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User: WillKemp

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  1. You seem to be asking a question, but it's not clear exactly what you're asking. I'd suggest you look at the html source of your comment (try "inspect" in Chrome) and then google "rel nofollow". That might help. It might at least stop you pointlessly spamming forums.

  2. Re:Lawsuits... on Self-Driving Delivery Robots To Hit Sidewalks of London In 2016 (thestack.com) · · Score: 1

    [......] what do you figure the odds are someone won't give it a good kick or otherwise find ways to abuse it?

    This is London we're talking about, so it's guaranteed that will happen. A lot. The other thing that's guaranteed to happen is they'll get stolen - then probably sold as scrap.

  3. Re:first! on Cities Wasting Millions of Taxpayer's Money In Failed IoT Pilots · · Score: 1
  4. Soon on How Long Until We Have a Home Robot That Lives Up To the Hype? · · Score: 1

    I'll give you a clue... It'll be powered by cold fusion.

  5. Re:Wow - who likes it that hot? on Researchers: The Thermostat In Your Office May Be Sexist · · Score: 1

    If 24C is a suitable medium and the men would prefer 21C, doesn't that imply that the women would prefer 27C - that's sounds pretty hot.

    I'm a man and i'd prefer 30C.

    I often have to go outside and stand in the sun to thaw out - luckily i work in Darwin (in the Australian tropics) and it mostly is about 30C outside.

  6. Re:"in a western factory" on Volkswagen Factory Worker Killed By a Robot · · Score: 1

    "Western" is reserved for North and South America since it is "west" of the Atlantic. Eastern would be China, Japan, India, etc.

    "Western" is a euphemism for ethnically European.

    It is quite distinct from the "western hemisphere", which is a euphemism for the Americas. Technically speaking, parts of Europe and Africa are in the western hemisphere, as well as part of Russia and some Pacific islands, but when people say "the western hemisphere", that's not what they mean.

  7. Re:Who buys them? on Is the End of Government Acceptance of Homeopathy In Sight? · · Score: 1

    To them, one cold remedy is the same as another.

    To anyone who knows anything much about health, one cold remedy is the same as another. A cold is caused by a virus and, apart from interferon, there is no remedy for viral infections like that. All cold remedies are placebos.

  8. Re:Does it matter? on Is the End of Government Acceptance of Homeopathy In Sight? · · Score: -1, Troll

    I went to the chemist a while back to buy some ibprofen, the chemist suggested a homeopathic, insisting it was just as good. If I hadn't been educated about homeopathy, I would have probably bought the homeopathic crap.

    Recent research has shown that most over the counter painkillers are ineffective - i.e., no more use than homeopathics, exhibiting only a placebo effect. However there's nothing in homeopathic "medicine" that's likely to make you sick, but the same isn't true of analgesics. Homeopathics may not do anything, but they may do less harm than other "medicines", which also don't do anything.

  9. Re:Ask these folks... on How To Store Your Data For 1 Million Years · · Score: 1

    *to sequence the genes*

  10. Re:Ask these folks... on How To Store Your Data For 1 Million Years · · Score: 1

    It doesn't matter what it's expressed as - or if it's expressed at all - to get the data back out of the DNA, you need complex equipment to sequenes the genes. Then you have to find the data among all the "noise".

  11. Re:Long term storage? on How To Store Your Data For 1 Million Years · · Score: 1

    It seems some cave paintings are older.

  12. Re:Genetic memory.... on How To Store Your Data For 1 Million Years · · Score: 1

    What strange confusion of ideas has lead you to consider such a ridiculous notion?

    My money's on marijuana.

  13. Re:Ask these folks... on How To Store Your Data For 1 Million Years · · Score: 1

    How does it know what's "critical" to our survival?[......]

    "It" doesn't need to know. If it's not there, that gene can't get passed on, as the organism doesn't survive.

