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User: Vagary

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  1. The Moon is a Harsh Disposal Site on Uranium Pebbles May Light the Way · · Score: 1

    I know that the US has given us the impression that nuclear waste needs to be carefully stored, but really that care is only warranted if there are people around. Once you've got it off the planet, it's best to keep the waste away from places of interest like the moon. Instead, just push it out into the black.

    If nuclear energy is really so efficient, then why not use some of that efficiency to create the rockets necessary to dispose in space? At the very least it'll give the private space industry something to do.

  2. Illiterate? on Great Computer Science Papers? · · Score: 1

    If you take an extra .5 year for the undergrad, an extra 1 year for the MBA, and can't write acronyms in order, then perhaps you are too learning disabled to RTFA?

    (I'm just kidding! You were probably taking time off to work or something. How'd the CS+MBA turn out for you, anyway?)

  3. Dropping French on What's the Worst Job Posting You've Seen? · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    I also switched to Japanese after my year of mandatory French. Never really got good at it, but at least we got to watch anime in class instead of that damn pineapple. Now I look at all the federal jobs and wish that someone could have bothered to explain why we were taking French!

  4. Slashing is one thing... on What's the Worst Job Posting You've Seen? · · Score: 1

    And some Canadian morons slashed all four of the tires on my car just because it had US plates on it! Fuck Canada!

    Slashing your tires is one thing, but hanging around to let you know why -- that takes balls!

  5. Moncton = Shut Up on What's the Worst Job Posting You've Seen? · · Score: 1

    Sorry, but everyone gets to choose either where they live or what they do, not both. If you've made the choice to live in Moncton, then you are not entitled to the luxary of choosing to work in IT. Either move or retrain -- stop whining without being willing to make sacrifices.

  6. Online Comic Authors on The Ten Most Overpaid Jobs In The U.S. · · Score: 1

    I'd like to throw Tycho from Penny Arcade in there, as well. Probably Gabe, too, although at least his job requires some kind of talent. But to make a full-time job out of writing and drawing three short strips a week (not even that if they're at a convention) and reporting on the video games you're playing! Maybe I'd be okay with it if they hadn't spent so much time bitching about micropayments and advertising click-throughs before they were making a living.

  7. Summary on The Ten Most Overpaid Jobs In The U.S. · · Score: 1
    1. Mutual-fund managers
    2. Washed-up pro athletes in long-term contracts
    3. CEOs of poorly performing companies
    4. Orthodontists
    5. Motivational speakers and ex-politicians on lecture circuit
    6. Real estate agents selling high-end homes
    7. Airport skycaps
    8. West Coast longshoremen
    9. Pilots for major airlines
    10. Wedding photographers
  8. Kernel vs Distribution on Sun To Build Opteron Servers · · Score: 1

    I admit, the Solaris kernel is very good on large systems, and as a result Sun has made some passable tools for large-scale administration. But once you go Linux (or even worse, Debian), you can never go back...

  9. They'd Better Be on Sun To Build Opteron Servers · · Score: 1

    I'd hope they're good at designing processors, or at least systems, because they sure as hell aren't good at designing software. Oh wait, unless torturing administrators is part of the requirements.

  10. I'm Not Let'n No Dynamic Code Run on *My* Computer on Cougaar 10.4.6 Released With Source · · Score: 1

    One of the goals of agent systems is to allow agents to run on other people's computers. Of course if you let your computer run someone else's agent, then you want some kind of assurance that the agent isn't malicious. Because of the Halting Problem, you can never prove that an agent isn't malicious without running it -- however statically typed languages allow you to make way more assurances (if not proofs) about what a program is going to do. Unfortunately, Erlang isn't statically typed; therefore Erlang agents will have to be run in a sandbox, thereby sucking as much as Java applets.

