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Comment Re:Had bad experiences when I was 22 and in port t (Score 1) 228

The ocean is freezing, the sub is well insulated, that traps heat. Even if you stop the rapid oxidation of the material in the compartment the heat does not dissipate instantly, so as soon as you open the compartment the fire will start again. Also the stored heat will continue to deform/ weaken the material that makes up the compartment.

Look at the coal fires that have been raging underground in PA for decades.

That is not to say that they did not seal off compartments, just that the whole situation is more complicated than just sealing the compartment until there are no visible flames.
The Military

New Tech Makes Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Verifiable 93

Harperdog writes "In 1999, Senate Republicans rejected the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty on the grounds that it wasn't verifiable. The National Academy of Sciences feels this is no longer true, due to new technology. Quoting: 'Technologies for detecting clandestine testing in four environments — underground, underwater, in the atmosphere, and in space — have improved significantly in the past decade. In particular, seismology, the most effective approach for monitoring underground nuclear explosion testing, can now detect underground explosions well below 1 kiloton in most regions. A kiloton is equivalent to 1,000 tons of chemical high explosive. The nuclear weapons that were used in Japan in World War II had yields in the range of 10 to 20 kilotons.'"

Comment Re:Good (Score 1) 407

As much as I dislike Best Buy, some of these ideas seem good: new checkout lines, presumably faster, better online pick-up options and a place in the center of the store to find help.

However, if their "technology support" plans are just expanding the current "Geek squad" offerings then that will further alienate people and lead to more bad word of mouth.

Comment Re:monetize ? (Score 1) 38

Anything that makes court opinions more accessible is a good thing. Your concern about "privately owned services" is about 200 years too late and ignorant of the way court opinions are presently published.

The present system is WestLaw Lexis or another legal publishing company publishes decisions of note, i.e. only decision that change something in the law. Your average case is never published. You have to pay major money to get access to this material.

The courts do store decisions but in such a difficult way to access that it is not worth the effort. Are you going to go and wait in line for a civil service person to go and get the physical copy of the official court opinion, every time you want to see it? Imagine trying to get hundreds of documents from the DMV everyday. And then paying photocopying services because the official court document cannot leave the file storage room.

Comment Re:What do they expect? (Score 1) 349

I mean, I would have been a lot more okay with things if they'd just been straightforward and said "look, the people we get our content from are raising the prices on us, we need to charge you more to cover it". That's fine, that I can understand.

Yeah if you were in Netflix's position what would you do? Potentially piss off the people who set the prices for the content your customers want access too or shit on part of your customer base? It puzzled me too for a bit, then I realized there was probably some business contracts where they could not name the studios as being a cause, I mean there are only about 6 major content distributors and they all march very closely together.

In fact all the stories that reported the price increase only speculated it was due to a probable licensing rate rise, no one besides Netflix has the real numbers, the rest is speculation.

Comment Re: optical drive (Score 1) 394

I know I did not even blink about missing an optical drive from my latest build. Even MS supports creating a boot-able USB drive with Windows 7 on it! Granted you need an existing copy of windows but still. I cast my vote firmly in the fewer moving parts camp.
Star Wars Prequels

Submission + - George Lucas messing with Star Wars again (badassdigest.com) 5

FrankNFurter writes: Once more George Lucas has been caught messing with the original Star Wars trilogy — this time for the Blu-Ray release later this year. What changed? He added Darth Vader saying 'NOOOOOO' to the scene where the Emperor is electrocuting Luke.

Leave Star Wars alone, George!

Security

Submission + - This telephone bug stole PINs from inside a bank (scmagazine.com.au)

mask.of.sanity writes: This telephone bug was found attached to a phone line inside one of Australia's biggest banks.
The device, attached by a cleaner, was listening to dial tones as unwitting consumers keyed in PIN numbers at the teller.
It broadcast the tones over a radio frequency to a laptop outside, while a card skimmer recorded credit and debit numbers.

Comment Re:Take a lesson from Mac OS X (Score 1) 404

Apple dropped the price of OS updates from $129.99 to $29.99. Piracy for OS updates dropped significantly and they actually make more money at the lower price point. Plus since more machines are running the latest version of the OS, they have less problems with old OS issues.

Apple can do this because their software is tied directly to the hardware, MS is solely a software company, realm of computers anyways. Office and Windows are currently the most profitable divisions of the company http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2011/04/microsoft-beats-estimates-but-not-apple-in-third-quarter-earnings.ars I'm sure they would sell more upgrades at a lower price but the question to answer is: "What price point nets them the most money?"

Comment Problem with Hobby v. Job (Score 1) 533

Isn't this the problem with all hobbies? As you mature and get older you move away from things with which you used to fill your leisure time. Hobbies drop off and are filled with spouse/kid/work related issues.

When the typical editor noted in the article ages through the honeymoon/kids period of their lives, I would suspect they will return to editing Wikipedia, even more so when they retire from work. The typical editor will return to editing just like the typical person that built models as a kid or played with toy trains, when they have leisure time to devote without distraction.
Government

Submission + - More Fedral Laws- More Felons (wsj.com) 1

KrisJon writes: ""As federal criminal statutes have ballooned, it has become increasingly easy for Americans to end up on the wrong side of the law. Many of the new federal laws also set a lower bar for conviction than in the past: Prosecutors don't necessarily need to show that the defendant had criminal intent. These factors are contributing to some unusual applications of justice."

Comment Already tried and shut down (Score 4, Informative) 388

This is nothing new. They had a program in 2009 called Clear to speed you through screening and it was abruptly shutdown without explanation. http://daggle.com/clear-airport-security-program-closes-707

It was then started again, but more limited. http://daggle.com/clear-airport-security-with-all-downsides-2179

So... how long will this incarnation last?

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Digital library management

doishmere writes: How do you organize your digital library? I want organize all kinds of digital text media, such as academic papers, user manuals, e-books, or even local copies of HTML pages. I'm most interested in actually managing the content, but bonus points if there is a reference manager too.

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