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User: newcastlejon

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Comments · 1,610

  1. Re:Elysium on the moon? on Japanese Company Announces Long-Term Plan To Develop the Moon (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    Only the very richest people on the planet will be able to afford the energy cost of travelling to the moon.

    So? It wasn't all that long ago that only the very richest nations could afford to go there.

  2. Re:So what? on Is Your Email Address Holding You Back? (wsj.com) · · Score: 1

    Really? If I saw a van with bobtheplumber@gmail.com on the side I'd think "Bloody hell, he got in early."

  3. Re:So nothing worth upgrading for on Apple Unveils macOS 10.14 Mojave With Dark Mode and Finder Photo Tools (venturebeat.com) · · Score: 2

    Due to APFS? What's desirable about keeping HFS+ as compared to APFS?

    For fixed drives I can't think of any reason but for portable drives it can be handy for old Xboxes, as they can read HFS+ formatted external drives*, but not NTFS ones. Why this should be so for an MS product is simultaneously baffling and hilarious.

    * The 360 did at any rate.

  4. Is there anybody with an IQ above room temperature still working in the US executive branch?

    That depends on whether you mean celsius or Fahrenheit.

  5. And will Star Trek language will go where no language has gone before?

    tlhIngnan'e' Hol, petaQ! Dajatlh'a' jay'?!

  6. Re:I beg to differ on Tesla Unveils 500-Mile Range Semi Truck, 620-Mile Range Roadster 2.0 · · Score: 1

    A vehicle specifically designed to break the land speed record is not a sports car however you look at it.

  7. That's nice. on Chrome Update Kills Annoying Redirects and Trick-To-Click Popups (androidcentral.com) · · Score: 5, Funny

    Does it also detect dupes on slashdot?

  8. Re:I don't get it... on Hong Kong Has No Space Left for the Dead (vice.com) · · Score: 1

    I simply don't get it.

    Funeral directors are in the business of making money. A simple wooden box sent to the crematorium doesn't make them as much as a silk-lined coffin with concrete mausoleum. They're also uniquely positioned to hard sell (or flat out guilt-trip) their wares onto grieving relatives.

    This is partly why a lot of older people pre-pay for their funerals and specify exactly how they want their remains to be dealt with. Personally I liked the idea of a tree burial*, until I saw how much they cost (more than a regular burial). Now I've bought the cheapest possible funeral plan and left instructions in my will that if my executor wants anything more they can pay for it themselves, and that I specifically don't want a church service. If people want to mourn me I'd rather they spent the money on a big party and a booze-up than sit in a church listening to a priest mumble platitudes about someone they've never even met. This actually happened with an uncle of mine some years ago; the priest, as it happens, was a young Justin Welby.

    *Your body is put in a cardboard or wicker box, buried in a field somewhere with a sapling as a grave marker.

  9. Re: Well... on YouTube Suspends Account of Popular Chinese Dissident (freebeacon.com) · · Score: 1

    Finally they came for me and no one said anything because the only protected victim class left are transspecies centaurs with cutie mark tattoos and surgically attached literal horse cocks.

    Phew!

  10. Legal problems like this aren't solved by technology; the Catalans could conceivably vote however they want but it won't matter one bit if the courts ignore the result.

  11. Re:Silver Lining on Equifax Suffered a Hack Almost Five Months Earlier Than the Date It Disclosed (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Then maybe we'll see the banksters starving in the gutter.

    "When banks fail, it is seldom bankers who starve."

  12. Re:Fun Fact: Juice isn't good for you on Juicero, Maker of the Infamous $400 Juicer, Is Shutting Down (fortune.com) · · Score: 1

    So I can milk a cat?

    Yes and I've got to do it every damned day.
    Bloody Harkonnens...

  13. Asbestos is inert too.

  14. Good thing we have a government who ignore the advice they're given when it suits them, and an environment secretary who's said publicly that we've had enough of hearing from experts.

  15. Re:Because men would lie "Yeah baby, I'm on the pi on Why We Can't Have the Male Pill (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 1

    Woman have a valid reason for BC.

    So do men. No-one wants to be lumbered with 18+ years of child support from a one night stand.

  16. Re:My IQ dropped 10 points after that summary on Why Your Call Center is Only Getting Noisier (mckinsey.com) · · Score: 2

    For me it's the "You can find more information on our website at...".

    If your website was worth a damn I wouldn't be waiting in a fucking queue to speak to you!

  17. No, it's not. on Ask Slashdot: Is Password Masking On Its Way Out? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The only interesting thing here is that you discovered a cheapo home device that doesn't mask passwords, fortunately in a situation (i.e. at home) when shoulder surfing is a non-issue anyway.

    Come back when you've got more than one data point, eh?

  18. Unfortunately, you can't have it both ways. If you increase automobile safety, you will have fewer dead people, and hence, fewer spare parts.

    Which is why the death penalty will be expanded to include false advertising and unpaid parking tickets.

  19. Something doesn't smell right. on RED Launches a $1,200 Smartphone With a 'Hydrogen Holographic Display' (phonedog.com) · · Score: 5, Funny

    If you're interested in this I have a car-swallowing, lane-straddling bus to sell you.

  20. Re: This is a *good* thing on Japan Wants To Put a Man On the Moon, Accelerating Asian Space Race (cnn.com) · · Score: 1

    Maybe. Maybe we just filmed it in a studio. Hard to say.

    Not really. If you believe this guy who, unlike most conspiracists, shows his work, it would have been harder to fake the moon landing than it would have been to actually go there. And here's a more light-hearted yet equally credible take.

  21. Re:Turn the power off on New Maglev Elevator Can Travel Horizontally, Vertically, and Diagonally (wired.co.uk) · · Score: 1

    Having a continuous-loop system, while it would allow you to put more cars in the loop, is vulnerable to a single-point-of-failure attack; jamming one car's door open piles up every car in the loop behind that one; doing that with a conventional elevator bank disables only that one elevator.

    This is an improvement over paternoster lifts: the cars aren't tied together and, since they can move in more than one direction, it's possible to have places where they can move to one side to pass each other as you see on single lane country roads.

  22. Re:Maybe BBC needs a backup plan on BBC Technical Glitch Leaves TV Presenter In Silence (theguardian.com) · · Score: 1

    Also, BBC 4 used to be part of the UK Nuclear deterrence system. If a submarine commander thought that the UK had been attacked, one of the tests was to check whether BBC Radio 4 was still broadcasting.

    Ah, so that's why Just a Minute has been going as long as it has. Nicholas Parsons, the dead man's switch for the free world!

  23. Gee I don't know, what do normal cars do when your turn on cruise control and let go of the wheel? Oh, they keep going.

    Unless they have lane assist they tend to drift towards the outside of the lane and eventually off the road entirely. Even with perfectly adjusted tracking the camber of the road will tend to make a car drift one way or the other, usually to the right (if you drive on the right) because the roads are slightly off-level to reduce rainfall pooling on the surface.

  24. Re:That makes 24 on NASA Finds Evidence Of 10 New Earth-sized Planets (usatoday.com) · · Score: 1

    It is going to another star system, where there will be ... a star. So it can use solar power during departure, sleep during the 20 year transit, and then use star power at the destination.

    You'd be hard pressed to send a signal back over four light years using nothing but solar power.

  25. Re:That makes 24 on NASA Finds Evidence Of 10 New Earth-sized Planets (usatoday.com) · · Score: 1

    just how much power is such a probe going to have to pack?

    It doesn't have to pack any power...

    Of course it does. What's the point in sending a probe that can't report back with its findings?