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User: History's+Coming+To

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  1. Re:And in other news... on Raspberry Pi's Eben Upton: "Programming Will Make You a Better Doctor" · · Score: 1

    Indeed. Programming is one of those exercises, like cryptic crosswords or playing chess, which simply gets you to think logically, with a little creativity thrown in. Doesn't matter what you do, keeping your brain active with logical problems is known to boost your ability in multiple different fields.

  2. Re:That's not a drone on Drone Comes Within 200 Feet of Airliner Over New York · · Score: 1

    Your average RC pilot is no longer all that aware of the CAA/FAA etc regs, when the toys are just a few hundred dollars it no longer takes a prolonged period of building up your experience and saving up for the next toy, you can just buy and fly. We're seeing the same problem in kitesurfing at the moment, people who buy the kit (usually unsuitable for a newbie) from eBay and just decide they're going to be a kitesurfer - no training, no experience, no hanging around with people and learning the basics. They can't keep themselves safe while launching the kite, let alone have an awareness of the basics of flight regulations and flying kites near airports.

  3. Re:Lots of cheap publicity on Tesla Motors Loses Appeal Against BBC's Top Gear · · Score: 2

    A lot of "hour long programs" turn out to be half an hour long when you watch them without ad breaks on the BBC however, so 40 mins on the BBC. You know what really confuses Americans in the UK? Watching the Superbowl without an ad break in it.

  4. Re:I'm not even a fan, but on Orson Scott Card's Superman Story Shelved After Homophobia Controversy · · Score: 1

    This is especially common, and especially important with, SF. Look at all the classic SF authors:

    Heinlein: right wing bordering on Fascism. Stephen Baxter very cleverly follows the ideology in the Destiny's Child series, and paints a biologically successful H. Superior, but isn't shy about the downside. While I doubt Baxter share's Heinlein's political philosophy, they both ask the question "are there elements of aggressive, expansionist policies which by definition must be adapted for the long term (post-Sun) survival of our species?"

    SF has a long tradition of exploring human themes, however good or bad they may seem now. Personally I have no problem with homosexuality, I see it as a completely normal sub-group of humanity (meaning a minority rather than "worse" in any way), but if an established SF writer who's books I previously enjoyed writes something then I'm going to judge them on their writing, not their personal views.

    If he oversteps the mark with his arguments against homosexuality then I'll get involved and argue back directly against him. But it's a different matter to SF.

  5. Re:I'm impressed on Microsoft: the 'Scroogled' Show Must Go On · · Score: 1

    Nope, some paid features are available free to high rated users, like a little tick box to turn off the adverts for example.

  6. Re:Lots of cheap publicity on Tesla Motors Loses Appeal Against BBC's Top Gear · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Nope, it was one of a long series of programmes that get made because of the licence fee. Some don't make a profit and get canned, some don't make a profit and stick around because the BBC are legally obliged to broadcast them (educational, religious, political and news programming for example), and some are syndicated around the world, or sold for remake under licence (Doctor Who, Top Gear, Red Dwarf's original series etc). The latter subsidises the former - remember, we're only paying about US$150 per household per year, and there is pretty much zero advertising to fund it or get in the way of us actually enjoying a whole episode of something. Pretty good deal really. I'm with Mitch Benn on this.

  7. Re:I'm impressed on Microsoft: the 'Scroogled' Show Must Go On · · Score: 1

    People with consistently high ratings get to see articles ahead of everybody else sometimes. I see a few a week, they're in red and you generally get about 15 minutes before it goes live to everybody else.

  8. Re:Cars produce more on State Rep. Says Biking Is Not Earth Friendly Because Breathing Produces CO2 · · Score: 1

    As lots of people have pointed out, the body produced CO2 which is what triggers the breathing reflex, I was working on the OP's basis that we've "erradicated all CO2", including the stuff produced by the body. Astronauts haven't used pure oxygen in a long time, it was initially used because it allowed lower pressure, meaning space suits were easier to move around in, but the fire risk turned out to be way too high, so these days it's simply normal air.

  9. Re:Ahhhhhhh.... on The Pirate Bay Claims It Is Now Hosting From North Korea · · Score: 2

    Precisely. If it was about belief and freedom of information then Torvalds, Doctorow and many like them would be the subject of persecution and legal threats in exactly the same way. The pirate bay breaks the law in many countries, and they are prosecuted as such. It's like whining about freedom of speech when you're committing a clear libel.

  10. Re:Sorry, Prenda on Copyright Trolls Sue Bloggers, Defense Lawyers · · Score: 1

    Generally the losing party has to pay the legal costs of the winning party (i.e. pay for your time if you're representing yourself), I'm not sure whether this counts when the Crown is the one doing the prosecuting however.

  11. Re:Sorry, Prenda on Copyright Trolls Sue Bloggers, Defense Lawyers · · Score: 1

    Inconvenience? I'm pretty sure that defending myself in court is easier than my current job, and in the UK at least I can claim loss of earnings from the litigant when I win the case. I could make quite a nice living from just sitting in court and winning cases which are meant to be inconveniencing me, and you can blog away while you're at it as long as you stay within the law.

  12. Re:Combustion plate on 83-Year-Old Inventor Wins $40,000 3D Printing Competition · · Score: 3, Informative

    Also covered in Stephen Baxter's Titan, page 170-172 in paperback ISBN 9780006498117

  13. Re:Combustion plate on 83-Year-Old Inventor Wins $40,000 3D Printing Competition · · Score: 3, Informative

    See U.S Space-Launch Vehicle Technology, Hunley, 9780813031781, page 196.

  14. Re:Schrodinger would be happy on Physicists Discover a Way Around Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They're measuring the average state of multiple cats. It's not a way around the uncertainty principle, it's a way of building up a statistical picture, which is exactly what QM does. Over-hyped article.

