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User: rasmusbr

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  1. $6,000 to join $3,000 pa and they only have a .info domain? Nothing says "exclusive" and "accomplished" like a .info domain...

    I can't think of a single TLD other than .com for Facebook that I've ever heard of anyone using, and yet 1.3 billion people still manage to find the website every damn day.

    With a list as long as my arm of things to tease and nitpick this site over, this ain't one of them. Let's not act like morons and pretend every search engine suddenly disappeared.

    TLDs stopped meaning anything more than a bullshit marketing ploy when we found a "need" for more than com/net/org.

    As long as URL:s are visible to viewers .com and .org will remain as status markers. The fact that these people couldn't afford to acquire the .com is evidence that there isn't a lot of financial muscle behind the project.

    Another piece of evidence is that the site is now down. I'm going to go ahead and guess that they are on this plan: http://mediatemple.net/webhost... with "unlimited bandwidth" for $29 a month, laws of physics be damned.

  2. Re:Africa on New Study Projects World Population of 11B by 2100 · · Score: 1

    Most of the anticipated growth is in Africa, where population is projected to quadruple from around 1 billion today to 4 billion by the end of the century.

    You mean, the continent that can barely feed itself and is the source of deadly plagues (Ebola, etc.) is somehow going to support four times it's current population? I'd like to see how that is feasible...

    Artificial fertilizer, tractors, better crop varieties. Maybe some GMO.

    Africa is huge and has a lot of good soil waiting to be turned into efficient industrial farms. What it lacks is peaces, stability and institutions. But they're working on it.

    It is sometimes said that Africa would eventually end up feeding the world, but if these new figures turn out to be true then it will perhaps merely end up feeding itself.

  3. Re:Provided on New Study Projects World Population of 11B by 2100 · · Score: 1

    Yeah, those plagues in the middle ages sure prevented Europe from becoming densely populated...

  4. Re:well, duh? on FCC Chairman: Americans Shouldn't Subsidize Internet Service Under 10Mbps · · Score: 1

    in urban europe 24mbps is considered subpar; what you yanks have, is frightenly slow.

    24 Mb/s is pretty good for most any everyday household use, assuming it has consistently low latency and no packet loss.

    The real question you should ask your ISP is: what's the network like when the weekend Netflix streaming surges kick in? Or: is my friday night deathmatch going to lag terribly? Of course if you ask that of their sales people you'll get blank stares and answers along the lines of "Netflix and games work great".

  5. Re:Oregon... on Wave Power Fails To Live Up To Promise · · Score: 2

    Hmm, I don't know.

    Suppose you build a tube (radius = 100 m) out of concrete where the water is 200 m deep. If I'm not mistaken you could then store up to this http://www.wolframalpha.com/in... much energy in watt-hours. That's not a lot in the big scheme of things. To store one terrawatt-hour you would need a tube that's 2.5 km in radius, or lots and lots of smaller tubes.

    Unless I messed up my high school level physics calculation there.

  6. Re:Why math? on ISIS Bans Math and Social Studies For Children · · Score: 1

    I could understand (from radical fundamentalist point of view) other bans, but why math? Even Koran (I think?) has writings on commerce (math), tithe (math) and so on.

    Some possible explanations in order of highest likelihood:

    The media got it wrong and they're not banning math.

    The media got it wrong and they're only banning math for girls.

    The great leader... or.. uh.. caliph? Well, the guy in charge doesn't like math.

    It's not possible for practical reasons. Maybe the math teachers have all fled the country or something.

  7. Re:Cheap and available on A DC-10 Passenger Plane Is Perfect At Fighting Wildfires · · Score: 2

    I think these planes have used up their allowed number of pressurization cycles anyway, before they are converted.

    At some point in the future someone will probably make good money converting old airliners into drones, which will make them cheaper to fly and solve the problem of pilots dying if the airframe gives in during flight.

  8. Re:Why does business exist? on New Global Plan Would Crack Down On Corporate Tax Avoidance · · Score: 1

    In highly competitive markets the competition will eventually force you to use every tax avoidance trick that your competitors use in order for you to stay in business, unless the corporate tax rate is something negligible.

    One solution would be to not have a corporate tax and instead try to go after the owners themselves with capital gains taxes and inheritance taxes and what not.

