Slashdot Mirror


User: HiThere

HiThere's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
17,789
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 17,789

  1. Re:Armegeddon for indigenous marine life. on World's First Lagoon Power Plants Unveiled In UK · · Score: 1

    You don't need a huge tide, that just makes it more efficient, and cheaper to build, and requiring less land and construction. So perhaps it's only feasible in a few places, but any country with a coast on the Atlantic, the Pacific, or the Indian Oceans should be able to make it work with enough effort and expense. Most of them just wouldnt' find it practical.

  2. Re:And dams aren't really worth it either on World's First Lagoon Power Plants Unveiled In UK · · Score: 1

    Tidal power would seem to have a lot going for it, but there's probably a good reason that it hasn't taken off before now. Of course, that reason may have been solved...

    For that matter, cost overruns are also likely on large nuclear plant projects. (Every one I've heard about has had a significant cost overrun, of course there's a huge selection bias...)

  3. Re:Bobby Tables to the rescue! Again. on AVG Announces Invisibility Glasses · · Score: 1

    Ah...Little Bobby Tables.

  4. Re: just FYI on Banned Weight-loss Drug Could Combat Liver Disease, Diabetes · · Score: 1

    Sorry, but you severly underestimate the problem. Severely. When she was on warfarin she had to take blood tests several times a week, and they kept changing the dose because her diet wasn't rigidly unchanging.

  5. Re:just FYI on Banned Weight-loss Drug Could Combat Liver Disease, Diabetes · · Score: 1

    Well, my wife needs a blood thinner, but strenuously avoided coumadine-warfarin. You can't eat green vegetables if you take warfarin, because vitamin K deactivates it. (So she's taking apixaban, which isn't affected by diet.)

  6. Re: things you wouldn't expect to hear from Micros on Microsoft's Goals For Their New Web Rendering Engine · · Score: 1

    That's all very nice, but MS is a software company. I'll admit I was thinking of cross-platform development environments, like their announced open source .NET, about which I know little, and I don't really count stuff they sell as end products. I will acknowledge that this is bias on my part.

    OTOH, ... you actually use those things on a tablet? As other than file viewers? (You didn't say you did, so perhaps I'm misunderstanding you.)

    That said, if I'd been thinking of consumer end-products I'd never have made that statement. MSOffice for Apple has been out for ages...and MSWord 5.2a for the Mac was the best word processor I've ever used. Far superior to any later versions, and it fixed a lot of bugs from the previous versions. These days it wouldn't be so good as, of course, it didn't handle unicode, but that's still the only improvement that I know about.

  7. Re:One thing for sure on Machine Intelligence and Religion · · Score: 1

    Yes, "he" claimed to be relating things from God. But what did he mean by that term? The available texts are too incomplete for me to decide...and they've been pruned by people with axes to grind. I can't be certain that I disagree with him, even though my belief in God is purely materialistically based.

  8. Re:One thing for sure on Machine Intelligence and Religion · · Score: 1

    While I agree that there's no good evidence that Jesus, per se, existed, there's some evidence that a person somewhat similar existed several decades before the time Jesus is supposed to have lived. Or at least someone who promulgated the doctrines that Jesus is reported to have promulgated. (Ignoring those of his disciples that diverge from the "red letter" text.)

    It's been awhile since I looked at this so I can't be closer than "several decades", but it was somewhere between about 40 years and about 400 years. (Not a big help, I admit.) I think it was related to the Essenes.

  9. Re:things you wouldn't expect to hear from Microso on Microsoft's Goals For Their New Web Rendering Engine · · Score: 1

    What substantive actions can you point to that don't run purely on their platform? (Promises and PR statements don't count.)

  10. Re:More of this on Microsoft's Goals For Their New Web Rendering Engine · · Score: 5, Informative

    To be fair, at the time MS adopted the CRLF line ending style there were *four* standards, none of them dominant:
    CR, LF, CRLF, and LFCR (called NLCR..new line carriage return). They picked one existing standard, and Unix was already using another. The supporters of the other standards have died off, so there are only two standards left.

    So don't blame MS for all the bad decisions. Only some of them. I still wouldn't want to use their software, though. Perhaps if they live up to their current "We love FOSS" line for a decade or so I'll change my mind, but currently it just feels like their latest lie.

  11. Re:Kinda stupid since on Machine Intelligence and Religion · · Score: 1

    Even that depends on believing things like "Revelations" which don't even pretend to be the word of JC, but are rather the ravings of someone who thought he was a follower.

  12. Re:Kinda stupid since on Machine Intelligence and Religion · · Score: 1

    Well....... if you'd said the point of human group organiztions is power, I'd agree with you, and as religions are human group organizations, that applies to them, but not any more to them than to the girl scouts or "Citizen's committee to suppor the libraries". The big ones are a bit more successful, of course...

    The real questions are "How much effort do they put into accomplishing their ostensible purpose relative to the amount of power they have?" and "Are they a net benefit to humanity?" I wouldn't trust any member of an organization to honestly answer that about the organization he was a member of. Or even to realize that they were being dishonest.

