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User: LittleDobbs

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  1. Re:Who will control the iPhone? on Apple vs. Google, Who Will Control the iPhone? · · Score: 1

    Actually yes. MythTV kicks the utter crap out of any other PVR ever made.

    Yes but does it blend?

  2. Re:iSync is the killer feature of .Mac on A Little .Mac Security Flaw · · Score: 1

    Right but the point he was making is iSync is seamless. Gmail is great but I can't exactly, nor do I want to, put my work email and contacts into my gmail account. With iSync email rules work on the desktop at work, desktop at home and the laptop. There is no need for a plugin on the browser to make bookmarks sync in the same way.

    It might not be worth 99 a year, but I don't think there is a single tool that handles this as well.

  3. Re:Unfortunately... on Former Anti-Nuclear Activist Does A 180 · · Score: 1

    I think it was a little of both. Cool down as you know is not the safest thing for metal, brittle fracture and all. I imagine the powers at be where also concerned about causing more damage. At the time they would have not known the state of the primary loop or vessel.

    Once they had things stable, I'm sure they were willing to let things cool down at a slower rate. The vessel is only rated for so many cycles of cool down. The rate of cool down effects the life span as well as radiation. I'm sure the last thing they wanted was to break the vessel.

    I'm not sure if TMI is a negative or positive alpha T core. Of course with the fuel in an unknown state I don't think any one knows how it would react to the relatively rapid few day cool down. That's my opinion through.

  4. Re:Why do the Chinese give away this capability? on Chinese Sub Pops Up Amid US Navy Exercise · · Score: 1

    [fast] to facilitate takeoffs... can you explain this to me? i'm assuming that you're referring to the take-off of the planes...why would a carrier need speed for that?

    The carrier travels into the wind increasing apparent wind speed which reduces the speed needed to take off. Also when landing the plane would have to slow down less. Although I don't think this is as important as take off. Neither can be done on a stationary carrier which is why the air group flies in while the carrier is still at sea.

  5. Re:And all of a sudden....Dust mites. on Astronomers Find Huge Hole in Universe · · Score: 1

    So: Does the Bible state that the Yahweh is the *only* god? The (modern) translated text of the Commandments says: "Worship no god but me.. Do not bow down to any idol or worship it, because I am the LORD your God and I tolerate no rivals"

    Which suggests to me that, though there ARE other gods, they should not be seen as more important than Yahweh. Does the Bible actually state anywhere that there are no other gods, or just that they shouldn't be worshipped over Yahweh?

    Far be it for me tho place God's words in my mouth. I believe that the reference was to other "false" gods. At the time every tribe or nation had their own god(s). The believe was that if one nation overthrew another that in fact that nation's god(s) had beaten the other. These people would have been exposed to the Egyptian gods and would be entering a land that would contain several other gods including the Assyrian's and Babylonian's. So from the perspective of those people at that time there would have been other gods. I think one has to take the context of when and to whom something was written before applying any hermeneutic. Basically you are right the bible states that Yahweh is the only God and that the others are false.

  6. Re:Some people sell their "waste" heat on Heat Wave Shuts Down Alabama Reactor · · Score: 1

    Dude. Heat IS radiation. Or are you talking like, gamma waves or something?

    Heat is the transfer of energy from one body to another. Heat is not radiation. Heat is created when the radiation interacts with metal surrounding the fuel. An example would be Compton Scattering. It's been a while but I believe gamma radiation is the least of the heat production mainly because it leaves the reactor pretty quickly.

    I am mainly referring to beta radiation and maybe alpha radiation although I'm not sure how that would work. The neutron radiation would still need to be utilized to maintain criticality of the reactor. If you are extracting your energy from the beta particles and did not desire heat you would design a fast neutron reactor that would not require as much moderation to maintain criticality and hence not generate as much heat.

    Although I have no evidence to support this I still think the hybrid is a good idea if it can be done. This would require less generation of steam to create the same amount of power and hence reduce waste heat.

    They capture a hell of a lot of the energy of the reaction... otherwise the entire complex would be radioactive.

    The only radiation that can escape the reactor vessel is gamma radiation and yes this is all over the place, well until it hits shielding, which typically is around the reactor vessel and then around the room containing the reactor, which you would not want to go into either because there is still a lot of secondary radiation

    Bottom line is that heating waster is never going to be the most efficient way to utilize nuclear power. You just can't get around the inherit inefficiency of the Carnot engine. Sadly since most Americans our idiots on the subject the US has not brought on any power plants since TMI. They make broad statements about nuclear waste as if the power companies actually want the waste. Waste cost them money to dispose of. If we can get past our fears of this there would actually be funding available since their would be money to made. Currently there is only one customer the US Navy and as stated earlier their motives are different then the private sector.

