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User: FalcDot

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Comments · 66

  1. Re:Something weird just happened ... on Teaching Fractions: The Tootsie Roll Is the New Pie · · Score: 1

    Technically, every Nobel Prize also rewards all the winner's teachers...

  2. Re:Completely off Base on The Legal Purgatory at the US Border: Detained, Searched, and Interrogated · · Score: 1

    The problem is that one of the rights you do not have is the right to go wherever you please.

    Thus, the government is not infringing on your rights. They are requiring that you waive certain of your rights in order to obtain the right to enter their territory. Merely protesting against it won't help.

  3. Re:And the survival-selection hypothesis would be. on Synchronized Virtual Reality Heartbeat Triggers Out-of-Body Experiences · · Score: 1

    You're coming at this from the wrong side. You're assuming this exists to allow a consciousness to be detached from a physical body. I'd say it's more likely that this allows a consciousness to form, to emerge, from any and all 'proper' physical bodies.

    In other words, the development of a foetus just needs to create the physical neurons in the brain. Conscience will then emerge from the firing neurons on its own. And because it wasn't tied down to the actual physical body to begin with, some leeway remains to project it outside.

    You're asking how we evolved from a consciousness tied to a body to one that isn't. What proof do you have that consciousness was ever tied to a body to start with?

  4. Re:Content moving to apps more of an impediment on EFF Makes Formal Objection to DRM In HTML5 · · Score: 1

    No, they do not sell the episodes individually because they want people to buy a whole subscription.

  5. Re:Wow on Taking the Pain Out of Debugging With Live Programming · · Score: 2

    Sounds more like they reinvented the Python console...

    Or, you know, bash.

    Any shell, reallly.

  6. Re:Billions of Fricken Dollars on Scary Toothbrush Prompts Shutdown of World's Busiest Airport · · Score: 1

    Except that it's not only about the safety of the passengers, it's also about the safety of all the people living and working in places where terrorists might crash the plane into.

  7. Re:FTFA on WSJ Says Pro-ACTA Forces Helped Drive Anti-ACTA Reactions · · Score: 4, Informative

    At least quote the whole paragraph, if nothing else it makes discussion *here* a whole lot easier.

    “The agreement is seeking to address a number of very different issues of which some are serious problems of public health and public safety, for example trade in fake medicine,” Ms. Schaake said. “But that issue doesn’t compare to the alleged cost to society of online piracy. It seeks to kill 20 birds with one stone. It risks not solving the legitimate concerns but causing incredible collateral damage.”

    I read this as indicating that both issues are simply in different leagues when it comes to importance. The phrasing "alleged cost [...] of online privacy" seems to indicate she sees the fake meds as much much more important and that she's worried that the inclusion of anti-piracy stuff is harming these legitimate concerns.

  8. Should be Android on iOS Vs. Android: Which Has the Crashiest Apps? · · Score: 2

    The thing is, it really should be Android. I mean, under Android you're free to develop and distribute an app designed just for crashing the phone. I'm sure such a thing would never get past the Apple censors.

  9. Re:There would be no healthcare crisis in the U.S. on The Problem With Personalized Medicine · · Score: 1

    Did you read that article you linked to?

    "Cancer survival in black men and women was systematically and substantially lower than in white men and women in all 16 states and six metropolitan areas included."

    Tell me that doesn't show that the more money you have in the US, the better your chances of survival.

  10. Re:2012-12-21 on In Bolivia, a Supervolcano Is Rising · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Because disasters that have passed are no longer newsworthy, and disasters scheduled for a hundred years from now aren't newsworthy yet.

    In other words, if it isn't about "more or less now", noone would care and you wouldn't hear anything about it.

  11. Re:IN CATS on Hair Growth Signal Dictated By Fat Cells · · Score: 2

    Women have testosterone, just not as much as men.

  12. Re:Uh, unless you're a programmer... on Microsoft Counts Down To XP Death · · Score: 1

    Your post is mixing two different points: open vs. closed source, and projects done by a whole team vs. a single guy. You can't compare closed source software developped by a big company that's staking its survival on the commercial success of said software with an open source hobby project of a single guy, and then make a general conclusion that closed source is better...

  13. Re:Next you will see on Drug Catapult Found At US-Mexico Border · · Score: 1
  14. Re:(0.999...)st Post! on Proving 0.999... Is Equal To 1 · · Score: 1

    No, 0.999... IS exactly equal to 1.

