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User: prograde

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Comments · 107

  1. Re:Well... on Ask Slashdot: How To Make a DVD-Rental Store More Relevant? · · Score: 1

    ...and have knowledgeable staff, who can respond to a customer who says, "I really liked this one, do you have any more that are similar?" (even if they're just plugging the title into an online service). Customer service is the main difference between B&M vs online.

  2. Re:And once we have a few gigatonnes of CO2 on New CO2 Harvester Could Help Scrub the Air · · Score: 1

    Your sarcasm, sir, hints at the real solution. Clean, cheap energy (CCE) solves it all. Unfortunately, CCE is currently beyond our means. But with CCE, everything else falls in to place: we can recapture atmospheric CO2, we can desalinate sea water as a source of freshwater, we can produce fertilizers for our crops. But, again, CCE is currently beyond our means. My money is on solar for CCE...only time will tell.

  3. Laziness FTW on Bell Canada To Stop Internet Throttling · · Score: 1

    I've had Bell internet at my home for 7 years now. I'm still on the original plan: 1Mb/s down, unlimited bandwidth. I know that I could upgrade to a better speed, but that would mean loosing the "unlimited" part. As it is, Netflix, at the highest quality setting, works just fine. What more could I ask?

  4. How Efficient? on Scientists Create World's Smallest Steam Engine · · Score: 1

    The article fails to quote an efficiency rating...are smaller heat engines more efficient than macro-scale ones?

  5. unless... on Fighting Mosquitoes With GM Mosquitoes · · Score: 1

    This sounds pretty well wrapped up, but I'm not convinced. Females who choose not to breed with the GM males will have normal healthy offspring. Any mating preference that causes the females to choose non-GM males will become highly successful. It doesn't matter what that mating preference is: if the males have a different colouring, a different smell, if they flap their wings a little too fast...it could be anything. And it doesn't have to apply *only* to the GM males, this trait could cause the females to select against non-GM males as well. The point is that any female with this selection preference will be highly successful since their female offspring will have wings and will thrive in an environment with very little intra-species competition.

    This move could, at best, introduce an evolutionary bottleneck (where genetic diversity is suddenly greatly reduced), but I wouldn't expect it to cause extinction. TFA reports an 80% reduction of the A. aegypti population on the Grand Cayman Island in 2009, but I'd be interested to know if the population has bounced back and if the same GM males would have a similar effect again today. I'm guessing that the present population would tend to avoid the GM males next time around.

  6. Lowell on Ask Slashdot: Science Sights To See? · · Score: 1

    The Lowell observatory has a nice property and good tour, including the telescope and the original photographic plates used to discover Pluto. If you're going to the Grand Canyon, it's pretty close. You can do it in a half-day. I suggest reading, "How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming" by Mike Brown to round out the experience (or the audiobook, since you're driving).

  7. Re:Real units? on The Weight of an e-Book · · Score: 1

    Oh, the irony. The parent posted as an AC. 37892084 is the post ID. Thus, I refute your assertion that Slashdot is for smart people, you must be new here.

  8. downside? on OpenOffice Is Dying (And IBM Won't Help) · · Score: 1

    a prelude to the killing of Lotus Symphony

    I fail to see a down-side to this.

  9. iPad on Linux In JavaScript, With Persistent Storage · · Score: 2

    Ok, that was, by far, the easiest way to get Linux running on my iPad.

  10. General Relativity on Faster-Than-Light Particle Results To Be Re-Tested · · Score: 2

    I can only assume that they've corrected for General Relativity. Everyone seems to be pointing to the obvious potential sources of error: knowing when the neutrinos are created, knowing when they arrive, knowing the distance that they've traveled.

    What about variations in the Earth's gravitational field between the two clocks? Or along the path that the neutrinos follow? You can't call the planet a point-source of gravity - the density of matter is quite lumpy.

    I haven't seen a back-of-the-envelope calculation for this...maybe it's orders of magnitudes impossible? Would it require a tiny black hole to throw the timing off by 60ns...or would a big uranium deposit be enough? I could probably do the Lorenz transforms for Special Relativity myself, but General is a bit beyond me!

  11. Re:Truly Remarkable on What You Eat Affects Your Genes · · Score: 2

    Since it is such a potentially high profile experiment, the cynic in me wonders why it didn't get published in a higher profile journal. Of course, not every important discovery is published in Nature or Science, but one wonders.

