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User: wazza

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Comments · 90

  1. Re:There is a point on Some USAF Pilots Refuse To Fly F-22 Raptor · · Score: 1

    But, anyway, even if the F22 is the best one-to-one, with only 200 able to fly, maybe 50 at any given time, it had to be seen if 50 of them could do the job against 1200 of a cheaper enemy (say China or Russia).

    One point to raise: 1200 airplanes require 1200 loads of fuel (not unlimited), 1200 pilots (trained ones take ages, and untrained ones are a danger to both the trained & untrained ones around them), and 1200 loads of munitions (definitely not unlimited, especially in a wartime situation).

    They also require airstrips, hangars, and maintenance crews to service 1200 airplanes, as opposed to 50.

    And let's not even get into the fun of trying to handle air traffic control and strike planning of 50 planes versus 1200...

  2. Re:Sure blame the taste buds... on Science Reveals Why Airplane Food Tastes So Bad · · Score: 1

    A myth. Whether a mussel opens or not depends solely on how strong the adductor muscles are, on the hinge of the shell, and has nothing to do with the meat inside.

    http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2008/10/29/2404364.htm

  3. Re:Yeah... except at 35,000ft it's pressurized to on Science Reveals Why Airplane Food Tastes So Bad · · Score: 1

    Just a point about LCCT - there's also a KFC, and the Old Town White Coffee isn't too bad for food either. There's another place called Taste of Asia which is also OK, in a pinch.

  4. Re:Tired of smart phones on Sprint CEO Defends Company's Decision To Bet It All On the iPhone · · Score: 2

    Perhaps he's considering doing what I do when I tether my laptop to my phone - using WiFi tethering, but plugging the phone into a USB port on the laptop to keep it going.

    You know, since there's a computer with USB ports always there when you're tethering to a computer.

  5. Re:Good Luck on Ask Slashdot: Re-Entering the Job Market As a Software Engineer? · · Score: 1

    Argh! (why does my argh have a silent h?)

    I reckon because of the type of, and origin of, books you read while growing up. I read a lot of sci-fi, war books, and action-spy type stuff, often of British origin, and they love their h's in their screams :)

  6. Re:See. Patents/Copyright spur innovation. on Patent Expires On Best Selling Drug of All Time · · Score: 2

    OK, I've had enough of this garbage. Time for a reality check.

    c) that is is OK to put a price on saving a human life. (i.e. "Sorry, you can't afford this drug -- you deserve to die.")

    In the real world, where everything that is done requires work, and possibly depletion of resources, there always IS a price that can be put, on anything.

    We might not like that fact, and it might not be all touchy-feely friendly, but that's how it is. Effort is required to get useful things done, effort requires work, and usually resources, and thus it costs you (or someone else). Money isn't very equitably distributed, but the various forms of it are what the entire world uses to trade for time, energy, and resources.

    But I'm really peeved by the completely BS second part of your point:

    "Sorry, you can't afford this drug..."

    Fair enough, a statement of the reality that some people sometimes face. You might never face it yourself (be lucky enough to live in a rich country), but most people do from time to time. It's a horrible situation to be in, and I've been there myself more than once.

    " -- you deserve to die."

    However, this sentence is simply your opinion of how you think other people are thinking, and is impossible to logically derive from the previous sentence. What a pathetic, sensationalist red herring. You should be ashamed of yourself. Do you have any proof at all that your second sentence describes the thought processes of the majority of people in the world? Because let me tell you, "you deserve to die" is a very hard indictment of someone - and the vast majority of people that I've ever known do not think in that way.

    Also, the following is also wrong:

    I'm sorry but EVERYONE has the right to life, regardless of the cost.

    No, they don't. I want your statement to be right, for the world to be like that. But it is not. You don't have the right to life, you merely have the right to fight for your own life. There is no universe-granted right to live. Civilization of humanity has brought us the understanding, and in some cases ability, to try and create and defend a "right to live" through a thousand different constructs such as government, welfare, centralised planning, universal healthcare (for some), and so on. But the natural world in general does NOT provide that, and civilization's attempts to overcome that fact will never succeed completely. We just don't have the mastery of our environment to do so. If the modern world allows you the chance to avoid certain medical problems, treat others, and generally extend your life compared to no care and assistance at all, then good. But that's a privilege of living in a rich, modern society, and not some sort of "I inherently deserve this" right.

  7. Re:Well this is some artificial bullshit. on Microsoft's Office365 Limits Emails To 500 Recipients · · Score: 1

    And second, 50 emails a day, each with 4 recipients, where none of those recipients are repeated? That's a bit of a stretch isn't it?

