Recent Comments

Jeez, that ain't all that bad. I replaced a PBX (Intertel with Asterisk for the curious) that had a voicemail system running on OS/2 with its chassis on the floor beneath a water heater. Now that was an archaic piece of crud (or at least, somewhat caked in crud).

I understand how these control systems end up connected to the Internet. A few years ago in my process engineering job, I had the ability to VPN in and access our plant's control system. When someone calls at 2 in the morning, you don't want to come in to work to troubleshoot.

Part of the problem is that companies don't figure the ongoing hardware and software maintenance into their solutions. They develop the product until it works, ship it, and then ignore it. This leaves the products stuck at a fixed point in time while the rest of the technology world evolves at Moore's Law speed.

Take our office phone system for a simple example. Twenty years ago, our small office (20 employees) upgraded the phone system to the latest and greatest digital PBX. Many of the functions where designed to use a standard computer (a sub 100Mhz original Pentium). The computer/PBX interface was a full length ISA card, voice mail was stored on the IDE hard drive (still measured in megabytes), the call holding music was simply a mp3 playlist piped out to the audio card (an original Sound Blaster), while the whole thing ran Windows 95a and Microsoft Schedule+. Or, in other words, an archaic piece of crud that still has to function today.

The take off roll is only a matter of seconds at most airports before the wheels are off the deck, unless the pilot is holding it down on purpose as he might do in gusty conditions.

There are of course the exceptions such as Quito where the altitude makes the take off run longer, or of course very hot places like Vegas in the summer where sometimes low power GA aircraft like the Piper J3 have to take off before sunrise.

I do not think the size of electric motors that could drive the wheels of a large jet would have significant impact on takeoff distance. I do think that they would be good for taxi purposes, but since the jets need to be spun up anyway there would probably be little gain of economy.

BSDGuy

Actually, it doesn't matter when you use the battery energy. LiPo just doesn't have enough energy density to be a viable energy source for big aircraft, especially so for long haul. This is important because fuel consumption is directly affected by the weight of the aircraft. So, if you have a lot of dead batteries on board, you're going to pay for them with fuel.

I just looked up the specific energy densities for LiPo and Jet A-1. They are 0.56 vs 43 MJ/kg. There is something like a 80 times difference. Let's say that you replace 100kg of fuel with equivalent batteries. The batteries will weigh 8 tons. This will make you burn 800 kg more fuel than normal, for a short 3 hour flight. I fly 320s and I simply doubled the numbers for A320 to get at 787. It is probably incorrect, but I'm sure it's in the ballpark. For a long flight like 10 hours, you burn 2500 kg more fuel just to carry the dead batteries.

I didn't mention a couple of things here: with regular fuel, consumption per hour reduces as the flight progresses and the aircraft becomes lighter. Also, for big electric motors, you will have another weight penalty, probably measured in tons. Electric motors are more efficient than turbofans, but I don't see how that could offset the costs I have mentioned because turbofan engines are also quite efficient, something like 70% IIRC.

In order to SAVE fuel using batteries, something drastic needs to be done, such as shutting down
engines during cruize or something similarly extraordinary. You could maybe do that with smaller aircraft, but never with a big aircraft like 787.

The technology does not lend it's self well as a replacement for jet propulsion, so the bigger faster planes will not benefit from this work in the foreseeable future.

I'm not so sure... I'd like to see how much more quickly a 787 with electric motors on the landing gear could reach takeoff speeds.

Mario would be so proud

Two dedicated machines to launder grocery bags only? And you're concerned about the environment? You just doubled your laundry's carbon footprint to keep from using 100% recyclable bags. I don't see that as a net positive.

As a middle class private pilot who owns his own plane (cheap little one) I can tell you there are plenty of costs to aviation which the public does not directly see. Here is a small list from my experience owning a plane for just a few years.

