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User: Ken+D

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Comments · 329

  1. Re:Basic Statistics on Why Standard Deviation Should Be Retired From Scientific Use · · Score: 1

    And how do you remember that exactly?

    I much prefer "Some Old Horse Caught Another Horse Taking Oats Away"

  2. Re:It's rigged on FISA Judges Oppose Intelligence Reform Proposals Aimed At Court · · Score: 2

    You're right, it's not nothing. It's a fig leaf.
    Because obviously, if they can figure out which of these limited cases are so special, they could give those cases extra thought today, without any changes.

    The FISA judges judgement is suspect. Putting anything under their discretion is NOT an improvement.

  3. Re:No dude... on Obamacare and Middle-Wheel-Wheelbarrows · · Score: 1

    No, I put in that part specifically because some places do not have trash disposal via taxes. In my town there are at least 4 private haulers that most people have contracts with. I'm sure there are a few people who choose to haul their own trash to a landfill on an as needed basis.
    But there is no municipal (or pseudo municipal) trash service.

  4. Re:A standard business problem on Obamacare and Middle-Wheel-Wheelbarrows · · Score: 1

    Good luck getting requirements that are written in law revised or waived.

    Ever have a requirement that you could point to and say: "Strike that requirement and I can cut the schedule in half" Yet it is still a challenge getting everyone to agree on changing it. Now imagine the people you are negotiating with is Congress.... and they have to pass a law in order to agree with the changes... and any attempt to re-open the requirements attracts hundreds of lobbyists trying to figure out how to change the requirements in order to get their paymasters a bigger share of the profit.

  5. Re:No dude... on Obamacare and Middle-Wheel-Wheelbarrows · · Score: 3, Interesting

    That shipped sailed long ago.

    Everyone has to pay for trash disposal. You have no choice. You can't burn it, you can't pile it on your property.

    You either haul it to a private landfill and pay them. Or you pay a private hauler to take it away. Or you pay taxes that pay a private hauler with a government contract to haul it away.

    Anything else is illegal.

  6. Re:Not that useful anyways on The Dismantling of POTS: Bold Move Or Grave Error? · · Score: 2

    Spoken like someone without much imagination.

    When the power goes out, the odds of needing to make a 911 call go way up.

  7. The fusion of heavier elements actually liberates less energy, and above some point (iron?) fusion of nuclei is a net loss of energy, which is why heavy elements are so much rarer than the lighter elements. They are all 'parasitic' losses of energy that are only produced during supernova.

    A "binding energy" chart shows that light elements should be fused to release energy and heavy elements should be split to release energy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Binding_energy_curve_-_common_isotopes.svg

  8. Re:How about just battery fires also? on Tesla Fires and Firestorms: Let's Breathe and Review Some Car Fire Math · · Score: 1

    No, this is not true.

    Once a car starts burning there's a lot of fuel that has a high ignition point so is unlikely to start burning, but once lit is almost impossible to put out, which is why cars tend to burn down to scorched patches of pavement.

    The tires are fuel, the plastic dashboard is fuel, the foam in the seats is fuel, the rubber hoses in the engine compartment is fuel, lots of rubber and plastic material, all flammable fuel.

  9. Re:For the record on Why Amazon Fights State Sales Tax, But Supports It Nationally · · Score: 1

    ... now that sounds more than a little bit fishy.

  10. Re:Noun, verb, noun noun verb (or: terrible headli on Hacker Spoofs Track Plays To Top Music Charts · · Score: 1

    So... all words that can take the role of multiple parts of speech should be banned? or what?

  11. Re:private dumb: $20K. Govt dumb: $400 billion on How To Lose $172,222 a Second For 45 Minutes · · Score: 2

    In many cases government inefficiency is caused by Congress. Congress funneling money to their districts, to their contributors, etc.

    Just look at the difficulties when they were trying to close military bases. Congressmen always wanted to keep "their" base open.

    The same thing with prohibitions on the government from using its size to negotiate contracts to its benefit (i.e. drive down the prices of drugs that it buys). These are inefficient transfers of public money to private industry mandated by Congress.

  12. Re: 153 GOP voted to default on US Government Shutdown Ends · · Score: 1

    So, there was no Bonus Army? no Hooverville? no Food Riots in 1931?

    I guess the New Deal was just something that sprang from no where for no reason at all.

  13. Re:Thank goodness on US Government Shutdown Ends · · Score: 1

    No, I'm implying that the sensationalist stories are easy to find, but are comparing apples and bowling balls.

  14. Re:As the saying goes... on US Government Shutdown Ends · · Score: 1

    You seem to be under the misapprehension that "non-essential" means 'surplus' or 'extra' or 'not needed'

    "essential employee' is defined by statute (i.e. a law passed by congress) and is typically used when closing offices for events like Hurricane Katrina. "non-essential" employees are sent home or told not to come in.

