Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop


Forgot your password?

Comment: These responses are heavily tech-industry biased (Score 1) 230

by PPalmgren (#48666879) Attached to: The Slow Death of Voice Mail

I work in finance, commonly dealing with payroll systems and data. There's a lot of stuff you can't or discuss in a standard email, and the secure stuff I do send, I only provide the password verbally to the recipient. On top of this, most agencies I need to interact with (state gov'ts/IRS/unions/EBAs) don't have anything available except voice discussion or snailmail.

Comment: Re:It looks like a friggin video game. (Score 1) 329

by PPalmgren (#48666297) Attached to: Ars: Final Hobbit Movie Is 'Soulless End' To 'Flawed' Trilogy

Its the same reason makeup is aesthetically better. Makeup for actors and normals alike are a way of blending out imperfections to regress to a norm. We actually find the average more beautiful than the eccentric when it comes to the human figure. 24fps and motion blur also blends out imperfections, but filming imperfections. With HFR, you feel like you're watching someone being filmed as it becomes too obvious that there's a camera involved due to movement imperfections/etc. That' a 4th wall violation and takes away from immersion.

When you remember someone's face, do you remember every freckle, mole, shade, and strand of hair? If you were to draw it on a paper, wouldn't it look closer to a drawing than a realistic representation? That's whats going on here. Movies with their theatrical effects are tapping into that, so its like you're watching a memory. You make it too real feeling or present 4th wall realizations and you remove the suspension of disbeleif.

All that said, 24fps has its limitations. Transformers was where I found this most obvious, they had to do all the transformations in slowmo for you to actually catch what was going on, and even then it was still too overwhelming to catch without the extra frames. I think HFR will be more successful if they add in some effects to reduce the obviousness that its being shot by a camera. What they are/will be, I don't know. I think camera stability, shooting angles, scene switching, and motion blur all need to be reworked for it to look a lot better. That's a tall order and its gonna take some time.

Comment: Re:Why do these reaction wheels keep failing? (Score 1) 28

by PPalmgren (#48633155) Attached to: Kepler Makes First Exoplanet Discovery After Mission Reboot

Magnetic suspension? That sounds quite costly on a power budget, and a lot of these probes have really tight power budgets. Plus, you'd have to build in the ability for it to not get ripped apart during launch, which means overengineering the magnetic suspension just to get it off the ground even though that excess capability will never be used in space. I'd think mechanical reaction wheels would be a cinch to lock in comparison.

I'm probably wrong, but that was my initial gut thoughts on the subject.

Comment: Re:The current wire payment system is... (Score 1) 156

by PPalmgren (#48609991) Attached to: Small Bank In Kansas Creates the Bank Account of the Future

Its on your customers not giving enough information in their wire transfers. That's something thats chosen when you initiate the wire, there is plenty of space for the information you request.

There are several ways to reduce the problem at least, all by accounting and billing methods. On accounting, there should be amounts sitting out there in an account waiting to clear for the incoming payments. The ambiguous payments are a small subset of the total and will likely be identifiable simply by amounts outstanding for smaller quantities. If you have too many duplicate amounts with ambiguous payments, and you have less than 100 frequent wire clients with this issue, you could implement collective invoicing on a monthly basis for those clients, something commonly managed by the collections dept and part of key client management anyway. That would significantly reduce the quantity of incoming payments and also make them more unique values. You'd still have to call to verify payment, but this way you could call the client directly instead.

Comment: Re: Unless it has support for Bitcoin... (Score 1) 156

by PPalmgren (#48609741) Attached to: Small Bank In Kansas Creates the Bank Account of the Future

While true, I was quite surprised at how expensive banking seems to be in Canada. Almost nowhere in the US do you actually have to pay for a bank account, let alone have such onerous transaction count limits or savings account transfer limits. I do wish we had the electronic transfers to inidividuals, but its not worth $10/mo to me.

Comment: Re:Really.. (Score 1) 114

by PPalmgren (#48609417) Attached to: Apple and Samsung Already Working On A9 Processor

Its a smart business method. My conglomerate group used to do the internal thing, but the past decade has consisted of making sure each business unit functions acceptably in the market on its own. The sister companies compete with outside clients for jobs, etc. It ensures that you don't end up with a bloated business unit riding on the laurels of another. When that happens, you get a single point of failure for all business units.

Comment: Re:Republican business as usual... (Score 3, Interesting) 116

by PPalmgren (#48539077) Attached to: NSF Accused of Misuse of Funds In Giant Ecological Project

Our company pays for employee coffee. We have coffee machines in every breakroom with coffee and cream and sugar available. It has been found to increase productivity and reduce the number of coffee breaks that employees take. $11,000 for coffee seems awfully low, honestly.

Comment: I'm kinda torn on this (Score 1) 461

by PPalmgren (#48533689) Attached to: Why Elon Musk's Batteries Frighten Electric Companies

I can see one side of mandating these connections. Say you're building a house and decide its going to be off-grid solar and water in North Carolina. Like 99% of the population, you don't buy the house outright and have a mortgage on it. You lose your job, you default and the house goes into foreclosure. The connection of these utilities is important to a lot of people who might buy your home since it's seen as a necessary amenity by many, so the bank or the homebuyer is now on the hook for those setups, even though you didn't own the home outright. To these people, buying a car without these connections is like buying a car without tires on it.

Comment: Re:Are they really that scared? (Score 1) 461

by PPalmgren (#48533587) Attached to: Why Elon Musk's Batteries Frighten Electric Companies

While true that they don't need special equipment for a small number of homes, they will have to spend quite a bit on the grid if that number continues to rise because the grid is currently designed for central, not distributed, power generation. Someone mentioned it in another thread, but separating the 'grid connection' cost from the power cost is the best solution to this and is done in other countries. The power companies who don't use this method are essentially treating the grid as a cost center, and I think that's why solar terrifies them. Hopefully they'll figure it out sooner or later.

Comment: Uncooperative witnesses (Score 1) 218

by PPalmgren (#48530215) Attached to: 'Moneyball' Approach Reduces Crime In New York City

This could be a case of mistaken nomenclature. Sure, it sounds like its just a guy that won't talk, but I doubt they put everyone on there that doesn't talk or the list would be a mile long, which is what they're trying to avoid. However, that guy, thats always around crime and has been questioned regarding 10 gang incidents, but is supposedly not in the gang, and won't talk? It signifies affiliation. It also points out which areas are under severe threat from gang intimidation.

I don't know, they didn't really go into too much detail about the term, but its mentioned alongside gang activities, so that's my guess. Point is that we're being really pedantic about two words that weren't expounded upon as a reason to scrap what appears to be a pretty level-headed approach to prosecution. Sounds like throwing the baby out with the bathwater to me.

Comment: Maybe not, but we can try to isolate (Score 1) 584

by PPalmgren (#48522305) Attached to: Programmer Father Asks: What Gets Little Girls Interested In Science?

The monkey studies on this was really interesting. The same toy disposition even effected sexes of monkeys, repeatable in more than one study. It proves that there's a biological aspect behind this predisposition. Of course, we're all wired differently and that doesn't mean everyone SHOULD have those same predisposition, it just explains why a 'normal' behavior exists.
