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User Journal

Journal Journal: Reason 431 that I don't bother with Slashdot any more - 5 minute comment timer.

I can type at over 100wpm. Slashdot's comment timer was set to 5 minutes a few years back. So if there is a particularly interesting article with interesting comments, I can comment and reply every 5 minutes.

If I'm going at 100wpm, I could write a 500 word essay as a comment. Or what happens more frequently is, I type out a nice constructive reply to someone, and am granted the text telling me I'm going too fast.

So I close the window and go elsewhere.

Comment Re: Cracking down? (Score 2) 290

Time based ones, especially for religious holidays are touchy. For some, they're friendly. For others, they're anything but.

Easter Eggs should generally be non-intrusive. They should take very intentional actions to make it happen.

Entering the Knomi code is a good example of that.

Just a randomizer that switches all your text to comic sans on presentations, with 8-bit game music in the background, not so much.

Submission + - NASA's Curiosity Eyes Prominent Mineral Veins on Mars (nasa.gov)

TracyAshley writes: Two-tone mineral veins at a site NASA's Curiosity rover has reached by climbing a layered Martian mountain offer clues about multiple episodes of fluid movement. These episodes occurred later than the wet environmental conditions that formed lake-bed deposits the rover examined at the mountain's base. Read more at: http://goo.gl/zg4EtF

Submission + - We're Planning to Shoot an Asteroid to See What Happens (discovery.com)

astroengine writes: What better way to understand how to deflect an incoming asteroid than to smash into one to see what happens? This may sound like the storyline to a certain science fiction movie involving a team of oil drillers, but this is science fact, and Europe has started planning a mission to map a small target asteroid that NASA will attempt to shoot with a speeding spacecraft, no nukes required. As the first half of the joint Asteroid Impact & Deflection Assessment mission, the European Space Agency this month has started planning for the launch of its Asteroid Impact Mission (AIM) in October 2020. AIM’s target will be the binary asteroid system of Didymos, which is composed of a main 800 meter-wide hunk of space rock circled by a smaller 170 meter-wide asteroid informally known as “Didymoon.” It’s the smaller asteroid that the joint NASA/ESA mission is interested in bullying.

Comment Re:He's just in a hurry to get to the future (Score 1) 78

I don't vote party, except that I avoid both D and R whenever there's a candidate who doesn't want to put half the people I know in prison for smoking pot.

If anyone but Bruce Rauner had run against Quinn I would have voted for the Republican, becuase Quinn just wasn't a good governor. I think Rauner will be even worse, maybe even as bad as Ryan(R) or Blago(D), both were crooks. I don't know if Rauner is a crook but his policies are terrible. There were only two named on the ballot, so it was indeed a choice between two evils.

Look, Republicans are against the Social Security I paid into all my life and am now enjoying, against unions, without which I would have no pension, against the single payer health care system which has countries with it in place enjoying half the costs we face with far less infant mortality and longer life spans (Obamacare is really Romneycare in disguise); against the Medicare I again paid into and will get in a couple of years; against food stamps (that's simply un-Christian, yet they claim to be Christians?); against taxes (again, an un-Christian stance). Tell me, what Democrat views that the Republicans don't share are detrimental to me, a middle class retired guy?

But both parties are against pot legalization, for our insanely long copyrights, and quite a few more where there really isn't a valid choice.

Comment Re:Is today Tuesday? (Score 1) 8

Well, when a child says bye-bye, it sounds like a contraction (b'bye), but bye-bye is not a contraction. It's more like Cory Doctorow spells sidewalk: side-walk. Wnat contraction uses a hyphen instead of an apostrophe? Not bye-bye, it isn't a contraction of anything.

As to "SyFy", that's a trademark, not a word. It only applies to that bad cable channel. Hi-fi and sci-fi aren't contractions of high fidelity and science fiction, but new words made out of old ones.

I guess that could argue the validity of e-mail and e-books, though.

Comment Re:Cyber "Attacks" (Score 1) 49

According to the article, they define incident as..

failure in electronic communications leads to a loss confidentiality, integrity, or availability.

So a operator or programmer error making privileged information available is an incident.

Someone trying to brute force their way into a FTP server and reaching the connection limit, is a denial of service, and therefor also an "incident".

I've used it both ways, depending on the context. I break it down to "tries" and "got in".

"Tries" justifies the budget for IT security. "There were 100 billion attempts to break into the network".

"Got in" is what they should mean. That should be zero. The zero number unfortunately means that the budget can be reduced, because no one can break in.

I generally ignore it when people talk about the attempts. Hell, any of us can fire up nmap, and make a whole bunch of attempts with virtually no effort. If you have public servers and they don't have at least some sort of attempt, you forgot to plug in the network cable. :)

Comment Re:Then and Now (Score 2) 56

That's not surprising. They want something guaranteed to be good. It's unrealistic for them to be able to know if every form of ID from any country in the world is legitimate. I'm sure they do at least a cursory check before allowing anyone in.

In theory, your passport is good. It should have been checked when you entered the US.

If you are a foreign national in the US, you're suppose to keep your passport with you at all times. Some states require anyone 18 and over to carry at least a state issued ID with them at all times. I carry 3 state/federal photo IDs, because they all serve a different purpose.

This is the ID requirement from their site.

ID Requirements
Please arrive at the designated boarding area at least 15 minutes before departure time. A U.S. government-issued Driver's License or U.S. State ID card is required for guests age 18 and over. International adult and child guests must present a valid passport to participate.

https://www.kennedyspacecenter.com/tours/ksc-up-close-then-and-now-tour.aspx

User Journal

Journal Journal: We've been spelling it wrong for over a quarter century 8

I'm surprised that this hasn't been addressed by the academic communities. Someone with a degree in English or linguistics or something like that should have though of this decades ago.

This word (actually more than one word) has various spellings, and I've probably used all of them at one time or another. The word is email, or eMail, or e-mail, or some other variation. They're all wrong.

Comment Re:Getting Older (Score 1) 4

Yes, if I were in college I'd certainly only lug one book around -- my notebook computer. I'd keep all the schoolbooks on the computer.

As to elderly eyesight, when I was a kid, all the geezers wore glasses, but few young people. Now all the youngsters have glasses and few geezers do. Why? The young are ruining their eyesight with computers, tablets, and phones much like I ruined mine with books.

But when I was a kid, cataract surgery was still rare. The patent on the CrystaLens should expire around 2023, so most oldsters won't need any glasses, since it not only cures cataracts but nearsightedness, farsightedness, and astigmatism. It won't be long before I have to get the other eye done.

Comment Rauner (Score 1) 78

We now have a "right to work" billionaire as governor of Illinois. He's calling for "right to work" zones, fortunately the legislature isn't going to let him.

If I weren't retired and lived in a "right to work" state, I would demand that the state's government supply me with employment. After all, if it's my RIGHT to work...

"Right to work" is a flat out bald faced lie, and any working person who supports it is a moron.

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