    I hate to nit-pick, but it was published in Nature

  12. not a new concept on Canadian Library to Loan Out People · · Score: 1

    This kind of idea has been around for ages, for example: the University of Guelph's Living Library.

  13. Re:All foam, no beer on Do 'Ultracool' Brown Dwarfs Surround Us? · · Score: 1

    Why would we use these as stepping stones? Is there an advantage to it? I don't understand why we would use them is all.

    Because they are closer. from the article:

    our nearest known neighbor will soon be a brown dwarf rather than Proxima Centauri.

    So, we could stop off at one of these on the way to Proxima Centauri.

  14. Re:This will not work on Scientists Develop New Method To Improve Passwords · · Score: 1

    ...because I am not the only one to use that specific login.

    I cannot think of a single circumstance where this is necessary or a good idea.

    Excuses for why is it the way it is don't count.

  15. Sounds like a deal on NASA Buys 12 Seats On Soyuz · · Score: 1

    That's less than $1M per kilogram, sounds like a bargain.

  16. Re:Distillation? on Researchers Develop Biofuel Alternative To Ethanol · · Score: 1

    Sure, that's absolutely correct, the distillation would work. It would, however, take much more energy. Instead of boiling off ~20% (by volume) of ethanol which boils at 78C, you'll need to boil off 80% of the water which boils at 100C. And then boil off the isobutanol (to separate it from the yeast and other crud). Most yeasts will conk out well before 20% ethanol, they basically die in their own excrement. I doubt that this fermentation to isobutanol would go to 20%, probably less.

  17. Distillation? on Researchers Develop Biofuel Alternative To Ethanol · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Isobutanol is not very soluble in water (87 g/L) - I wonder if this process also avoids the need for distillation? Distillation is the most energy-intensive part of bio-ethanol production.

    If it doesn't separate, distillation will really suck, since it's boiling point (107.89 C) is higher than water.

  18. Re:I don't see the problem on Red Hat Stops Shipping Kernel Changes as Patches · · Score: 1

    Except where Red Hat put their logos and trademarks. Now instead of searching the patches for those, they need to search the entire patched source.

    There are logos in the kernel? Really?

  19. Suuure, this'll work. on Mozilla Adds Do-Not-Track Feature To Firefox 4 Pre-Beta Builds · · Score: 1

    I am reminded once again of the "evil bit".

  20. monatomic Hydrogen? on LHC Scientists Create and Capture Antimatter · · Score: 1
    I'm quite surprised that the hydrogen atoms didn't condense in to molecular Hydrogen (H2). Monatomic Hydrogen is remarkably unstable at any temperature above 1K. If they isolated 38 atoms for 1/6 of a second, that seems like plenty of time for chemical reactions to take over (i.e. formation of H2).

    From the article at Nature:

    To trap just 38 atoms, the group had to run the experiment 335 times.

    I'm guessing that the 38 atoms that they isolated were during different runs of the experiment.

  21. Re:85% increase in code? on Red Hat Releases RHEL 6 · · Score: 1

    More code does not necessarily equal "bloat". The complete DVD iso for RHEL-6 is only 2.7 GB, does the latest Windows Server release even fit on a single DVD?

  22. Re:What a godawful headline... on The Galaxy May Have Billions of Habitable Planets · · Score: 1

    Or, you know, more.

  23. Re:I would take a wild guess that on Privacy Option Proposed To Control Behavioral Ads · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm reminded of the 'evil' bit.

  24. Re:Linux already runs on thousands of cores on Linux May Need a Rewrite Beyond 48 Cores · · Score: 1

    I beg to differ. I have access to the following system:

    $ grep -c processor /proc/cpuinfo
    127
    $ uname -a
    Linux xxxxx 2.6.16.54-0.2.12-default #1 SMP Fri Oct 24 02:16:38 UTC 2008 ia64 ia64 ia64 GNU/Linux
    $ free
    total used free shared buffers cached
    Mem: 255840720 81293200 174547520 0 16 0
    -/+ buffers/cache: 81293184 174547536
    Swap: 73243120 0 73243120

    ...that's a single instance with 127 processors and 256GB of ram. It rocks. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.

  25. telescoped? on Fifty Meter Asteroid Might Hit Earth In 2098 · · Score: 2, Funny

    telescoped [tel-uh-skohp-dee] noun, a process that runs in the background waiting for incoming photons.
    Usage: "here is how a remarkable telescoped ... found its first potential target."