. annual inspection (about $400 for my little plane, much more for a 747)
. 100 hour inspection - yep every plane in commercial service must be inspected every 100 operational hours at about the same level as the annual inspection
. landing fees - to land and take off from JFK, LGA, or EWR costs over $100 for my little 2 place plane
.fuel of course
.lubrication oil
.replacement parts for time limited parts - ex a gen-set may be rated at 10,000 hours after which it must be replaced even if in perfect order
. mandated engine overhauls - my engine must be given a complete overhaul every 500 operating hours
. recurring training for pilots - for private pilots this comes out to something between $500 and $2000 every 2 years, for ATP pilots (airline pilots) the costs are greater and so is the frequency
.cost of operating slots at major airports - yep the airlines have to pay for take off and landing times at LGA,JGK, LAX, SFO etc.

So while we would all love to see lower costs I can not say it is all due to greed. Something I read several years ago claimed that airlines only made a few percent profit. I have not been part of an airline, but I am friends with owners of small charter operations and I can tell you they have real thin profit margins.

From what I see the best use of hybrid technology in aviation is for small general aviation aircraft like mine, and then the small to medium sized puddle jumpers used by the regional operators and charter operations. The technology does not lend it's self well as a replacement for jet propulsion, so the bigger faster planes will not benefit from this work in the foreseeable future.

BSDGuy

I hope it is, but I doubt we will see any drop in ticket prices. Greedy, all of them!

Ah, then the blood turns anyone who eats anything inside the grocery bag into cow zombies. Got it.

I would rather pay for plastic bags which will break down over the plastic reusable bags. Either degradable or biodegeadable. Just culling off plastic bags for thick plastic bags is not a solution. Paper bags are considered to be worse than plastic hence the cost disincentive.

Will it scale to commercial airlines though

I do carry meat in those on a weekly basis, as well as Dairy. What's the problem exactly? They're cloth. They can be cleaned easily. I have a dedicated machine in my basement for doing so, with another one dedicated to drying them.

I understand as I have the same use cases ( minus the packaging stuffer). However, if 99% of the bags are recycled and 1% of them end up in the ocean creating a garbage island the size of texas ...

Well, then I think you have to seriously consider methods to prevent them from forming a garbage island, or include introduce a tax in their price that would cover the cost of clean up. I don't models that privatize benefits and socialize costs.

The sample posted earlier was the only one I'd ever seen, so I was quite surprised about the scale of the problem. Having it spammed into old threads would explain that though, which is possibly one reason why Slashdot archives older discussions. You're right about the pain of having stuff dropped into a submission queue though, and simply blocking common spam terms like "viagra" and the like is obviously going to give many false positives on a site that might discuss them, and will probably have them used in humourous comments elsewhere.

Getting back to the regexps, it's hard to say what (if anything) would work for Pipedot without a good overview of the crap being submitted, but one general technique that does seem like it would work well for typical forum spam (including your example) is to trigger off excessive use of certain punctuation marks, particularly in subjects - commas and hyphens seem well liked by many forum spammers; the one in your example put four in there. Ideally you'd probably also want to have a requirement that multiple rules match before a post goes into the moderation queue, or even a basic scoring system like SpamAssassin et al use, but based on the comments above that's probably overkill - at least at present. Ultimately though it's still an arms race, and the spammers will adapt as soon as they realise they are being blocked; sometimes you just have to go for the easy stuff and accept that the rest might need manual handling later.

seem to follow a fairly standard template so a few well crafted regexp's combined with a tool like Fail2Ban feeding the IP blacklist might nail a lot of the low hanging fruit

Doesn't sound like you've seen the kind of spam |. has been getting flooded with... It's paragraph after paragraph of random nonsense words. No pattern to it, but instead quite intentionally very random. Only commonality is that they had links in there, somewhere.

eg: http://pipedot.org/comment/2WL7

I tend to find it annoying when sites hold comments in a moderation queue, so I wouldn't like to see that happening here for every comment that happens to have a link in it... Or ones that just happen to mention "viagra".

I've always liked this guide: http://www.landauer.at/preventing-spam-in-form-submissions-without-using-a-captcha/ some people hate these methods though specially if they use javascript my answer to that balance might be to only use these anti spam options on unregistered users. The page is none the less an interesting read.

The concern is with blood leaking into the bag

Not having direct links was one of the key reasons I loathed /.Beta

I've looked into preemptive bans using existing spam databases (see http://www.stopforumspam.com/usage for an example) that use either a REST API call or a DNS lookup. However, with the current spam load I think the reactive approach is sufficient for now.

