Stock Drops, Says It Was Wrong About DRM Coffee Pods · · Score: 3, Informative

    This. Luckily I think this (horrible, nasty, awful taste) will help sink the whole Keurig ship.

    I prefer strong coffee. Impossible to make in a Keurig, because you don't control the ratio of coffee to water. There is a cup size setting -- I set it to the smallest cup, assuming that would extract the most coffee essence per ounce -- but that still didn't make it strong enough for me. I was also trying it with my preferred blend (in a reusable K-cup) and it tasted bloody awful. I would rather eat my group coffee. Seriously.

    I think the only people using these regularly are people without taste buds...and the corporate world where they are happy people aren't spending 10 minutes making a cup of coffee.

    K-Cups are a weapon of mass destruction, accounting for 1% of landfill waste.

  7. Re:Easy solution on The World's Most Wasteful Megacity · · Score: 1

    It is rather mind boggling that such a congested city would still be saturated with World War II Decker tanks. Unfortunately they are too reliable. Still, I imagine in the not too distant future a change in pedestrian-killers so massive the Earth will indeed shift. Possibly enough to create a 4.0 earthquake.

  8. At the same time on Single Verizon IP Address Used For Hundreds of Windows 7 Activations · · Score: 2, Insightful

    At the same time it is also true that Microsoft is famously tolerant and encouraging of software professionals. Offering software at cost (like offering me Office 2000 for a hundred bucks, way back when), providing dev tools and beta products for free or close to it, and tolerating staggering levels of out-and-out piracy...in the interest of having their products used by a truly large sample size.

    If it wasn't for Microsoft, we would still be on mainframes and mini-computers. Paying jacked up prices. For crap, frankly.

    The only part of the Microsoft game I don't care for is trying to ship old wine in new bottles (i.e. every version of MSOffice since 2000) and especially the force-marching of us to a worse product (the downward progression away from XP). With XP, Microsoft could have created a decent 64-bit version. They could have given us (essentially) unlimited RAM usage on 64-bit XP. And they could have left it to us to decide when to move on to a product...IFF we thought that product was better. But then they would have had to make a real effort at making future Windows products truly better.

  9. Payday loans as a lifestyle on Internet Customers Surpass Cable Subscribers At Comcast · · Score: 3, Informative

    Ohio -- more payday loan vendors than McDonald's, Burger King & Wendy's...combined.

    In Oklahoma, more borrowers use at least 17 loans in a year than use just one.

    In 2006 the Pentagon found that payday loans were "becoming a threat to readiness" and tightened up the rules on loans...to military personnel.

    - all three from yesterday's NYTimes weekend magazine

  10. Re:A story for those who on 4.0 Earthquake Near Concord, California · · Score: 1

    I'm getting too old to lift those 5-gallon jugs too.

  11. A story for those who on 4.0 Earthquake Near Concord, California · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A story for those who don't understand orders of magnitude?

  12. Re:This again? on New Test Supports NASA's Controversial EM Drive · · Score: -1, Troll

    Spring-And-Loop Theory predicts that its version of "virtual particle pairs" -- dubbed springs -- cause electrons to move at one-tenth of the speed of light.

    100 years ago, those "virtual particle pairs" were called the ether. The ether doesn't go away, just because SR said it wasn't there and the M-M expt couldn't detect it.

    "e/m", in Spring-And-Loop Theory, is "spring bumps". In the NASA expt., they are firing microwave energy (i.e. spring bumps) at "space" (i.e. springs). The springs have nowhere to go, since every Planck-unit of the Universe is full of them. So they have no choice but to push back. Immovable spring objects vs irresistable bump force.

    Mod stalkers: this would be where you down-mod this comment, typically with the non-meta-moderatable "overrated" mod, usually doing this several days after the thread's start so that few will notice or have a chance to reverse your handiwork.

  13. Re: Apologies for posting something on topic on Russian Cargo Mission To ISS Spinning Out of Control · · Score: 1

    Ok, you pass Physics 100. Now back to the problem at hand.

    If this was a simple case of the capsule being put into a spin, and then all forces on the capsule stopping, it would be trivial to send the capsule a signal to "fire thruster x for y seconds" to stop the spin. I am sure this is done all the time.

    Yet the spin continues...

    The logical conclusion is that something is continuing to impart rotational force to the capsule. Something stuck doing this. With the only somethings that checks all the boxes being navigational thrusters.

  14. Re:Apologies for posting something on topic on Russian Cargo Mission To ISS Spinning Out of Control · · Score: 1

    I tried to point out how I think the summary is wrong in suspecting too much lift. That the extra altitude is miniscule. And then there is the matter of the rocket spinning. But yes, other than those 3 differences, I completely agree with the summary I suppose.

