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User: jafac

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  1. Re:most young developers are at least as bad on Programmers: It's OK To Grow Up · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is really about how older people are experienced to know a boondoggle when they see one. (Example:the cloud, and how it's basically about trying to take control from the user and seeking rent). Older people don't buy into the bullshit and get off my lawn, and thus are seen as not wanting to embrace new technology. Its not that you can't teach an old dog new tricks, it's that the old dog knows that it's all a bunch of crap

  2. Re:Coffins are vaguely phallic. on H.R. Giger, Alien Artist and Designer, Dead at Age 74 · · Score: 2

    But sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar.
    (- Sigmund Freud).

  3. I think this relates: on Glenn Greenwald: How the NSA Tampers With US Made Internet Routers · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Security researcher and Tor developer, Andrea Shepherd, found something fishy:
    http://www.techdirt.com/articl...

  4. Re:Once Again on SpaceX Injunction Dissolved · · Score: 1

    It was just a political stunt to try to appeal to nationalist sentiment. Probably ill-considered, and we would not have seen it if there weren't presently political tensions. Whether Musk won or not, he got some publicity out of this.

  5. Re:Not Getting the Strategy Here on Court: Oracle Entitled To Copyright Protection Over Some Parts of Java · · Score: 1

    Most of these acquisitions are really about marketshare, and killing-off competition. When there is market-overlap, the purchasing company is buying that marketshare - and a certain percentage of those customers will abandon it; but some will stay. The abandoners will not likely go to a single (biggest) competitor, but often be scattered, which makes the purchasing player stronger as top-dog. When there is no overlap, it's usually for the purpose of keeping other companies who are nearby in the marketplace, from getting too big and bridging over. They'll talk the talk about "synergy" (which usually means, trying to bundle semi-related products as a suite, to vertically integrate) - but this is usually bullshit.

    Source: been through three of these "mergers". Symantec is the devil.

  6. Re:sigh on US Climate Report Says Global Warming Impact Already Severe · · Score: 1

    all of that other shit is just pie-in-the-sky garbage.

    The only proven method is a cap-and-trade.

    We know this, because it worked with chloroflourocarbons.

    What is less-certain, is if the carbon we've already released, hasn't already done irreversible damage.

  7. simple solution on Police Departments Using Car Tracking Database Sworn To Secrecy · · Score: 2

    .... develop a display panel which ONLY emits IR (not visible light).

    Mount such display panel adjacent to your license plate.
    Connect display to computer which outputs randomly-generated license plate numbers, every half second.
    Result: Scanners "see" hundreds of different plate ID's, among your own.
    Data collection foiled.
    No Laws Broken.

  8. Re:I don't like the control it takes away from you on Did the Ignition Key Just Die? · · Score: 1, Insightful

    The year 1995 just called: "what's a manual transmission?"
    Followed by - The year 2050 just called: "what's a transmission?"

    Really, if you need to start your car, nothing beats that big old hand-crank over the front-bumper!

  9. Re:And increased profits for GM on Did the Ignition Key Just Die? · · Score: 1

    Lol; a BMW key will set you back at least $80, for any BMW less than 20 years old.

  10. applicable: on Did the Ignition Key Just Die? · · Score: 2

    # "The unavoidable price of reliability is simplicity"
    -- C.A.R. Hoare

  11. Re:California = 1D10T Errors on California City Considers Restarting Desalination Plant To Fight Drought · · Score: 0

    In the early part of the last century, automation reduced the labor amount for producing food drastically. This reduced it's market value. Probably far below its real value. (when you consider that that value is actually a composite of the food itself, and the water used to produce it, and the soil, and how we burned through the water and soil at a much higher rate than it can be replaced).

    So if you want to blame something, don't blame "urban hipster douchebags". Blame the invisible hand for not being able to use basic science to look 100 years into the future and see how growing the population to 7 billion people, while burning through resources at an unsustainable rate, is going to make the concept of money look like a complete fraud, within the next generation.

  12. Re:"Three years ago today" on The Guy Who Unknowingly 'Live-Blogged' the Bin Laden Raid · · Score: 1

    You're accusing Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Bush of being pussies? (ie. Civilized).

  13. Re:Love the idea, hate the ideologues on Talking To the Public: the Biggest Enemy To Reducing Greenhouse Emissions · · Score: 1

    3 times the electricity cost is actually pretty cheap compared to one's water-bill, or what one spends on gasoline, on average, and what we'll all be spending on electricity for running AC 24/7 everywhere when global warming really starts to kick in. (not to mention all the hundreds of millions of people who will have to relocate, and the hundreds of millions who will starve to death when we can't grow or distribute food anymore)

    How much is a livable planet worth, anyway?

