Posted by timothy (42% noise) View
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adamengst writes “We seldom think about how our mobile phones actually work, but in this TidBITS article, Rich Mogull pulls back the covers and peels away the jargon to explain why text messages work when voice calls are dropped, why your battery lasts longer in some places than in others, why you’re not allowed to use phones on airplanes, why you can be notified of a voicemail message when your phone never rang, and more.”
Short summary isn’t always good - by bendodge (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread
And here we see illustrated why a reading the article isn’t always a good thing. This summary is obviously designed to drive people to the site hosting this article (and lots of ads I’m sure), but by forcing people to read the article you’ve taken down your site and most of us will now leave this page. Nice.
On a side note, what we do have in the way of a summary suggests that there’s very little for us to learn here.
1. Text messages work when voice calls are dropped for the same reason Morse can get through when SSB voice can’t.
2. Your battery lasts longer in some places than in others because the phone automatically adjusts its transmit strength based on the distance from the tower.
3. You’re not allowed to use phones on airplanes because of paranoid ignoramuses and the insightful people who realize how bad it could get when people in a flying bomb know what’s going on (and how annoying cell phones are).
4. You can be notified of a voicemail message when your phone never rang because the network was too busy to initiate the connection, your phone was on vibrate or it didn’t have a connection at the moment.
There. Now you can get on with your day.
Re:Short summary isn’t always good - by mmontour (Score: 3, Insightful) Thread
3. You’re not allowed to use phones on airplanes because of paranoid ignoramuses and the insightful people who realize how bad it could get when people in a flying bomb know what’s going on (and how annoying cell phones are).
Or, just possibly it’s because:
1. GSM phones are known to emit strong pulses of RF that interfere with nearby electronics (audio amplifiers, televisions, speakerphones, etc).
2. Airplanes contain quite a few important electronic systems for navigation, communication, flight control, etc.
3. Considering the number of passengers who are carried by airplanes each year, even something with a one-in-a-million chance of causing a problem would be a very bad thing.
Shortlist of answers: - by iamdrscience (Score: 4, Funny) Thread
The real answers:
why text messages work when voice calls are dropped
Text messages are magic.
why your battery lasts longer in some places than in others
Some places are magic.
why you’re not allowed to use phones on airplanes
Pilots are afraid of magic.
why you can be notified of a voicemail message when your phone never rang
Voicemails are magic.
Mirror - by Exstatica (Score: 5, Informative) Thread
Here is a mirror
http://mirrors.mednor.net/slashdot/10072008/TidBITS_Networking%20_Peering_Inside_a_Mobile_Phone_Network.htm
Re:Mirror - by commodoresloat (Score: 4, Funny) Thread
Here’s a much better mirror.
Posted by timothy (41% noise) View
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narramissic writes “In a continuation of the first successful U.S. investigation ever into DDOS attacks, Axel Gembe, 25, of Germany and Lee Graham Walker, 24, of England were indicted Thursday by a grand jury in Los Angeles, California, on one count of conspiracy and one count of intentionally damaging a computer system. The two men were allegedly hired by Jay R. Echouafni, owner of Orbit Communication, a Massachusetts-based company that sold home satellite systems, to carry out DDOS attacks against two of Orbit’s competitors.”
The interesting part - by bendodge (Score: 4, Insightful) Thread
While I think it’s a good thing that international cyber-vandalism (or whatever you want to call it) is being investigated in regular courts (instead of some super-world thingy), I think the most interesting part is the charges against Lee Graham Walker. According to the article, his crime was using IRC to chat with Gembe about the botnet’s code. Now, I’m not a legal expert or even legal savvy, but that sounds like a charge that would easily apply to a lot of geeks who IM with geeks short on ethics. I don’t think it’s being misused in this case, but it does sound like a pretty wide net.
sigh - by gbjbaanb (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread
and all they had to do was post a made-up “home satellite” article to slashdot.
Revoke - by Improv (Score: 5, Interesting) Thread
This seems like a good time to consider revoking Orbit Communications’ corporate charter.
