My home regularly loses power, especially during ice storms that take out power lines. I'm looking to install solar with several days of battery storage to mitigate that recurring problem. Don't mistake your preference for universal truth. It's a common mistake, and one reason people feel comfortable demonizing others.

I'm also in the market for a new linux laptop, after seeing what Windows 10 has done to my security. However, I'd hold off for a couple of months. Dell and others are releasing versions of laptops with Intel's new Skylake architecture. I believe that it has enough improvements to warrant the wait.

I deployed to Iraq several years ago. While there, we were building schools and refurbished a hospital. We had a CNN reporter there with us, and we saw a couple of stories that CNN ran on us at the time. The only thing that the reporter got right was our unit name. Everything else was wrong, edited to support the political agenda of the editor at CNN. All about how we were killing people. Nothing about how we made friends with the local Iraqis, nothing about our public works, nothing about the "learn to read" program that our commander started, nothing positive at all.

Good luck in finding "objective" journalism.

I'm wondering when somebody in congress will initiate legal action against the NSA for weakening national security.

It's generally acknowledged by now that the NSA has intentionally weakened various cryptographic algorithms, including AES. I'm responsible for various WAN links at my organization, and they use AES-256 IPSec tunnels to secure the traffic. That traffic is extremely sensitive in nature. The NSA may have intended to only allow themselves to crack this encryption, but how am I supposed to know that some other hacker hasn't figured out how to take advantage of the NSA's actions? How do I tell my director that our data is secure, and that we're meeting state and federal regulatory requirements?

I just graduated with a Masters degree in education. I can tell you that, having met and worked with many Ph.D.s , that the degree does not necessarily mean that you know what you're doing. Case in point, have you LOOKED at the current Common Core standards? The curriculum? The test questions? Whoever created that mess will be primarily responsible for our increasing illiteracy in this country for the next decade.

Personally, I think Mr. Burton's efforts will me much more effective than much of the tripe created by supposed "experts",

Sorry for the double-post, didn't realize I wasn't logged in when I posted this previously

I keep hearing about "Dark Matter" as an explanation for how galaxies don't fly apart due to the force generated by their rotation, but I can't help thinking that all that mass we're looking for in galaxies could be stuff like this. Regular matter that just doesn't generate enough heat or light for us to have noticed prior to this.

Could the question of how galaxies rotate be answered by large quantities of objects such as these?

The next time a kiddie-porn person gets arrested for having illegal images, I imagine all he'll have to say is that somebody used this back door to use his wi-fi router to download the bad files, despite his encryption.

Get-out-of-jail-free card.

<sarcasm>Wait, I thought that Roe v. Wade established my right to privacy. Don't those left-wing nutjobs believe in their own judicial activisim? Based on that legal precedent, all NSA spying of all U.S. citizens should cease, immediately!</sarcasm>

My memory has gotten considerably worse these past five years. I need something to take with me to stimulate my memory of the things I found important.

I also find that, if I'm busy trying to take notes, the Extraneous Cognitive Load ensures that I actually absorb less of the material.

Bottom line: If I have pre-printed notes, highlights, outline, etc of the talk before it is given, I can relax and enjoy the lecture, interact with the instructor, and only add specific impressions by writing on the handout. I'll retain more, learn more, and remember more.

Damn, the first time I can remember when I *actually* laughed out loud at a Slashdot post, and I'm without MOD points!

My wife is a veterinarian trying to open her own clinic. I got angry, then depressed when I saw how much money we had to spend on useless, stupid regulation that did nothing but line the pockets of bureaucrats.

It's easy for you liberals to say that "big government" is a good thing, until you're a small business person trying to create and run a business and provide jobs for a few people. Once you have to actually deal with the crap you guys are creating, you'd sing a different tune, believe me.

They're a bit expensive and I wish the documentation was better, but I've had some luck with the Synology products. They've got a lot of plug-in software modules, including an Asterisk PBM for VoIP, Cloud Station for folder synchronization, etc.

Make sure that you look at the specifications, if you're wanting encrypted tunnels or encrypted data on the drives, ensure that you buy one with the AES encryption set in hardware.

One more thing: I have had very poor luck with the Seagate drives I originally bought and put in a DS 412+. I replaced them with Western Digital Red NAS drives, and they work much better.

That javascript pop-up at the top asks for feedback with a link to feedback@slashdot.org, subject beta_feedback. (I'm not doing an actual link, because the beta site appears to not allow links).

I've already sent an email stating that, if beta becomes permanent, I will be deleting my account and not returning to Slashdot. If everybody gives their feedback about the Beta, perhaps they'll realize that they're going to lose all their money when we stop visiting.

Wow. Just....wow. So *this* is what modern education has come to?

Seriously, weight is an accelerational effect upon the mass by a force, in this case, gravity. Einstein taught us that any acceleration, outside of a frame of reference, would be identical. So, providing an acceleration by means of some other force while in microgravity would accomplish the same thing.

I suggest that you do a quick Google search on the subject. In about 5 seconds I found articles on using springs on the ISS, and a patent application for using a centrifuge to accomplish the same thing.

The kilogram is a measure of mass, not weight.