  14. Re:Translation: Let's FORCE it on them! on Talking To the Public: the Biggest Enemy To Reducing Greenhouse Emissions · · Score: 1

    Well, here's your clandestine workaround then.

    Go take a hike, and start killing any and all plants and animals you see by any means necessary. Accomplishes the same thing, and works around those pesky civilized rules.

  15. preaching from the choir on An MIT Dean's Defense of the Humanities · · Score: 4, Informative

    MIT doesn't need to justify Humanities degrees.

    The business world must. Maybe such degrees are okay for people who are already independently wealthy? But right now, our broken job market doesn't think they're worth much.

  16. Re:Why on SpaceX Wins Injunction Against Russian Rocket Purchases · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The ULA boosters are Lockheed's Atlas V (with the Russian RD-180 engine), and the Boeing Delta IV (which, I believe uses the Rocketdyne RS-68).

    However, Boeing has pulled the Delta IV from the market, so there will be a limited number of these launched in the future.

    I think that Boeing's decision was one of the reasons that prompted the launch-services merger. The RS-68 was expensive to develop, (and expensive to fly; part of that was the choice to use hydrogen+LOX, instead of kerosene+LOX like the RD-180) - and they weren't making enough profit on the launches, and were ready to bail from the market entirely; while Lockheed's decision to use the RD-180 saved them money - it made them the only player in the medium/heavy launch market.

    One thing about the Delta IV; is that it had capabilities that Atlas does not have, like in-air restarts, better reliability, more accurate payload delivery. Don't get me wrong, I think that both vehicles have their merits. The market will suffer with the loss of the Delta IV; and hopefully SpaceX can help, but SpaceX's goal is going to be cheaper launches, and it remains to be seen whether Falcon can deliver any of those features. (the other question about Falcon, is whether they can deliver the Heavy Lift capability which is a HUGE gap right now. Both Atlas and Delta have flown in "heavy" configurations - both of which are essentially "hacks" - but no worse than Ares was going to be).

  17. They're not selling drugs.

    They're selling FREEDOM!!!

  18. Re:Discrimination on White House Worried About Discrimination Through Analytics · · Score: 2

    Darwin doesn't take care of it. Nature does.
    And that approach basically says we should throw up our hands at this whole civilization thing, and let nature take it's course in every human endeavor.

    The whole point of insurance is to share risk. So yes, if insurers are allowed to discriminate, then there is really no point to insurance, other than as being a middleman for the end-user's savings plan.

  19. Re:Not going to happen on How Japan Plans To Build Orbital Solar Power Stations · · Score: 1

    If one could offshore a wind-farm, it seems trivial by comparison to offshore the receiving antenna.

  20. Re:Not going to happen on How Japan Plans To Build Orbital Solar Power Stations · · Score: 1

    A method for working this out, in the 1970's, included a moon-base, and a mass-driver to launch raw materials into earth orbit for processing and construction. This was deemed to be profitable (by the precursors of what later become the Planetary Society, used to be the L5 Society) - based on projected energy costs (in 1973, during the energy crisis), and also based on a cheap, reusable spacelaunch system which would reduce launch costs to something like $10/kg. The Space Shuttle was supposed to BE that launch system, and we all know how that turned out. (nowhere near $10/kg).

    So if you use today's numbers, and rule-out a moon-mining colony; yeah, it's kind of a ridiculous proposition.

    However, a lot could happen to our energy costs in the not-too-distant future. Though I don't think that that will lead to orbital solar power stations.

  21. Re:He said it worked, except we can't prove it on SpaceX Files Suit Against US Air Force · · Score: 1

    I think that the really amazing bit was that they were able to land over the ocean, in stormy seas. I wonder what the wind-speed was at that time?

  22. Re:Beta Sucks on SpaceX Files Suit Against US Air Force · · Score: 1

    several fish were severely burned. probably.

  23. Re:What does it mean? on FTC Approves Tesla's Direct Sales Model · · Score: 1

    commerce-clause has been used to enforce a national 55 mph speed limit (the dark times), and national 21 yr drinking age.

  24. Re:When is HP going to have to pay up? on Apple, Google Agree To Settle Lawsuit Alleging Hiring Conspiracy · · Score: 1

    Yes; they absolutely ARE in lockstep on this.

  25. Re:Misleading headline on Apple, Google Agree To Settle Lawsuit Alleging Hiring Conspiracy · · Score: 1

    This is what unions are for.