Or the team could be more proactive on the backend. Many of the bots (or low-rent workers in 3rd world sweatshops, it's hard to tell these days) that stuff forums and submission queues seem to follow a fairly standard template so a few well crafted regexp's combined with a tool like Fail2Ban feeding the IP blacklist might nail a lot of the low hanging fruit before anyone even gets to see it.

Click the ban IP button it if it's one of those spammer bots. Otherwise, it'll just keep posting. That poor poll article I linked above had over 1000 spam messages all from the same french bot network.

Of course, the IP ban just prevents anonymous posts from that address. Registered users can still post through it.

I just carried a 6 lbs brisket flat, 5 lbs of short rib, and 4 lbs of ground beef, all in a reusable grocery bag. I mean, a 15 lbs grocery bag is kind of annoying, but it worked just fine. I'm not sure what you're doing wrong, but it's not like it's hard to put things in a bag and carry it away.

What's your recommendation to editors on using, or not, the "Ban IP" option for spam posts?

Here's as good a place as any...

If the problem is that plastic bags are just a scourage that needs to be eliminated... The 10¢ tax on paper bags that is part of the law, makes absolutely no sense, and is completely counter-productive to the supposed cause.

By what logic? I did not say anything about making or banning plastics. I pointed out an argumentative flaw in the arguments of the plastic bag manufacturers. What I would have expected were paid studies, which show that plastic bags have only very little environmental impact. Promises to recycle more. Promises to make them environmentally more friendly. However, more or less they answered the concerns that plastic bags could harm ocean life with: They are so convenient and have many uses. Or even shorter: So what?

What's more:

who say their product can be easily recycled

Again a non argument. So they are not recycled, but only can be recycled? Not they want to recycle more? Who is exactly supposed to recycle? Sounds to me like the usual 'privatize profits, socialize costs'. All in all if that's all the plastic bag manufacturers have to say, they should fire their spin doctors. They are absolutely incompetent.

I just received a notification the other day for a post I had made a while ago...Upon checking the message, it was a spam comment. I am very grateful for this added functionality. Thank you.

Directly linking to the comment will also show the comment, regardless of its junk status. Example: #2VAK

As the article says, there was nothing wrong with cloth bags. We just somehow got into this habit of getting plastic bags. I use cloth bags all the time and haven't had any issues with them. They don't deform and topple on their own so spillage etc. isn't even an issue. Also, it's very easy to keep a couple of them in the car, a couple at the house etc. Remembering to bring one isn't an issue either.

The reuse cases they mention in the article are just laughable. In all three cases, the bag ends up in landfill along with unrecycled food/dog waste.

However, simply banning stuff makes people feel uneasy. There was a supermarket in UK which did a very clever thing. They printed the membership-discount barcode on the cheap cloth bag they sold. So if you wanted discounts, you remembered to bring your cloth bag. Something like that could make people view this as a more positive thing rather than government horsing around, banning stuff without good reason.

Is there such a thing as Life. Are we only here to (re)produce more machines. Is there an end to all this, a purpose. Do I exist. Why. How. Mew.

Submissions are always welcome. It's just Zafiro and myself finding and writing-up most of the content that hits the front page. When both of us are busy, as we have been (hence the past couple very quiet weeks), the site sits idle until we find some free time.

It's easy enough to approve or reject submissions on my phone when I have just a few minutes to spare, but not nearly so quick and easy to find interesting stories, and write-up a good summary of them, myself, while occupied with other tasks.

Somebody has to come up with the interesting content. I had never submitted anything to the old site, but I figured it out pretty quick once I gave it a try. With a bit of practice anyone can do it, and everyone is welcome to chip-in and try their hand at it. Something to keep in mind while waiting around to see when the next story is going to show-up...

I'm sorry I can't offer much in the way of cogent discussion on this topic, but I love reading it. Pipedot is far and away superior to its competitors both technically and in terms of content.

How are the thick bags better than the thin plastic bags?