Re:Revoke - by idontgno (Score: 5, Informative) Thread
Maybe he can run a lemonade stand.
Well, right now, he’s running… like the fugitive scum that he is.
Re:Tax Dollars - by Reality Master 101 (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread
It’s a criminal investigation. If Company A vandalizes Company B, do you expect Company B to “bring their own evidence to court”?
Posted by timothy (55% noise) View
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snydeq writes “InfoWorld examines 10 power-saving assumptions IT has been operating under in its quest to rein in energy costs vs. the permanent energy crisis. Under scrutiny, most such assumptions wither. From true CPU efficiency, to the life span effect of power-down frequency on servers, to SSD power consumption, to switching to DC in the datacenter, get the facts before setting your IT energy strategy.”
Debunk this - by sargeUSMC (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread
Taking ten suppositions and making suppositions about those suppositions (I’m getting dizzy) is not debunking. All I see here is lots of questionable, completely unattributed information.
For example: “The average 17-inch LCD monitor consumes 35 watts of electricity”. Really? Where did this information come from? Did you pull this information from the glossy for a 17” monitor? Did you just test your monitor? Did you test a large sample of monitor’s here? Did you pull this information from a study? Out of your ass?
Questionable grasp on the problem space. - by Anonymous Coward (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread
Myth No. 3: The power rating (in watts) of a CPU is a simple measurement of the system’s efficiency.
Fact: Efficiency is measured in percentage of power converted, which can range from 50 to 90 percent or more. The AC power not converted to DC is lost as heat…Unfortunately, it’s often difficult to tell the efficiency of a power supply, and many manufacturers don’t publish the number.
I’m not sold on taking advice who doesn’t understand the difference between the wattage rating of a CPU and the wattage rating of the power supply. They’re completely different components.
Re:Questionable grasp on the problem space. - by gmack (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread
Myth No. 9: Going to DC power will inevitably save energy.
Fact: Going to DC power entails removing the power supplies from a rack of servers or all the servers in a datacenter and consolidating the AC-DC power supply into a single unit for all the systems. Doing this may not actually be more efficient since you lose a lot of power over the even relatively small distances between the consolidated unit and the machines. New servers have 95 percent efficient power supplies, so any power savings you might have gotten by going DC is lost in the transmission process. Your savings will really depend on the relative efficiency of the power supplies in the servers you’re buying as well as the one in the consolidated unit.
This is completely wrong. The author missed out on two of the three power conversions that take place in a data center. Data center UPS units take the AC current convert to DC then back again just so the server can convert it back to DC. Even if you have 95% efficiency at each stage the conversion losses will add up.
People wouldn’t be going DC if it didn’t result in measurable power savings.
Sleep != Hibernate - by Taimat (Score: 5, Informative) Thread
Myth No. 6: A notebook doesn’t use any power when it’s suspended or sleeping. USB devices charge from the notebook’s AC adapter. Fact: Sleep (in Vista) or Hibernate mode in XP saves the state of the system to RAM and then maintains the RAM image even though the rest of the system is powered down. Suspend saves the state of the system to hard disk, which reduces the boot time greatly and allows the system to be shut down. Sleeping continues to draw a small amount of power, between 1 and 3 watts, even though the system appears to be inactive. By comparison, Suspend draws less than 1 watt. Even over the course of a year, this difference is probably negligible.
um… Hibernate != Sleep. Hibernate in XP saves the RAM to the Hard Drive, and powers off. Suspend keeps RAM powered…
Re:Sleep != Hibernate - by EvilRyry (Score: 5, Interesting) Thread
Using my handy killawatt, I tested how much power my desktop (not including accessories) draws while off, on and idle, on and under load, and in S3 suspend.
Off - 6 watts
Idle - 140W (dropped from 152W after installing a tickless kernel)
Loaded - 220W
S3 - 8 watts
Ever since I ran that test, I put my machine into suspend at every opportunity. 140W is a lot of juice in the land of $0.18/kWh.