  15. Re:Cars produce more on State Rep. Says Biking Is Not Earth Friendly Because Breathing Produces CO2 · · Score: 1

    I was assuming we're getting rid of all CO2 as OP suggested, including the stuff generated in the lungs as TFA refers to. Yes, you do make your own which is why we tend to see Cheyne Stokes rather than people just dying - at altitude the mechanism is due to reduced partial pressure of atmospheric CO2, so scrubbing all CO2 from the atmosphere could still cause problems in people who are already in O2 debt for whatever reason.

  16. Re:Engineering isn't a secret club on 83-Year-Old Inventor Wins $40,000 3D Printing Competition · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Even the most qualified engineers on the planet sometimes resort to "getting a bigger hammer", or trial and error. You know the Saturn V rocket? One of the biggest and most complex things ever made by humans? They had problems with the combustion plate, basically a big disc of metal that the fuel is sprayed through before igniting. The combustion kept becoming unstable to the point where it was an explosion rather than a burn, and they knew it was something to do with the pattern of holes. No amount of mathematics and computing "power" back then was enough to find a solution, so they took a bunch of plates and drilled holes in them at random until they found one that worked for long enough to launch the vehicle "safely".

  17. Re:Not as strange as it sounds on State Rep. Says Biking Is Not Earth Friendly Because Breathing Produces CO2 · · Score: 1

    The point is that the CO2 you breath out has come from atmospheric and/or food carbon, you're not adding any extra CO2 to the atmosphere, just moving it around a bit. The "dangerous" CO2 is the stuff that's generated from sources which are outside the normal biological cycles, eg fossil fuels. For example, burning wood is carbon neutral on the scale of a few decades - a tree grows extracting CO2 from the atmosphere, which we then release by burning it. The net change in atmospheric CO2 from the planting of the seed to the burning of the wood is zero - on the other hand, the CO2 released by burning coal was extracted from the atmosphere over the course of a few hundred thousand years, we'd need to wait for the equivalent mass of coal to form again before we balanced the sheets.

    Car analogy: burning wood is like regularly spending $100 on maintenance, burning coal is like spending nothing on the car to save money, and waiting for the timing belt to break, destroying the engine.

  18. Re:Cars produce more on State Rep. Says Biking Is Not Earth Friendly Because Breathing Produces CO2 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    That's the last of our problems- we'd all be dead within 72 hours or so. CO2 is required to make the human respiration system work, the breathing reflex is triggered by too much CO2, not by a lack of oxygen, this is why hyperventilating before holding your breath can make you pass out, you scrub lots of CO2 out of your system and then run out of O2 before your brain forces you to inhale. This is also the mechanism behind Cheyne Stokes respiration, where high altitude climbers don't breath enough while they sleep.

    Erradicate all CO2 and you have to consciously breath, on purpose - if you forget, or fall asleep, you're dead.

  19. Re:Was the baby infected? on Researchers Describe First 'Functional HIV Cure' In an Infant · · Score: 1

    The sad thing is that a lot of the cost is down to pharma companies (quite fairly) needing to recoup the substantial R&D involved. I'd like to see the world's governments get together, work out how much the companies are due, buying the licence from them and then distributing free or low cost treatments.

  20. Re:Was the baby infected? on Researchers Describe First 'Functional HIV Cure' In an Infant · · Score: 5, Informative

    The baby was infected, but this is a "functional cure", it works like this: Whilst in-utero the baby receives a certain amount of protection from the mother's immune system and the filtering of the placenta. When it's born it does have the virus, and then the baby's own immune system begins to kick in. At this point, immediately after birth, they begin an aggressive but fairly standard treatment with antiviral medication. This suppresses the virus enough that the immune system then has a fighting chance, and whilst the virus is unlikely to be completely eradicated it is in theory manageable by the immune system for the rest of the baby's life. The virus is still there, but kept to very low levels so developing AIDS or passing the virus on becomes very unlikely.

    This approach may work with adults, but you have to get in there very quickly with the antivirals, so it's more likely to work with, for example, a nurse who gets a needlestick injury than a person who contracted it days before. The developing immune system in infants may also play a part, so this may never be a "functional cure" in adults, but it's certainly a step forward.

    Remember, we don't necessarily need to cure things like HIV and cancer, we just need to keep them at bay until something else kills the patient, that still counts as a functional cure.

  21. Re:16KB storage on Did Steve Jobs Pick the Wrong Tablet Size? · · Score: 1

    I leave deciphering my intention as an exercise for the reader ;)

  22. Re:I'd think it takes two on New Research Sheds Light On the Evolution of Dogs · · Score: 2

    I've long held this view (and have a little archaeological training, so it's not 100% uninformed) - human group behaviour often seems, to me at least, to be closer to that of a dog pack than any of the other apes, so it's not entirely impossible that dogs have been "training" humans just as much as the other way around over the millennia. That said, this is just my gut feeling and I have very little to back it up with - I'm also doubtful that we'll ever find conclusive evidence either way.

  23. Re:Not just a giant iPhone on Did Steve Jobs Pick the Wrong Tablet Size? · · Score: 1

    Bah, yes, problem between brain and finger. Flip it about a bit, you get my meaning.

  24. Re:16KB storage on Did Steve Jobs Pick the Wrong Tablet Size? · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's the oblivious mistake, there's one in every summary, just /. editors doing some subtle trolling to get the comments going.

  25. Re:Not just a giant iPhone on Did Steve Jobs Pick the Wrong Tablet Size? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I find ten inches perfect for one handed use in bed, but going back to tablets you may have a point - VHS won over Betamax (in part) because Sony licensed the technology for porn and Betamax refused to - a parallel with Flash today perhaps?