We have had a state ban here for years. Same rules as in TFA. It sucks. Just does not work. Most people buy the thick "multi use" bags which are generally not multi use unless you take very good care of them. Some people take their cloth bags back to the shops. Most of the thick plastic bags are thrown away. Case in point: Every second week or so for two years they ran out of thick bags. Yes. Imagine that. Thousands of people with no bags to put their groceries in. There are no big paper bags here. It sucks. Some people drive 25 mins away to Qnbyn just to shop. I, like most people, just pay the 15c per bag "shopping tax".

Try carrying meat in those. Hope your dairy products don't spill. Yes, the cloth bags can be good for dry boxed products.

All of the grocery stores around here (Texas) have reusable cloth bags at the check-out counters. For a couple of bucks you get a durable cloth bag that can be used hundreds of times and wont break when carrying heavy objects like milk or orange juice bottles. For me, plastic bags "died" years ago.

By that logic, we should stop making any and all plastics right now, and go back a century in industrial technology (you know, back when the skies were far more polluted than they are now). There are environmentally friendly uses for all manmade materials, and there are environmentally irresponsible ways to use them. I try to do my part to keep the planet clean. Simply put, a reused bag is one less newly manufactured bag. If that's not good enough for you, get out there and picket, or run for office to legislate changes.

Thin plastic bags are reused, he said: They are repurposed as lunch bags and trash can liners, and they come in handy for pet cleanup.

That is not the point. Even if a plastic bag is 10000 times reused, what matters is their number and their effect in the environment. To defend the plastic bag they'd have to show that their impact is less or equal than all of the alternatives. Since they don't do this one can safely assume they cannot do this.

I find them useful as packaging material when shipping an item; they are lightweight, naturally trap air, and have just enough "give" to keep the item I'm shipping intact during a drop. I also reuse them as trash bags for small cans, and for carrying my lunch to work. While I can't control what happens after being used for shipping, I can say that I always put them in the recycle bin after eating my lunch. And any extras that we get are taken to the local grocery store in bulk, which has a recycling program specifically for these types of bags.

I realize not everyone has the same usage patterns, but I don't think that 100% of plastic bags end up choking ocean life to death either. Like anything else, it's up to each person to act responsibly. I personally think California could better spend the money on recycling efforts and education about recycling, but I don't live there so I don't have a say in that.

If you're going to complain about wording, you should go to the source.

The word "can" merely specifies the ability. It says nothing, one way or the other, about choice, so I don't know why you would read the word as involving decision-making.

Your preferred wording might instead be read to imply other proteins were known to have the (latent) capability, but perhaps this was just the first observed performing the function.

I think that the use of can is a bit wrong here, I'd put it as "is used to edit", can seems to imply that it has a choice, or prefers to edit other proteins instead of building up muscles, or causing holes to form in your cerebral tissues.

Yeah, no maybe about it.

Nuclear battery. I have leant something new today. Thank you

Give Comodo Dragon a try while you are experimenting with new browsers?

Uhhh because they refuse to take responsibility for the malware they spread? If I put malware on my site and infect your PC? Unless someone took control of my site MY ass is on the line, but these advertisers rent space to anybody with cash and when they spread a zero day they just go "oh well, sucks to be you" and keep cashing the checks.

So fuck 'em, as long as they refuse to take responsibility for the security of their ads I will be happy to support all manner of screwing their business model, because it is a corrupt piece of offal that needs to DIAF.

Pipedot story.

I will keep a constant attention to your articles. Really good stuff!

Why are people so against the advertisers? I'm not a huge fan of most web ads, but fighting click fraud seems like a nobel goal. If I pay for advertising, I'd like to ensure that I'm paying for the right number of views.

On the otherside, if your ad is being distributed widely enough to enough sites, advertisers aren't being stolen from. They are just paying higher rates than they realized. Instead of paying 0.10 US per ad view they may actually be paying 1.00, if 1 out of every ten views is fraudulent. Like any kind of ads, they have to do their own calculations to see if they are getting enough return on their spending.

With almost everything the gov't does, they take the lowest bid, and it still comes out more expensive and half the quality it should have been...

What's the point of floating cities on Venus anyway?

From the article:

A new study by researchers at the Systems Analysis and Concepts Directorate, part of the NASA Langley Research Center, suggests astronauts could circle Venus in a helium-inflated dirigible -- conducting science experiments as they orbit.

So no cities to live in, but research platforms.