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Comment: Re:Sounds like a pretty good system (Score 2) 101

....you don't need autonomous charging stations for city-wide surveillance. You can just fly the drone back home.

Don't forget about quick deployment either.

A well placed charging station with a drone already inside ready to deploy at any time could shave off a number of minutes for getting first eyes on the scene. And sometimes, that very short initial lead time could be crucial in locating a drowning victim, or identifying a fleeing bank robber, or seeing what's going on just a few milliseconds after some gunshots are heard.

Comment: Re:rather have money (Score 2) 499

by stephanruby (#43785945) Attached to: Do Developers Need Free Perks To Thrive?

Personally, I'd rather have more healthy snacks like fresh fruits and nuts.

But either way, if upper management takes away free sodas (without the CEO having to make a similar sacrifice like giving up his corporate jet, or giving up his bonus), upper management and HR better brace themselves for an internal email shit storm that could take down its internal network for a couple of days, if not for a couple weeks, and that could potentially cost the company millions of dollars in loss of productivity and loss of sales (not to mention the eventual loss of key employees, the ones that are in demand enough -- not to be afraid to look for employment elsewhere).

And if those key employees are developers, good luck replacing them. Code bases and developers are not so easily interchangeable. Please read the book "Mythical Man-Month" by Fred Brooks (if you haven't already).

Comment: Re:little light on the science details. (Score 1) 295

by stephanruby (#43768915) Attached to: Charge Your Cellphone In 20 Seconds (Eventually)

The problem is that Ubuntu touch doesn't support the 1x1 screen resolution.

1x1 screen resolution is so last year!

If my kid wants higher resolution scrolling bars, or higher resolution ascii porn (bigger than 1 by 1 pixel at least), he'll just have to simulate that higher resolution by shaking/spinning/blinking the led fast enough.

Comment: Re:little light on the science details. (Score 4, Funny) 295

by stephanruby (#43766977) Attached to: Charge Your Cellphone In 20 Seconds (Eventually)

did she have some new angle to the tech?

Yes, she did. She used a "led" as a demo device for her super battery.

Basically, a led is the equivalent a cell phone without a screen, without an antenna, without sensors, without memory (except for one bit), without a gps, without a speaker, without a microphone, without an amplifier, without a cpu, without a gpu, etc. Plus, it's a great device for simulating the power consumption of an actual cell phone.

A "led" is a also a great device to give your kids instead of a cell phone. It doesn't have a great range, may be just a couple of meters. And it needs to be in the constant line of sight of the person your kid is communicating with. But barring those two little constraints, it's a good tool for your kid to learn morse code (provided that "led" is the only piece of electronics/toy your kid has access to), it works great at night, it comes with uncapped/unlimited data, and it doesn't come with an expensive bill no matter how much your kids do texting with it.

Comment: Re:Cisco (Score 2) 154

Cisco IronPort. We use it and rely on it heavily for secure emails regarding pii for our pension fund

Yeah, we did the same at my company.

Our IT Staff just threw their hands in the air, and now we just use a public bulletin board for our all our internal electronic communications (with private messaging disabled). And once in a while just to be thorough, we let a spammer come in to post viagra ads on it, just to remind all of our employees that our bulletin board is completely opened to the outside world and nothing posted on it will ever be private.

Comment: Re:Let me be the first to say... (Score 2) 272

by stephanruby (#43669965) Attached to: Sleep Deprivation Lowers School Achievement In Children

No, blame the schools because they let out the kids out at 4 PM.

If schools let them out at 1 PM instead of 4 PM, then cartoon time and prime time can be moved forward 3 hours, and then little school children everywhere could go to bed at 8 PM instead of 11 PM, and nobody would be having this problem of not enough sleep.

Comment: Re:What about ATMs (Score 1) 144

ATMs are not the same as a Poker machines.

This guy shouldn't be punished. He should be celebrated and be given multi-million dollars endorsement deals by the largest casinos (in addition to being defended by them against our overzealous government). Poker machines are marketed as puzzle boxes to be solved, or random boxes to be taken advantage of, if you're lucky or skillful enough.

Casinos will only benefit by his actions from the tens of thousands of people who will try to replicate what he did on their machines (of course, by now the flaw will have been fixed almost everywhere, but that won't stop many people from thinking that they may be able to find another similar flaw if they keep trying different variations and putting even more money in).

If Casinos are smart, they'll try to use this opportunity to reassure this particular segment of their customers, that what he did was fine and was within the rules, so that those patrons will try to do the same as he did (as hopeless as this endeavor may be for them).

Comment: Re:Eye dominance (Score 1) 67

I'm extremely left-eye dominant, to the the point where reading with my right eye alone is next to impossible. I can make out the scenery, but the center of my vision in that eye has the acuity of peripheral vision, and I can't parse complex shapes (ie text) with that eye alone. I hate to claim "I have a medical condition", but I do, and it's called amblyopia.

It must suck for you that the DMV tests the eyesight of each eye individually.

I can certainly see that as the kind of thing that will show up in version 2 or 3, but they would be a waste of money for me at this point.

Don't despair.

Google Glass would be a waste of money for almost anyone at this point (unless you're a developer wishing to develop on that emerging platform, or unless you're a billionaire looking for a fashion accessory and money is nothing to you right now).

Comment: Re:Warranty or insurance? (Score 1) 329

by stephanruby (#43627151) Attached to: Is Buying an Extended Warranty Ever a Good Idea?

I mean repeat offenders--with water-damaged phones and cracked screens. $15 a month or whatever it is may seem steep

Wow! You must really be a former Best Buy employee, because only a Best Buy employee would make a mistake like that. The $15 a month extended warranty at Best Buy does not cover water-damage. It never did.

The bottom line is I saw a lot of people get their money's worth.

Who were those people? Attractive people? Celebrities? Friends and relatives of your manager? Or just stories you heard?

The extended Warranty at Best Buy is even designed to make people think they have less rights than they usually do (at least for the people in California, where I'm from). For instance, take the clause about returning the device at least a minimum three times to Best Buy before being able to get a replacement for a defective product. That clause is utter nonsense.

If the product I purchased is defective within the Warranty period, by law the retailer must replace the device (even if it's just a manufacturers warranty). And of course, there is no nonsense about returning the device a minimum of three times, or being forced to ship the device back to the manufacturer (if one didn't get the extended Warranty).

Comment: Re:Warranty or insurance? (Score 5, Interesting) 329

by stephanruby (#43624937) Attached to: Is Buying an Extended Warranty Ever a Good Idea?

This is a problematic piece because it's form of advertisement thinly veiled as a Slashdot article.

$125 a year (or more if I pay on a monthly basis) to replace my smartphone in case of an accident. Are they kidding me! The last problem I had with my Evo, Sprint replaced the screen free of charge (they didn't even charge me the $40 I had agreed to paid when I dropped it off). Please note, this is not an advertisement for Sprint (even if Sprint's customer service is fine, their 4G coverage is seriously getting degraded in areas where it used to be fine before).

I think everybody would be better off if they just set aside $125 a year in a piggy bank every time they buy a new device (whether it's a smartphone, a laptop, a TV, or whatever). It all adds up. If something ever goes wrong, they can just break the piggy bank. At least, after everything is repaired and the bills are settled, they'll have a few thousand dollars left over that they wouldn't have had otherwise.

Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?

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