  14. Re:Ask these folks... on How To Store Your Data For 1 Million Years · · Score: 1

    The medal box is empty at the moment, but we're expecting a shipment any day. Yours will be on its way to you as soon as they come in.

    (I also live in the country - in northern Australia - and my water comes from the sky, via my roof and a rainwater tank. There's millions of acres of savannah woodland around here, and very few people, no town water or sewerage. I'm close to 60. And, no, I don't want a medal, thanks.)

  15. Re:Ask these folks... on How To Store Your Data For 1 Million Years · · Score: 1

    Our future generations will probably not even know about global warming, or that the threat even existed. After all, do you know anything about events, which were averted, 500 years ago?

    Tbey also may not know about the deforestation and soil erosion, but they'll live with the consequences of it - just as we do today.

  16. Re:Ask these folks... on How To Store Your Data For 1 Million Years · · Score: 1

    [......] It would be really handy to have a durable means to store that information that I could retrieve without having to completely rebuild an advanced technological society first

    Good luck reading data stored in DNA under those circumstances!

  17. Re:Ever wonder on How To Store Your Data For 1 Million Years · · Score: 1

    Where animals instinctual behaviors come from?

    Wikipedia in their genes?

  18. Re:reasons on Why PowerPoint Should Be Banned · · Score: 1

    You don't read slides. If you do that, you are doing it wrong.

    You don't read slides. If you do that, your audience will go to sleep.

  19. Re:Hah! on Internet Explorer's Successor, Project Spartan, Is Called Microsoft Edge · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Yeah, one thing Microsoft does well - the only thing - is their anticompetitive strategy.

  20. Re:times smaller,,, on Cosmologists Find Eleven Runaway Galaxies · · Score: 1

    Wait, why would that be confusing?

    It's not confusing, it's illogical.

  21. Re:times smaller,,, on Cosmologists Find Eleven Runaway Galaxies · · Score: 1

    "Times smaller", "times less" and their ilk are terrible phrases.

    I agree - but if i ever express that, nobody understands the problem. I'm glad i'm not the only weird one!

    The issue is how small is it to start with? We can easily express how large something is - there are units for that - but there are no units for smallness. So if thing A is 10 times smaller than thing B, how small is thing B? You can tell me how big it is, but you can't tell me how small it is.

    Yeah, we all know what it means - but that doesn't make the illogicalness of it grate any less.

  22. Re:Is that the best sales pitch they can offer? on Microsoft and Miele Team Collaborate To Cook Up an IoT Revolution · · Score: 1

    I fail to see where any of this is saving me much time or effort compared to what I can do today.

    It'll be like Slashdot's autorefresh gimmick - maximum annoyance for minimum benefit. It interrupts my reading to save me absolutely zero effort.

  23. Re:Objectivist utopia on The Dystopian Lake Filled By the World's Tech Sludge · · Score: 2

    Coincidentally, a Facebook friend posted this video of the place: Baotou toxic lake.

    As i suspected, it's a standard - although huge - tailings dam. Anywhere there's a metalliferous mine, you'll find one (or more) of these. I've only worked in one mine (in Australia) and their tailings dam had been incompetently built and managed - and it leaks into the surrounding soil and water table. I suspect they're like that everywhere, as mining companies only care about money, not the environment, and governments turn a blind eye.

    The dust masks worn by the people in this video are rather melodramatic - and useless. It doesn't look dusty and the masks will have no effect on the sulfur dioxide and other gases given off by the tailings.

  24. Re:Really? on Ask Slashdot: What Makes a Good Work Environment For Developers and IT? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The first place i would go would be to my staff. There's only a few of them, just ask them what they want from a manager - that'd be a fucking first!

  25. Instil? on New Yarn Conducts Electricity · · Score: 0

    [......] dipped in silver nanoparticles to instill conductivity [......]

    instil
    verb
    1. gradually but firmly establish (an idea or attitude) in a person's mind.

    2. put (a substance) into something in the form of liquid drops.

    Which sense of instil did you mean?