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Comment: Re: There must be a very good reason... (Score 1, Informative) 579

by erpbridge (#45793301) Attached to: Utilities Fight Back Against Solar Energy

You may want to double check before you claim that Nevada doesn't have large amounts of mountains. For that matter, also double check that the northern edge of Arizona, as well as the area that Tucson is in, aren't mountainous. I think you might find that contrary to what you might think, those states do indeed have a share of mountains.

Comment: Re:WD et al. (Score 3, Informative) 537

by erpbridge (#45552621) Attached to: Why Bitcoin Is Doomed To Fail, In One Economist's Eyes

The coins themselves are not lost, as they are not themselves stored on the drive. Rather, the drive contains the user's key and their respective addresses, to which they match themselves up to the network. This is why if the file wallet.dat is stolen, someone can easily open the Bitcoin client with the stolen copy, authorize the transmission of coins from that key to another address, and then just wait for the transmission to be validated.

There is, however, no mechanism for the recovery by the network for addresses and keys which have been lost or destroyed. I personally mined slightly more than 4 bitcoins out of curiosity back in 2011, then stopped as I ran the power cost to income calculations. I eventually rebuilt that system, but accidentally destroyed that wallet.dat. Although I know the public receive address, I don't have the key associated with it to claim those transactions in the network that indicate the 4BTC. The claim to the transactions which represent those coins collectively are essentially irrevocably lost, with no way of the network as a whole reclaiming them due to inactivity as the system currently stands. The transactions are still present in the Blockchain, just no one can claim them.

Comment: Re:RoI (Score 1) 203

by erpbridge (#45006311) Attached to: Sinkhole Sucks Brains From Wasteful Bitcoin Mining Botnet

They had to have been CPU mining... thats the easiest way this could have been done, rather than try to tun a miner to an ATI GPU, and to an Nvidia GPU. SHA256 mining on CPUs is at this point in time so horribly energy inefficient. Even on GPUs its quickly being deprecated.

So it makes no wonder it was using up 561,000/day worth of electricity, and depositing 2000/day of profits. Had they been smarter and made the mine point at a multiswitching pool like multipool.us and mined Scrypt coins , they probably would have made more upwards of 1.5x as much cash CPU mining and used less electricity... or had they done one of the few Scrypt-Jane coins, (and auto-sold to Bitcoin then to USD), a tad bit more still than the Scrypt mining.

Comment: Re:http://apple (Score 2) 132

by erpbridge (#44723727) Attached to: Dotless Domain Names Prohibited, ICANN Tells Google

That's a valid URL, for internal to your own DNS server. If no FQDN is provided pointing it to a domain outside your own, it will try to match up that name to any A records or CNAME records that exist on your DNS.

Many organizations do this for internal webpages. http://intranet/ , http://learning/ , http://getservice/ are examples of how some companies do this. It's not the same as the Google suggestion, which is making a top level FQDN domain.

Comment: Re:It would be great (Score 4, Insightful) 232

by erpbridge (#44539037) Attached to: Chain Reaction Shattered Antarctica's Larson B Ice Shelf

The problem with extrapolating the same rate... is you assume that nothing is reliant on each other, nothing affects anything else, and everything is a closed system.

Icebergs calve off a glacier on the Larsen B Ice Shelf at a rate of x amount per year, meaning that the Larsen B Ice Shelf will exist for about 300 thousand years. But yet... it didn't. One lake drained away at a given rate on this ice shelf... one could extrapolate that to be that it would take decades for all the other lakes to drain away, and further say that one lake draining has no effect on other lakes, and that it will be replaced by the formation of many other meltwater lakes just like it was formed. One could also say one small lake draining would NEVER affect a large ice shelf.

But yet... it did have an effect that was not explained by a purely flat rate per time extrapolation. It wasn't quite exponential, but it definitely came in somewhere between. It was an example of how one thing happening in one place... can effect and increase speed of other nearby items.

Or, from another source... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Trends_in_global_average_absolute_sea_level,_1870-2008_(US_EPA).png. Sea levels rose 0 inches between 1910-1930. A lot different than the 2.4 millimeters per year rise that you claim. But yet... it did happen. I think you're trying to scare us by using measurable facts.

No, the 4 foot rise number is an upper limit... and not 4 foot per year. The actual is anywhere from 7 inches to 4 feet, depending on how things cascade. The biggest concern is the ice melt from the Greenland Ice Sheets, and the continued ice melt of large Antarctic ice sheets.

Comment: Re: PGP won't help you (Score 1) 399

by erpbridge (#44529073) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: How Do I Request Someone To Send Me a Public Key?

The same could be said of any method you use. The end result will be a form in which data is outside your hands, in someone else's. whether paper, fax (also paper), optical media, or electronically transmitted by email, it still needs to be in a human readable and understandable format as the end result. And as a result of that... Unless you use the electronic version and have a document management DRM on it, it will always be in a form which can be copied, distributed, and potentially misused.

The key here is how best to secure it in transit. Electronic transmit, preferably something other than email (secure FTP? ) is much more preferable to a physical transmit. If the data you are transmitting is so secure you want to shield it from prying eyes or interception during transmit, physical is one of the last options you can choose.

Comment: Re:Conversion to foot (Score 4, Informative) 125

by erpbridge (#44204839) Attached to: Mount Everest Gets 4G Connectivity

Having thought about it, guessing he was talking about 5,200 meters with the thinking that in certain places in the world, they use a comma rather than a decimal point to represent the division between partial units. In that case, 5,200 metres = 5.200 meters = 17.0604 feet = 17,0604 feet in that particular case.

But Everest Base camp (either south or north, both on a fairly broad area) are most certainly not a handful of meters above sea level.

Comment: Re:Just do it (Score 4, Insightful) 293

by erpbridge (#43929499) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Getting Exchange and SQL Experience?

