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User: 140Mandak262Jamuna

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  1. It is standard op for Microsoft. on Munich Reverses Course, May Ditch Linux For Microsoft · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Microsoft used to pay hosting service providers to switch to IIS. To gain a few server count numbers in netcraft.com surveys or something. It actually paid people to use Bing. Well let us see how much they are willing to give Munich to buy one more headline. All the while Google is consolidating its position in search and is seriously undermining the Office monopoly through Google docs.

    I just met a 50 something guy who bought Nokia latest phone Lumia 650 or whatever. His phone constantly forgets the google log in, changes the ring tone and randomly shutsdown. Normally some kid or a nephew would have fixed the issue had it been a iPhone or android. There is no kid in his extended circle who knows to troubleshoot a microsoft phone. His complaint is not the problems with the phone. ALL his phones malfunction because he answers yes/no to prompts without fully understanding the questions. But there are always children who would bail him out.

    I wonder how long its desktop monopoly is going to provide the cash to try these gimmicks.

  2. Why not google docs? on Munich Reverses Course, May Ditch Linux For Microsoft · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Our (S&P Midcap) company switched to Google docs + Google Apps packages successfully. It lets people buy Microsoft products too if they ask for it. But except for a few fancy presentations including lots of animation no one on the engineering side uses Microsoft. Some in accounting use Excel. But almost 90% of the time people stay in google docs. Slowly people have figured out what features not to use in Microsoft to interoperate with Google docs. There is relative peace and clam. Its integration with gmail, and collaborative editing and sharing makes google docs very useful. We no longer have multiple versions mutating through the email attachments. That is the biggest benefit as far as the users are concerned.

  3. Bad idea. Sherlock would not like it. on Reversible Type-C USB Connector Ready For Production · · Score: 1

    If you can plug in the USB either way, then there will not be scratch marks on the phone when a drunk tried to plug it in the wrong way. Then his brother might not have tell tale scratches in the phone he borrowed. Then how can Sherlock impress Watson? Bad idea.

  4. Re: Silicon Valley is overrated on Silicon Valley Doesn't Have an Attitude Problem, OK? · · Score: 0

    But Austin is in Texas. They elect dumb assess as governers, open carry deadly weapons, inject creationism in school textbooks, they are anti family planning. Life is not with living if you got to live it in Texas.

  5. 25 cm resolution on Google's Satellites Could Soon See Your Face From Space · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Your face will occupy all of one quarter of a pixel 25cm x 25cm. Good luck seeing your face from satellite. It is high res. But not so high as to see a face.

  6. Just the last 100K years on Wyoming's Natural Trap Cave Yields Huge Trove of Animal Remains · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Does not go back very far. Just last 100K years. Similar to the La Brea tar pits in age and diversity. Tar pits preserve bones and lots of micro fossils very well, but it is very tedious to clean them out. May be this one could be easier.

  7. No it does not make 9 billion profit. on NFL Fights To Save TV Blackout Rule Despite $9 Billion Revenue · · Score: 4, Interesting
    NFL is a non-profit organization. It does not make any profit. What you call 9 billion dollar profit, might look like profit, walk like profit, bark like profit, smell like profit, bite like profit. But it is NOT profit. IRS will not get a dime.

    America has been consistently electing politicians who promise to cut taxes. And they have been dutifully cutting the taxes for the richest people (and corporations which are people). But corporations are special citizens who can claim a non-profit status and exempt themselves from taxation. It is very expensive to create a new people-citizen. But corporate citizen is just a 25$ filing fee, no nine month waiting period, no active cooperation between two different people required. Corporation-people don't go to jail. They can be killed when it is suitable without any penalty. But corporation-people can be enslaved by other corporation-people and people-people. Corporation-people can have religious beliefs when it is profitable to have them. But they don't have religious responsibilities .

    Don't blame the politicians. Blame ourselves, collectively.

  8. Re:Hurray! USA is going to get another canal cheap on With Chinese Investment, Nicaraguan Passage Could Dwarf Panama Canal · · Score: 1

    Who's talking about borrowing any money from anyone? What part of cunning Wall street bankers pulling levers of influence you don't get? They will steal the required money from the Chinese. Probably with active collusion with the top Chinese government officials. If there is one thing our banksters are good at, it is using influence over government to steal money from the tax payers. And one thing Chinese, Indian, Russian, Brazilian governments are good at is in stealing money from their citizens. It is a match made in heaven.

