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User: dfsmith

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  1. Re:similar question on The Brainteaser Elon Musk Asks New SpaceX Engineers · · Score: 1

    The span of the roof of my room (measured parallel to the walls) is over 13000 miles. I see brown bears. (And I've just got the bill for the tall crane that had to assemble the room exactly square. Next time, I'm aiming to see penguins!)

  2. Re:At one of the poles? on The Brainteaser Elon Musk Asks New SpaceX Engineers · · Score: 1

    You could be 1.2 miles north of the south pole.

  3. Deadbeats are not who you think they are on No Justice For Victims of Identity Theft · · Score: 2

    Those exorbitant interest rates credit card companies charge are to pay for deadbeats who don't pay back their credit card accounts, not fraud. (Empasis added.)

    FYI: In credit card parlance, a deadbeat is someone who pays off their card every month. The people who don't pay it back are customers [citation needed!].

  4. Re:Wow ... on Crashing iPad App Grounds Dozens of American Airline Flights · · Score: 1

    I don't get why people don't understand staggered roll outs....

    Here's a scenario:

    • Captain A: I see communications have failed. What does your manual say to do?
    • Co-pilot B: It says to do ABC.
    • A: Hmm. Mine says XYZ is the procedure.
    • B: That's peculiar, let's have a long technical discussion.

    In this case, checking the EFB on the ground may have been safer than resolving conflicting versions in the air.

  5. Re:Public Shaming the Red Chinese ? on Github DDoS Attack As Seen By Google · · Score: 1

    As explained in

    War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength

    The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism by Emmanuel Goldstein

  6. Because it's easier than getting the document via inter-department request from the IRS? Why else would the FBAR filings be through a different agency?

  7. Re:elinks on Every Browser Hacked At Pwn2own 2015, HP Pays Out $557,500 In Awards · · Score: 1

    Well, the rendering engine for these browsers is tty; a known ugly hack of a beast. While there are unlikely to be OS level exploits easily available, there are plenty of user-based exploits available in the vt code (redefining character sets, occasional graphical terminals, goodness knows how many keyboard insertion sequences...).

  8. Re:Fee waiver on ICE Tells Reporter Its Secretive Drone Program Isn't Newsworthy · · Score: 1

    Your point is taken, but that's not actually the case.

    Fees are $0.10/page, search is $16 to $28/hour depending on the type. You are notified in advance if the fees will be over $25.[1]

    Also, the request has to be "not primarily in the commercial interest of the requester" [1], which may or may not be the case here.

    [1] http://www.dhs.gov/foia-fee-structure-and-waivers

  9. Re:Please, next story. on ICE Tells Reporter Its Secretive Drone Program Isn't Newsworthy · · Score: 2, Funny

    You appear to have accidentally hit the "Post" button instead of going to the next story. Easy mistake—I totally understand.

  10. Fee waiver on ICE Tells Reporter Its Secretive Drone Program Isn't Newsworthy · · Score: -1

    So this is a reporter who wants the taxpayers to foot the expense of digging up this data, rather than paying for it himself. Did I get that right?

  11. Re:And Yet..... HTC.... on Google Announces Android 5.1 · · Score: 1

    That's the price you pay for believing in your carrier's warranty (Verizon/AT&T?). If you're happy being out of waranty, then just install the updates yourself. (I converted my AT&T M8 to the GPE load, and have been very happy.)

  12. Re:You don't need a mic... on Ask Slashdot: Wireless Microphone For Stand-up Meetings? · · Score: 1

    And make sure the room is oxygen free. No! I meant the cable. Um. One or the other should work.

  13. Re:We've all been there before on 18 Months On, Grand Theft Auto V's Mount Chiliad Mystery Remains Unsolved · · Score: 1

    This aptitude does not have Super Cow Powers.

  14. Re:This would be a great Slashdot poll on 1950s Toy That Included Actual Uranium Ore Goes On Display At Museum · · Score: 1

    When you see someone who has done something remarkable with their life, it often turns out that they did, indeed, do something like Nigerian summer camp as a kid. (Not that Nigeria's a bad place—reasonably civillized.)

  15. Re:Perhaps it wouldn’t pass today’s .. on 1950s Toy That Included Actual Uranium Ore Goes On Display At Museum · · Score: 1

    Anything with a "Frozen" princess on?

  16. Re:The most insecure OS in the world on Microsoft Fixes Critical Remotely Exploitable Windows Root-Level Design Bug · · Score: 1

    You don't count PostScript as an OS? It's so much more than a language....

  17. What the Bible says: on Woman Suffers Significant Weight Gain After Fecal Transplant · · Score: 1

    From Genesis 41:20-21:

    The lean, ugly cows ate up the seven fat cows that came up first. But even after they ate them, no one could tell that they had done so; they looked just as ugly as before. Then I woke up.

    It was just a dream... B-)

  18. Re:Intestinal infection, don't jump to conclusions on Woman Suffers Significant Weight Gain After Fecal Transplant · · Score: 1

    Arnold Schwarzenegger's BMI was 33 when he won Mr. Universe. BMI is somewhat useful in statistical analysis, but rarely relevent for a single case with no other information.

  19. Re:naming scheme is going to drive people to drink on New Multi-Core Raspberry Pi 2 Launches · · Score: 1

    I suppose you could name it the Tau B where tau=2.pi.

  20. Re:IBM on Cutting Through Data Science Hype · · Score: 1

    Actually last year bonuses were forgone amid lower profits....

    Now Watson has some data on what happens to a company when you cut the pay of its top-performing employees more than the lowest performing! *

    * I'm talking about the regular employees who get ranked, not necessarily the exectives.

  21. Re:Tin foil hattery on Adobe's Latest Zero-Day Exploit Repurposed, Targeting Adult Websites · · Score: 1

    Well, the company in question did implement their graphics rendering engine (PostScript) as an interpreted language.

  22. Re:Perhaps at last an affordable mini PC? on Tiny Fanless Mini-PC Runs Linux Or Windows On Quad-core AMD SoC · · Score: 2

    I got an nVidia ION-based Asus Aspire Revo PC a few years back. It worked fairly well, gets nice and warm, and is still in service as my Kodi box, NAS/backup server (eSATA+GbE with RAID) and secondary DNS/DHCP. It does leave out the PCI slots from the reference platform though.

    I'm currently evaluating a $150 (from Fry's) Asus VivoPC as my next primary server. Dual core, hidden micro-PCIe, SATA and USB3. So far, so good.

  23. Re: Technologically maybe... on The Next Decade In Storage · · Score: 1

    When I got my first CD-ROM drive, it was half speed (75kB/s). Oh yeah! It was awesome—I wish I still had some of those early CD-ROM demos. (The Intel monk/book of the dead one sticks in my mind: it talked to you!)

  24. Re:Why do I want to upgrade? on Is Kitkat Killing Lollipop Uptake? · · Score: 1

    I guess changing the calendar's "week view" from 7 days to 5 days is part of their 20% play-at-work scheme. (It also only displays a fixed time span, because who would want to see your appointments for the whole day?)

  25. Use telnet on Tips For Securing Your Secure Shell · · Score: 1

    The telnet protocol can be made very secure with the right software in place.* But it's only useful when you have a pre-agreed algorithm.

    * Use the data stream to carry benign traffic. Encode your critical message elsewhere, e.g., the inter-packet delays, typos, a secondary (intermingled) TCP stream, TCP retries, TCP checksum, window lengths, header packing.