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User: holophrastic

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  1. Re:...eventually put people on mars...my butt on Opportunity Rover Reaches Martian Day 4,000 of Its 90-Day Mission · · Score: 1

    Why don't you try it, then tell me how long it takes. Remember, cradle to grave. Door to door. Not take-off to landing. Not plane door. Not airport door. House door to house door. Did you drive to the airport? Did you walk through three miles of airport hallways? Security line? Wait to taxi? Did you get there early so you wouldn't be late? Did you spend extra time packing into smaller luggage?

    Right now, this instant, as you read this, if you were to stand up from whereever you are sitting and want to be 3'000 miles away, how long would it take?

    Do you get to wait for the taxi? The bus? Your luggage?

    It's eight hours from a residential suburb house in new york to a residential suburb house in california. And you want to go to mars tomorrow.

  2. ...eventually put people on mars...my butt on Opportunity Rover Reaches Martian Day 4,000 of Its 90-Day Mission · · Score: 3, Insightful

    yeah, that's probably a good 100 years away, if not 500. Aside from dangers like radiation, nutrition, and other oh-so-subtle big things like gravity -- each of which is likely to kill a human long before they need their first water source -- there are also dangers in the trip itself, like radiation, nutrition, gravity, the vessel, going stir-crazy, and the time itself. Before all of that, there's the money, the interest, and the law. There's the communication delay, the medical equipment that doesn't exist, and the general goodbye-ness of it all. Oh, and then there's the actual "success" part -- ten failures does not a landing make. And finally, and I can't stress this enough we aren't going to mars the day after settling on the moon; and we sure as hell aren't going to mars before settling the moon.

    So, figure another twenty years before ten humans live on the moon (the way they do on the space station now). Figure another twenty years before the moon is routinely stable, reliable, and worthwhile. Then figure fifty more years to actually give a damn about mars.

    "eventually" appears as the heading on my to-do lists too. There's "now", "today", "tomorrow", "this week", "next week", "this month", "next month", "soon", "later", and "eventually". I think it 25 years I've yet to even start even one task from the "eventually" section.

    Technology moves very quickly these days. Humans still don't. How about building a transit system that lets me get from new york to california in under EIGHT HOURS! then you can work on mars.

  3. lure a victim to an untrusted web page on New Javascript Attack Lets Websites Spy On the CPU's Cache · · Score: 1

    umm, all I need to do is lure a victim to my untrusted dumpster, and I can do all sorts of bad things to them.

    The problem isn't that there's a way for me to hurt you. The problem is that you're walking down dark alleys alone at night.

    Stop doing that.

    Why are you going to untrusted web-sites in the first place?

  4. Re:I wish I could find it again on Mobile 'Deep Links' and the Fate of the Web · · Score: 1

    Nah, that's not the one. That's pretty concise.

    Imagine just the lyrics, each one linked far far away. So one term might be to a wikipedia article, another to some russian site, a third to a research centre in bolivia, a fourth to a county web-site in the middle of nowhere, a fifth to a boxing club, etc..

    I can read your page in 20 minutes. But that site in 1995 took days to read -- because each word was another site with new interests.

    But this was in 1995, back when "surfing" the web was actually possible -- when sites linked to other sites. That's kind of the point of this thread, sites don't do that anymore. So there's no getting lost surfing the web anymore. I do miss that.

  5. Re:I wish I could find it again on Mobile 'Deep Links' and the Fate of the Web · · Score: 1

    Yeah, I'm pretty sure I did -- it's probably still in my Compuserve account -- do you remember when e-mail addresses had a comma?

    And besides, who'd have thought that the best web-site ever was from 1995? I sure didn't know that at the time.

  6. I wish I could find it again on Mobile 'Deep Links' and the Fate of the Web · · Score: 2

    It's been at least 20 years since I saw the best web page ever. Very simple: the lyrics to Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire", with each term linked to yet another external site discussing its history.