  7. Re:Some people sell their "waste" heat on Heat Wave Shuts Down Alabama Reactor · · Score: 1

    Maybe we could use the most copious product of that reaction, let's call it "heat", and apply it to some easily managed fluid that will change phases at a temperature and pressure

    Radiation is the biggest products of a fission reaction. Heat is only a byproduct of the reaction. For fission to continue you need to keep the neutrons, but the rest is junk. You can capture that radiation into the equivalent of a solar cell. That's a fairly simple design. Or you can design a primary cooling loop, steam generation, and cooling systems to convert low enthalpy steam back to water (waste heat). This is a fairly complex design that requires tons of maintenance and has several points of failure.

    Direct energy conversion already exists. The question is not science fiction but how far has KAPL and Bettis has gotten on this. Since the Navy's primary interest is for submarines you have to take other things into account. Your typical steam engine room is not a quite place hence there is more to this then just efficiency. I would go as far as saying that you could make a sell of even a hybrid system in which electricity was generated via direct conversion and propulsion was generated using the traditional Carnot engine.

    That's just my 2 cents

  8. Re:In a mid-sized manufacturing or distribution... on The Mainframe Still Lives! · · Score: 1

    Check the price again and the size again. It's really gone down in the past couple years. A new 525 rack mount at 3800 CPW isn't that bad and is much smaller the then a Dell with equal amount of hard drive space. It consumes less power then the cluster and takes less space. So if you pay for either you have to take that into account. In the short run you are going to save money on hardware but over the long run maybe not.

    What is the cost to double the processing power for a busy month if you need it, say around Christmas when sales are up? For the cluster you have to buy enough hardware to support the peak usage. With an iSeries IBM is giving you a cheaper price on the hardware for a 2 way if you use only one processor. You can then pay to use that extra processor "Business on Demand" when you need it. If you have a cyclic work load this may pan out to be cheaper as well.

    Bottom line is that what may be cheaper for you is not necessarily cheaper for me. No I not an IBM monkey and yes I just did cost analysis of a similar setup using Continuent uni/cluster and 2 iSeries with DataPropagator. The overall cost was not that far off.

  9. Re:Apple lists this problem in fine print on No iPhone For 64-Bit Windows · · Score: 1

    Honestly, this isn't rocket science here. How hard would it have been to recompile the iPhone software for a 64-bit machine?

    It actually can be quite hard to port in either direction. Take any open source program that ported from Linux to Windows as an example.

    Microsoft isn't really doing any better on this front. They have yet to release an Intel compatible Mac version of Office. Once they do it doesn't look like they'll be able to port over VBA. I find that pretty ironic that MS has more trouble on Intel then PPC. Actually I'm pretty sure the reason is more of the need to move away from the Carbon API to the Cocoa API (or did I get that backwards).

    At any rate changing OS APIs is far from a trivial task and certainly not just a recompile.

  10. Re:The software on Apple iPhone Dissected · · Score: 1

    I haven't yet worked out whether the iPhone will be a big success or a massive flop. What I do know though is that it will only be bought by people who buy based on hype rather than featureset. So the equation comes down to how many Apple fanboys are there with buckets of cash who will buy something purely because Apple tells them to. :)

    Success for the same reason I have TiVo instead of MythTV. My wife likes the TiVo remote and interface. She also likes the look of the iPhone, although we're still waiting on it for a while. She'll buy based on look and feel not on features. I think Apple's appealed to the masses on this one just like they did with the iPod. It's not the cheapest but it is "the one to have" which is all marketing. Jobs knows this and is banking on it. I hate to say this, but geeks are a minority in technology these days. If you doubt this then just look at who gets the newest toys where you work.

  11. Re:Cell and parallel processing. Answer this for m on The Future of Intel Processors · · Score: 1

    What we need is a change in paradigm at the OS level the in turn leads to the need to create a language that supports the paradigm. Something along the lines as Unix and C. For that to happen we need hardware that works efficiently in the existing paradigm while driving the paradigm shift.

    I wish I had the answer to what the new system will look like, but I don't. If I did I would be working on creating it, but then again I don't have access to 200+ core processors :-)

    My closest guess is something along the lines of todays distributed systems (i.e. Seta@home) but at the OS level. It can not be something that is as serial in nature as what we currently have. I imagine that there would also be something akin to callbacks. This is where I envision the need for new languages that make this process less painful then C yet can still get at the hardware like C does.

