cdrmret - Slashdot User

Comment Dragon (Score 1) 125

by cdrmret on Saturday May 28, 2022 @10:46AM (#62572666) Attached to: NASA Praises Boeing Starliner's 'Picture Perfect' Return from ISS Visit

Meanwhile Dragon capsules continue to rotate trips to the ISS. Major failure was a bad toilet which has been fixed and capsules are reused multiple times. Starliner is a gigantic waste of time, money and engineering (un) elegance as well as being an example of the wasteful nonrecyclable NASA space program. Congrats on being able to land close to the target.

Comment Content doesn't meet the $1/week threshold (Score 1) 675

by cdrmret on Tuesday February 09, 2016 @11:11AM (#51469873) Attached to: Wired To Block Ad-Blocking Users, Offer Subscription

I'd be willing to pay $.01 or 0.2 for an article, but will probably just stop looking at Wired online. Years ago micropayment was touted as a means to support online content, but went by the wayside as ads became more common. I pay $150.00 a month for my internet connection, I block ads for the most part because they are irritating, obtrusive, and they occupy a nontrivial portion of the data transmission. Find a better way to support yourself Wired or risk losing a large portion of your audience. The expectation people are willing to pay $100/yr each for New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times and several others for 1 or 2 articles/week, then $50/yr for Wired, Forbes and a few other magazine articles approaches absurdity on top of outrageous charges for slow unreliable bandwidth. I would like to be able to get most of my current news and information online, it's just not going to happen if I have to put up with ridiculously absurd advertising.

Comment The Doctor (Score 1) 197

by cdrmret on Sunday August 17, 2014 @01:16PM (#47689905) Attached to: Is Dolby Atmos a Flop For Home Theater Like 3DTV Was?

I think ATMOS was revealed to be a Sontaran plot to turn earth into a cloning center. No wonder it will never become popular.

Comment Re:For Fear Of Godwinning... (Score 1) 272

by cdrmret on Friday November 18, 2011 @09:27PM (#38105588) Attached to: Two Porn Companies Take ICANN and<nobr> <wbr></nobr>.xxx Registrar To Court

The power of government may be the only porn we need to worry about. at least we can filter out .gov

Comment Quantum change in attitude (Score 1) 522

by cdrmret on Saturday October 15, 2011 @10:00AM (#37723770) Attached to: The best computer upgrade I've ever done was:

Sleekline running XP to Ubuntu, then getting an iMac. I do more work at home with the iMac and VMware in 1 hour than 5 hours on the Dell at the office. Never crashes, and has a beautiful display.

Girl Quits On Dry Erase Board a Hoax 147

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday August 11, 2010 @07:30AM from the take-this-job-and-shove-it dept.

suraj.sun writes "It's the same old story: young woman quits, uses dry erase board and series of pictures to let entire office know the boss is a sexist pig, exposes his love of playing FarmVille during work hours." Story seem too good to be true? It probably is, at least according to writer Peter Kafka. Even so, Jay Leno and Good Morning America have already reached out to "Jenny."

Southwest Adds 'Mechanical Difficulties' To Act Of God List 223

Posted by samzenpus on Monday July 26, 2010 @03:09PM from the blameless-travel dept.

War, earthquakes, and broken washers are all unavoidable events for which a carrier should not be liable if travel is delayed according to Southwest Airlines. Southwest quietly updated their act of God list a few weeks ago to include mechanical problems with the other horrors of an angry travel god. From the article: "Robert Mann, an airline industry analyst based in Port Washington, NY, called it 'surprising' that Southwest, which has a reputation for stellar customer service, would make a change that puts passengers at a legal disadvantage if an aircraft breakdown delays their travel. Keeping a fleet mechanically sound 'is certainly within the control of any airline,' Mann said. 'Putting mechanical issues in the same category as an act of God — I don't think that's what God intended.'"

Open Source OCR That Makes Searchable PDFs 133

Posted by timothy on Thursday July 22, 2010 @02:21PM from the word-of-advice dept.

An anonymous reader writes "In my job all of our multifunction copiers scan to PDF but many of our users want and expect those PDFs to be text searchable. I looked around for software that would create text searchable pdfs but most are very expensive and I couldn't find any that were open source (free). I did find some open source packages like CuneiForm and Exactimage that could in theory do the job, but they were hard to install and difficult to set up and use over a network. Then I stumbled upon WatchOCR. This is a Live CD distro that can easily create a server on your network that provides an OCR service using watched folders. Now all my scanners scan to a watched folder, WatchOCR picks up those files and OCRs them, and then spits them out into another folder. It uses CuneiForm and ExactImage but it is all configured and ready to deploy. It can even be remotely managed via the Web interface. Hope this proves helpful to someone else who has this same situation."

Doctors Seeing a Rise In "Google-itis" 368

Posted by samzenpus on Monday May 17, 2010 @01:29PM from the sounds-like-rickets-to-me dept.

It's one of the fastest-growing health issues that doctors now face: "Google-itis." Everyone from concerned mothers to businessmen on their lunch break are typing in symptoms and coming up with rare diseases or just plain wrong information. Many doctors are bringing computers into examination rooms now so they can search along with patients to alleviate their fears. "I'm not looking for a relationship where the patient accepts my word as the gospel truth," says Dr. James Valek. "I just feel the Internet brings so much misinformation to the (exam) room that we have to fight through all that before we can get to the problem at hand."

Breaking the Squid Barrier 126

Posted by timothy on Sunday February 14, 2010 @08:33PM from the calimari-for-the-5000 dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Dr. Steve O'Shea of Auckland, New Zealand is attempting to break the record for keeping deep sea squid alive in captivity, with the goal of being able to raise a giant squid one day. Right now, he's raising the broad squid, sepioteuthis australis, from egg masses found in seaweed. This is a lot harder than it sounds, because the squid he's studying grow rapidly and eat only live prey, making it hard for them to keep the squid from becoming prey themselves. If his research works out, you might one day be able to visit an aquarium and see giant squid."

Porsche Unveils 911 Hybrid With Flywheel Booster 197

Posted by timothy on Friday February 12, 2010 @09:10PM from the yeah-well-I-get-better-mileage dept.

MikeChino writes "Porsche has just unveiled its 911 GT3 R Hybrid, a 480 horsepower track vehicle ready to rock the 24-hour Nurburgring race this May. Porsche's latest supercar will use the same 911 production platform available to consumers today, with a few race-ready features including front-wheel hybrid drive and an innovative flywheel system that stores kinetic energy from braking and then uses it to provide a 160 horsepower burst of speed. The setup is sure to offer an advantage when powering out of turns and passing by other racers."

Comment Re:Step back a bit... (Score 3, Interesting) 442

by cdrmret on Saturday May 02, 2009 @11:22AM (#27799011) Attached to: Portables Without Cameras?

I missed a chance to have a video cam and voice activated recorder installed when I had total knee replacement this winter. I won't make that mistake again. The way metal detectors and guards treat my knee you'd think it was a nuclear (not nuculer) device. Sometimes its hell getting old...

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