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User: peter303

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  1. 90% my internet activity is reading short messages on Slashdot Asks: Do You Want a Smart Watch? · · Score: 1

    You wouldnt create content on a smart watch. But most of the time I look on the computer to read mail/texts, news and weather. I dont need to sit a desk or pull a lump out of pocket to do this.

  2. reproduction & metabolism evolved separately? on Hints of Life's Start Found In a Giant Virus · · Score: 1

    Then merged to become life as we know it. This is a hypothesis proposed by some science scientists like Robert Hazen.
    Although we dont see pre-life metabolic fossils, some viruses could be pre-life reproductive fossils.

  3. save the space station first! on Buzz Aldrin Pressures Obama For New Space Exploration Initiative · · Score: 1

    In Bush's original terminiation of the space shuttle program the US was supposed have a shuttle replacement by this year. Now the earliest is 2018 with some suspecting more like 2021 or so. The recession and tea party politics stretched out replacement spending programs. NASA has order Soyuz seats through 2017 at a very high price. Russian factories need a three year advance order to build new capsules and rockets.

    The rated lifetime of the ISS somewhere between 2020 and 2030. Russia is not committing past 2020 due to neo-cold war politics. A catstophic failure like that of the solar panel position bearings a few years back could end the ISS because there isnt launch capacity for large replacements. The tea party faction in the US is blah toward the space program and ISS too.

  4. Most likely they read plans online about modified on TSA Prohibits Taking Discharged Electronic Devices Onto Planes · · Score: 1

    TSA tends to react to threads rather than speculate on new ones. This doesn't mean the other side is posting speculative plans too that they may not build.

  5. mystery where most anthropengic CO2 goes on NASA Launching Satellite To Track Carbon · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Less than half what humans create in hydrocarbon buring and cement making stays in the atmosphere. The ocean is suspected as the major sink, as it turns into something like soda. A more active plant biopshere could be another sink.

    Furthermore we dont know all the non-human sources. Is there a significant amount being released from melting permafrost marshes? Some onsite studies suggest the possibility. Volcanoes, melting sedimate methane hydrates too. This satellite could help constrain unkown sources and sinks.

    The resuting data is likely to fuel both pro and anti AGW factions. A significant group prefers not to know whatis happening at all and blocked these kind of satellites in the 1990s and 2000s. I wish to know what is happening.

  6. $99 price point on Ask Slashdot: What Would It Take For You To Buy a Smartwatch? · · Score: 1

    Like modern tablets started at $500, with decent ones around $200 now. There will be a shake-out in smartwatch feature sets and manufacturing economies of scale. You probably dont need a camera on a watch as some have tried.

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

    Species means you cannot have fertile interbreeding. But we could and did interbreed. Up to 5% of European and Asian genes are neadertal.

    As discoveries accumlate it looks more and more like neadertal did most of same cultural things as homo double-sapiens: composite tools, fire, language, art, clothing, etc. The degree of culture may have been different.

    It also appears neadertal had larger and more complex brains than double-sapiens.

  8. only 46% of Americans work on Workaholism In America Is Hurting the Economy · · Score: 1

    146M out of 315M according to the BLS. Its 59% percent if you only look at working age adults. 26M of those 146M are parttime too.

  9. one part in 200,000,000 on Evidence of a Correction To the Speed of Light · · Score: 1

    Distance to Magellanic Cloud (158K LY) divided by 7.7 hours. Light travels 300,000,000 meters a second. So that would be a delta of a couple feet per second. I'd think we'd see something large in our solar system.

  10. Romans had steam-powered robotic toys on How Disney Built and Programmed an Animatronic President · · Score: 1

    Play out scenes in mythology or props in plays. Perhaps they learned steam technology from building hot baths in every city. They never industrialized this technology however. I was quicker and cheaper to use slaves.

  11. Colorado has about a 25% error rate on Prisoners Freed After Cops Struggle With New Records Software · · Score: 3, Interesting

    An audit found this after the murder of Corrections Chief a couple years ago by someone let out early. The error rate is mostly due the complexity of readjusting sentences for new infractions in prison and good behavior credit. The errors are both longer and shorter.