  12. Re:just web? on Laws Threaten Web Security Researchers · · Score: 1

    I think the answer to this is who the researcher is contacting. If I find a flaw in HTTP I would not be contacting Joe Smoe's website developer company, I would be contacting other research groups W3C etc and the OS providers. Linux, Microsoft, Apple etc. The later group would be more likely to look at you as a researcher while the former assumes you are a thug. At that point the law doesn't matter. I seriously doubt OpenBSD group is going to prosecute if you find a flaw in SSH.

  13. Re:Yawn on Virtualization Is Not All Roses · · Score: 1

    VMs are still quite a new science (as opposed to LPARs) so there are lots of bugs still out there. Don't you mean VMWare/Xen/KVM or whatever. LPAR is just IBM/Sun's implementation of virtualization. Yes x86 virtualization is still infant in comparison.
  14. Re:Hmm, so... on Humans Hardwired to Believe in Supernatural Deity? · · Score: 1

    Why is this always so difficult with you religious people. Let me try to take it really slow for you, so that perhaps you understand. Atheism is not the "belief that god does not exist", atheism is the "lack of belief in god".

    Two reasons first that you and most atheists I know are condescending so I am unlikely to believe anything. Secondly from the dictionary. "atheism - the theory or belief that God does not exist." Oxford American Dictionary. This is definition is exactly the opposite of what you just said. When the definition of the word changes then I'll consider your arguments. Until then I am belief the state is more deist primary because of the Constitutional officers.

  15. Re:Hmm, so... on Humans Hardwired to Believe in Supernatural Deity? · · Score: 1

    Sadly stating ones opinion has become taboo in this country lately. I lament that fact.

    Yes when you opinion is derogatory to others. If I stated that a disagree with a non theists doctrine that's fine. If I say I think that an atheist is an absurd stance then yes that should be left out of public because it's derogatory to others. Another example and this is just an example I don't really think this but it gets the point across. Niggers are all stupid. Even if you thought that you won't go around in the public square saying this because it's offensive. I'm not asking you not to have or voice an opinion just be careful of the words you use.

    probably not based on religion at all

    Killing people because they don't share the same religion. How is that not based on religion? Congressional approval goes beyond mere executive privilege.

    Where does our constitution and works explicitly state that the US is an atheist state? Seriously please site examples.

    Prohibiting Congress from make a law that respects an establishment of religion is a far cry from atheist. That's merely a limit on Congressional authority. So congress can not create a religion where does it say Congress must belief that God does not exist. Also does this only apply to Congress or the Executive Branch as well. What about the judicial branch?

    The Declaration is the basis for forming the nation, so although legally it's not part of the law it's part of the foundation. So would common law not be applicable either? I'm not a lawyer nor do I pretend to be but the nation is not just summation of it's laws. The nation is the summation of the people and the people's will.

    Basically we've both heard the arguments back and forth. I don't give any creed to the Declaration argument any more then I expect you to give back to me. I would say it's safe at this point to say the best we can hope for is to agree to disagree. But please give me the examples I ask for above.

  16. Re:Hmm, so... on Humans Hardwired to Believe in Supernatural Deity? · · Score: 1

    Did you find any lack of tolerance in my statements?

    Of course teaching children to believe in something that is fundamentally illogical and absurd OK maybe not intolerant but insulting not the less. Calling somebodies faith absurd is insulting. Not allowing my kids to practice my religion is intolerant because you think my religion is absurd would be intolerant.

    As I asked before, what part of the US as a state do you think is not atheist? Iraq war. Muslim crusades (I mean war of terror sorry). Those are two examples. The fact that the basis of our freedom comes from a Creator thereby making us a deist state.
  17. Re:Hmm, so... on Humans Hardwired to Believe in Supernatural Deity? · · Score: 1
    Thank you for proving my point. So atheists are indeed zealots towards lack of religion more so then most religious people. Most religions have room for some level of tolerance where it seems you do not. This is no more harmful then any fantasy which at some point a child is going to have to choose to believe in or not.

    if Jefferson was able to watch, it would be puke city. I think you should read Ben Franklin and Jefferson's notes on considering the difference between public and private religion.

    Why is it that people in the US have not yet been able to come to terms with the fact that the US is an atheist state? Because US is not and never will be an atheist state. There would have to be a civil war for that to happen. Being that the military is large composed of the theists it would be kind of hard for the atheists to win such a war.
  18. Re:Hmm, so... on Humans Hardwired to Believe in Supernatural Deity? · · Score: 1

    Then they got their bibles in a bunch when some Pagans distributed flyers under the same rules.