  9. Re:Ads on Microsoft To Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang For $2.5 Billion · · Score: 1

    Sorry, that should obviously be revenue and not turnover. Swedish financial lingo is easy to mistranslate.

    Would have been funny though...

  10. Re:Ads on Microsoft To Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang For $2.5 Billion · · Score: 3, Informative

    Mojang had 1.5 billion SEK in cash at the end of 2013, or about 220M USD at 2013 exchange rates. Their turnower for 2013 was 2 billion SEK or about 300 million USD.

    Source: http://www.allabolag.se/556819...

  11. Re:Ads on Microsoft To Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang For $2.5 Billion · · Score: 1

    Yeah, but how long can they keep growing? How long can they even sustain the revenue that they have now?

    Game purchases are one-time payments. I'm not going to buy a second copy of Minecraft for PC, nor am I buying a second copy of Pocked Edition and I'm not in the market for console games.

    Long-term revenue has to come from recurring payments (subscriptions), or maybe from selling Creeper plush toys and t-shirts as some have suggested.

  12. Re:Ads on Microsoft To Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang For $2.5 Billion · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's no secret that Mojang is developing a pay to play kind of add-on called Realms. The idea is that people who want to have a Minecraft server for themselves and their friends can pay Mojang to host the server and take care of the technical details.

    There are probably somewhere between 10 and 100 million Minecraft players. Suppose that 1% will subscribe to Realms at $4.99 a month (currently €10). That would yield between 500k and 5M in monthly revenue, or about 6M to 60M in yearly revenue.

    Minecraft would probably be worth a few hundred million dollars in a sane market.

  13. Re:Evolution is hard to stop on The Future According To Stanislaw Lem · · Score: 1

    Selection does not necessarily select the strong and the intelligent, selection selects the ones that pass on their genes.

    For example, there is still considerable selection pressure for any genetic expression that helps us produce plentiful sperm and ova. There is also strong selection pressure for having functioning penises, vaginas, uteruses. These pressures could ease in the future with sufficiently advanced medicine.

  14. Re:Evolution is hard to stop on The Future According To Stanislaw Lem · · Score: 2

    Evolutionary selection pressures never stop. Even within a dominant species, if there is any level of genetic difference, there will be both genetic drift and evolution. Other species also apply selection pressures (think of evolving viruses, for instance).

    Evolution never stops permanently at least.

    It is conceivable that the selection pressure on humans could go away temporarily if we achieve something like perfect medicine, or a world where any person would be equally likely to have biological children and grandchildren. The effect of that would be to radically increase diversity among humans both in terms of genes and in terms of traits. This would then lay the groundwork for potentially rapid evolution once the selection pressure reappears due to some systemic failure, or catastrophe, or what have you. The diversity would give natural selection more options to select from.

  15. Re:Fahrenheit? WTHolyF? on SanDisk Releases 512GB SD Card · · Score: 1

    All Imperial units are great for real world human-scale measurements. That's what they were designed for. Metric units are obviously much better for scientific use, but the units are mostly too big for day to day stuff.

    The metric units were originally based on preexisting units units. If they hadn't been similar to the imperial units they would probably never have caught on.

    One meter ~= one yard. One liter ~= 2 pints. One kilogram ~= 2 pounds. A decimeter happens by chance to be about the width of a hand and a centimeter about the width of a finger.

  16. Re:Double-edged sword on Software Patents Are Crumbling, Thanks To the Supreme Court · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Please.

    The intellectually hard work of software isn't the idea. It's almost entirely within the coding.

    When it comes to really ground-breaking stuff it is often the idea, but in those cases the idea belongs (and usually comes from) a paper published in a math or computer science journal or a journal from an adjacent field. It would probably not be a good idea to allow people to patents mathematical truths.

  17. Re:Nature on Liquid Sponges Extract Hydrogen From Water · · Score: 2

    Call me a cynic, but wouldn't nature of done this long ago as a primary source of energy for oceanic life? Take Hydrogen and combine with oxygen. Lots-o-energy with a simple path of ingestion. It's like, inhaling food!

    First of all hydrogen production does not generate energy, it consumes energy.