  9. Hurray! USA is going to get another canal cheap! on With Chinese Investment, Nicaraguan Passage Could Dwarf Panama Canal · · Score: 4, Interesting
    The Europeans invested so much and spent so much to build the original Panama canal. They went bankrupt and USA picked up the semi finished canal cheaply. At that time that canal was part of Columbia. A group of influential bankers in New York with pulled levers in Washington DC, overseas American Navy etc, intervened in an internal conflict in Columbia and peeled off the zone of the canal from Columbia. They got Washington to recognize Panama with their puppets as the government. The puppets signed a highly lopsided deal favoring the banksters. They pocketed the money and walked off the mess. It took some 18 more years of stand off and then US Taxpayers stepped in and compensated the Columbians for stealing their canal.

    So don't worry, our government could be weak and our military power could be misapplied. But we have some really cunning bankers who would steal the loin cloth of Papua New Guineans if they could make a dollar or two. They will steal this spanking new Chinese built canal from Nicaragua for us. Some two decades later we the tax payers will compensate the victims of their greed.

  10. Solar city model on Why Morgan Stanley Is Betting That Tesla Will Kill Your Power Company · · Score: 4, Interesting
    One of the main stumbling blocks for residential solar is that a typical home owner is ill equipped to make the decision, (investment needed, financing, amortization schedules, expected future price of grid electricity, sizing etc) and find the contractor to execute it. Also resale, value of home etc etc come in. The solar city model is where they own the panels, they install it, you only pay metered electricity, you get to keep the grid for back up. In the end they pack it and take it away when you want to sell the home if the buyer is not interested in it. Suddenly the home owner can try solar for very low risk.

    Even without subsidies, this model has reasonable pay back period in places like Arizona or Hawaii. Of course storage technology is very bad at residential levels. Solar thermal has better storage using molten salt. But not viable at homes. But home storage does not have the size, weight and crashworthiness requirements of auto batteries. The flywheel storage mechanical batteries might become viable. But almost all the proposed storage have issues.

  11. Re:What is his job? on Satya Nadella At Six Months: Grading Microsoft's New CEO · · Score: 1, Troll
    Do you realize Indians (from South Asia, not those mistakenly named Indians by Columbus) are Caucasians?

    In fact when the Chinese Exclusion Act stripped Indian Americans of their property rights in the early 20th century, they argued the Act did not apply to them because they were Caucasians. It went all the way to the SCOTUS where Chief Justice Sutherland ruled, "yeah yeah Indians are Caucasians, but the law still applied to them because when the Congress said Caucasians they meant White, and the Indians are not White, so off you along with the Chinese."

  12. Re:Check out Detroit on Tesla's Already Shopping For More Office Space · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Yeah, these places have laws friendlier to the employers than the employees. So all the employees with skills in demand have moved to places where they can name their prices. People left behind in those places are usually low skilled. When things like fracking or oil well drilling requires skilled labor they get imported from other places at premium prices. I know quite a few oil rig/fracking rig operators living in places like Naperville Il, and work on 4 weeks on 2 weeks off rotations.

    Free market is a bitch. You skew the laws favoring employers, employees with skills leave, creating a vicious cycle.

  13. Such a large office needs ... on Tesla's Already Shopping For More Office Space · · Score: 1

    ... I think such a large office space needs some sort of transport for people to go from one end to another. Should not be emitting gases and ideally be very silent. Wonder who has the know-how to conjure up such a vehicle ;-)

  14. What is his job? on Satya Nadella At Six Months: Grading Microsoft's New CEO · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Before you grade his performance first decide what his job is. Whether he is going to be graded as a doctor trying to save a dying patient? Or a doctor doing terminal care, pain management etc to ease the passage? Or transplant surgeon who should harvest usable organs for transplant? or is he just an undertaker brought in to dress up the corpse for one last ride in the Cadillac?

    [The car analogy is left to the astute reader].

  15. Re:Others?? on Google Spots Explicit Images of a Child In Man's Email, Tips Off Police · · Score: 1

    Apparently there is a registry of known images, with hashes. All google was looking was for matched hashes, not running picasa en masse over all the images of all the people.

  16. The cow clicker guy was on to something. on Animal Behaviour Specialists Map Out the Social Networks of Cows · · Score: 2

    So this is the next frontier in social networking? Farmville is so human, the next killer app is cow clicker.

  17. Kodi means flag in Tamil. on The XBMC Project Will Now Be Called Kodi · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There was this long discussion in that site about the meaning of Kodi and whether or not it is suitable for this package. Kodi means flag, (the flappy thing that flutters from a flagpole flag, not flag meaning getting tired). That is if you say kodi like you say "midi" in the midi-skirt. If you say it more like ko-die it would mean an umbrella or a donation. I don't know much else about the software.

