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Comment Re:Tech isn't there yet (Score 1) 765

No, the FN303 is a paintball gun. It is less-lethal to the point of being useless against a determined attacker. I would not want to defend my home from an intruder with an FN303. I have paintball guns made by the same company that designed the FN303. I can put the same type of ammunition in it and I can dial it up to similar velocities.

I also have a revolver...If my life and my family are depending on it I'd rather have the revolver instead of severely aggravating an intruder while they kill everyone.

Comment Change the game (Score 2) 800

If a crash is "inevitable" and there's no way out then change the game. If the potential impact is calculated to be fatal to the occupant then trigger explosive bolts and blow the wheels off the vehicle to increase friction as the body slams to the ground. Have an underbody plate that's built to be ready for this and is contoured and/or spiked to reduce spin and keep the vehicle on a straight path. Effectively just do what a turtle does. Pull up your legs and get ready for the impact.

Collision systems today only trigger once the crash is already happening. If you're in a guaranteed "no way out" scenario in a vehicle smart enough to know then you can slowly inflate the airbags to cushion the cabin (even at child-safe speeds). An extra second is a lot of time for collision mitigation.

If the crash is expected to be at a low enough speed where your survivability is not in question then there's probably more risk involved if you swerve off the road. That should keep you from plowing over pedestrians, but the underlying intent is to keep you from swerving into a river.

Like some have said above...do whatever is best to protect the occupant(s). Most of the time anywhere off the road has a high probability of getting you more seriously injured than on the road. If there are squishy pedestrians around there's also probably a lot of heavy anchored things like telephone poles and buildings. Those are not usually a better target than the car that's swerving into you.

Comment Re:Recovering... (Score 1) 187

good luck with that...I'm celebrating my 10 year anniversary since my bone marrow transplant.

It probably took me close to a year before I was able to really get a grasp on things again. The fog of it all is really quite impressive (at least as much as I remember)

Comment I can probably help you... (Score 1) 70

I was the senior integration technician at a mid-large VAR. We processed about 12,000 custom systems annually comprised of HP, IBM, & the occasional Sun server.

In 2010 our division was purchased and moved across the country (I didn't move with it). I've got a lot of tips and even some photos of what our build rooms were like. We had a major uptick in volume in ~2008 and I was given a similar chance to do what you're doing now. We picked up a new blank warehouse and gutted offices to turn into build rooms. It was quite a fun project.

contact me at my spam address (my username@hotmail.com) or "friend" me on here and I'd be happy to chat about some of our lessons learned.I'll keep an eye on my junk bin for a day or two to see if I catch your notice.

Comment Re:Cancer treatment (Score 1) 159

been there, done that...the fingerprint loss is pretty rare from what I've heard. They told me about it, but mine never even changed temporarily...not that there weren't plenty of other terribly amusing and horrifying side effects for the next year to year and a half. Good luck w/the transplant. I'm ~8 years out and happy I chose the most aggressive options presented to me.

Comment Re:Every 11-year-old boy's dream come true... (Score 2) 44

A Solar Powered Paper Airplane!

The resilient solar cells still function even when folded up into a paper airplane.

Tape a pager-motor with a small propeller onto it and you've got a paper airplane that can circumnavigate the globe !

How cool would that be?

-S

Only if it can move fast enough to stay in the sun....

Comment Re:KeyChest isn't "DRM", at least on the file leve (Score 1) 292

Yes they will...You just won't be buying from one entity anymore...

You'll be sending a cut to everyone with every purchase, even if you don't have multiple devices from multiple vendors.

Your cable company will show you that movie for free because you paid them $3 when you bought it for $65 at Best Buy (You also paid Sony, Disney, and whoever else wants in). Its not price fixing if everyone only sells the one product. Then it's just a monopoly with every company in for their chunk. If all the big kids play together then no one big enough to get lobbyists can go after them for cornering the industry.

Of course they still won't be able to plug what used to be called "the analog hole" since the community will build their own damn rippers/players from the chips up if they have to to avoid these schemes.

Comment Re:Network Design? (Score 1) 502

If the dude walked out without giving passwords to anyone and the system was poorly designed so that admin passwords had to be forcefully recovered via single user mode or the like, then the city should just eat crow, lick their wounds, and install a real network AAA system.

except that all the startup configs had been erased. any reboot of the routers would have caused them to bounce to factory defaults. They were set up this way specifically to prevent a password recovery attempt...

Comment Re:Article is BS... (Score 2, Informative) 619

I used to think plasma had the best picture as well, but then I got an LG 47LH90...

The new local dimming LED backlight systems are amazingly high contrast. If the screen is black you can't tell that the TV is on at all (since you can also control the power light). The brights are also amazing, and the ability to have the two sitting immediately adjacent has made everything appear more crisply.

The ONLY gripe I have is with the somewhat diminished viewing angle. At very wide angles you can see a little glow around some things when they're on a pitch black background.

Mars

Bacteria Could Survive In Martian Soil 90

Dagondanum writes "Multiple missions have been sent to Mars with the hopes of testing the surface of the planet for life — or the conditions that could create life. The question of whether life in the form of bacteria (or something even more exotic) exists on Mars is hotly debated, and still lacks a definitive yes or no. Experiments done right here on Earth that simulate the conditions on Mars and their effects on terrestrial bacteria show that it is entirely possible for certain strains of bacteria to weather the harsh environment of Mars." Perhaps this is something that will be tested further in a few years by the Mars Science Lab, also known as "Curiosity" and (as reader Nova1021 points out) "the Mars Action Hero."
Privacy

An Inbox Is Not a Glove Compartment 316

Frequent Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton writes "A federal judge rules that government can obtain access to a person's inbox contents without any notification to the subscriber. The pros and cons of this are complicated, but the decision hinges on the assertion that ISP customers have lowered privacy interests in e-mail because they 'expose to the ISP's employees in the ordinary course of business the contents of their e-mails.' Fortunately for everybody, this is not true — most ISPs do not allow their employees to read customer e-mails 'in the ordinary course of business' — but then what are the consequences for the rest of the argument?" Read on for the rest of Bennett's analysis.

Comment Re:Google Voice not on Cydia (Score 2, Informative) 295

Sorry, but how does it not integrate well? I just installed GV mobile last night and when I go to the keypad and hit the contacts button I see only my iPhone contact list...I can dial just like I do with phone.app

If anything the seamless integration of the iPhone contact list is the thing that GV mobile does best...

Comment Re:50,000 is not that many (Score 1) 106

Your average server rack is only 42U in height...50 discrete systems is extremely high density. Even with blades you rarely get past about 64 per rack...Most datacenters have a mix of machine sizes so the average density quickly drops below 40. This also drops again once you put in all the switching and routing necessary to support these networks.

I work for a VAR in our integration facility and the highest densities we ever see are 64 BL460c HP blades in a 42U rack.

Comment Re:A printer! (Score 5, Informative) 606

skipping tracks is as simple as clicking the inline button on the earbuds. pause is a double click. The buds also double as your headset so that phone calls automatically pause the music and give you a chance to answer with another simple squeeze of the button. Hanging up is just one more squeeze again and then back to the music. It's not advanced, but it's perfectly sufficient...

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