Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment I wish people understood batteries better (Score 1) 73

The PLATES are a much bigger problem than the electrolyte. Look at a car battery... LEAD plates and sulfuric acid. The acid isn't the environmental problem, the lead is. It's the plates you need to be looking at, not the electrolyte. Also,

the technology could replace bulky lead-acid batteries within a few years.

Lead-acid plates are almost always used in cars right now, where you need rugged and high current batteries. Two things that these "water batteries" perform very poorly at.

Comment Re:is that really a "zero-day"? (Score 1) 46

In my opinion, "zero-day" should be reserved for security holes that the Bad Guys found first and are actively exploiting, that the developers have just been informed about and are rushing to develop, test, and release a patch for, but haven't had enough tiime yet, leaving a *short* window of opportunity for the bad actors to take advantage of the opening before it gets closed on them. The "zero" in "zero-day" was intended to represent the amount of NOTICE a developer has gotten that the hole exits, highlighting how recently it was made public. I can accept that this process takes a little time, but develoopment should be urgent, and it should be as brief as possible.

I've seen a few comments offering the definition of "zero-day" to any hole that simply doesn't have a patch available for it yet, but I think there needs to be a separtate category/name for bugs that the devs have known about for longer than it should take for them to have issued a patch (call it a "neglect-day"?) and also possibly another name for holes in software (or firmware I suppose) where the company is out of business and so the hole is going to be permanent unless it gets crown-sourced. (call that one a "perma-day"?)

Comment is that really a "zero-day"? (Score 3, Insightful) 46

I thought "zero-day" meant it was a new, previously unknown vulnerability? Once it's been discovered and reported to microsoft, doesn't that make it NOT a zero-day anymore?

Sure, it WAS a "zero-day", but so is every other vulnerability - until it's noticed and reported.

Calling a vulnerability that was reported six months ago a "zero-day" seems to fall somewhere between click-bait and outright dishonest reporting.

I don't think we have a tidy name for a vulnerability that's been languishing for months waiting for a patch though - and that's exactly what this is. Just a vendor dragging their feet about patching a reported hole in their system. (and in this case, trying to down-play the severity)

I also think the down-play is pretty disappointing - don't most Windows users run as admins? So for example. this would affect 98% of users that were sent an attachment? I don't buy "this only affects 98% of our users, so its not urgent"?

Comment Re:The triumphant return of BUTTONS! (Score 2) 177

While "cell-phone zombines" walking into poles on sidewalks is a problem, it's nowhere near as unsafe as taking your eyes off the road while driving.

The switch back to physical buttons on cars can't come fast enough.

The only acceptable place for driver touch-controls is right along the top of the dash, where the driver can still see the road in their peripheral vision.
That's where I keep my GPS on my 2005 Escape - up on the dash where I don't have to take my eyes off the road to see the map.

Comment not even a little bit (Score 3, Insightful) 243

I was always confused when someone told me to "visualize" something. The only time it ever works is if I'm helping someone over the phone and need to walk them through steps. At that point, I seem to be able to pull up images of what they're seeing and can walk them through it. (usually computer screens) Unfortunately, this seems to be almost purely conceptual, I don't actually "see a picture" of anything in my head, ever.

And if someone asks me to try to picture something I haven't seen before, I can't just "imagine it" into my head.

On the other hand, I have a very strong "internal dialog" and always "think with my voice". I don't have anything even remotely approaching a "photographic memory", but learned very early on to spell words by "remembering hearing someone spell them out aloud" and literally writing down the letters as I hear them being read back to me in my head. I've never ran into anyone else that experiences this though.

On the plus side, those "I before E, except after C" sort of memory tricks work extremely well for me. As long as I never hear it wrong, even once. Or else I'm doomed to never forget it wrong, and then I have to keep track of which was the "right way".

Comment no motivation? (Score 1) 30

Maxar was "no longer profiting from their work on OSAM-1," after which the xproject appeared not "to be a high priority for Maxar in terms of the quality of its staffing."

Well yeah that'll do it. It "appeared" to not be a priority now that it was losing money. Thank you Cpt. Obv.

Space is hard. But spacce is also expensive.

Comment looks more like a sunny day to me? (Score 1) 21

It's a "dark day for the India internet,

... when big companies start getting forced to pay for services they've been stealing for years.

yeah, truly dark. Companies being held accountable for the kind of behavior that they otherwise tend to send armies of lawyers out to protect themselves from.

Over in India, enforcement is especially lax, and companies are used to getting away with all kinds of things. They're just plain not used to having to follow the law.

cry me a river.

Slashdot Top Deals

The use of money is all the advantage there is to having money. -- B. Franklin

Working...