  7. another 2-9's useless metric on A Robo-Car Just Drove Across the Country · · Score: 1

    So, a typical commute here is about 10km. 99% would be 9'900 metres, leaving 100 metres as the 1%.

    Now, I agree that only driving the last 100m would be convenient for many. But that's not the 99% here.

    In this case, it's as bad as driving 1m every 100m. It's actually much worse. It's MAYBE driving 1m every 100m.

    So, either I'm staring at the road, effectively "driving" without touching anything, so that when the car suddenly beeps, I suddenly grab the wheel, or I'm reading my book and writing an e-mail, and then instantaneously stopping, looking up, grabbing the wheel, and figuring out what the hell is going on -- assuming I heard the car's beep.

    This isn't robo-car. This is car-as-train -- with paint and cameras acting as train tracks and train wheels.

    It's never been about the perfect highways. You won't find a 10km stretch of highway here without construction, detours, stopped cars, emergencies, and roadkill at any time of the year. Add snow, ice, rain, black ice, debris, fog, sand, salt, and sun, and I spend over a quarter of my driving without being able to see the lane markings at all.

  8. Re:Silly two person rule on Modern Cockpits: Harder To Invade But Easier To Lock Up · · Score: 1

    inductive, meet deductive.

  9. Silly two person rule on Modern Cockpits: Harder To Invade But Easier To Lock Up · · Score: 0

    Two persons in the cockpit won't help a thing.

    First-off, a flight attendant ain't going to be able to counter a pilot's suicidal actions. So that's just theatre as usual.

    Second, even another pilot ain't going to start by assuming that his co-pilot is suicidal. The pilot is going to assume that something is wrong with the plane. Any co-pilot worth his salt would easily be able to crash the plane while the pilot is trying to diagnose the problem.

    The only problem here is that a trusted authority (i.e. a pilot in control of a plane) isn't trust-worthy. That problem isn't solved in the air -- because it's not a plane problem and it's not a cockpit problem. It's a trust problem. So it's solved at the point where the co-pilot became trusted. Maybe that was a year ago, maybe it was that morning. But it wasn't in the air. That's already too late for any documentable procedure.

  10. Some Quebec Gambling Background From Ontario on Quebec Plans To Require Website Blocking, Studies New Internet Access Tax · · Score: 2

    This isn't as anti-gambling or even as anti-competition as it sounds. Quebec's gambling laws have always been very different from the rest of Canada, in a very interesting way.

    For example, in Ontario, gambling is really for lotteries and contests and casinos and that's about it. Everything else is illegal -- just like you can't buy alcohol in a grocery store, you can't gamble in a bar.

    In Quebec, however, there are slot machines (fun ones) in bars all the time. Gambling is available everywhere -- especially where alcohol is. It's governed and licensed and available.

    Two very different ways of controlling gambling, in a country where gambling is seen as an addictive activity to be controlled. Quebec's not wrong in wanting to control on-line gambling -- it's totally consistent with their gaming laws.

    And, most of all, I promise that no one in Quebec is at a loss for opportunities to gamble. They are everywhere.

  11. Heart and lungs? on Treadmill Performance Predicts Mortality · · Score: 1

    So you're saying that a human is more likely to die with a weak hearth and weak lungs, as compared to weak fingers. Interesting. I guess vital organs really are vital.

  12. The Big Bang Theory on Leonard Nimoy Dies At 83 · · Score: 1

    Waiting on the next episode. They'll certainly do something.

  13. So much for science on Google Wants To Rank Websites Based On Facts Not Links · · Score: 1

    So every time science changes, google will ignore it -- or crash. I want to know what will happen to the site that say pluto is a planet. Then the ones that say pluto is not a planet. And then, I want to know about the next time pluto becomes a planet.

    So google's going to ignore every site that says anything new that contradicts something old. climate change will be fun. so will vitamins, vaccinations, and any new religions.

    But hey, google already doesn't believe my city, just because my city is 300 miles away from another city spelled with 4 of the 6 letters the same. I'll never find a bakery this way.

