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Comment: Re:Troll! In the dungeon! Thought you'd want to kn (Score 2) 559

by foksoft (#43848161) Attached to: Criminal Complaint Filed Against Facebook After Girl's Death
This really sound more as parents fail than anyone others. Especially Facebook. Parents should teach their kids to come to them when something like this happens. And if it happens then help them resolve the problem.
The fact that bullying messages are posted on social netwrok sites can be used as easy evidence against bullies. Just remember how it was before all the electronic stuff wass available. The bullies met you somewhere and threatened you. And you had nothing to prove that he was threatening you. Nowadays you just pulls out message from your phone, e-mail, or whatever way was used and goes after bully. The problem is how it will be handled. Usually reporting bullies will backfire at you. So you should be prepared for that.

Just one question. How did 14 year old get drunk in the first place?

Comment: Re:Classes online, a radical innovation? (Score 1) 105

by foksoft (#40616409) Attached to: School's In For Summer At Udacity

I have been hearing all this hype about how innovative online classes are, how this will change teaching, how we might not have colleges any more because it is so revolutionary.

Then you have been hearing it wrong. This kind of education is not going to make current education obsolete. It will just complement it. If you look at reasons why Sebastian Thrun left Stanford, then you might be surprised. The reason why he left was partly due to the fact that after he started teaching online AI class, then his usually packed classes at Stanford were suddenly empty. And when he asked his students why they don't come to see him while they pay big bills to be able to, the answer was surprising. I quote freely "Professor we rather like you on video. We can pause you and rewind you back."
You might also find a talk by Salman Khan, who made a bit of change in the learning field too. Just by using the tools like prerecorded classes you as a teacher can spend more on discussing stuff with students rather than talking to the room. And this is the point where I see biggest added value. Not mentioning that now are such lectures available to people like me who are long time out of school, but want to learn something new.


by foksoft (#40464739) Attached to: Robot Hand Beats You At Rock, Paper, Scissors 100% of the Time
The one with longer delay will always win. Or if the time between the two machines will be short enough, then I expect the game will be degraded to paper - paper, because both machines would assume that other hand is being left in rock position, so it will transform its hand to paper.
The question is whether it would be even possible to play at all. The problem is that currently it is programmed to follow human player's hand. So if two machines are put against each other, then both will wait until the other one makes move and thus waiting indefinitely.
Just consider it a demonstration of very fast real time pattern recognition. But wait a moment don't we have a kinect for these kinds of tricks?

Comment: Not so quickly (Score 1) 314

by foksoft (#40153363) Attached to: What Would a Post-Email World Look Like?
And what technology / service will that old e-mail replace?

- I haven't seen any replacement for encryption / digital signatures
- I still didn't figure how to mark what I have read and what not on services like FB or G+
- I haven't realized how to mark a post for immediate response of for getting to it later
- I haven't realized how to move a message to specific place so I can use it for reference later
- I haven't found a way to setup my own / corporate server, so I can be sure that my business will continue in case such service will go under

But what I have already learned with e-mail.
- its delivery is almost instant like any other service
- if I need it, I can work with it offline (on the plain, train, ship, ...)

Comment: Re:Or you could just take an ordinary train (Score 2) 148

by foksoft (#40140319) Attached to: Autonomous Road Train Project Completes First Public Road Test
This shouldn't be a problem. This technology is primarily meant for highways. And as long as my memory goes. I didn't seen anyone crossing it. Except from some crazies and then it is safer to stop whole train. But it might assist even in the urban areas. How often it happens that driver in one lane lets you walk across and in the next line is driver speeding up and almost driving over you. Just to stop on red light in less than 50 meters.

Comment: Re:How can you quantify the loss? (Score 1) 663

This is done to reduce revenue loss from piracy. Just imagine what sometimes happen. You go and see movie poster saying that it is premiere. You say to yourself, hey it might be good movie. But then you think. Wait a minute, what a premiere, it is the movie I have downloaded a couple months ago. OK, but it wasn't bad and I almost forget what it was about. I will go and see it again. And you go and it feels like watching those old movies with Charlie Chaplin. Studios make their profit and you feel good because you have seen that old forgotten movie again.

