BonquiquiShiquavius - Slashdot User

Comment Fail Poll (Score 1, Informative) 206

by BonquiquiShiquavius on Friday January 01, 2010 @05:47AM (#30613096) Attached to: Until I remember to write '2010' instead of '2009':

Fail Poll...if you delete the comments, you should also delete the poll responses. The deleted comments would provide insight into the fact the poll is probably widely inaccurate given that the original question left out half the question.

Actually, sorry, scratch that. I see now that all polls on /. are widely inaccurate. Just another day at the office.

Submission + - Sceptical climate researcher withholds code (newscientist.com) 1

Submitted by xav_jones on Wednesday December 23, 2009 @09:25PM

xav_jones writes: New Scientist is reporting that Nicola Scafetta, a physicist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina — whose work is often highlighted by climate-change sceptics, including US senator James Inhofe — is refusing to provide the software he used to other climate researchers attempting to replicate his results. Emails between Rasmus Benestad of the Norwegian Meteorological Institute in Oslo and Scafetta over the past week had Scaffetta repeatedly refusing to provide the code. "If you just disclose your code and data, then we will manage to get to the bottom of this," Benestad writes in one email. "I really do not understand why you are not able to write your own program to reproduce the calculations," responds Scafetta.

Aussie Scientists Find Coconut-Carrying Octopus 205

Posted by timothy on Tuesday December 15, 2009 @02:40PM from the concealed-carry-in-australian-waters dept.

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from an AP report: "Australian scientists have discovered an octopus in Indonesia that collects coconut shells for shelter — unusually sophisticated behavior that the researchers believe is the first evidence of tool use in an invertebrate animal. The scientists filmed the veined octopus, Amphioctopus marginatus, selecting halved coconut shells from the sea floor, emptying them out, carrying them under their bodies up to 65 feet (20 meters), and assembling two shells together to make a spherical hiding spot. ... 'I was gobsmacked,' said Finn, a research biologist at the museum who specializes in cephalopods. 'I mean, I've seen a lot of octopuses hiding in shells, but I've never seen one that grabs it up and jogs across the sea floor. I was trying hard not to laugh.'"

Comment Re:$700,000 (Score 2, Funny) 571

by BonquiquiShiquavius on Thursday November 26, 2009 @08:32PM (#30241162) Attached to: Hacker McKinnon To Be Extradited To US

My analogy would be that it's like the owner of a stolen car having to spend $700,000 on a secure garage after realizing that keeping the car on the street with the keys in the ignition is inadequate.

Sorry it took so long for the fix...I got on it as soon as I realized the anguish a non-car analogy would cause on /.

Comment $700? (Score 5, Insightful) 109

by BonquiquiShiquavius on Wednesday November 04, 2009 @05:32PM (#29986080) Attached to: New Web-Based Netbook From Litl — Based On Clutter, Uncluttered

Why would anyone spend $700 buy a device that is dependent on the web to function, when a netbook costs half and can access the web and still function when offline?

Comment Re:60 Minutes (Score 1) 560

by BonquiquiShiquavius on Monday November 02, 2009 @07:36PM (#29956778) Attached to: Pirate Bay Closure Sparked P2P Explosion

Bullshit. The media companies are only interested in viewership/copies sold. Ideology / world view has nothing to do with it. News has been viewed as entertainment rather education for a long time now. Sensationalist reporting gets much more attention than ensuring their stories are fair and unbiased. Imagine the average American - what do you think will get their attention - "Piracy Strongly Linked to Child Prostitution" or "Potential Link Found between File Sharing and Child Pornography (Maybe)"?

Comment Re:Saudi Arabia tried that (Score 1) 429

by BonquiquiShiquavius on Wednesday October 21, 2009 @04:32PM (#29828303) Attached to: 125 Years of Longitude 0 0' 00" At Greenwich

I agree with abolishing the daylight savings time, but not with using UTC. The vast majority of our activities are based on solar time. Everyone instantly recognizes what getting up at 4:00 AM means. You can only recognize what getting up at 12:00 UTC (or GMT) means if you also know the location of the person doing the action, and where that location is in relation to the central time zone. Can you imagine what this would do to story telling - not just published works, but also the daily anecdotes we tell each other? It would require either significantly more mental math, or two time standards as suggested by the original poster - both of which I would find more of a pain in the ass than the need to deal with occasionally convert time from another zone to current time.