  13. Re:As a Developer of Heuristic AI ... on Machine Intelligence and Religion · · Score: 1

    You are making assumptions about its motivational structure. Also about its sense of humor.

  14. Re:As a Developer of Heuristic AI ... on Machine Intelligence and Religion · · Score: 2

    Any self-aware AI will be dependent on a large number of heuristic modules. I'm not sure what you mean by "the classic self-aware AI", but if it's a well specified concept then it didn't work out.

    OTOH, you should be aware that *YOU* are dependent on a large number of heuristic modules. You use them to talk, to listen, to walk across the room, etc.

  15. Re:One thing for sure on Machine Intelligence and Religion · · Score: 1

    Well, no.

    He claimed to be a son of God. And he also said "You are ALL sons of God.", unless the Aramaic was improperly translated, and it should be children of God.

    Then religous people made him into "THE son of God", and nobody else has a claim. But that wasn't what J.C. claimed.

  16. Re: One thing for sure on Machine Intelligence and Religion · · Score: 1

    I think it's that the religious rites involved things a lot more powerful than wine. (Mushrooms are frequently mentioned.) So I expect there may well have been a lot more direct religious experience. After all, if it weren't something the brain was capable of, nobody would experince it, so the potential is there. Also many "ecstatic saints" appear to have had some form of epilepsy (it comes in lots of forms).

  17. Re:One thing for sure on Machine Intelligence and Religion · · Score: 1

    FWIW, that (and also Galileo) were more about politics than about religion. And I've got suspicions that the Inquisition was more about economics than about religion. But, and this is central, religion ENDORSED those abuses.

    (That said, Galileo, at least, was quite abusive towards the pope, and there was no first amendment protection.)

  18. Re:Inquisition on Lawmakers Seek Information On Funding For Climate Change Critics · · Score: 1

    Well, clearly *SOME* hidden funding has been revealed, as mentioned even in the summary. Possibly not by that enquiry, but perhaps they just didn't look very closely.

    OTOH, I *do* think that the sources for funding for *all* those who testify before congress should be revealed. And for any other favors or promissed favors also. There's nothing wrong with taking money from somebody who agrees with your findings, but there is wrong in hiding that you did so if they are used as a guide for public policy (or even the policy of some private group that isn't the one paying you).

  19. Re:Oh? on 12-Billion-Solar-Mass Black Hole Discovered · · Score: 1

    Well, one guess is that it could have formed *during* the big bang, and been force-fed at high pressure for a bit. (I'm no cosmologist, in case you couldn't tell, but I *did* warn you it was a guess.) External pressure could do wonders at increasing the rate of feed, and since it would thus grow more rapidly than expected, it would then feed more rapidly than expected when the external pressure was relieved.

    Or possibly there was a universe here *before* the big bang, and the nucleus of that black hole predated the big bang.

  20. Re:Garbage on 5 White Collar Jobs Robots Already Have Taken · · Score: 1

    Everything you said is correct, and *today* very few white collar jobs have gone to robots and AIs. But the number of categories has been increasing incrementally over the years (well, decades). To deny the problem is to be as foolish as to panic over it. And it *does* seem to me that the rate has been increasing.

  21. Re: This is hilarious... on It's Official: NSA Spying Is Hurting the US Tech Economy · · Score: 2

    My guess is that local (Chinese) companies have gotten good enough that China feels that with a bit of a boost they can do all that is needed, so they don't need the US companies anymore.

    I don't have any evidence, so I could well be wrong, but nobody else has been presenting much in the way of evidence either. And this lets them cut off imports from the US in a way palatable to the world community. (Even if they aren't believed, it's a damn good excuse.)

  22. Re:Of course they are on It's Official: NSA Spying Is Hurting the US Tech Economy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    But I'm not living in China. I'm living in the US. So I'll blame the NSA (which is breaking the law, by the way) rather than China (which probably isn't breaking their laws).

    Mind you, it's not that they're breaking the law that I mind, it's that they're snooping on me, but if the laws were actually enforced against the powerful I'd have much less objection. Since they aren't, I don't consider them binding on anyone. You obey the law, when it is unjust, only to avoid danger of punishment, but given the current government, that's no guarantee you won't be punished anyway.

  23. Re:Library computers even worse on Looking Up Symptoms Online? These Companies Are Tracking You · · Score: 1

    It's even simpler than that. Usually the computers are already running, and you don't need to tell anyone what you are searching for. and the next user will cover your browsing history just like you covered the history of the prior user. And there's no sign-up log. (The librarians are too busy to bother with such things.)

    The only problem is you need to use a computer with MSWind installed. And usually an old browser.

  24. Re:Read the EULA... the lawsuit has no merit. on Lenovo Hit With Lawsuit Over Superfish Adware · · Score: 1

    Is the US the only place where this happened? (OK, so *this* case is in the US, that doesn't mean there won't be others.)

  25. Re:Encrypt all the things on NSA, GHCQ Implicated In SIM Encryption Hack · · Score: 2

    Yeah, but most people would use "password" as their password.