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Comment Back in the 80ies they were trying a better thing (Score 1) 202

Back in the 80ies they were trying a better thing: Tranquilizing Rinos and replacing their horns with artificial ones made of red plastic. The Rinos don't care - they're colorblind and probably like a new horn thats bigger and sturdier than the original. But the poachers won't kill a rino for plastic. Neat idea - why didn't that pan out .- apparently?

Comment Easy answer: (Score 2) 175

Find a feasible FOSS replacement for Flash that enables fast and easy cross-plattform development for performant non-trivial 'good-looking' client applications - and you have a winner. Offer some tacky half-assed JS cross-compiler nonsense, and your new tech won't get off the ground. The Web and DOM tech is a mess enough as it is, without yet another PL/runtime solution thrown into the mix.

However, I remain slightly optimistic that this may be the long awaited not-fucked-up-by-adobe FOSS Flash successor we've been waiting for. All other non-foss contenders failed throughout the last 15 years, but this might have a chance, also since there is nothing else around and the web has taken over as platform of choice due to 80ies style tech fragmentation via the mobile revolution.

Two cents from a senior webdev.

Comment CUAS (Score 1) 288

Common User Access Standard.

Enough said. ...
The very first to start breaking the rules on a broad scale was - curiously enough - Apple with their we're-doing-everything-different-this-time iTunes programm. UI standards basically went steeply downhill from there on. We've moved so far away from standards that it can even take an expert weeks to get familiar with programms (s)he should be able to operate instantly. On top of that, the software manual has disappeared (I'm looking at you, Adobe)

Handling computers has gotten more difficult, no doubt.

Comment Yes. Good thing. (Score 1) 340

Switching positions throughout the day is awesome - for physical and mental health. ... And for the eyes and arms/wrists (RSI) aswell.
Highly recommended. I once worked in an office where everyone had a desk they could electrically lift to standing height. Very cool for quick discussions or standing conding sessions. ... You can do standing excersises and Kung Fu moves at the same time. ... Work on your "Crane Technique" (TM) :-)

Comment Re: I hereby ascertain the bankruptcy of Greece. (Score 2) 1307

Hey, thanks for your honest question. ... Wow, nuanced political debate coming up on slashdot - interesting! ...
I hope this answers your question:
I have absolutely nothing against any country or folks in our outside of Europe. And, funny clichees aside, I don't think anybody in Europe has anything against Greece or Italy or any other country. Most Europeans love Europe in its entireity. And also each country on its own, especially the differences. Europe would be quite a boring place if it weren't for those.
As for Greece, no problem at all. I would love for Greece to be a merry member of the Eurozone with no more problems than Germany at the moment. Part of this whole charade being such a waste is that we actually have enough problems in Europe without one country causing so much trouble.
The big problem though is that Greece has been living off emergency (!!) loans for quite some time now and has been unwilling to execute even the most elementary and pressing reforms. Their administration hasn't even started trying! To me and many other observers it seems that the Greek aren't really aware of how dire their situation is. An exit from the Euro is long overdue and I see absolutely no problem with that. Denmark and Norway have both kept their currency and AFAICT they're doing just fine. It's a drag to trade currency when I visit them, and I'd rather not have to, but I'll live and I still like to visit them and take the trading thing as an excersize.
As a currency, the Eurp is a tool. It's supposed to facilitate easyer trade amoung European Countries and move their economies closer together. The implementation of the Euro is buggy, no doubt, and it could've been done better. This Greece thing is an exception no one thought of, for instance. ... Well, except those who've been warning everybody else for years that is.

Bottom line:
Greece has to get its shit together, one way or the other. Just about now is the right time to call it quits and have Greece take the other way. At least that seems to be the broader opinion within the Eurozone and I can't blame them.