California Requests Stimulus Funding For Bullet Train 567

Posted by Soulskill on Friday October 02, 2009 @07:14PM from the does-it-come-with-a-silencer dept.

marquinhocb writes "Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger requested $4.7 billion in federal stimulus money Friday to help build an 800-mile bullet train system from San Diego to San Francisco. 'We're traveling on our trains at the same speed as 100 years ago,' the governor said. 'That is inexcusable. America must catch up.' Planners said the train would be able to travel from Los Angeles to San Francisco in two hours and 40 minutes, traveling at speeds of more than 200 miles per hour. About time! There comes a point when 'let's add another lane' is no longer a viable option!"

Comment Re:All while listening to this particular song... (Score 1) 638

by BonquiquiShiquavius on Tuesday September 22, 2009 @05:19PM (#29509015) Attached to: Soviets Built a Doomsday Machine; It's Still Alive

For everyone outside of the US...here's the link to "Silo Lullabye" on Grooveshark. Works in Canada at least - not sure about the rest of the world. http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/song/Silo_Lullaby/8977133

Comment Re:Winter-to-Winfly (Score 1) 451

by BonquiquiShiquavius on Tuesday September 15, 2009 @07:43PM (#29433757) Attached to: Favorite seasonal transition?

So I have to ask...it's completely off topic (but how often do you get to pose a question to someone stationed at McMurdo?)...how common are inter-personnel affairs down there? I can only imagine that they are inevitable given the inhospitable climate, the cramped quarters and long isolation periods. Actually, it kinda sounds like a nerd's paradise...just like the basement but actual women are forced to stay down there with you as well!?!

Appropriate Interviewing For a Worldwide Search? 440

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday September 04, 2009 @06:17PM from the can't-please-everyone-so-i-choose-to-please-no-one dept.

jellomizer writes 'I am a manager of a small Software Development department, looking to hire some more developers. By edict of the CEO, the search must be made globally, so we are dealing with different cultures and different ideas of truth and embellishment, etc. To try to counteract this, we give the potential employees tests where I watch what they do, to see if they actually know what they say they know. However, it seems a lot of applicants drop out when I mention that this test is mandatory. Is this a sign that we caught them in a lie, or are we weeding out good people where we shouldn't be? Would you be willing to take a test as part of an interview? If so, is there any type of heads up you would like to know beforehand to make the decision of whether to take the test easier?' What other difficulties have people seen while trying to hire from many different cultures?

Comment Not Blizzard Fan = Not a Gamer? (Score 1) 452

by BonquiquiShiquavius on Tuesday August 25, 2009 @12:49AM (#29182367) Attached to: Blizzard Game You're Most Looking Forward To?

Seriously how could you miss the option of "Not a Blizzard Fan" or something to that effect? Although I'm always impressed with the quality of the games Blizzard produces, the entire genre they produce carries little to no interest to me. I'm sure I'm not the only gamer that looks forward to the release of certain new games, just not the type Blizzard produces. Even though I spend an average of 5 - 10 hrs a week playing PC games, does not liking/looking forward to upcoming Blizzard titles classify me as a non-gamer?

Submission + - SPAM: New Software To Understand Viruses

Submitted by

abushhiwa1976

on Friday July 24, 2009 @09:23PM

abushhiwa1976 writes: "This software has a power to understand any virus to know all the details of virus that is good software to get more information and details about the virus effect on the human and how can to Treatment this virus ."
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Researchers: Security certificate warnings useless (networkworld.com)

Submitted by BobB-nw on Friday July 24, 2009 @09:07PM

BobB-nw writes: Every Web surfer has seen them. Those "invalid certificate" warnings you sometimes get when you're trying to visit a secure Web site. They say things like "There is a problem with this Web site's security certificate." If you're like most people, you may feel vaguely uneasy, and — according to a new paper from researchers at Carnegie Mellon University — there's a good chance you'll ignore the warning and click through anyway. In a laboratory experiment, researchers found that between 55 percent and 100 percent of participants ignored certificate security warnings, depending on which browser they were using (different browsers use different language to warn their users).

Submission + - Firmware Bug in New Intel SSDs - Shipments Delayed

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24, 2009 @08:30PM

An anonymous reader writes: It has come to light that there is a defect in recently-released Intel SSDs which causes them to stop functioning if — and only if — a password is set on the drive in the system BIOS... and then changed or disabled later. Despite early concerns about the viability of these drives, Intel has been able to work out a firmware fix for the problem. That won't be available immediately, but should be showing up in about two weeks. Intel is not going to be shipping more of these until they have the firmware fix, so there will likely be a shortage of the drives for the next couple weeks — depending on how vendors handle their existing stock and orders.

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