almeida - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Lock-em down (Score 1) 698

by almeida on Wednesday November 12, 2014 @06:11PM (#48373321) Attached to: US School Installs 'Shooter Detection' System

Forget the fire codes. If you lock the shooter in a room, you might also lock a lot of potential victims in the room with him. Say someone enters a packed cafeteria and fires some shots. No matter what, people will instinctively run to the exits once they realize what's going on. If the doors are open, they'll have a chance to get away. But, if the doors locked, everyone will pile up near the exits and be trapped. Now, the shooter has a lot of targets clumped together.

Comment Obituary (Score 4, Informative) 82

by almeida on Monday November 03, 2014 @09:17PM (#48306363) Attached to: "Car Talk" Co-Host Tom Magliozzi Dies At Age 77

There is a nice and humorous obituary on their website.

Comment Re:The 4th of December? (Score 2) 340

by almeida on Friday July 04, 2014 @03:28PM (#47385031) Attached to: On 4th of July:

You can't be American, because you're apparently unaware...

Let me stop you right there. You must not know Americans, because unawareness, of our own history and so many other things, is one of our hallmarks. The fact that the signing of the Declaration of Independence wasn't promptly followed by the "shot heard round the world," or that the war dragged on for years and wasn't particularly popular while it was raging, or that our Constitution was our second attempt at self government is not something people know. The details of our history just aren't taught, or aren't taught well at least, so we end with people having a weak grasp of the highlights and not understanding or even being aware of the rest.

Comment ZigBee (Score 1) 176

by almeida on Tuesday April 01, 2014 @04:52PM (#46633899) Attached to: The Connected Home's Battle of the Bulbs

Hue bulbs speak ZigBee, not Wi-Fi. Communication between the bridge and the lights is done with a mix of the ZigBee Home Automation and ZigBee Light Link application profiles on a ZigBee PRO mesh network using an IEEE 802.15.4 MAC layer. The bridge is an IP-to-ZigBee gateway, but there's no direct IP connectively to the bulbs.

Comment Re:She lies.... Reality is (Score 2) 150

by almeida on Friday January 17, 2014 @12:40PM (#45987351) Attached to: US Senator Warns Against Political Surveillance By Drone

her support of the endless wars she supports

This is why I only vote for candidates who have pledged to support only the wars they don't support.

Submission + - Advice for Recording Interviews with Family Member

Submitted by almeida on Thursday September 15, 2011 @04:16PM

almeida writes: My grandfather passed away when I was in my early twenties, around the time that I was just learning to appreciate his humor, stories, history, and perspective. All four of my nine-month-old daughter's grandparents and one of her great grandparents are currently alive and well, but I'm afraid that they'll pass away before she has the same chance to really know them, interact with them as an adult, and learn from them. To help preserve part of our family history and to give her a chance to hear about them in their own words with their own voice, I have decided to record a series of interviews with some of the older members of our family. I want to ask about their childhoods, their relationships with their families, how they met their spouses, what my wife and I were like as children, how the world has changed in their lives, what they might have done differently in their lives, what advice they have for her, etc. After listening to many hours of NPR, I have come to really enjoy audio-only interviews and would like to take this approach with my interviews. So my questions for Slashdot are what type of recording equipment should I use? What type of environment will give the best quality? I want to balance audio quality with content quality. I think sitting around the kitchen table would make people more comfortable and more willing to talk than sitting in some kind of recording studio. How can I minimize background noises, echos, and static? I only want to hear the voices, the laughter and the sighs, and maybe some crying. What media should I use to store the recordings? I realize I'll have to do some editing to separate the good stuff from the boring parts. If anyone has done something like this before, what kind of ratio can I expect? What's the best way to edit something like this? What other questions should I ask? What would you want to know from your grandparents?

Comment Re:Sure there are more blackberries (Score 5, Informative) 207

by almeida on Monday June 22, 2009 @10:48PM (#28433747) Attached to: An Experiment In BlackBerry Development

I develop applications for BlackBerry and I've talked to RIM about what restrictions corporate users will see. According to RIM, only 40% of BlackBerry users are on BlackBerry Enterprise Networks (BES) and over 90% of BES installations use the default settings. The default BES settings do not impose any restrictions on the device.

Teacher Sells Ads On Tests 532

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday December 02, 2008 @02:37PM from the pay-the-bills dept.

Tom Farber, a calculus teacher at Rancho Bernardo high school in San Diego, has come up with a unique way of covering district cuts to his supplies budget. He sells ads on his tests. "Tough times call for tough actions," Tom says. The price of an ad on a Mr. Farber Calc test is as follows: $10 for a quiz, $20 for a chapter test, and $30 for a semester final. Most of the ads are messages from parents but about a third of them come from local businesses. Principal Paul Robinson says reaction has been "mixed," but adds, "It's not like, 'This test is brought to you by McDonald's or Nike.'" I see his point. Being a local business whore is much better than being a multinational conglomerate whore.

Submission + - How a Pulsar gets its Spin

Submitted by

brian0918

on Friday January 05, 2007 @04:19PM

brian0918 writes: "Until now, the assumption has been that the rapid spin of a pulsar comes from the spin of the original star. The problem was that this only explained the fastest observed pulsars. Now, researchers at Oak Ridge have shown that the spin of a pulsar is determined by the shock wave created when the star's massive iron core collapses. From the article: 'That shock wave is inherently unstable, and eventually becomes cigar-shaped instead of spherical. The instability creates two rotating flows — one in one direction directly below the shock wave and another, inner flow, that travels in the opposite direction and spins up the core. The asymmetrical flows establish a 'sloshing' motion that accounts for the pulsars' observed spin velocities from once every 15 to 300 milliseconds.'"

Submission + - Military to forecast global wars with new computer

Submitted by

John Keller

on Friday January 05, 2007 @04:11PM

John Keller writes: "Scientists at the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Arlington, Va., are asking industry for ideas on how to develop an advanced computer system called the Integrated Crisis Early Warning System (ICEWS) that is able to predict global wars and other political instability. The goal is to develop a system to monitor, assess, and forecast crises throughout the world to support decisions on how to allocate resources to mitigate them, officials say. The ICEWS will provide military commanders with a powerful capability to anticipate and respond to worldwide political crises and track their success in near-real time.

URL of this story is: http://mae.pennnet.com/display_article/281403/32/N EWS/none/none/DARPA-kicks-off-program-to-develop-a dvanced-computer-system-to-forecast-global-wars-an d-other-political-instability/"

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