    Which is why floor(0.999...) should be exactly equal to floor(1), ie. 1

  15. Re:It is a phone on Chinese 'Apple Peel' Turns iPods Into iPhones · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Except that my Touch needs to be recharged maybe once a week, depending on exactly how much I use it for gaming on the subway. My ordinary cell phone also lasts about a week on a charge. Yet if I were to combine both, I'd end up needing to recharge it every day. And I'd better have my charger around 'cause it might not last through the entire day.

  16. Why 5 years? on Boeing Gets $89M To Build Drone That Can Fly For 5 Years Straight · · Score: 1

    Maybe it's just the fact that English isn't my native tongue, but... Is this 5 year thing a requirement for the project? Or is it just that Boeing estimates such a plane could conceivably fly for 5 years?

    Because I just can't imagine any sort of scenario where something like this absolutely has to stay in the air for 5 straight years and could not be replaced by 2 or 3 of these things doing one-year rotations.

  17. Re:Just reverse it on Tractor Beams Come To Life · · Score: 1

    Nonono, all you reall need is to create a black hole in the right spot so you can use its gravity to bend your light beam in such a way that it hits the object you'll be 'pulling' from behind and hey presto, you're pushing!

  18. Re:Poor solution on 'Leap Seconds' May Be Eliminated From UTC · · Score: 1

    How about the other way round? Define one year as 365 days. Sure, in (365/2)*4 = 730 years we'll have winters in august in the northern hemisphere, but that's not gonna matter to any computer...

  19. Re:Here's hoping they can track down peanut allerg on Researchers Pinpoint Cause of Gluten Allergies · · Score: 1

    Except that we're talking about food allergies here (yes, celiac's isn't an allergy, but the discussion drifted away from that).

    I don't think you can deny that the typical diet of the modern western world has become very different from what it was 100 years ago. Better transportation has allowed us access to more and more 'foreign' foods and keeps making them cheaper and thus available to more families.

    By your logic, the fact that people have become exposed to more and more different food allergens should mean food allergies should be declining. Which I doubt they are...

  20. Re:Science and Intuition defeating Fun Math on The Tuesday Birthday Problem · · Score: 1

    Do it with actual numbers and not percentages, because you're getting tripped up by the fact that your total population changes.

    Take 1000 families, with two children. Assuming a perfect distribution, every possible combination of boy/girl for both children results is represented 250 times. Note that the actual order of the children is largely irrelevant, but if you ignore order you still have 250 families with two boys, 250 with two girls and 500 with one of each.

    Now you take the next step. You reveal that at least one child must be a boy. This means you eliminate 250 families from your population, namely those with 2 girls. You're left with a population of 750, 500 of which have a girl as well and 250 who have another boy.

    Now, pick one family at random from those 750. The odds of getting one with two boys is 250/750 or 1/3.

    Yes, 1/4 of (all families with 2 children) has 2 boys, but 1/3 of (all families with 2 children AND at least one boy) has two boys.

  21. Re:It's the database, silly on UK Home Office Set To Scrap National ID Cards · · Score: 1

    You should never have to prove your identity, you should have to prove that you have the right to be doing whatever you are doing - role based access control.

    I fail to see how you could ever achieve this without also proving your identity. Let's say you walk into a high-security area. You produce all the documents needed to prove that Jim Bobbins has the right to be there. Should you be allowed in? No, because you've given no proof at all that you are, in fact, Jim Bobbins.

  22. Re:What's the problem with keyboards? on OLPC's XO-3 Prototype Tablet Coming In 2010 · · Score: 1

    Feh, just give each kid one of these instead. Can't add too much to the cost, right?

  23. Re:a filesystem for flash devices on Linux 2.6.34 Released · · Score: 1

    As long as it's not a flashvertisement...

  24. Re:Input on WoW On an iPad Via Gaikai · · Score: 1

    As far as WoW is concerned, I'd say that movement would be tricky. There's click-to-move so that should work, but it's a bit clunky. Chatting too. But combat, just clicking buttons... That'd work better than a keyboard.

  25. Printers... on Confessions of a SysAdmin · · Score: 1

    I don't really mind computers.

    I do hate printers, though. All those stupid moving parts, paper that needs to get in and then get out, the heat, the toner... I swear it's all just waiting to fail!