Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:Add a 5 row slide out keyboard (Score 1) 45

Back in the day, phones had a numeric keypad which also allowed a kind of touch-typing for text messages. Then people started getting online with their phones more and more, and ended up typing more than talking. If things were logical, this would have resulted in better/larger keyboards for phones, such as the slide-out QWERTY ones. Instead, we lost even the small numeric keypads due to some idiotic fashion ideas.

(I still have my Nokia N900 which I use as a backup phone and camera -- it has a better camera than many of today's cheaper "smart"phones.)

Comment Re:Not a home-printed part (Score 4, Insightful) 98

Actually, I suppose the subject should be something like: "not printed by the pilot". Who knows how reputable the company/person was from which he bought the part... and what their supply chain looked like. But, given the information to hand, there's no reason to believe that the pilot had any knowledge of any possible problem with the part.

Comment Re:$100 trillion Zimbabwe = $3 USD (Score 1) 126

> If your debt is denominated in dollars how does depreciation in the dollar make it harder to pay back?

It doesn't, it just leaves the general public holding sacks of worthless paper money or pointless numbers in a bank's database when they want actual stuff, like food.

Inflation as long been used as a stealthy way to tax the public, they see their quality of life going to crap as each new generation comes along, but nobody wants to admit the problem lies with government spending The US had the advantage of pushing a lot of the inflation tax onto the rest of the world, but that's going away as so many other countries want to get free of the dollar.

If tomorrow the government hands out a trillion dollars to everyone, we won't all suddenly have a lot more stuff. We'll have a lot more paper and all the resources that were scarce yesterday will still be just as scarce. Probably even more so as there's a rush to consume more before prices can fully react to such a change.

Comment $100 trillion Zimbabwe = $3 USD (Score 2) 126

> We have been hearing these same predictions about the national debt for almost 100 years ... the argument is fundamentally flawed. Mostly because it ignores things like economic growth, inflation and the value created by whatever the debt buys.

The fiat system has collapsed a few times, do you know anything about Brazil or Zimbabwe?

I don't think gold is a magic solution here, or returning to that standard would fix everything, but you do need some level of balance between the amount of currency and the things there are to buy with it and we damn near broke it during Covid with the mass inflation there. So I wouldn't be too cavalier that this could never happen, even as I don't think it's in any immediate danger.

But remember: there won't be a US dollar to peg the US dollar to if we screw it up and that's the only way Brazil got out of its mess in the 1990s.

Meanwhile, you can get $100 trillion Zimbabwe dollars for $3 USD.

Comment Re:Frames & pixels obsolete. The future is a p (Score 1) 72

Back in 2002 I was working with image processing, and I came up with a video compression idea: treat the video as a 3D image and apply 3D Fourier transform, then drop the weaker components as done with similar 1D/2D schemes. This would provide a natural balancing between temporal and spatial resolution, depending on the scene. I wasn't much of a programmer back then, but I later realized this would probably be too heavy for practical use. I also learned that the same idea had been put into development around the same time as Ogg Tarkin, but it didn't get very far either.

As a bonus, the Fourier/wavelet format could be decoded in arbitrary resolutions in space or time. This idea is actually used in some music playing libraries, producing 24-bit output from a format intended for 16-bit quality.

Comment Re: Microsoft Store is the monopoly (Score 1) 164

Yeah, because the customers don't want anything else. Itch.io is great ... if you want random indie stuff. GOG seems to have no idea what to recommend and you either get games from 1992 or hentai VNs with a porn patch so they're not technically selling the porn, with little that's actually interesting.

Comment Re:Coconut milk? (Score 1) 193

Here's the thing though. I don't think nut milk producers are trying to fake people out. A huge part of their value proposition is that their milk doesn't come from animals, just like goat milk suppliers aren't going to want you to miss that the milk comes from goats, not cows. Same for veggie meats and sausages.

Cow tittie milk should be labeled "cow tittie milk" to remind people where the product comes from. It's natural for mammals to drink the tittie milk of their own species when they're young, but drinking tittie milk (a) when you're grown up and (b) from another species seems downright perverse. Likewise, people could use a good reminder how the meat they eat is produced.

Slashdot Top Deals

I cannot draw a cart, nor eat dried oats; If it be man's work I will do it.

Working...