  12. Paul Asente's Stanford masters project on X Window System Turns 30 Years Old · · Score: 3, Informative

    Paul and his adviser, whom I forget, wrote it in the early 1980s at Stanford. MIT liked it and decided to manage its development. It was after Xerox Parc and Apollos distributed graphics system, but before Sun, Apple and MicroSoft. Following Unix's minimalist toolkit naming convention "X" was the command stream and "W" the display api. Our Stanford computer joined in at version #5 on a VAX. It was commercially supperted around version 10 by DEC and Sun. And "froze" at version 11, going into 2nd and 3rd digit numbering after that.

    There was always the intent to make it objected-oriented, hence the tootlkit kludge called Motif. The early 80s was in flux over OO languages Xerox MESA, way-to-slow Smalltalk, ObjectPascal, etc. C++ and ObjectiveC wouldnt be around for a few more years.

  13. hearing this rumor for 20 years on Chinese-Built Cars Are Coming To the US Next Year · · Score: 1

    Then either they dont come or pass US import standards.

  14. I taught myself programming and did fine on Average HS Student Given Little Chance of AP CS Success · · Score: 1

    Many good software engineers I know did the same. I passed throught the educational system before a lot of this material was distilled into coursework. With all the public resources out there now- half the MOOCs are on CS topics- its even easier for a motivated person to learn things than when I did. I wish people would stop whining about education.

  15. federal employee mining with gov computers to on Bitcoin Security Endangered By Powerful Mining Pool · · Score: 1

    Reported last week. Reprimanded, but not fired. Resulting bitcoins were about 10% fof the computer cost.

  16. quite a rapid flyby on NASA's Horizons Spacecraft To Probe Pluto Moon For Underground Ocean · · Score: 5, Interesting

    In order to get the probe there in the career lifetimes of the investigators and minimize decay of the power source and instruments, this probe has the fastest velocity of any probe so far. It took only eight hours to pass the Moon's orbit. That gives it about a three day window to make measurements before heading off into the Kuiper belt (and 2nd plutoid if they can find one soon).

  17. Re:So how old then? on Why the Moon's New Birthday Means the Earth Is Older Than We Thought · · Score: 2

    Some isotopic ages are accurate to four decimal places. Sixity million years is the third decimal place.

    The moon-out-Earth hypothesis is the predominate lunar creation hypothesis these days for several reasons. But an unusually old mineral on the Moon or Earth could void that hypothesis. thats part of the reason scientists are always checking.

  18. outgassing vs comets ocean filling hypotheses on New Evidence For Oceans of Water Deep In the Earth · · Score: 1

    Evidence for both. This study leans toward outgassing.

  19. incipient antlers on my forehead on Study: Male Facial Development Evolved To Take Punches · · Score: 1

    The bones feels a little pointy around there.

  20. much of that evidence underwater on DNA Study: First Farmers Were Also Sailors · · Score: 1

    People settled further out on the continental shelf near the seashore before the last glaciers melted. Sea level was significantly lower.

    Archeology tends to underestimate the first time a technology is developed. Only a few may have ben using it in now-lost areas the first centuries. For example genetic evidence suggest body lie and clothing developed nearly 80K years ago. But we have sewing artifacts less than half that period.

  21. I never felt right after tonsillectomy on General Anesthesia Exposure In Infancy Causes Long-Term Memory Deficits · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This is just an anecdote, not science. But that was the only time I had a general at age 5. That procedure was very common in those days. I never felt as good a muscular coordination aftwards as before. I am used to it after all these decades.

  22. He has already been deposed in lawsuits on GM Names and Fires Engineers Involved In Faulty Ignition Switch · · Score: 1

    Assuming that was under the corporate umbrella at the time

  23. why would any person assume this didnt happen? on NSA Collecting Millions of Faces From Web Images · · Score: 1

    People would have to be incredibly naive to assume the worlds government intelligence agencies and commercial intelligence are not collected and analyzing any data they can.

  24. "Wired" suggested this in 1990s on NSA Collecting Millions of Faces From Web Images · · Score: 1

    They suggested that any public be able to access public camera feeds. That is the spy targets spy on the spyers. The writing was n the wall then with video prices dropping, you could install thousands of cameras everywhere. Many businesses and police do so.

  25. Linux on PC hardware killed Sun on After the Sun (Microsystems) Sets, the Real Stories Come Out · · Score: 1

    Opensource GNU/Linux software emulated much of the fabulous SunOS. Sun could not compete in hardware price.
    My current company has always used the UNIX platform sinc eits start in thel late 80s First we used IBM PowerPC, then that plus Sun, then Sun plus Linex, and finallung Linux64 alone.