  18. Rules for IT is "IT Rules". on Ask Slashdot: IT Personnel As Ostriches? · · Score: 0
    The main goal of IT is to provide security to the company network. You must accomplish this by any means necessary. If it means stopping every one else from doing their job, so be it. Stop them. Most of these dim wits who think they are working, always create problems for IT. For IT to be efficient they have to be stopped. So stop them.

    Once you have established the rule, "IT rules", most people will cower before you and try to get their work done without offending you or getting on the wrong side of you. That means you can celebrate "Mission Accomplished". Your company will have a few that know how networks work and know a smattering of knowledge about Unix or Linux. They might have even served as root of some lab or the other in the grad school. Find them, stop them completely on their tracks. Thwart every one of their moves. Either they leave you alone, or the leave the company. I T should have unquestioned authority over the corporate infrastructure, and ideally there should be no one in the company capable of questioning you.

    So the rules for IT is "IT Rules".

  19. But EMACS has butterfly mode... on Comparison: Linux Text Editors · · Score: 4, Funny
  20. I really hate TiVO on Why TiVo's Founders Crashed and Burned With Qplay · · Score: 1
    They took a simple idea, patented it and sued and forced all other hard disk based recorders down. Their main innovation was the revenue model of sucking 10 or 15 $ a month from the early adopters. That gave them the financial muscle to sue everyone and shut everyone down. They are basically Microsoft of hard disk based recording. I own a couple of hard disk based standard def recorders, both more than six years old.

    When the DVD recorder broke, I searched and found that this is the only piece of electronics that has appreciated in value. The one I bought for 500$ brand-new was selling in eBay for 1800$ four year old, but in working condition. Integration with TV-guide listing got broken after analog broadcasts were discontinued. All the cable tv vendors are in collusion with TiVo. All of them want 15$ a month.

    If the insanely stupid patent monopoly had not been granted to TiVo we would be seeing 1TB, HD-recording hard disk players with full integration with TV-listings for 100$ flat without any monthly fees.

  21. Is she google bombing herself with stoned? on An Accidental Wikipedia Hoax · · Score: 1

    The number of times the hoaxer says, "we were stoned" makes me think her next project is to google bomb herself with the keyword "stoned"?

  22. Re:Looks like it is market opportunity. on Lots Of People Really Want Slideout-Keyboard Phones: Where Are They? · · Score: 1

    If it is there, find it and buy it. If it is not there build it, sell it and make a decent profit.

  23. what happened to the Voronoi polyhedrons? on How Bird Flocks Resemble Liquid Helium · · Score: 1
    Last time the bird flock was mentioned it was about how a flock flies past an obstacle without colliding. Something about each bird maintaining its position by maximizing the distance to its nearest neighbors. The math would work out such that each bird would form a vertex in a Delaunay tessellation and the "space" associated with each bird would form a Voronoi polyhedron.

    I was kind of scared. You know, you spend all your life learning computational geometry and suddenly a flock of shearwaters or starlings show up and solve the same problem you have been solving for decades. You are given the pink slip and be replaced by a flock of bird brains. Man! that would suck.

    But I am glad now, the birds are after bigger prize. No stupid engineering and mesh generation for them. They want pure science and may be they are after the Nobel prize. Glad they have moved on to simulating the liquid helium. Good for them. I think next thing will be they have solved the Cauchy-Riemman integral and they have a deterministic solution to Shroedinger's equation. They are going to finish off with a solution to Navier-Stokes equation with k-epsilon turbulence modeling.

  24. Re:There have been attempts before on How Bird Flocks Resemble Liquid Helium · · Score: 1

    Bertram Wooster, is that you? Slowing stirring from the bed sipping tea and eating breakfast at the ungodly hour of 10:45 AM? How is Jeeves, old chap, Can I borrow him, I, no, no not I, my friend is batting on a sticky wicket, say. Toot. toots.

  25. India has disputed borders too. on Google's Mapping Contest Draws Ire From Indian Government · · Score: 1
    I have seen numerous Govt offices in India with a rusted metal sign saying, "Photography prohibited". But cut them some slack too, routinely attacked by terrorists looking for soft targets.

    Also the border is disputed with Pakistan and China. Since Pakistan has been the "ally" of USA since 1950s, and India kept dallying with USSR all those days, almost all the American magazines will carry maps that show disputed parts of Kashmir as part of Pakistan. I have seen so many Reader's Digest, Time, National Geographic, Life mags with maps of Kashmir region stamped with, "This map does not agree with the official map published by the Surveyor General of India. No significance may be attached to the differences published here. " (quoting from memory, actual wording could be even more bureaucratese ).