    Just to clear up this one point - O365 counts *all* recipients towards the limit, not unique recipients.

  8. Re:Hypocrites on 100,000 iPhones Overwhelm Activation Server · · Score: 1

    That's not quite true - the reason that RIM's network went down certainly was completely explainable, but RIM just didn't deign to explain it. I find that difference important, and it's another reason to avoid all things Blackberry for me.

  9. Re:In Soviet Antarctica... on Stroke Victim Stranded At South Pole Base · · Score: 1

    Whoa. That guy is the bloke *I* want around when the crap hits the fan.

    You make me wonder who'd win if he battled a honey badger.

  10. Re:Alcohol would help sales on One More Thing For Apple Stores: Food? · · Score: 1

    No, a developer who hates having to handle Apple's bizarrely modified, quite screwed up version of UNIX.

  11. Re:I Am Not Surprised on Mass Psychosis In the USA? · · Score: 1

    While not denying the possibility, I think it's a bit of a tangent to ascribe the diet aspect of colonising influence (for want of a better word) to resultant depression amongst indigenous people.

    One thing you inevitably get along with a western-style diet, is a western-style social civilization. I'd be far more likely to ascribe a psychological effect on native people to the recently imported changed psychological & social structure than on something off in the outfield, like the diet that comes with it.

    Surely a changed local psychology is more likely to affect the local's psychological state than something dietary? Call me a fan of Occam.

  12. Re:Can we close Fox News yet? on Voicemail Hack Scandal Leads To Closure of UK Tabloid · · Score: 1

    As a fellow Aussie,

    The ABC impartial? As in, not biased towards or away from the views of one particular (political) party?

    HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

    Oh man, that was a good one. It had been a dreary day until you came along. Thanks!nl

  13. Re:Boot Disc on Rootkit Infection Requires Windows Reinstall · · Score: 1

    Ouch... that method fails as soon as you have hotfixes installed that aren't included on the install disk. I'm assuming, of course, that the rootkit infects/affects one or more files that have been hotfixed since the OS was installed from CD.

    The only way around is to add known good copies of all new hotfixed files, as they're added to your OS, to a read-only medium (like a CD-R).

    Not fun!

  14. Re:Tell the person on Ask Slashdot: What To Do With Other People's Email? · · Score: 1

    Yep, same problem here. I have a firstname@domain.com address, and I get multiple daily messages from people who enter addresses wrongly, people who give addresses wrongly, all the usual suspects. Tried for a few weeks to reply nicely to them all, but now I can't be bothered. My life is too short, and my time too limited, to clean up other people's mistakes like that.

    The only ones I sort out manually nowadays are those that either:
    a) relate to things I actually want my *own* account on (this happened with people registering for LinkedIn, amongst other things, with my address)
    b) things that are really quite important - one poor bloke had a huuuuuuge tract of information, business and personal, entered into an account on some site... and accidentally put my address in as the contact. I spent the time contacting him, and sorting it out, because he had a lot of business he might have lost.

    But the rest? The receipts for apartment rent (from the UK)? The innumerable misdirected resumes? The order confirmations? The random "hey, how are ya" messages? The possibly-important "here is the powerpoint presentation for this morning's meeting" attachments? The people who sign up for Apple IDs with my e-mail address? Sorry, just because you made this my problem by typing an address in wrong doesn't mean I have time to fix your problems for you. Straight into the bit bucket, baby... another donation to /dev/null.

  15. Re:quality schmality on Wal-Mart Tests Online Grocery Delivery · · Score: 1

    I'm a bit off topic, but things like those you just mentioned remind me (and amaze me) again how *cheap* food is in the U.S. Your milk for $3.59 per gallon is far less than what an Aussie in Melbourne pays - $3 per 2 litres for branded milk (equivalent to $5.70 per gallon.)

    And at the moment US$1.00 = AU$1.07, too. There's something to be said for economy of scale!

  16. Re:That's normal on Comcast's 105MBit Service Comes With Data Cap · · Score: 1

    In some places, with some providers, perhaps. But it's not that bad everywhere: in Melbourne, I pay $60 per month for a cable connection (about 10 to 14 mbps) with 50 gb peak and 70 gb off-peak. And that's with Optus, certainly not the best or cheapest ISP.

    Where are your numbers from?

  17. Re:One can dream... on One Giant Cargo Ship Pollutes As Much As 50M Cars · · Score: 1

    Bugger! I stand corrected... thanks :)

  18. Re:One can dream... on One Giant Cargo Ship Pollutes As Much As 50M Cars · · Score: 2, Informative

    Nope, he was pretty close. Your figure is way out - there's no way a gallon of fuel put into a cargo ship would move 1 ton 500 miles (or the inverse).