    You are most likely considered a "non-essential" employee by your own employer.

    "Essential employees" typically have jobs related to safety or security. Non-essential do not.

    If government shutdowns weren't political theater, then ALL employees would gone. The borders would be open, the airports would be closed, etc.

  15. Re:Thank goodness on US Government Shutdown Ends · · Score: 1

    "The biggest problem you're facing down the road is when some bureaucrat decides that keeping you alive is not cost-effective"

    Can you clarify your position?
    Are you saying that you believe in spending money in a non cost effective manner, i.e. wasting it on ineffective end-of-life care?
    Or are you saying that not only should we spend money ineffectively on futile end of life care that actually makes dying people miserable and suffer by inflicting invasive care upon them that actually doesn't accomplish much except waste their last days on God's good earth, but also we should spend *every* dollar of medical expenses ineffectively by by wasting large amounts of each medical dollar on grossly inflated industry 'profits' that occur due to the huge market inefficiencies, the intrinsic in-elastic demand curve for urgent and emergency medicine, and the opaqueness of medical pricing (aka 'trade secrets')?

  16. Re:Thank goodness on US Government Shutdown Ends · · Score: 1

    It's easy to find someone who had a plan that didn't actually cover anything (but it was cheap! oh so cheap! only $x a month in exchange for a nebulous nothing) and now can only find plans that meet the minimum coverage requirements and therefore costs more.

  17. Re:Thank goodness on US Government Shutdown Ends · · Score: 1

    Yes and No.

    Drugmakers, Insurance Companies and Medical Device makers all are forgoing some of their profits (e.g. the medical device tax) in exchange for the larger volume of people with coverage.

    It's just one of several mechanisms in the law to shift costs and benefits around in our broken health care 'market' via regulation.

  18. Re:No, he's wrong on NYT Publisher Says Not Focusing on Engineering Was A Serious Mistake · · Score: 4, Informative

    For the AP that was probably true (that the Internet was a deadly competitor). The AP represents one of the major things that is wrong with the newspaper business.

    You look at a print version of some newspapers and it's filled with cusinarted AP articles. They've been butchered to fill empty column space. The newspaper that I actually read cover to cover has zero (0) AP articles in it.

  19. Re:Change is hard on Users Revolt Over Yahoo Groups Update · · Score: 2

    Perhaps everyone who needed Yahoo Groups to be different had already left. By forcing current groups to change they didn't necessarily give them any new functionality that they wanted, and might have taken away functionality that they did want.

    Just another example of sacrificing current users on the altar of UX. Funny how changes to improve UX so often piss off users.

  20. Re:level 1 to level 3 on Fukushima Actually "Much Worse" Than So Far Disclosed, Say Experts · · Score: 1

    After reading the article, it's clear that they mean that this leak by itself is a Level 3 incident. Not "Fukushima" is a Level 3 incident.

  21. Re:I'll believe it when I see it on Public Facial Recognition Is Making Gains In Surveillance · · Score: 1

    Remember the Boston marathon bombing.

    They had several specific pictures of the suspects and the quality seemed pretty good.
    They had the guy's photo in their system due to a prior terrorism related investigation.
    They had several days to match the photos, i.e. not in real time

    They failed.

  22. Re:Troll much, slashdot? on Using Java In Low Latency Environments · · Score: 1

    ... or you could have written it in Java the exact same way and kept recycling a large buffer over and over without any garbage collection whatsoever..

  23. Re:Nice try? on Banking Malware, Under the Hood · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So.... I have to give out my personal data to a site that I don't know is legitimate because they won't show me the security image because they don't know that I'm legitimate?? Who's going to blink first?

  24. Re:Postapocoliptic Nightmare on GMO Wheat Found Growing Wild In Oregon, Japan Suspends Import From U.S. · · Score: 2

    Commerce has proven time and time again, that not only can't they adequately plan for problems that they anticipate happening, i.e. their disaster contingency plans fail when used, e.g. Monsanto's GMO wheat crop destruction plan obviously failed. But they also fail to identify all the actual problems in advance, and therefore they weren't planned for.

    Some of these problems are blindingly obvious and yet completely ignored. For example, a class of flame retardants is determined to be too toxic and is banned, and is replaced with another chemical without testing it for toxicity. Said chemical is later determined to be even more hazardous than the chemical it replaced. Who'd have thought that two chemicals with similar desirable properties might also have similar undesirable properties, right?

  25. Re:Sports are the key on How Netflix Eats the Internet · · Score: 1

    Sports is also their weakness.
    Cable companies pay a fortune for sports content, a fortune that they then ask their customers to pay. Which is one of the reasons I'm a non-sports consuming *former* customer.
    At some point you get tired of paying more for less watchable content.