Slashdot Mirror


User: dryeo

dryeo's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
6,838
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 6,838

  1. Re: They're infringing my Second-Amendment drone r on That Toy Is Now a Drone · · Score: 1

    Note also there is also minor limitations on keeping a standing army, namely having to refinance it regularly IIRC, I'm not American. Even by the time of the Revolution of 1688 it was well recognized that a standing army led to tyranny and limits were attempted.
    Way back it was expected (with laws enforcing it I believe) that free men would keep and be proficient in arms, often long bow, so that the militia could quickly be organized.

  2. Re:The Goggles! on That Toy Is Now a Drone · · Score: 1

    In principal you're right. Still privacy issues as you may be able to use the drone to view over the neighbours privacy fence and into their hot tub or private sun bathing area.

  3. Re:The Canadian law doesn't apply to these on Microsoft Suspending "Patch Tuesday" Emails · · Score: 1

    Microsoft just moved a bunch of stuff to Vancouver so they are doing more then just doing business in Canada. Just shows that 30 years of tax cuts can bring some business. Of course they promise to leave as soon as they get a better offer and the province is like a junker car that hasn't had maintenance done in years, bald tires, no oil change in years, water instead of anti-freeze, brakes down to metal, and spark plugs that just barely create spark. And they wonder why the mileage is so bad, why the block cracked last winter and now they have to keep adding shit that stops the leak and overheats the car and the mechanic says not to drive the piece of shit until a $1000 brake job as everything is shot.

  4. Re:Linux? on Microsoft Suspending "Patch Tuesday" Emails · · Score: 2

    Canada is the party at fault, Microsoft is just responding to a stupid law.

    Whats stupid about requiring people to opt-in? Microsoft could always add an unsubscribe option and ask Canadians if they want to receive their spam.

  5. Re:De-americanization has officially began on Germany Scores First: Ends Verizon Contract Over NSA Concerns · · Score: 1

    I'm sure America and others would have developed nuclear weapons no matter what as they were an invention whose time had come, just like America developed aircraft carriers during peace time and also was a major contender in the naval arms race between the wars until a treaty limited the numbers of capital ships.
    Nothing you say challenges the idea that after WWII, especially after the Soviets also had nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them, large scale wars such as the world wars became impractical due to "Mutual Assured Destruction".

  6. Re:Libertarian nirvana on Massachusetts SWAT Teams Claim They're Private Corporations, Immune To Oversight · · Score: 1

    If they are prevented from pooling their resources and government forces them to pay for the protection through an unaccountable private corporation, that is progressivism

    You renamed right wing to progressivism? It's the right that is always trying to privatize government to get around accountability and the progressive movement was as much about getting rid of private unaccountable law enforcement (think Pinkertons, larger then the US Army at one point) as much as promoting the common persons rights.
    This is the problem with Libertarianism, they're teaming up with the regressives who want to take us back when the serfs knew their place and stayed there.

  7. Re:De-americanization has officially began on Germany Scores First: Ends Verizon Contract Over NSA Concerns · · Score: 2

    Regional conflicts are a whole lot less nasty than the world wars that were going on before nuclear weapons created MAD seems more accurate, the US seems to have created more conflicts since WWII then any other country with many of those conflicts being a long way away from the US borders and the only thing that America seems to respect is nukes.

  8. Re:same species, different race on Neanderthals Ate Their Veggies · · Score: 1

    Kirk is more like a male dog, tries to breed with everything including legs without caring about species or pretty much anything but getting his rocks off.

  9. Re:Vegetables out of necessity, or out of preferen on Neanderthals Ate Their Veggies · · Score: 1

    There's also mutations where one group can handle a poisonous plant or often fungus that will sicken or kill another group. We see this with milk where Europeans often have a mutation allowing to digest milk and other groups don't. Really the ideal diet varies on sub-type of human and what was available in their ancestral homes.

  10. Re:same species, different race on Neanderthals Ate Their Veggies · · Score: 2

    Species is much more subtle then no fertile interbreeding. Example, ring species where you have types a,b,c and a can breed with b, b can breed with c but a can not breed with c. There are examples (big cats I believe) where the off spring are fertile if a is male and b is female but infertile if b is male and a is female. Then there are the species that are fertile across species but aren't turned on by the other species or have different breeding seasons so don't breed.
    Basically species are more of a spectrum then boolean and when it comes to modern Humans vs Neanderthals it is border line whether sub-species or separate species.