  11. Develop Much? on Cougaar 10.4.6 Released With Source · · Score: 1

    The point isn't whether or not the program breaks, its whether the break is caught. Because if a user gets a message like "Traceback (most recent call last): File "", line 1, in ? TypeError: cannot concatenate 'str' and 'int' objects" then you might as well have said "5", it'd be about as meaningful. Lets face it: the only languages suitable for a production environment are statically typed.

  12. Re:My Body Made in Taiwan on Hackers On Atkins · · Score: 1

    Thank you! That kind of personal touch is way more meaningful than some idiot moderator clicking on little buttons.

  13. My Body Made in Taiwan on Hackers On Atkins · · Score: 1

    Your body wasn't exactly designed to fly either and yet those big shiny things just keep passing overhead. The whole point of being human is that we get to pickup new cards -- we're not stuck with the shit evolution dealt us.

    So if my genetically modified food grown with pesticides and robot tractors makes me fat, then I'll get lyposuction or cybernetic tapeworms or nanobots to break down the fat molecules or whatever other crazy shit my scientists come up with. And I'll remember to laugh at your starving ass when I see you chewing on twigs in the park wearing nothing but a fur loincloth.

  14. Think of the Children on Hackers On Atkins · · Score: 1

    It would take a very long time, perhaps 1,000 years, for our race to evolve to the point it could consume carbohydrates without consequence. By that time, many generations would have died from diabetes and heart disease. Why wait? I am alive now.

    Fine, you eat your carefully tuned, specialized diet and I'll continue to eat shit. In a thousand years, after thermonuclear war, my ancestors will eat the plentiful stores of twinkies and chips and whatever the hell else they want while yours will scrounge for rats and cockroaches -- who will have won then, huh?

  15. I Wish I Was Taller on Hackers On Atkins · · Score: 1

    Did your wife also gain height on your exercise plan? You should really consider marketing it, especially in light of the recent study that found a correllation between height and income.

  16. Don't Be Pedantic on IBM's Blue Gene powered by Linux · · Score: 1

    Yes, due to globalization every time you produce anything you are assisting arms development, but you must admit that there are degrees of assistence. I think it's perfectly reasonable to fork any open source license to include restrictions on use; some examples:

    • This software may not be run on hardware platforms that have been designed to cause loss of life or property.
    • This software may not be used on military information systems.
    • This software may not be used to directly assist in the development of weapons technology.
    • This software may not be used by military organizations or companies that are contracted by military organizations.

    You'd probably want something modular like the Creative Commons License so every group of developers could decide for themselves just what uses of their software they were acceptable with. Yes, this might not be "free", but I think that for the majority of users such software will be philosophically compatible with free software. Remember: GPL is not the point, freedom is the point.

  17. Step 1: Lose the Moveable Type on Spam Rapidly Increasing In Weblog Comments · · Score: 1

    I'm sorry, but anyone using proprietary weblog software such as Moveable Type has brought this on themselves. MT is evidence of the widespread belief that there is money in weblogs, so of course people are going to exploit it. And these exploits are wide-ranging because proprietary software ensures uniform hosts. Without open source you're all clones just waiting for a virus tailored to your DNA.

  18. Moveable Type IS The Problem on Spam Rapidly Increasing In Weblog Comments · · Score: 1

    I'm sorry, but anyone using proprietary spam software such as Moveable Type has brought this on themselves. If there's money in weblogs, as MT seems to think there is, then of course people are going to exploit it. And these exploits can be global because proprietary software ensures uniform hosts. Without open source you're all clones just waiting for a virus tailored to your DNA.

  19. Dear Scott: on Sun Posts Increasing Loss · · Score: 2, Funny

    Many people have complained about the experience of using Solaris from the desktop environment to the compiler (originally none) to the editor. In each case you've chosen to fix the problem by bundling the best-of-breed open source option thereby increasing compatibility while decreasing cost. It's time to go all the way.

    The Debian project has been working on abstracting the GNU/ from the Linux by porting the distribution to other kernels. It's time for the Solaris kernel to toss off its ugly Unix wrappings and become the apex of the open source world: GNU/Solaris. With one exception: it shouldn't be free.