Posted by timothy (38% noise) View
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eldavojohn writes “RealNetwork’s product that allows one to copy a DVD containing a movie has been pulled. You may recall us discussing RealDVD and its legal implications.” According to the linked BBC report, “RealNetworks — the firm behind the software — has responded to restraining order issued by a US court stopped selling the RealDVD software [sic]. Six major movie studios jointly sued the company on 30 September — the day the software was launched.”
Nobody with a brain used that crap anyway - by InspectorxGadget (Score: 5, Informative) Thread
1. (DVD) -> DVD Decrypter -> MeGUI, X264 -> Done.
2. (BD) -> DVDFAB -> TsMuxeR -> MeGUI, X264 -> Done.
3. (CD) -> Exact Audio Copy -> FLAC -8 -> Done.
Next question.
How to rip DVDs for nothing - by DrXym (Score: 5, Informative) Thread
DVDs are easy to rip. Commercial tools like AnyDVD and Nero Recode make a good job but you can do it for nothing quite easily.
Handbrake is a front end over xvid and x264 encoders so you get either an MPEG-2 ASP (DiVX) or H264 AVC file from the process. Depending on your target device you might want to choose one or the other or fiddle with the other settings but the defaults are pretty sane if you don’t know what you are doing.
Sure the process might skip supplementals and there may be edge cases with alternate tracks or subtitles that require more effort but x264 is an excellent encoder and the quality is very good. I really don’t see why anybody would want to use RealDVD when it DRMs the resulting movie in the process.
Re:What, No Balls?? - by the eric conspiracy (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread
Huh? You mean ignore a restraining order? That would be totally suicidal. Coming out with the product in the first place is pretty ballsy, and I think Real should be congratulated for that move.
Re:What, No Balls?? - by BobMcD (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread
Going to a gun fight with a knife is pretty ballsy too, but I’m not sure “congratulations” are the first thought that would be offered to such an act.
Inside or outside 21 feet?
maybe there were other motives… - by ChienAndalu (Score: 5, Funny) Thread
I mean, have you ever *used* a Real(TM) product? Maybe the film studios only want to protect us…
Posted by timothy (37% noise) View
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somegeekynick writes “The 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics has been jointly awarded to Yoichiro Nambu of the University of Chicago ‘for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics.’ and Makoto Kobayashi of the KEK lab and Toshihide Maskawa of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics, both in Japan, ‘for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature.’”
Curious - by pjt33 (Score: 4, Interesting) Thread
It’s interesting that they should award a Nobel for particle physics now, when there’s a very real possibility that discoveries at the LHC will make an outstanding case for another within just a few years. Normally they won’t award two prizes to the same field in a short timeframe. I’m glad that they didn’t take that into account and deny these worthy winners, and I hope that it doesn’t impact on any decisions in the near future.
Re:Curious - by j-beda (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread
Nobel prizes (at least in physics - I don’t follow the others as much) often tend to lag the discoveries for a fairly large number of years, and they try to go for things that are widely accepted. Fr example Einstein got it in 1921 for work published in 1905 on the Photoelectric Effect, Leggett’s 2003 prize was for work done in the 1980s I think, and Kilby’s prize in 2000 was for the integrated circuit obviously done more than a few years earlier. If the LHC has any Nobel prize fallout, it will not hit for at least a decade.
Re:Am I the only one that thinks - by morgan_greywolf (Score: 5, Funny) Thread
[Am I the only one that thinks] sharing prizes on subatomic particles studies is ironic???
Maybe you are, maybe you are not. We won’t know until someone observes your post, thus collapsing the waveform…
Re:w00t - by rugatero (Score: 5, Funny) Thread
Sure is one ugly woman…
Re:Bose anyone? - by Geoffrey.landis (Score: 5, Informative) Thread
As an Indian, its kinda disheartening that Bose didn’t get the Nobel.