  11. Re:Awesome! on Federal Judge Rules US No-fly List Violates Constitution · · Score: 1

    America has a common law system, judges can create law through precedent and the legislatures can create laws through statute. Most crimes are now covered by statute but for example, murder was a crime even before there was ever a statute outlawing murder and even today much of contract law exists without statutes but rather as a series of precedents passed by courts.

  12. Re:Awesome! on Federal Judge Rules US No-fly List Violates Constitution · · Score: 1

    Some countries have constitutional protection of rights including the right not to be sentenced to cruel and unusual punishment and not having laws passed to punish at a later date. America created the list and retroactively put people on the list, many people on the list are not rapists and the list causes cruel punishment for minor offenses in some cases.
    Here someone just got sentenced for raping an 11yr old boy, part of the sentencing was 10 year prohibition on owning firearms, put on the sex offenders list and forced to give a DNA sample. Note this was part of the sentencing, not a vindictive law passed to make a politician look good by putting sexters, 16 yr olds who had consensual sex with a 15 yr old and various other minor crimes on a list which severely limits their life after doing their sentence.
    Note that even without a right to firearms, a judge has to actually ban a person from owning them instead of blanket bans designed to take arms away from segments of society.
    While America has a wonderful Bill of Rights, it's useless if not followed by all branches of government and it is up to the Judiciary to enforce those rights. This should also include bans on traveling, if a Judge does it at sentencing, fine, if the government does it just to look tough on crime, terrorism or whatever, not fine.

  13. Re:Which means on Evidence of a Correction To the Speed of Light · · Score: 1

    That is only true if the faster then light particle carries information. The way I heard it (and I don't remember where and whether it was much more then speculation) was that photons average the speed of light so they might go a bit faster, then a bit slower then c. There is also phenomena such as quantum entanglement that clearly show the speed of light being broken or bypassed with no information being transmitted faster then light. There are other quantum effects that also seem like they may be instant, unluckily it is really hard to measure speed at trillionths of an inch.

  14. Re:Because clearly... on WikiLeaks Publishes Secret International Trade Agreement · · Score: 1

    Good idea that existed at one time. Of course different businesses vary on what is too big which is why traditionally it was taken care of by anti-trust laws.

  15. Re:Because clearly... on WikiLeaks Publishes Secret International Trade Agreement · · Score: 1

    No need to keep the banks nationalized. Nationalize, fix the regulations, break the banks into smaller pieces and sell them to new people. The big things are to punish the perpetrators, fix the regulations and make the banks small enough that if they fail it doesn't take down the worlds economy.

  16. Re:keeping the heat on on WikiLeaks Publishes Secret International Trade Agreement · · Score: 1

    We need to find a way to restore the accountability they once had to us, their customers and citizens, their meal ticket - otherwise we'll continue to become more and more like animals in factory farms, and less and less like the autonomous geings we were born as.

    When were they actually accountable to the people?

  17. Re:Because clearly... on WikiLeaks Publishes Secret International Trade Agreement · · Score: 4, Informative

    Nationalise the bank to ensure that investors who allowed such thing to happen lose everything regardless. In other words, make those guilty of taking the risk shoulder the consequences.

    Then bail it out to save your taxpayers money.

    But that would actually be socialist.
    It's funny with Americans calling the Democrats and Obama socialist left wingers when there reaction to the banking crisis was the opposite. The big differences between the parties is who they are in thrall to, not whether one is left wing and the other is right wing.

  18. Re:Backpeddle? on Big Bang Breakthrough Team Back-Pedals On Major Result · · Score: 1

    Scientists are human and can have the same flaws as any human. There are lots of scientists who have held onto their beliefs in the face of new evidence which is why it has been stated that for new scientific paradigms to be generally accepted needs a new generation of scientists to replace the old established ones. There is the ideal of a scientist, then there is the reality of humans playing scientist.
    Famously there is Einstein refusing to accept quantum, Fred Hoyle refusing to accept the big bang and insisting on continuous creation and many more.
    Usually it is plain old emotional involvement, Sir Oliver J. Lodge made many good observations on the make up of atoms, particularly electrons but after losing his son in the war became a firm believer in spiritualism and psychic research despite the total lack of evidence. Humans strive for security and form beliefs based on wishful thinking that makes them more secure, look at almost any religion.