    Scientists are interested in hydrogen as an energy storage medium. It is unlikely that life forms would use hydrogen as an energy storage medium since hydrogen gas can practically only be stored inside a metal tank, or at least a tank lined with an internal layer of metal. Metal requires smelting which is highly incompatible with how life forms develop, so you're not going to find plants or animals with metal parts.

  18. Re:Deprecating the telephone system on Google Hangouts Gets Google Voice Integration And Free VoIP Calls · · Score: 2

    They're probably hoping that we will finally start using video conversations. And we sort of are.

    Once video is the norm they can go on to push for 4k video, then perhaps stereoscopic 4k. This is sure to keep the data flowing and your data plan costs growing or at least remaining stagnant.

    The funny part is that video conversations were technically possible in the 1970's, but it didn't catch on for whatever reason. It only really caught on about 5 years ago. I can't think of a consumer product that has taken longer to gain traction.

  19. Re:So what exactly is the market here. on Apple Announces Smartwatch, Bigger iPhones, Mobile Payments · · Score: 1

    I believe the pitch goes something like this: In a world populated by very lazy and impatient people, the Apple watch allows you to get much of the functionality of your phone without pulling your phone out of your pocket. It also has an Apple logo on it.

    Right. So what was the market the various Android Wear smart watches were going for?

    I imagine they went after the same market, minus the Apple logo.

  20. Re:What stance? on Toyota and Tesla May Work Together Again · · Score: 1

    IIRC Toyota's stance is that batteries are never going to get good enough to be the main energy storage in a (premium) car and that all-electric cars will run on hydrogen fuel cells.

  21. Re:So what exactly is the market here. on Apple Announces Smartwatch, Bigger iPhones, Mobile Payments · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What exactly is the reason to have this as well, as opposed to pulling your phone out of your pocket?

    Unless some company comes up with a functionally independent wearable device that replaces the need for keeping your phone with you I do not see the appeal. I don't understand what the pitch is supposed to even be.

    I believe the pitch goes something like this: In a world populated by very lazy and impatient people, the Apple watch allows you to get much of the functionality of your phone without pulling your phone out of your pocket. It also has an Apple logo on it.

  22. Re:Worst annoucment ever.... on Apple Announces Smartwatch, Bigger iPhones, Mobile Payments · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I think they were right to go with a larger phone. Let's face it, times have changed. And a lot of people (myself included) really like the idea of a 5.5" phone. My large fingers make a larger screen a godsend, and it's a lot easier on the eyes.

    As someone who has fairly big hands I had a hard time adapting from a 4" Android phone to my current 4.95" Nexus 5. I tried to use the big phone in the same way that I had been using smaller smartphones in the past, by holding the phone firmly in my hand and moving my thumb around the screen. The problem is that my thumb only reaches about 4.2 inches, so I kept trying to reach further than I could by over-reaching with my thumb. It got to the point where I had to switch to using my phone with my left hand out of fear of permanently injuring my right thumb (feel free to joke...).

    I eventually learned that you should sort of slide the phone around your palm to align it with your thumb. Now I could probably adapt to a 5.5" phone, but I think I would go for the 4.7" one if I was an Apple user.

    It's going to be interesting to hear if iPhone thumb becomes a thing now that there are no longer any "thumb-sized" new iPhones.

  23. The math tends to be simpler in many cases if you start counting at 0. In C's case, a[1] is == a + 1 if a is an array of bytes.

    Yeah, it's usually easier to start with 0 in pure math too. Remember that an N:th degree polynomial can be written as:

    sum from n=0 to n=N of c_n*x^n, where c_n are constants

    Here you avoid having to invent a special case for the constant (zeroth degree) term by exploiting the fact that x^0 = 1.

  24. Re:Stackoverflow's got a list on Ask Slashdot: What Are the Strangest Features of Various Programming Languages? · · Score: 1

    But TFA apparently got it wrong. '1' + 1 does not yield 11, it yields '11' like one would expect in a modern language. The odd thing is that '1' - 1 apparently yields 0.

    Disclaimer: I don't write JavaScript, thank God.

  25. Re:"Death to Gamers and Long Live Videogames" on Combating Recent, Ugly Incidents of Misogyny In Gamer Culture · · Score: 1

    Anyone who has ever accidentally revealed some private information by sharing a screen cap would have done that as a routine, especially if they know that thousands of people are standing in line to take proverbial shots at them.