Well, Satyendra Nath Bose died in 1974… one of the rules of the Nobel prize that they don’t break is that it only goes to living scientists, so they were hardly likely to give the 2008 prize to him. (The dead scientists can’t appreciate the honor, so it makes sense to give it to them while they’re alive.)
Posted by timothy (39% noise) View
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I.M.O.G. was one of many readers to write with the news that “Advanced Micro Devices plans to announce Tuesday that it will split into two companies — one focused on designing microprocessors and the other on the costly business of manufacturing them — in a drastic effort to maintain its position as the only real rival to Intel. ‘This is the biggest announcement in our history,’ said AMD’s chief executive, Dirk Meyer. ‘This will make us a financially stronger company, both in the near term and in the long term, as a result of being out from the capital expense burden we have had to bear.’”
Abu Dhabi Investment Group - by twmcneil (Score: 5, Interesting) Thread
So the bottom line is that the Abu Dhabi Government is buying AMD?
Stick a fork in ‘em… - by Dawn Keyhotie (Score: 5, Interesting) Thread
Stick a fork in AMD, they’re done.
A design firm plus a foundry does not equal an integrated semiconductor powerhouse.
Who is left to compete with Intel now? At least we will have Nehalem. Get used to Nehalem, embrace it, love it. Because it’s going to be around for a long, long time. At least we have the x86-64 ISA, on-board memory controller, and point-to-point processor communications as an AMD legacy. And thank $DEITY that AMD was able to put a stake through the heart of Itanium.
There won’t be much future innovation from Intel without the spur of aggressive competition from AMD.
Cheers!
Backwards - by Thelasko (Score: 5, Interesting) Thread
Funny, my company just did the opposite. Our design department was just recently merged with manufacturing. This was done because:
A) Design would rarely factor in the manufacturability of it’s designs, driving up costs.
B) Manufacturing had a tendency to sacrifice quality to reduce costs.
This new corporate structure has only been in place for a few months, but so far has worked quite well. Entire product lines have been eliminated (design didn’t know manufacturing was still making the old stuff). Entire processes have been eliminated (manufacturing thought they were needed to meet the final spec, but weren’t).
Most of these issues could have been resolved with better management and communication, but when design and manufacturing are a single unit, these issues resolve themselves naturally.
Re:How is this supposed to make things better? - by Targon (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread
Right now, AMD fabs are ONLY used to produce AMD processors. They don’t handle GPU manufacturing at this point. As a result of this, and because of the bad economy, the fab side of things would drag AMD down more than keeping the two companies in a good position. On top of this, from a pure bookkeeping/accounting perspective, it becomes easier for investors and potential investors to see a profit from one side of the business or the other.
The Athlon 64 X2 and Phenom sales numbers really are not bad, but the profits from the sales are never seen for investors if the fab side is losing money. The split will make it very clear how well the company is doing in each area. It will also open the doors for other companies to buy fab capacity from AMD, so AMD could make money by making chips for other companies. We may never see Intel use AMD for this, but other companies are out there.
The downside to this is that as two smaller companies, one side or the other might be purchased by another company, which would hurt in the long run. It’s a dangerous time…
Re:How is this supposed to make things better? - by hey! (Score: 5, Informative) Thread
It is NOT supposed to help AMD. It is supposed to help AMD’s stockholders.
This often happens with troubled stocks that have a number of different business functions that can be split off. Some of those business functions may represent a great deal of capital investment, but not return much cash. You don’t want that capital tied up in idle buildings and equipment, but you probably can’t sell those things to your rival who’s happy to see you shrivel up and blow away.
So you split the company up. The more profitable divisions can start to appreciate in value or even pay dividends. The less profitable business can stay afloat on business from its former sibling divisions while the stockholders unload their stock in it. It’s possible that new management can turn thing around.
