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User: istartedi

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  1. Re:Oklahoma, as an example on The World Lost an Oklahoma-Sized Area of Forest In 2013, Satellite Data Show · · Score: 4, Informative

    The USA in general has more forest now then it did 100 years ago. The first industrial revolution was really hard on trees. For example, In NorCal there is a town called Guerneville. Next to the Safeway you can read a historical marker that explains it was once called "stumptown". Reason? Redwoods cut down to make railroad ties and other structures. Guerneville is now surrounded by 2nd growth redwood. It looks great, even if you know that it's not the amazing beauty that it must have been before.

  2. Re:Oh this is easy .... on Ask Slashdot: Living Without Social Media In 2015? · · Score: 2

    goto the Bahamas or the Keys

    Are you sure that won't be harmful?

  3. Re:So Germany is not a state? on California Has Become the First State To Get Over 5% of Its Power From Solar · · Score: 1

    In this context, Germany is not a state. In the USA (remember, Slashdot is a US web site, it's in the FAQ) you say "country" when referring to a foreign entity. Germany is a country. California is a state.

  4. Re:Why would a PDP8 be expensive? on Rebuilding the PDP-8 With a Raspberry Pi · · Score: 1

    Absent interference in the market by governments and/or corporations, price is determined by supply and demand, not capability. I can't think of any rational reason for anybody to interfere with the market for PDP8s, so I'm going to assume it's a free market. Although economic theory with its neat little graphs might give one the impression that it's some kind of science, the actual shape of the supply and demand graphs (and thus the equilibrium price) are determined by emotional "ugly bags of mostly water".

  5. Re:Time on Ask Slashdot: What Makes Some Code Particularly Good? · · Score: 1

    Scrolled down for this. I would add, "time and testing" and "testing" usually involves wide distribution. Yes, JPEG, PNG and Open Source compression libraries have had bugs, sometimes very serious ones. I still consider it some of the best code out there. I don't think being able to read the code matters. That's a red herring, unless you need to work on it. If everybody needs to work on it, it's too unfinished to be particularly good code. The only thing I've read in some of these libraries is the headers, and mostly the comments in there. It was literally self-documenting in comments the last time I looked at it. That's some good code.

  6. Re:Only parents should do piloting on Germanwings Plane Crash Was No Accident · · Score: 1

    Well this one is unfortunately easy to refute with data.

    From the linked article: "Al-Batouti was married and had five children".

  7. Re:The design is relatively simple on Feds Attempt To Censor Parts of a New Book About the Hydrogen Bomb · · Score: 1

    A quick look and some googling on that was interesting. It still requires a state-level effort. It definitely doesn't sound "simple". There isn't any tech that will allow meth cookers to turn into uranium cookers, and that's a good thing.

  8. Re:End the Fed! on Energy Company Trials Computer Servers To Heat Homes · · Score: 1

    Not to mention that many diseases were a death sentence in 1913. Sure, health care was cheap. The doctor would take a chicken in trade; but all he had was a black bag. Appendicitis? surgical mortality was much higher. Polio? No vaccine. That's why FDR was in a wheel chair. Today? We can even cure some cancers if we catch them in time. Yeah, paying premiums sucks. I just paid mine today. Hate it; but I have no desire to go back to 1913.

  9. The design is relatively simple on Feds Attempt To Censor Parts of a New Book About the Hydrogen Bomb · · Score: 2

    The design of the bombs is not the problem. Getting fissile material to build the trigger is the problem. Even a large corporation could probably not enrich uranium without attracting attention. Unless the book contains some method that Joe Sixpack can use to leach highly-enriched uranium from tailings or something, it's not a threat.

  10. Re:Pump and dump? on Steve Wozniak Now Afraid of AI Too, Just Like Elon Musk · · Score: 1

    Is "quantum comuting" faster than my pickup truck?

    I don't know. Have you run over any cats lately? "That's not how this works. That's not how any of this works".

  11. Reminds me of my old decision process on A Sucker Is Optimized Every Minute · · Score: 1

    It's been years since I've thought about it. When I was young and first got exposed to the whole concept of "making big decisions" I realized something. The process was like this: 1. Gather data. 2. Make chart of pros-and cons. 3. Come up with some kind of way to weight the data, ultimately arriving at some numbers that suggested the best course of action. 4. Screw it all and go with your gut.

    It's obvious to think that you could cut out the first 3 steps. The big revelation for me was to realize that while steps 1-3 were important, the disappointment I felt over the numerical outcome was important too. It was like there was symbiosis between data and emotion.

    An extreme example of "only looking at numbers" came to me in my late 30s. It was suggested that I should remain on the East Coast because "taxes are high in California".

  12. Tesla's open patents on Ask GM's Exec. Chief Engineer For Electric Vehicles Pam Fletcher a Question · · Score: 2

    Has Tesla's decision to open its patents had any impact on your work?