    PC hardware is largely commodity junk and the Linux kernel still has trouble scaling to massive architectures. Consider this scenario: a small company uses PCs running Linux; as the company grows, so does its server requirements, but all its applications are running on GNU/Linux. This is where Sun steps in: all their applications can be easily, even seamlessly, ported to massive SPARC servers running GNU/Solaris. Both Sun and the open source community concentrate on their strengths, and the customers have an upgrade path: everybody wins!

    Or you could stick with your administrator-hostile Unix distribution and your overpriced workstations until Bill and Linus fight over who gets to eat your sweetbread. It's all up to you.

  20. Re:Erm, radio carbon dating huh? on Stonehenge Discovery using 3D Laser Scanning · · Score: 1

    Sorry, but just because you can date art, casting ores, and water doesn't mean you can date rocks:

    • Rock art is usually made from vegetable (which are made of carbon) or mineral paint. Can you guess what mineral is used to make black?
    • To make metal hot enough to cast you stick it in a fire, to make a fire you burn wood, wood is made of...?
    • I'm not sure about carbon dating water, but there are similar dating methods.

    However, you can uranium date rocks that contain no carbon much as the water is oxygen dated. Unfortunately, dating Stonehenge is still difficult.

  21. Better init Replacement on Replacing the Aging Init Procedure on Linux · · Score: 2, Funny

    So you're saying that the big complicated scheme this story is about could be skipped if the kernel let you play Tetris while it booted?

  22. Save it Online on Live CD for PC Games? · · Score: 1

    Duh: save it online! Mirabilis finally realised that with reinstalls, mobility, etc. people would prefer their ICQ lists to be saved on a central server -- all those reasons also apply to game settings and savegames. Never mind just continuing on another machine, highly customised games like Tribes 1 are unplayable under someone else's configuration. And once you start sticking things online, the possibilities are endless; eg: I can let you take a look at my beautiful SimCity in read-only mode.

  23. Multitasking and Patching on Live CD for PC Games? · · Score: 1

    If you can afford the CPU power and bandwidth to multitask, then why don't you just buy a headless box to do that shit for you? But more seriously, if the game has a rich enough scripting engine, users can add all sorts of stupid features. Tribes 1, for example, can have ICQ integrated into the HUD.

    The patch problem can be solved by mailing out replacement CDs, which makes the whole idea interesting because it benefits both customers and producers:

    Producers don't have to worry about setting up mirrors and tools to let their patches be downloaded (ever tried to download a patch over a lossy connection without rsync?).

    Customers don't have to screw around with getting patches online.

    Producers get some information about who's buying their games when customers give them an address to send patches to. (This is valuable even if they don't sell it to third-parties.) Plus the patch CD just so happens to come with glossy ads for other games.

    Customers will be able to look forward to games actually working when they're released now that there's some cost to producers in sending out a patch. (Compare Tribes 2 to the software running on the computers in your car.)

  24. Teaching Arithmetic on Recommendations for RPN Calculators? · · Score: 1

    The ACM's latest report on undergrad CompSci education stresses that students should be exposed to languages from many paradigms, perhaps we can make the same recommendation about algebraic notation? Would students find functions easier if they were also taught as user-defined operators and operators had also been taught as infix functions? Would students be able to think more abstractly if arithmetic was taught as just a random syntax? Would LISP reach its full potential if people weren't afraid of the syntax? If all notations were loved equally, would that lead to world peace?

  25. Save Us Bill! on Half-Life 2 - A Linux User's Lament · · Score: 1

    I have a similiar philosophy as that of the article author: I'd rather do work on my PC and play games on a console. Unfortunately, the kinds of games I like to play are mods of first-person shooters, which have not been particularly available on a console. What I'm praying for is that Microsoft will be able to use some of their clout to get real, non-crippled ports on the XBox. And for the love of IntelliMouses, please let me use a proper input device!