Posted by kdawson (87% noise) View
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An anonymous reader writes “ABC is warning that dirty election tricks are about to start. In the past, they’ve ranged from late-night robo-calls to voter intimidation. ABC has a pretty good list of what to watch out for as told by Allen Raymond, a former Republican operative, who was reformed after spending three months in prison in 2006 for pulling some of the stunts he now helps to prevent.” To make this story timely, last week someone broke into a McCain campaign office in Missouri and stole a laptop computer containing “strategic information” about the local campaign.
I’ve seen dirty tricks firsthand - by elrous0 (Score: 5, Interesting) Thread
I live in South Carolina, and have seen many nasty tricks over the years (being in a particularly conservative/religious-nutball/reactionary state). Of course, there was the infamous John McCain flyer that was sent out to upstate Rebublicans in 2000 (implying McCain had a black love child). But the nastiest bit is the one they’ve done the last two elections (and will almost certainly do again this time). Republicans show up a precincts on or near historically black colleges (like Benedict) and demand to see people’s ID’s before they vote, checking every crossed “i” and dotted “t” and generally trying to intimidate black voters or make it as hard on them as possible (since they know they’ll likely vote Democrat). They do not, of course, do this for precincts at predominantly white colleges or in strong Republican precincts.
Re:I’ve seen dirty tricks firsthand - by Nimey (Score: 5, Interesting) Thread
NPR did a spot on voter intimidation this morning. They said that a certain state (forget the one) will no longer allow out-of-state political operatives to dispute someone’s eligibility to vote, and all challenges must be in writing, with particulars.
This was done in response to Republican tactics in the last election.
Re:I’ve seen dirty tricks firsthand - by elrous0 (Score: 5, Informative) Thread
And, just in case anyone thinks I’m making this up, or that this doesn’t happen in the 21st century, just go to this link (it’s a search result page for the “The State,” South Carolina’s biggest newspaper). The sixth entry on the page is a full article detailing what happened at Benedict the last time they tried this (you can pay to read the whole thing if you like, but the summary should give you a good idea).
McCain v. Obama v. third-party - by Rinisari (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread
We need to continue drilling the McCain campaign on economic issues. Neither McCain nor Palin has addressed the economy in an intelligent, organized manner.
We need to continue drilling Obama on the constitutionality of the things he wants to do. Social healthcare is prominent unconstitutional issue and it must be drilled.
We need to continue drilling the media to get more focus on the third party candidates and the up to 10% of the vote they have in some states, especially swing states like Ohio.
Our dirty tricks—we the geeks—can be to FLOOD iReport, Digg, Reddit, and such with third party coverage. They need to be inundated with it.
Don’t worry, Fox is on it - by smooth wombat (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread
I’m sometimes curious as to what “news” Fox is covering on their morning show as compared to everyone else. While CNN, MSNBC, CNBC et al are covering the falling markets, what each campaign is doing, comments and the like, Fox is covering the dirty tricks of Ohio and how the Democrats are trying to steal the election.
What dirty tricks you say? The fact that people can register and vote on the same day for a one-week period. Now, as Fox spins it, this opens the door for fraudulent voting and other dirty tricks since there was a big push to register voters and have them vote on the same day.
Mind you, Fox didn’t say word one when the head of Diebold made his infamous statement because after all, that wasn’t a dirty trick nor even the appearance of a dirty trick.
So have no fear, Fox will report all the dirty tricks the Democrats attempt to pull.
Posted by kdawson (81% noise) View
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John Sokol writes “I just heard from a good friend and Linux kernel hacker in Brazil that they have just finished their municipal election with 128 million people using Linux to vote. They voted nationwide for something like 5,000 city mayors. Voting is mandatory in Brazil. The embedded computer they are using once ran VirtuOS (a variant of MS-DOS); it now has its own locally developed, Linux-based distro. These are much nicer, smaller, and cheaper than the systems being deployed here in the US. Here is a Java-required site with a simulated Brazilian voting system. It’s very cool; they even show you a picture of the candidate you voted for.”