Comment I hereby ascertain the bankruptcy of Greece. (Score 2) 1307

Idiots. The whole corrupt and incompetent lot of greek politicians. They frauded their way into the Eurozone and have been dragging their heels ever since. This whole Syriza stunt was the very last straw. They were the worst. They could've gotten real reforms on the way - they had the mandate by the people. Instead they kept fucking and bullshitting around, squandering the very last bit of good will with every gouvernment in the Eurozone. Even Italy is pissed - which actually is quite amazing in itself, because they're are almost right up there with Greece when it comes to mal-administration.

They could've gotten away easy - now they'll be left to their own devices.

At least it's a clear "No" by the people. Better a clear NO that a whishy-washy YES. Tsipras can use this to get some real internal reforms on the way. ... Although I doubt he will.
Well, at least we can finally make a clear cut. No more money for free for all. No more bizarely overpaid early pensioneers and nepotism. The Eurozone should finally cut their losses, have Greece move back to the Drachma and prepare for humanitarian help, like food supplies and such - at least that money won't be wasted.

Lets finally put the ECB goodies and candy to work for nations who are actually pulling their weight and can use a little help aswell, like some baltic nations.

My 2 eurocents.

Comment Re:Infrastructure or the lack thereof (Score 1) 688

And now Seattle is going on a war against vehicles by eliminating required parking in new apartments and condos. So everyone must revert to on street parking. Good luck plugging your vehicle into an outlet if you are 200 feet down the street. It's back to gasoline for everyone.

Always ready to jump on a bandwagon, many new buildings in Vancouver are doing the same thing.

Most of our electricity here in B.C. comes from hydroelectric systems, so fossil fuels/emission elsewhere is a non-issue.

...laura

Comment Infrastructure or the lack thereof (Score 5, Informative) 688

A middle-of-the-road EV like a Nissan Leaf would cover 98% of my driving. I can afford one easily. I could afford a Model S if I put my mind to it. I've even looked in to buying an old banger and converting it myself.

The problem is I have nowhere to plug one in. I live in an apartment building and there is no wiring in the parkade. Nor is there any requirement (or incentive) to retrofit the building. I've talked to the building management, but we've never come up with any answers.

New buildings must have EV support. Old ones don't.

...laura

Comment Converted old cell phone to uplink transmitter (Score 5, Interesting) 210

Many moons ago, I got tired of what was on the radio, and I built a pirate FM station. It had a studio supplied with over 50 volunteer DJs, but most of all it had the transmitter up in the mountains, with a UHF uplink system, to allow for very broad coverage of our city. I made the uplink transmitter form a 1985 Motorola cell phone, the old brick type. It was suitably modified to put out wideband FM audio. You might be able to read about it by Googling "Radio Limbo Tucson".

Comment JQuery is the JavaScript Standard library. (Score 2) 126

In my perception jQuery has basically become the JavaScript standard library.
Basically any combination of frontend toolkits has it included somewhere, so you don't even have to worry about doing that. It's the default for Joomla and Wordpress and there are a measurable amount of functions that take care of the gruntwork and normalize utility across browsers.

On top of that, the amount of JS projects relying on jQuery as a foundation is staggering. The secondary market has tools built around the jQuery ecosystem and the project as a whole does an excellent job at marketing and advocating.

I personally see the next generation in such avantgarde stuff as Googles Polymer (pretty amazing) but until everyone has moved to SPAs and web components - which is not happening any time soon - but until then it's not the worst idea to familiarize yourself with the concepts and the utility funcitons of jQuery. ... *After* you've learned JS itself properly, that is.

My 2 cents.

Submission + - Did you know the randomness of unintialized RAM is a quality Entropy source (hackaday.com)

szczys writes: When you power up a device, the RAM is always in an unknown state. You might think it would be similar most of the time but you're wrong. Voja Antonic looked into the concept and built a few different True Random Number Generators (TRNG) which use the random state of the RAM at power-on to produce random seeds. He's able to build 10MB random collections which do extremely well in the best of entropy testing.

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