"I see here on your resume that you have SQL experience. Can you tell me about some of the SQL deployments and experience that you were doing in your last job? How did you integrate that into your business requirements?"

Its exactly THIS sort of question, which I'm getting a bit, which trips people up who self learn. I'm getting it with VMware... I had VMware experience building, maintaining, updating machines... but never anything server side, and never anything on the farm level of things like vMotion. After I was let go at end of contract after 5 years on build team/CMDB remediation team, all the interview screen questions tended to focus toward vmWare and Exchange. So, I went out, got myself a beefy machine, installed vSphere 5.1 on it, and have done quite a few things with it... but that experience means SQUAT when you're sitting in front of a board which includes interviewing manager, vmWare SME, and a couple other general members of the IT team who are trying to probe you for you BUSINESS level experience.

There's a heck of a lot difference between test lab, and business level, and interviewers can ferret that out REAL quick.

Comment: Star Trek Holodeck - one more item toward it (Score 3, Informative) 292

by erpbridge (#43513503) Attached to: Omnidirectional Treadmill: The Ultimate FPS Input Device?


Comment: Re:Why? (Score 2) 108

by erpbridge (#43078665) Attached to: NASA's 'Inspirational' Mars Flyby

The same could be said of doing the test of tech remotely from the safety of the surface of the Earth, and being able to return to your own home in a couple of hours.

For that matter, why did we send people to the moon... or up on the Apollo/Gemini/shuttle or Salyut... and why do we keep sending people to the ISS if they're just going to return later?

And had there been the capability of unmanned probes in the 15th and 16th centuries, the same could have been said of sending an unmanned probe across the ocean rather than humans traveling for months across a hostile environment that could not support all the basic living needs of humans, necessitating them to bring their own supplies (of desalinated water and food in the event that captured food was not enough.) Once you got a distance out from European port, quick fail back to port was a tough call.

Actually, same can also be said of climbing Everest or K2.

Why bother traveling there if its tough to failback easily within a couple days, and you're just going to come back? Just send a robot, and use the money on stuff back at home, right?

Sometimes, you need to go out there, push the boundaries, take some risks... even if those risks might mean possible death to the explorers, like in the 15th and 16th centuries, they knew that and still went. Because after one person goes forward, takes the risk, whether they succeed or fail, others will follow and push the envelope further. And as they do, they will improve on what was wrong, and expand on what was right.

Comment: Re:fix the students (Score 4, Interesting) 215

by erpbridge (#42960905) Attached to: The Two Big Problems With Online College Courses

When I took my online classes at Charter Oak from 2007-2011, the instructors in ALL the classes were required to have an online forum, and part of the grading criteria for every course was a class participation grade which was 30 pct of the total grade. The instructors usually had a criteria that there had to be X number of posts on the forum across two different days, and that one of the posts had to be an initial post in response to one of the 3 or 4 posted discussion topics for the week. The other posts had to be a meaningful and well thought out post in response to another person's topic advancing the discussion. The teachers also, in addition to a weeklong assignment published ahead of time, had a written assignment due mid week that was not posted until that Sunday, and one that was posted the day after the mid week one that was due Saturday.

These all seemed to be common themes across all the courses. This seemed to be this college's way of trying to keep the students engaged with the class and instructor. Now, it depended on the instructor... some were pretty hands off for their classes, so people got away with posting a very general short post, and some instructors were hands on and did not accept those short posts toward the week total.

The students also, in the first year, had a mid semester and mid term checkup phone conference with their assigned academic advisor, as well as a yearly checkup over the summer to fine tune their course selections for the coming year. After the first year was completed, the only time we really talked to academic advisor was during the summer about fine tuning the course selections, as the course curriculum contained a relatively large open area for choosing your classes toward your major, and WHEN you could choose to take those classes (some colleges insist certain core courses must be taken during your first two semesters... this one was open to when you took them, as long as you did.)

Really though, no matter what amount of handholding the college gives you, no matter if you're taking it online or in person, or hybrid, its up to you as the student to step up as an adult and realize you're overwhelmed and need help. With an online course, you end up taking more of that in your own hands, as no one can actually see your body language, your class hours are NOT set to specific times like at a brick and mortar, and you also aren't as isolated from outside real world distractions during your chosen class time as you are at a brick and mortar.

Whereas in a brick and mortar college you are able to sit yourself down in the cafeteria or library and read, and you MUST be in a structured class between 2:30-5:00 on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday... In an online class you have to find time after the kids head to sleep, and your chosen class time is 10:30pm-11:45pm on Sunday, Tuesday, and Saturday.... and as you're sitting at the computer, you have to resist the urge to Facebook/email/IM/game, and set your priorities straight.

(That last little bit right there is the unstated reason why so many people have problems... myself included. I never bombed out of any online classes or withdrew... but I skated through on a few classes by phoning it in with lax teachers while on a raiding guild schedule from shortly after work ended until midnight.)

Comment: Re:So by forced, they mean chose (Score 5, Insightful) 174

by erpbridge (#42924485) Attached to: UK Apple Shop Forced To Change Its Name

Had that been the case, them including the service of consulting, repairing, recommending, or selling Apple (Cupertino) branded products or accessories, that probably would have given Apple (Cupertino) the necessary ammunition to sue them to change their name... even if the apple (fruit) products were the primary function of the store still.

It sounds like a lose/lose... Either you get the phone ringing, taking up your time and business and pulling you away from your customers walking in the door, to the point you change your name... or you take advantage of the opportunity, and open yourself up to being sued for the name.

Comment: Article is missing? (Score 1) 386

by erpbridge (#42727649) Attached to: Feedback On Simcity Gets User Banned From EA Forums


1 Sagan = Billions & Billions