Review of the voting machine by a poll worker - by davide marney (Score: 4, Interesting) Thread
I work at the polls here in Virginia, and we have an electronic voting machine. Here’s my review of the Brazilian device compared to ours:
In any event, I think SL geeks are obvious choices to volunteer to be Officers of Election. We know the vulnerabilities of the technology, and have the necessary attention to detail to appreciate the kinds of auditing checks that need to be done to run a fair and open election.
Next step is a paper trail - by what about (Score: 4, Insightful) Thread
This is great
I do really miss a paper trail, that is needed in case there are doubts of “fraud”, we do not want such doubts, do we ?
When will we have web based voting - by syousef (Score: 5, Interesting) Thread
We have web based banking. Why not web based voting?
If anyone thinks I care more about who I vote for than the money in my bank accounts (and my liability for debt) they’re disillusional. The politicians are all just different monkeys screeching different things that suit them. In the last election I voted for (mandatory council elections) I didn’t know or care about the candidates who’d only shown their faces 2 weeks beforehand. On the ballot I wrote “Fuck them liars all. This form of democrasy a joke”. Am I the only one that thinks it’s hilarious that we can bank online but not vote online?
Re:When will we have web based voting - by Anonymous Coward (Score: 5, Informative) Thread
Actually, in Estonia, there has been web-based elections a year ago. The national ID card has PKI certificates in it and this cryptographically makes it safe. There’s more information on the net, ie
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting_in_Estonia
Re:When will we have web based voting - by meringuoid (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread
We have web based banking. Why not web based voting?
Risk of fraud. Under the current system I can’t go out and bribe, blackmail or threaten voters, because I have no way of determining whether or not they voted as I asked. ‘Vote for X or I break your legs’ doesn’t work if I cannot find out whether or not any given person actually did vote for X. But while you can take steps to ensure that the polling booth is private, you can’t say the same for an internet terminal whose location you do not know and whose configuration you do not control. For all you know the voter’s boss is watching him as he votes for the candidate who will restrict workers’ rights and remove regulations on abusive bosses.
The moment there’s a way a person can prove who they voted for to a third party, the secret ballot is dead.
Posted by kdawson (78% noise) View
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Several readers noted the release of Mono 2.0, which is compatible with Microsoft’s .NET Framework 2.0. According to Miguel de Icaza, ”… users can move over server applications built for .NET and client applications built with Windows Forms.” InternetNews points out that only about half of the .NET apps out there will work on Mono 2.0, for a variety of reasons including (but not limited to) legacy Windows-only libraries and Microsoft’s progress on .NET 3.0 and 3.5 APIs.
The real .NET - by Lord Lode (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread
I wish the real
Re:The real .NET - by kazade84 (Score: 5, Informative) Thread
Download winetricks then run:
sh winetricks dotnet11 dotnet20
Bingo.
Portability depends on more than the platform - by jonaskoelker (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread
Good luck porting over LoadDLL(“C:\\windows\\system32\\mylib.dll”);.
The existence of a working mono is a necessary condition, not a sufficient one, for porting an application. Whether that condition is fulfilled and to what degree, I’ll leave up to you to discuss.
Portability comes from being largely independent of the differences between the platform you want to port from and the one you want to port to. Good portability engineering consists of gathering all the platform-specific bits into one unit with a uniform interface, such that it’s easy to write platform-specific modules for all the platforms you want to support; then, make sure to test on all your target platforms.
For a good piece of engineering, see Simon Tatham’s puzzle collection (http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/). To see the importance of testing on all your target platforms, see the state of synergy on the Mac (http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/ — “The Mac OS X port is incomplete […]”). To see the importance of isolating your platform dependence, see any code that makes liberal use of fork and ioctl everywhere [sorry, I can’t name an example].
Also, good portability engineering done up front is much less work (i.e. cheaper for your employer) than when the project is already deployed on windows only.
— Jonas K
Re:IDE - by JanneM (Score: 5, Funny) Thread
“A question: Is there a functional IDE for Mono, for us who don’t want gnome or even gnome libs on our System?”
Um, what? You’ll get gnome cooties?
