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User: flnca

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  1. Re:Fixing this leak solves nothing! on Crack In Fukushima Structure May Be Leaking Radiation · · Score: 1

    The big problem at Fukushima is that the top half of the reactor buildings are GONE.

    I've wondered about this myself. If you compare the fact that you mentioned to a schematic of the reactor buildings, where do you think could the containment vessels and their contents be?

    When you look at the images of buildings 3 and 4, do you actually see a containment vessel?

    I'm really worried when I look at the images. It looks like the explosions have blown the containment vessels apart. Some guy on some blog said that it would all be nothing but smoldering burning ruins ... do you think there's a possibility that the containment vessels are intact?

    Do you think there's a risk of a domino effect? That the rises in ambient radiation could affect other reactor sites in the area?

  2. Re:'disturbing to who?' on FBI Seeks Suspect's Web Game Records · · Score: 1

    And "freedom of speech" was never about "no consequences for your speech".

    So I guess any dictatorship can claim they support free speech now, don't they?

    "You are free to speak, but it will have consequences."

    What's the point of free speech if you can't speak without having to fear repercussions?

  3. Re:Perhaps it's the water? on Placebos Work -- Even Without Deception · · Score: 1

    In the rest of the world it is understood that drinking a can of soda is not the same as drinking clear, fresh water.

  4. Perhaps it's the water? on Placebos Work -- Even Without Deception · · Score: 1

    People generally don't drink enough clear, fresh water. Often, when they're taking a pill it's the only circumstance they're doing so. Perhaps that's the reason why even placebos work.

  5. What's the big deal? on The Luck of the Irish Runs Out · · Score: 1

    The EU will pump € 85 billion into Ireland.

  6. Re:But But But But Buzt Buut on Alternative To the 200-Line Linux Kernel Patch · · Score: 1

    I guess this is just for the ones who want a solution right now. The others still can wait until the next kernel update, which will probably include the 200-line patch.

  7. Re:THIS IS GREAT!!! on E Ink Unveils Color E-Reader Display · · Score: 1

    True ... but to me, it's all about the display technology. I wouldn't be interested in them otherwise. E-Ink displays don't require power when they're not flipping pages. I.e. you can even remove the batteries and see the same image that was loaded last. Can't do that with a Palm! ;)

  8. DVD Print Booking Problem on Bethesda Criticized Over Buggy Releases · · Score: 1

    Booking space for DVD printing is scarce, and when the game isn't ready to ship at this point, then boom, lots of bugs in the shipped product, b/c the booking slot had to be used. Happens to many game publishers.

  9. Re:Personally... on E Ink Unveils Color E-Reader Display · · Score: 1

    This video shows off E-Ink displays running color video. In principle, it's possible, even if the frame rate is not particularly high.

  10. Re:color e-ink killer app: digital picture frames on E Ink Unveils Color E-Reader Display · · Score: 1

    TFA says the device does have WiFi ... the only question is if there's a way to program it in some way. E-Ink earlier complained that with better drivers, a lot more could be done with the display. This video shows off various E-Ink displays, some running color videos ... it is possible to some extent with the right software, so I figure with the right drivers, it could be used as a regular computer display, which in turn would enable the development of arbitrary applications.

  11. Re:THIS IS GREAT!!! on E Ink Unveils Color E-Reader Display · · Score: 1

    Why? People waited decades for that technology, but that doesn't mean it's old ...

  12. Re:Uh, "E-Ink" is a bistable liquid crystal displa on E Ink Unveils Color E-Reader Display · · Score: 1

    Uh ... really? ...

  13. Re:Disappointed that e-paper printers never worked on E Ink Unveils Color E-Reader Display · · Score: 1

    The printing solution exists, from Toshiba, using erasable plastic sheets.

  14. Re:Disappointed that e-paper printers never worked on E Ink Unveils Color E-Reader Display · · Score: 1

    That printing technology does exist. There was a Slashdot article about it a while back. Can't remember from which company, though.

  15. Re:Windows 1.0 was barely usable on Recalling Windows 1.0 At 25 Years · · Score: 1

    Have you ever tried to use the tiling function that's built-in in Windows? Windows always had that function. In Windows 7, you simply right-click on the task bar and choose the menu item. :)

  16. Re:Generational Ships on The Galaxy May Have Billions of Habitable Planets · · Score: 1

    Isn't that an interesting parallel? I can imagine God reading /. right now and saying to himself: "Yep... It's not as easy as it looks is it?... to create a self-sustaining world, put people on it and expect things to turn out how you'd like in the end."

    Definitely. Once I had a coworker, who said, after I had explained the concept to him: "What do you need a spacecraft for? There is Earth! Isn't Earth like a giant spacecraft?"