  19. Re:Administrators on Teaching College Is No Longer a Middle Class Job · · Score: 1

    Not everyone has access to high speed internet, where I am it's dial-up or nothing. That video might take an hour or more to download and with a couple of people sharing the tiny pipe, videos are out of reach and even many web sites are moving that way. There are sites I need to access that take close to an hour to load and login.
    We go to the library

  20. Re:No, that means it is still being used on Russia Wants To Replace US Computer Chips With Local Processors · · Score: 3, Informative

    The sister ship of the Titanic, the RMS Olympic, steamed for 24 years before being replaced by the RMS Queen Mary and scrapped and was the largest ocean liner in the world from 1911-1913 (excepting the short reign of the Titanic). The other sister, the HMHS Britannic had the misfortune of meeting a mine. She was larger then the Titanic and benefited from the lessons learned from the sinking of the Titanic (the Olympic also benefited with retrofits) and even though she sank within an hour there was only 30 casualties which I believe includes the occupants of 2 life boats that got munched by the propellers. Would have been much better if all the portholes were closed and a water-tight door hadn't failed, may have been worse if the water had been freezing instead of room temperature.
    The Titanic was never claimed to be unsinkable, just very safe, the press started the unsinkable BS.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...

  21. Re:"Draft" people into Congress ... on Steve Wozniak Endorses Lessig's Mayday Super PAC · · Score: 2

    It would be like the draft in the sense that you lose your business or job and maybe family due to taking 2 years off. Otherwise it would be the opposite of the draft as instead of potentially going to your death, you'd be going to the land of hookers, blow and nice paid holidays in tropical resorts with a nice guaranteed well paying job that doesn't involve work after your 2 years. Just have to vote the right way and when doing blow and getting blown you will go OK.

  22. Re:Water on mars for self-sustaining city on Elon Musk: I'll Put a Human On Mars By 2026 · · Score: 1

    It'll take new tech to operate a reactor on Mars, if only due to the lack of rivers or oceans for heat dumps. The militant Greens will like nuclear as a technology to help turn Mars green, it's the Militant Reds who want to preserve Mars in its natural state that will be the worry.

  23. Re:Water on mars for self-sustaining city on Elon Musk: I'll Put a Human On Mars By 2026 · · Score: 1

    RTGs are another option but still limited, not much of the right isotope of plutonium available and they don't generate large amounts of power. Solar is straight forward and even though Mars receives only 44% of the sunlight that Earth does, there are no clouds to interfere, (dust storms are rare) and more high energy UV. Much safer for heavy equipment, vehicles and such as well as any factories that are set to work before the crew arrives. As usual a mixture of technology is probably best.

  24. Re:Water on mars for self-sustaining city on Elon Musk: I'll Put a Human On Mars By 2026 · · Score: 1

    There are reports of evidence of dust covered glaciers quite a bit further south that should be investigated and would be ideal including the possibility of tunneling into for a habitat shielded from radiation. Even at 50 deg latitude, approximately where I live, the winter days are pretty short.
    As for a nuclear reactor, it is going to have to be specially designed due to the heat sink problem. As far as I know all our reactor designs currently depend on large amounts of water. I'd also guess that for safety reasons it'll probably be sent separately from the crew and either way it'll take time to set up bore holes or such for dumping heat. Solar will still be a good choice for vehicles, heavy equipment and such that may work far from the main camp as well as back up for the main camp including immediately after landing. I'd also assume that quite a bit of equipment will arrive ahead of the crew, including factories to process the atmosphere for oxygen, methane or similar for fuel and water.
    Landing on Mars is hard due to not enough atmosphere for braking so manned craft aren't going to have much supplies within.

  25. Re:Water on mars for self-sustaining city on Elon Musk: I'll Put a Human On Mars By 2026 · · Score: 1

    The problem with the poles is the long periods of darkness. Solar power will be important as it takes time to set up the nuclear reactor and they'll need power away from the base. There are probably deposits of water in the mid-latitudes and can always mine the atmosphere.