Monodevelop is a good IDE, and I don’t think having GTK and related libs installed is going to steal your masculinity or anything.
Re:IDE - by QuantumG (Score: 5, Funny) Thread
Yeah, it’s a bitch trying to develop
Posted by kdawson (95% noise) View
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thesandbender writes “Ford is set to release a management system that will restrict certain aspects of a car’s performance based on which key is in the ignition. The speed is limited to 80, you can’t turn off traction control, and you can’t turn the stereo up to eleven. It’s targeted at parents of teenagers and seems like a generally good idea, especially if you get a break on your insurance.” The keys will be introduced with the 2010 Focus coupe and will quickly spread to Ford’s entire lineup.
Won’t help much - by hcdejong (Score: 4, Interesting) Thread
1. Most accidents don’t happen on motorways (the only place where speeds of >80 mph would be likely). You’d have to have location-dependent speed limits to make significant inroads. This is already being done, the new Nissan GT-R has (in the Japanese version) a 120 mph speed limiter which is swiched off automatically when you’re on a racetrack; it uses GPS to decide where you are. IMO, this is a nightmare scenario. It reduces the driver’s freedom even more, and encourages people to just drive at the governed limit blindly, instead of paying attention to circumstances. The lack of dynamics in the traffic around you (everyone going at the same speed) lulls you into a false sense of security (see below).
A governed limit means there’ll be small differences in speed due to calibration errors, etc, which means people will be overtaking with 1 mph speed difference all the time. In Europe, trucks already have a speed limiter, and as a result you get huge tailbacks behind two trucks going 50+/-1 mph side-by-side. To prevent this, you’d have to mandate radar-guided cruise control as well, and before you know it fully autonomous vehicles are mandatory.
2. Most accidents aren’t caused by speeding, but by not paying attention. This means that having a speed limiter won’t have much effect, and due to the false sense of security it provides, may increase the number of incidents.
Alternatively.. - by Orlando (Score: 5, Funny) Thread
Alternatively parents could try having a mature and trusting relationship with their teenage children…
Re:Hey, Fuck You. - by DerekLyons (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread
“It’s targeted at parents of teenagers and seems like a generally good idea, especially if you get a break on your insurance.”
It’s a terrible idea. Teenagers need to be practicing setting their own responsibilities and limits. The more they’re “protected” the less time they have to learn to be self-reliant.
I just knew this post, and others like it, would fill the comments section of this article. As usual, the two faced kneejerk nature of Slashdot groupthink rears it’s ugly head… On one hand, the hive mind insists that parents are responsible and accountable for monitoring and controlling their kids - but each time a tool to actually allow the parents to do that is discussed here, the same hive mind rears up on it’s back legs and howls about how unfair it is for parents to monitor and control their kids.
Re:Hey, Fuck You. - by dangitman (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread
Seriously, traditional societies recognize adulthood at, like 13.
Seriously, traditional societies were totally fucked up. I’m not sure why we should be using them as role models.
Re:Hey, Fuck You. - by Max Romantschuk (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread
And around 25 your brain is physically mature. Go ask a neuroscientist and get a clue, my friend.
Posted by kdawson (64% noise) View
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davidmwilliams writes “Microsoft followed their major annual Tech-Ed event in Australia with a week-long programming contest called ‘DevSta,’ to find ‘star developers.’ While the quantity and quality of submissions suggest a poor turnout, it certainly caught the attention of at least two hackers who left their mark. Here is the low-down on the contest, what happened, by whom, and screen shots for posterity in case it’s been fixed by the time you read this. And unless the volume of submissions increase dramatically within the next few hours, someone may be awarded an Xbox for doing nothing more than rewriting the Windows calculator as a .NET app.”
HACKED BY BENJYMOUSE - by benjymouse (Score: 5, Insightful) Thread
HACKED BY BENJYMOUSE HACKED BY BENJYMOUSE HACKED BY BENJYMOUSE
There, now I “hacked” slashdot the very same way. The “hacked” and “defaced” site is nothing more than submissions (like comments on slashdot) with “HACKED BY OVERLORD” text. No JavaScript injection, no SQL injection, no nothing. Some medias will go to any length to capture traffic. sheesh.