  15. Apologies for posting something on topic on Russian Cargo Mission To ISS Spinning Out of Control · · Score: 4, Insightful

    (1) spinning is caused by force
    (2) more force, unless purely rotational = higher speed
    (3) higher speed = higher orbit
    (4) 20km higher orbit is not much -- consistent with a small engine (like a thruster) causing it
    So, (5) keep guessing what the problem is

    My guess: a thruster stuck open...

  16. Re:You really are fucking stupid on The Engineer's Lament -- Prioritizing Car Safety Issues · · Score: 1

    And there is precisely zero evidence that the engineers ever objected to continuing to fly despite these ongoing failures.

    he had refused to sign the launch recommendation over safety concerns.
    - admittedly this is buried in the first sentence of the article

  17. Re:Fluoride in drinking water isn't necessary on Feds Say It's Time To Cut Back On Fluoride In Drinking Water · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Then there's the issue of toxicity, which apparently is essentially nil

    Spectacularly wrong.

    When you type "fluoride" into Wikipedia, the second auto-suggest is this "Fluoride_toxicity" page.

    Then there is this paragraph on an otherwise pro-fluoridation page: "In India an estimated 60 million people have been poisoned by well water contaminated by excessive fluoride... The effects are particularly evident in the bone deformations of children."

    At another pro-fluoridation page, we learn that the natural fluoride levels causing all those poisoned East Indians is 3 to 6 mg/l. Just 6 times the original US national standard forced on two-thirds of the population for the past sixty years.

    The normal rule of toxicology is a safety factor of 100. About 100 cups of coffee will kill us, for example. One baby aspirin is 1/200 of the lethal (ld50) dose for an infant. Same as one 200 mg Ibuprofen. But a day's maximum ibuprofen dose is 6% of lethal. One cigarette is 1/80th of lethal. The average US salt consumption of 3.5 g/day is 2% of lethal...and common sense tells us we eat too much salt, on average.

    Fluoride's ld50 is 50 mg/Kg. 8 glasses of water is about 2000 grams. Fluoridate at 1 mg/l, we get 2 mg of fluoride just from the water. That is 4% of lethal. And does not include at least 15 other sources of fluoride in our diet.

    Stats in the last two paragraphs drawing from "Toxic: How Science Measures Harm"

    tldr? Fluoride is more toxic than lead and almost as toxic as arsenic - common knowledge

    Saying that something more toxic than lead has "essentially nil" toxicity is my idea of wrong.

  18. Re:Umm... no. on The Engineer's Lament -- Prioritizing Car Safety Issues · · Score: 1
  19. Re:Easy fix on The Engineer's Lament -- Prioritizing Car Safety Issues · · Score: 2

    The SRBs were rated safe for a certain launch temperature range...that operational managers decided to override that fateful day.

  20. Re:I'll be happy with one thing... on Smart Headlights Adjust To Aid Drivers In Difficult Conditions · · Score: 1

    For the past year I've made a conscious effort to disengage my mind from the negative aspects of driving. My best solution is to drive with an engaging audio book or podcast playing. Instead of trying to change the behavior of other drivers, I'm working on self-improvement.

  21. Since when on Pepsi To Stop Using Aspartame · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Since when is Sucralose better than Aspartame?

  22. Re:How did he even get that job? on Google Executive Dan Fredinburg Among Victims of Everest Avalanche · · Score: 1

    You do not "conquer" this challenge yourself, as you might by biking up the col de ventoux, or by free-climbing el-capitan. There is great expense involved, and you would need support from what is practically an aboriginal people. (You also cannot actually survive the summit, so you need all of industrialized society behind you to supply you with air/gear).

    He did

  23. Re: World's best? on In New AI Benchmark, Computer Takes On Four Top Professional Poker Players · · Score: 1

    Oh surely.

    Doug Polk's Global Poker Index ranking:

    Ranking Position National rank Total score Highest

    GPI rank #164 for 1 weeks #85 1,942.19 pts #77

    PoY 2015 rank #1228 for 1 weeks #471 254.16 pts #353

  24. Re:World's best? on In New AI Benchmark, Computer Takes On Four Top Professional Poker Players · · Score: 1

    And it is not as if Bluff is the best ranking place either. Most of the names there I've never even heard of. The Magician isn't even listed on page 1 (top 50), yet in a single tournament he won 4 times what Polk has won over an entire career. Phil Ivey & Huck Seed are also missing from page one, in part because they are big cash game players.

    I imagine Polk is some very average player who got roped into this project and so, to give the project credibility, they trump him up into the stratosphere.

  25. Re:Is it the phone or the stupid stuff installed o on Ask Slashdot: What Are the Most Stable Smartphones These Days? · · Score: 1

    Your vote and your actions don't line up. You blame "stuff" but don't play games (and likely don't randomly install new stuff every few days).

    Isn't this obviously a memory mgmt/memory leak issue?

    I see tons of this on desktops/laptops -- Chrome, you are currently #1 on the hit list. Why can't it be even more prevalent on the newer platform of smartphones? That don't make it easy to bring up a Task Manager and study the memory usage of applications.