    Yah most groups with a message would do this religious or not. I'm not saying it's right I'm just saying that it's human nature.

    Religion is extremely dangerous

    Isn't this an example of what I just said. OK not exactly how I said it, but you consider religion dangerous. Who is it dangerous to the state or the people of the state? I agree that we should keep Church and state separate. Church does not equal religion. Politicians use Church in the US to get voters emotional and I don't think that's dangerous to a state with a proper check and balance system in place.

    Is teaching a child to pray to the the God of the parent dangerous to the child? All of the atheists I know answer yes this is dangerous to the child, which is where I get my bias from, sorry if that offends you and please prove me wrong.

  19. Re:faith on Humans Hardwired to Believe in Supernatural Deity? · · Score: 1

    No, but, faith requires lack of reasoning. If by stupid you mean intellectual capacity, then people that do not reason are stupid. QED.

    No faith requires faith

    As most people on Slashdot, probably, my IQ is higher than 100. So, therefore, most of the world is stupider than me.

    Actually stupid refers to common sense not IQ. The smartest group of my friends and family tend lack in the common sense department. So technically wouldn't most of us be stupider then the rest of the world. *grin* sorry I couldn't resist that one.

    Aside from the humor or what ever you perceive of yourself it's just not nice to go around stating that you are the one with all of the answers and everybody else is wrong. Watch the movie Contact at some point if you haven't already.

  20. Re:In defence of PHP on Month of PHP Bugs Has Begun · · Score: 1

    So your entire argument is to blame the users instead of the product?

    EXACTLY. If you stick a fork in toaster the you get shocked. If you can't program or do security audits, which BTW hardened-php will do if you pay them, then you risk getting hacked.

    If you use Windows 95 to browse the Internet you risk your computer being compromised.

    Like I said before get a job and you will understand the argument. The quality of the language has nothing to do with the size of the paycheck. If anything it's the opposite because there tends to be less demand for the newest language and newest technologies.

  21. Re:Hmm, so... on Humans Hardwired to Believe in Supernatural Deity? · · Score: 1

    Then why do athiests attempt to stop religious believes. All the athiests I know tend to be the most religious about not believing in a religion. They tend to state that faith is harmful especially when talking about their children. What about remove the In God we trust movement. Aren't theses athiests or am I as confused as an agnostic. *grin*

  22. Re:faith on Humans Hardwired to Believe in Supernatural Deity? · · Score: 2, Interesting

    By the same logic, faith should end when science disproves something that faith is held in. Of course, it doesn't.

    Not always the case. Religion just tends to be slow in accepting the prove. Science tends to not disprove things. You can disprove a hypothesis but that only effects a theory. Theories tend to be positive in verbiage.

    There are not many who still believe the world is flat. But that took a while to accept as an example of this

    Even your "inspiration" is a faith of some sort. In your case it's a faith in yourself.

    If I am to understand you correctly, you have so much knowledge about the Universe that anybody who has faith in something is beneath you?

    I'm not flaming you. Just food for thought before you imply that most of the world is stupid.

  23. Re:In defence of PHP on Month of PHP Bugs Has Begun · · Score: 1

    Yes, lots of people writing code in their parents' basements have a QA department. Brilliant idea.

    Thank you for proving my point. It's kids in the basement not the language. Or wait do you fall in to that category

    No, it's about not picking the worst language - in this case, PHP.

    So basically yeah. You are in your parents basement. How can you determine the point I am trying to make? You can make your own point but you can't tell me mine.

    Tell you what. Go get a job as programmer in a shop that already has a working product then come talk to me.

  24. Re:In defence of PHP on Month of PHP Bugs Has Begun · · Score: 1

    So do you have a trick to make all programmers suddenly experienced? No? Well, how about we have programming languages try to catch their worst mistakes in the meanwhile? Actually yes there is trick it's called a QA department which actually improves the quality of the programmer over time. As an equal argument we should all use IE 6 because it renders poor HTML better then Safari. No that's not correct :-) Let me guess you are C hater as well as a PHP hater. Never mind the fact that language of choice is probably written in C. My original point is that it's not just a matter of picking the "best" language. If you already have a code base in one language it's hard to justify spending the money to switch. It's much easier to just fix the code you have in hand.
  25. Re:Defective by Design? on Month of PHP Bugs Has Begun · · Score: 1

    Arrg notice my on typo. That should be can't duplicate this.