Microsoft programmers…stars? Too funny… - by subnomine (Score: 5, Informative) Thread
I speak from about 15 years experience at multiple companies and not bias that the more “Microsofty” the programmer is, the worse they are.
The current project I am on is full of the Microsoft way of doing things. And get this:
We have a Linux server and Windows client, and they designed a Windows Registry as an interface to the database on Linux. They are having piss-poor performance due to many design issues related to this thing. I should probably post it to Daily WTF. I mean WTF indeed.
Who wants to be a Microsoft Star!! Wooohoo!
rewriting the windows calculator? - by Punto (Score: 5, Funny) Thread
What about the guy who found a security hole on IIS and wrote and exploit for it? that sounds way cooler than rewriting calc.
Re:rewriting the windows calculator? - by Anonymous Coward (Score: 5, Funny) Thread
What about the guy who found a security hole on IIS and wrote and exploit for it? that sounds way cooler than rewriting calc.
Easier too.
Was SELinux enabled? - by pembo13 (Score: 5, Funny) Thread
They really shouldn’t be running HTTP daemons without SELinux running. Such services are just too popular a target.
Posted by kdawson (85% noise) View
musatov writes “There’s talk on The Minor Planet Mailing List about a small asteroid approaching Earth with a 99.8% probability of colliding. The entrance to the Earth’s atmosphere will take place October 7 at 0246 UTC (2:35 after this story goes live) over northern Sudan, releasing the energy of about a kiloton of TNT. The asteroid is assumed to be 3-4 meters in size; it is expected to burn up completely in the atmosphere, causing no harm. As a powerful bolide, it may put on quite a show in the sky. For those advanced enough in astronomy to observe, check the MPEC 2008-T50 and MPEC 2008-T64 circulars. NASA’s JPL Small Body Database has a 3D orbit view. The story has been already picked up by CNN and NASA.”
1 in 20 chance it’ll be bigger than expected - by jmichaelg (Score: 5, Interesting) Thread
5% of the meteors are iron. Iron is both denser and darker than the far more common stony meteor which means if the asteroid is made of iron, it’ll be bigger than expected because the size estimates are based on the amount of light the asteroid is reflecting. If it’s iron, its higher density, combined with its larger size, will improve the odds that some remnants will make earth fall.
If it makes earth fall it’ll be by far, the most valuable meteorite ever since it’s the first asteroid whose arrival was predicted. It’ll literally be money from Heaven for whomever finds a piece.
We’re all going to die! - by HangingChad (Score: 5, Funny) Thread
a small asteroid approaching Earth with a 99.8% probability of colliding
O-M-G We’re all going to die! It’s the end of the world! Run! Agh, forget that, you’ll just die tired! I’m freaking out! I’m freaking out!
The asteroid is assumed to be 3-4 meters in size…
This has been a test of the emergency end of the world system. Has this been the actual end of the world you would have been given explicit instructions to bend over and kiss your ass good bye.
This concludes this test of the emergency end of the world system.
Re:Testing tractor beam theory. - by Fluffeh (Score: 4, Informative) Thread
Firstly the mass of a satellite would not generate enough of a gravity well to nudge any object off a crash course with the earth. Secondly, as the object in question will be travelling at around 12.8km/s (That’s just under 8 miles per second if you are American). The sort of gravity needed to change that trajectory considerably would likely cause much much more problems than this little lump of rock could ever cause.
Re:Scary… - by amRadioHed (Score: 5, Funny) Thread
Well it was only two hours by the time I posted that, but truth be told I’m out a microwave right now. I make my popcorn by putting the bag on top of my wireless router and firing up a bittorent.
Re:Good News Everyone… - by amRadioHed (Score: 5, Funny) Thread
Please can we send Tom Cruise instead??