  13. If I really want to send money to friends... on Facebook Introduces Payment System · · Score: 1

    I already have a system. It works like this: "I'm out of cash, will you pick up this tab?". "Yeah, no problem. I owe you for pizza last night anyway". A long time ago, we were BSing over some beers and jokingly floated the notion of "pizza currency"--an entire economy backed by pizza as a highly perishable store of wealth, thus requiring some unique accommodations. In reality though, "pizza currency" transactions are small dollar figures that tend to cancel out in the long run among true friends. Everybody knows who the mooch is, and unless they have some legitimate reason for being that poor, they're not your friend.

    So. It might be cute to have a hi-tech "friend money ledger" that keeps track of who is in debt, etc.; No actual banking is necessary for that. It could have been done with some Perl script in a few hours, and probably already has been done at some point; but it might do more harm than good to some friendships.

    Aside from that, there's the obvious problem of giving real ACH power to FB; but others have covered that angle nicely.

  14. Re:Or will it? on Self-Driving Car Will Make Trip From San Francisco To New York City · · Score: 1

    I think you may have done a better job of elucidating this than I did when I ranted along similar lines on Slashdot.

    We still don't have a name for this Godwin-like law though, which perhaps is most succinctly formulated as "anything that can be inferred will be inferred". I suppose that would simply make it a corollary of Murphy's Law; but I still think it deserves its own law.

  15. Or will it? on Self-Driving Car Will Make Trip From San Francisco To New York City · · Score: 2, Funny

    Will it, or will it just go off for a few lube jobs and tell us it did that? When AI learns how to cook the books, then I'll be impressed... and scared.

  16. Re:Another explanation-economy is really bad on In Historic Turn, CO2 Emissions Flatline In 2014, Even As Global Economy Grows · · Score: 1

    I would be happier if your links were from some place other than Zero Hedge. They're a broken clock when it comes to economic catastrophe. Sooner or later they'll be right, simply because recessions happen now and then. Sometimes I think that what might happen is that the US economy does really well, people lose interest in doom and gloom. Then, ZH shuts down due to lack of Interest, and just a few weeks later the market crashes 50%. On a smaller scale, that reminds me of Kitco firing John Nadler at the height of the most recent peaks in precious metals. Nadler was a critic of the gold market, if not an actual gold bear. He was repeatedly trashed on sites such as ZH. HIs firing, in retrospect, was a sign of a top.

  17. Another explanation on In Historic Turn, CO2 Emissions Flatline In 2014, Even As Global Economy Grows · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Another explanation is that the global economy has flat-lined or gone into recession. CO2 may be a leading economic indicator for the next crash. GDP figures are more easily faked than CO2 levels.

  18. Re:STOP SAYING BLOCKCHAIN on IBM Reported To Be Developing Blockchain-Based Currency Transaction System · · Score: 1

    Let met guess. You're a "cracker" who run "gnu/linux" from a small dock on a lonely island, from which the ship has sailed.

  19. Re:Bullshit on In 10 Years, Every Human Connected To the Internet Will Have a Timeline · · Score: 1

    The internet is certainly better off without the 50% which is complete bullshit.

    50%? You're way under-estimating, especially if you go on a straight SNR ratio. One stupid auto-playing video that should have been a brief essay (happens on Yahoo all the time) is enough to make a page almost 100% pure bullshit.

  20. Re:Ban Jargon? Seriously? on Lauren Ipsum: A Story About Computer Science and Other Improbable Things · · Score: 1

    Well, whatever. She has as good a chance at banning jargon as she does banning creole. It's human nature for distinct groups to communicate in distinct ways. As a man who has run afoul of jargon (I really embarrassed myself with "side effects" at some point) I didn't get bent out of shape about it. I learned and moved on. If you want to empower women, teach them how not to lose confidence when they look stupid. If looking stupid discourages you, software is no place to be. Anybody who has been programming for a while should have quite a few stories about how some bug made them feel stupid. Indeed, "all bugs are shallow" is a cliche, and yet they continue to bug us.

  21. Why not run with it? on Star Trek Fans Told To Stop "Spocking" Canadian $5 Bill · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Why not issue commemorative $5 notes? Commemorative coins are issued in the US, although actors aren't usually on them. There is, AFAIK, no commemorative US or Canadian note like that. Stamps are more liberal in that regard. I'm sure a lot of conservatives would hate it, say it's "undignified", blah, blah... It's Canada so they might even have to get permission from the Queen; but if they don't, then why not innovate? Come on Canada. You're so cool in many other ways. Make it happen.

  22. In Search Of... on Leonard Nimoy Dies At 83 · · Score: 2

    In Search Of... consolation...

  23. Article summary on What Happens When Betelgeuse Explodes? · · Score: 1

    Worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, as bright as a quarter moon for a while, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry.

    There would be considerably more worrying were it not for Slashdot filters.

  24. Based on a study on Use Astrology To Save Britain's Health System, Says MP · · Score: 1

    Based on a study that shows the average Briton doesn't take nearly enough placebo.

  25. Re:I hereby declare... on Fedcoin Rising? · · Score: 1

    I would say "sold" but with BTC in the $250 range that works out to roughly $0.000025 so it isn't worth the hassle of setting up an account, and it's too small to withdraw. Besides, agents of His Majesty Felipe VI are the ones who really need to do the collecting.