    And he's right: Earth is like a spacecraft too. Or, if you expand on the concept of giant spacecraft, our solar system could entirely be contained in some kind of chamber inside a spacecraft, and what we see as stars, might be other chambers with other solar systems. That's the largest of spacecraft imaginable! ;)

    Universes could be like snowflakes falling on a winter day, and galaxies like little ice crystals ... who knows? ;)

    And then there might be God who sent us on a journey ... question is: Will we ever know when the journey is over? Is there a goal within our reach? :)

  17. Re:Generational Ships on The Galaxy May Have Billions of Habitable Planets · · Score: 1

    That could happen with the secret order too. Or maybe the secret order will decide to use the people for their own gains. Who knows. The ethical thing to do is keep people informed. A government by the people, for the people -- in space too.

    The secret order should be where the AI of the ship comes in. It would have to select the best new members for the order, and keep them "aligned". This would keep management "cost" in that area minimal. Now picture the consequences of your suggestion: Let's assume for a moment that the ship is governed by a democratic government. In the worst case, it would have control over the ship. There'd be various interest groups that would try to gain control of the ship. Would you like to see them die, the billions of people on such a ship? One tiny error in the control of such a ship can cause all people to die. Now put it in the hands of power-hungry madmen. That's why still in democratic governments, there's still shadow groups like secret societies, and secret services that keep some information out of the hands of even the highest ranks in government. To keep a democratic government at bay and in functional condition, the AI would have to use far more sophisticated tactics (if even allowed to do so). Meh ... I like the secret order thing much better. People can go ahead and have their governments and such, but don't mess with the ship! lol ;)

  18. Re:Generational Ships on The Galaxy May Have Billions of Habitable Planets · · Score: 1

    Government should be open and transparent, and the people should be informed. It makes me sad that people would even propose such a thing.

    Certainly, you're right. It would be the reasonable choice, to make everything transparent and open ... if it works for a couple hundred or thousand years, that is the question. What if the ship falls into anarchy, civil wars, dictatorships? The ship must still function under those circumstances, and ship its passengers along and nourish them. In a ship with Earth-like conditions, rain would fall and sun would shine, grass would grow, and cows would feed ... mountains and rocks would endure the centuries. People will be born and die, become dust and nourish the trees. I wonder if people would not forget where they are after a couple of centuries ... with all tech happening in the background, they would never even need to be aware of the fact. But who knows? There's a lot of possibilities.

  19. Re:Generational Ships on The Galaxy May Have Billions of Habitable Planets · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I thought about his pretty often, and I think that the most reasonable form of generation spacecraft would be AI controlled, self-repairing, self-sustaining, and very huge, so that Earth-like landscapes could be built in them. A ship that is 1000 km wide and high, and 10,000 km long would not be much different from a planet to its inhabitants. Clarke's 1x4x9 ratio also would make a reasonable form factor. Such a ship can of course only be built when resources are mined from the solar system planets, especially the gas giants have plenty of matter to utilize. With an "army" of robots, such a thing would be comparably easy to build and to maintain. The ship would have to have automated mining facilities, factories and so on. To the people, it would be like an ordinary world. Many of them would not need to know they're on a spacecraft. But some staff should definitely exist (an order perhaps?) that knows about the journey. Also, the government of the ship could be such that it's clear to everyone they're on a spacecraft, but then provisions need to be in place to avoid mutinies, etc.

  20. Re:which language is best? on Taco Bell Programming · · Score: 1

    Of course, but this was about whether it can be done by a C programmer in less than 1 hour.

  21. Re:which language is best? on Taco Bell Programming · · Score: 1

    However, with this little change, which I completed in less than 5 minutes, the program completes in only 0.056 seconds and makes it only 5 times slower than the tail version. ;)

    The setvbuf() in this case has the effect, that the fseek() will fetch a 10 megabyte-sized chunk upon the first read backwards from the end of file. This makes the inefficiency of repeated fseeko() calls for every character almost negligible. :)

  22. Re:which language is best? on Taco Bell Programming · · Score: 1

    With a 1 gigabyte file of random data, my program needs 21 seconds, while the tail version naturally completes within 0.011 seconds, so in this case, it'd be roughly 2000 times slower! :)

  23. Re:which language is best? on Taco Bell Programming · · Score: 1

    But it's proof that a functional equivalent can be written by a C programmer in less than 1 hour! :)

  24. Re:which language is best? on Taco Bell Programming · · Score: 1

    Yup, I know that. S/he wanted me to demonstrate it could be written in less than 1 hour, and that's what I did: I intentionally didn't try to reimplement the UNIX tools, only the essential functionality. So, my code doesn't seek backwards (I do have written code before that does just that), instead I keep line positions in a cycling buffer and scroll through them. Also note the setvbuf() call, which speeds things up by reading 10 megabytes at a time. The getc() call is a macro that expands to code that is executed in the cache of the CPU, so the result will be pretty fast. Granted, I haven't tested it with overly large files, but the performance won't be too shabby. But it certainly won't be as fast as tail.

  25. Re:which language is best? on Taco Bell Programming · · Score: 1

    Ah, I forgot to mention that fseeko() and ftello() are POSIX functions, but needed to process 64 bit files on 32 bit systems (when _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64 is used).