Comment: Re:I thought this was known by now (Score 1) 777

Producing, distributing and watching child porn is illegal. Period. So if you are accused of committing such crime, it could be seen as reasonable preventive action to prevent you from being alone with child. Any child. In your original post you mentioned sex with adults and that was thing I was mainly reacting at. It is not crime to watch porn with adults and adults only. However this guy was not arrested and even accused of any crime by police. And this is weird in this case. He has been banned from seeing his child only based on request of some people from child protective services.


No, because filming/distributing/watching porn with adults is not a crime. While porn with child is treated quite differently.

But I still don't get why he was banned from seeing his child when there is no accusation against him. Or is there something missing from the article?

Comment: Re:what is this bullshit slashvertisement? (Score 1) 128

I am wondering why they didn't just put only part of the captcha in each frame, so it would appear as solid text for humans when being replayed but it will appear totally different when you will look on separate frames. It might be just F in the first frame and underscore on second frame. This repeated will appear to humans as nice E. Yes, robots will adapt to it eventually. But it might take some time.

Comment: What I learned about such situations (Score 1) 385

by foksoft (#38993301) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: How To Deal With Refurbed Drives With Customer Data?
The easiest way is to just wipe the data and then forget about it.

You might also look for any clue about original owner and inform him about it. And of course wipe the data.

Just to help you in deciding I would like to share two stories of mine.

I have once found a USB stick. I checked it out and found who is its owner. He was glad that I returned it to him and paid me for it.

Another one is about external HDD I had. It died one day. But I had some data that was not in any backup. So I opened it and put the drive itself in computer. I have downloaded data and wiped disk. Then I put it back into its enclosure and returned it back. It was not simple as WD external disks have security sealed screws and some plastic locks. But after getting disk out of enclosure, then it was very easy to get data out.

Comment: How about in larger installation (Score -1, Redundant) 410

by foksoft (#37141648) Attached to: 13-Year-Old Uses Fibonacci Sequence For Solar Power Breakthrough
It might be interesting, how the results will look like in larger installation with more rows of panels or more trees of panels. Given size of the tree I would expect more shadows at the tree model affecting results.

As noted by others, the tree is using more panels than flat installation. So it will be more expensive, more demanding on material resources and so on.

Comment: Re:He just used more solar cells (Score 1) 410

by foksoft (#37141472) Attached to: 13-Year-Old Uses Fibonacci Sequence For Solar Power Breakthrough

I bet there's another ten on the other side.

I doubt that. He mentions in his article


Also if you look on the graphs that you can see peek values are higher on tree model than at "classic" model. So he has more panels on the tree or has significantly crippled standard configuration.

But there is one interesting thing on the tree design. It is more even distribution of the power during a day.

Comment: Re:No the biggest problem is IPv4 devices (Score 1) 167

by foksoft (#36905264) Attached to: Most Enterprises Plan To Be On IPv6 By 2013
And what good is enterprise system if SOHO customers can't reach their IPv4-hosted web sites?

As you can probably see, the key to success in transition to IPv6 is dualstack for services, not for users.

If we will have all websites and VPN's and other services available via both IPv4 and IPv6, then there is no problem if users are on IPv4 or IPv6. They will just choose whatever is available from their ISP. And as more and more users will be IPv6 only, then content providers who stick to IPv4 only will fade out.

Just check with web/server hosting in your region to see how many of them already provide IPv6 connectivity. The content providers are those who should act now. Users will simply follow.

Comment: Re:Comparing high end to low end (Score 1) 322

by foksoft (#36798934) Attached to: The History of Ethernet


You can't. Ethernet cabling also evolved during its lifetime. In the early stage it was using different cables with different connectors. Even your PS/2 keyboard can be connected to your USB port using reduction. But I don't know about any reduction from BNC to 8P8C. In this Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet you can find photo of ethernet card with both connectors.

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