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Comment: microwaves radiation is still light (Score 1) 102

by junglebeast (#41007429) Attached to: After 60 Years, a Room-Temperature Maser


what the hell? microwaves are still EM radiation. EM radiation is light. thus a maser is just a regular laser in a different wavelength, no more different from a green laser vs a red laser....which are also just different wavelengths of light.

Comment: How should a computer behave? (Score 2) 603

by junglebeast (#38430826) Attached to: Software Bug Caused Qantas Airbus A330 To Nose-Dive


I'm surprised there are people who think that we have the technology to program computers to make decisions about how to control things like airplanes better then a human being.

Computers excel at solving mathematical problems with definitive inputs and outputs, but our attempts to translate the problem of controlling an airplane, or an organism, into a simple circuit...will necessarily be limiting.

They can only test that the computer program will behave as expected, but there is no test to prove that the behavior we attempted to implement is actually a "good" way to behave under all circumstances.

Comment: Unexpected consequences (Score 2) 252

by junglebeast (#38286760) Attached to: Reverse Robocall Turns Tables On Politicians

While I am ALL for bombarding our sometimes misguided, uninformed or overzealous congressmen with public opinion...I have a fear that giving people the ability to set up automated calling in this fashion would just overwhelm their call centers to the point where they just stop picking up the phone and listening to the public at all.

Comment: What if it CAN't be fixed? (Score 2) 754

by junglebeast (#38197958) Attached to: Paper On Super Flu Strain May Be Banned From Publication

The concept of publicizing security flaws makes some semblance of sense in the security world, but when it comes to viruses that could wipe out 50% of the world's population...because patches can be easily made and distributed rapidly over the internet.

When it comes to vaccines, that is NOT the case. It could take years, decades, or possibly never to create a vaccine..or the only vaccines might be too expensive or difficult to distribute on the scale that is necessary.

With a population of over 7 billion, not ALL rational people, not ALL happy people, I'm sure there are some individuals out there sick enough to want to destroy the human race. By reducing that barrier to entry to...perhaps...little more than the $20 it costs to purchase an online journal...it becomes an immediate death sentence for billions of people.

So shut the f* up about your ultra forward thinking concept of sharing info on how to kill us all, you sadist.

Comment: Re:Log NAT Translations (Score 1) 346

by junglebeast (#37365792) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: P2P Liability On a Shared Connection?

Anybody could keep a log of their downloads and then simply delete the infringing files from the log before presenting it into evidence. This does not prove or even give credence to your defense, but the fact that you kept such meticulous logs shows that you had a reasonable suspicion that you might be brought into court for something...which makes you look even more guilty than before.

Comment: Computer science is mostly math (Score 1) 583

by junglebeast (#35468184) Attached to: CS Profs Debate Role of Math In CS Education

What's the difference between a computer scientist and a programmer?
Typically, the computer scientist is great at math but can't program, and the programmer is great at programming but stinks at math.

Unfortunately computer science has become a bit too broad to have an easy definition, however, the one thing that almost every hot field of computer science has in common is a heavy reliance on math. For example, to name just a few,
- natural language processing (predicate logic, probability...)
- computer graphics (projective geometry and numerical optimization)
- computer vision (projective geometry, advanced linear algebra, numerical optimization)
- computer security (aka cryptology, modular arithmetic)
- quantum computing (you don't even want to know)

Comment: Don't fight the system (Score 2) 465

by junglebeast (#35326974) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Is the Recycle Bin a Good GUI Metaphor?






Comment: a good home backup strategy (Score 2) 680

by junglebeast (#34945330) Attached to: How Do You Store Your Personal Photos?

I use three hard drives in my main computer. One small drive for the OS and installed applications, a second large drive to store my media (1 TB is sufficient for me), and a third drive to hold backups. Differential backups are automatically made for WIP data on a nightly schedule, everything else is automatically done on a weekly schedule.

Every few years I pull the hard drive and wrap it in some bubble wrap, package it into a cardboard box with the date on the outside and give it to my parents to store in their attic as a fallback.

The total cost of this operation comes down to about $100 every three years.