Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:And the vendor response will be... (Score 1) 286

I think some subsequent commenters may have thought I was condoning the described behavior, which I was not. IMO, the hard line is not the right approach, and I enthusiastically agree with the comments about sites that politely ask to be whitelisted. If the site is one that I value (primarily because of the specific writers or the community), I enable advertising or contribute directly. Sites that take the hard line, sites that use the pop-up overlay tactic, Outbrain links, paywalls, etc, I ignore and largely don't visit again. I used to be a lot more aggressive about it with local DNS redirects for trackers, etc., but I no longer have the energy for that. I just delete history and cookies every few weeks. Web content is easily substitutable. There are hundreds of sources for news. There are millions of sources for opinions. I'm glad the court ruled as it did. It's sad (and a little bit worrying) that they had to.

Comment Re:And the vendor response will be... (Score 5, Insightful) 286

I suspect the vendor response will be more along the lines of, "We've detected Ad Block on your computer. You will be unable to view content on this site while this is active." The legal decision is, IMO, the correct one. We're not in Oceania (yet) and we're still allowed to turn off our TVs or change the channel. That doesn't mean, though, that the provider of the content is required to show it to us if we choose not to pay for it in some way. Ad Block is probably going to have to get a little craftier about running in stealth mode in the future.

Comment Re:My B.S. Detector is Going Off (Score 2) 76

If the end of the coil that is hanging is grounded (earthed), it becomes an autotransformer. As it's shown, it's a variable inductor and the disconnected end is irrelevant and has no meaningful physical effect at the frequency a spark transmitter could have reached.

This comment seems to get closer to what they actually mean in their scientific paper. But the article about it is garble and the paper might suffer from second-language issues, and a lack of familiarity with the terms used in RF engineering.

Comment Hmm (Score 1) 649

If they're going to be like that about it, how's about setting up a copyright-free car project that you could build down at the local makerspace? You could probably do something on the order of complexity of the Ariel Atom without too much difficulty, and pull in an engine from a local junkyard. If that's what it takes to own your own car in this day and age, the guys the automakers are cock-blocking are more than capable of coming up with the designs.

Comment Re:Hmm, I guess I invented this as well... (Score 1) 76

Damn, I wish I would have patented that and all its quantum magic...

I noticed that my vertical transmitting antenna often works better if I connect a horizontal wire about the same length as the antenna to ground at its base! The wire isn't connected to the transmitting side of the circuit at all! And how well it works varies depending on the length! Obviously there is some deus ex machina at work here...

Comment Re:DIR 868L (Score 1) 107

Ah well as I said, my upload speeds to Youtube are ridiculous. I generate two or three skydiving videos a week and it used to take a couple hours to upload them all to youtube. I'll have to make a video of me uploading a video to Youtube, I guess...

I also had a problem, while on Comcast, where my computer waking up from hibernation would not be able to resolve DNS for several minutes. I'd be able to ping numeric IP addresses including Google's DNS servers, which I'd set the machine to use. But it would be several minutes before I could resolve names. That problem went away completely when I switched off Comcast.

So I'm getting gigabit speeds for $59 a month from an ISP that doesn't have the reputation for fuckery that your ISP probably does. Seems worth it to me.

Comment Re:My B.S. Detector is Going Off (Score 1) 76

Clearly you missed the bit where they invoked quantum mechanics, surely that explains away all the inaccuracies, like the fact you can already buy chip scale dielectric antennas

The thing that I really hate about Innovation Stories is that the reporter invariably doesn't understand what's going on, and invariably is easily convinced that The Obviiously Very Technical People have some very valuable invention.

Slashdot Top Deals

The hardest part of climbing the ladder of success is getting through the crowd at the bottom.

Working...