    Witness the largest (and possibly most efficient) marine engine in the world:

    https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/W%C3%A4rtsil%C3%A4-Sulzer_RTA96-C

    Fuel consumption is listed as 3.80 litres per second, or 1 gallon per second (3600 gallons/hour). That's a hell of a lot of fuel, and far off your 1 gallon = 1 ton moved 500 miles.

    Cargo ships use fairly insane amounts of fuel, compared to how much we consumer-types are used to putting in our cars or even trucks.

  19. Re:Glynn Moody commented on this days ago on A Composer's-Eye View of the Copyright Wars · · Score: 1

    Are you serious?

    Are you really serious?

    Do you honestly believe that any point that's more complex than a one line description doesn't deserve to exist?

    I defy you to explain the point of quantum mechanics in one sentence. Or why we should/shouldn't (your choice) allow doctors to refuse to perform risky operations on people who continue risk-increasing habits. Or why electric power generation should/shouldn't (your choice) be managed by selling power on a market. *Without* assuming a massive amount of prior reading done by whoever you're speaking to.

    Ideas that can't be expressed in one sentence are even worth bothering with? A super ignorant version of TL;DR? Absolutely priceless... are you sure you want to be posting here? Perhaps you should go over and post on Yahoo! Answers for a bit, instead. Some of us here like to explore slightly more complicated issues, because life is actually quite interesting once you get a proper attention span.

    And yes, my tone is harsh, because this sort of attitude is a poor one. I find it depressing.

  20. Re:It's not "trade" on A Composer's-Eye View of the Copyright Wars · · Score: 1

    He has a right to be a dick, but that doesn't mean increased commercial success.

    To me, this is the point. He has a right to be a dick. It's music he has written, and under the law he has control over who copies it. He is trying to stop people - by asking, not DRMing - from copying his work, without his permission, which is what he has, under the law.

    His personal justifications or thought processes -

    but that doesn't mean increased commercial success.

    - are his own, too, and your belief in the correctness, legitimacy, or defensibility of those personal justifications has no affect on his right to control, under the law, how his music is copied.

    I agree with the composer entirely in this case. If this young girl doesn't want to follow the rules, set by the composer as is his right under the law, then she can go and write the music she wants to perform herself. What's stopping her? Just that immature attitude toward the law that she has?

    [And if she doesn't like the law, then she can do something about that too - study law, and work to have the laws changed. Welcome to what's called "civilization", with all its processes and structures... it's the main reason you exist today. Without it the world population wouldn't be what it is, and you wouldn't have been born, by a massive likelihood.]

  21. Re:Cool on Hong Kong Company Develops Solar-Powered Lightbulb · · Score: 1

    Then this ain't necessarily the best solution for big cities.

    Big cities usually have at least the beginnings of electrical distribution infrastructure; the solution in a big city is to improve the transmission infrastructure, and the generation infrastructure. An investment in these two things will give benefit to a relatively high number of people for each (say) coal fired plant you turn into a reliable generating station, or whatever your source of power is. The centralisation that defines the big city helps here.

    But where there aren't any wires around for miles, then this is a low-cost way of starting to get around the problems of lack of lighting after dark.

  22. Re:Cool on Hong Kong Company Develops Solar-Powered Lightbulb · · Score: 1

    Nah, you just whack on bigger lights.

    And if they're not enough, BIGGER ONES!!!

    (and a second alternator :> )

  23. Re:Cool on Hong Kong Company Develops Solar-Powered Lightbulb · · Score: 2, Insightful

    And an additional useful side effect: the other cars on the road, which are far more dangerous than the pedestrians and animals that might be out there, will also know you're there, from a *very long* way away.

    Which is quite useful, really.

  24. Re:ASUS RT-N16 on Open Source Router To Replace WRT54GL? · · Score: 1

    Sorry?

    1 x 100 mbps ethernet (Alix)
                            vs.
    5 x 1000 mbps ethernet (Asus), on a router

          = comparison FAIL.

    Seriously, it's a router. Without decent network I/O, what use is it?

    I've just bought one of these, and it's brilliantly quick.

  25. Re:Nice on China Debuts the World's Fastest Train · · Score: 1

    I understand your point (and agree with it).

    But in the longer term, there are two good reasons to add high speed rail to the system:

    1) a train station can be built in many, many more places than an airport can
    2) Oil will eventually be a problem. You can't electrify an airplane.