  14. Gee, let's see on What If We Lost the Sky? · · Score: 1

    you'd certainly be killing off many animals. I'm not sure if nocturnal animals who hide at night would be worse off than the diurnal animals who hide at night.

    Scratch that, it'd probably be worse for the animals who navigate and migrate by the stars.

  15. Um, advantage? on Bill Gates On Educating the World · · Score: 2

    "Before a child even starts primary school," -- so, that's kindergarten.

    "she will be able to use her mom's smartphone to learn her numbers and letters, giving her a big head start." -- we call that parents talking to their children.

    "Software will be able to see when she's having trouble with the material and adjust for her pace." -- we call that parenting.

    "She will collaborate with teachers and other students in a much richer way." -- richer than the human teacher being right there in the room? Explain that one to me, then you can replace hookers with software too.

    "If she is learning a language, she'll be able to speak out loud and the software will give her feedback on her pronunciation." -- we call that conversing with humans.

    So this whole concept is not to bring education to the world. Instead it's to bring childhood development problems due to lack of parenting to the world. Excellent.

  16. Perfect, I eat myself on Researcher Developing Tattoo Removal Cream · · Score: 1

    You're going to train my immune system to eat itself. Sounds like an auto-immune disease, plain and simple.

  17. Umm, SMALLER! on Japan Now Has More Car Charging Points Than Gas Stations · · Score: 1, Interesting

    So, let's understand this. In smaller countries, where no one drives very far at all, and electricity is everywhere, gas is going electric. No shit. Gas requires transport, electricity does not.

    Oh wait, electricity requires continuous unbroken well maintained infrastructure. So given a 2'000 mile broken road, electricity doesn't exist.

    But there's something much more fundamental going on here. This isn't a question of gas or electric. This is a question of portable fuel or infrastructure energy.

    I don't really care if it's gas or hydrogen or some other fuel, I'm always a big fan of the independence of carrying my own fuel. But I'm a little biased, since all mammals carry their own fuel. Maybe you'll get a different answer from your plant friends.

  18. Not at all true on Why Gmail Has Better Security Than Your Bank · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I can't sue google if my information is stolen. My google products are not insured by my government. My bank account, however, has a huge paper-trail, and is insured, and I can sue my bank.

    It's not about access security; it's about content security. My bank has more content security. It doesn't need access security -- that's just to reduce the number of times we need to go through the content recovery procedures.

  19. Completely ruins M.A.D. on War Tech the US, Russia, China and India All Want: Hypersonic Weapons · · Score: 1

    We've long touted M.A.D. (and nuclear weapons as a result) as the invention of peace-ensuring weapons. Can't launch a nuke without being guaranteed that someone else will nuke you a few moments later, so you never launch yours.

    But thirty minutes is shorter than the administrative effort for a launch-back. That's a big huge problem.

    Ready the dead-man switches.

  20. Re:I can't believe you're saying this either on Reaction To the Sony Hack Is 'Beyond the Realm of Stupid' · · Score: 1

    Apologies are absolutely meaningless statements, just like movie lines. And since we're dealing with a country that cares about apologies, it costs you absolutely nothing to give it -- and it savfes you a few billion dollars.

    As for being responsible for private citizens, most terrorist attacks are done by private citizens. And since your laws don't count in the foreign country, I guess you should just sit back and do nothing, because the attacks came from outside of your jurisdiction, and they were just private citizens. Except you don't. You attack the entire country instead -- remember?

    But there's something so much simpler going on here. Who the hell cares what's right, moral, or correct. You could kill people, you could get people killed, or you could say a few words. You're going to take the death approach because you believe that principles outweigh actual lives. Good for you. My family won't be around to bleed for your principles. I trust your family will stand with you -- or sit -- in the theatre. I can see my local headlines now: "USA gets blown up sitting down."

    Let me know when your country grows up just a little bit. It's been a few hundred years, and you haven't progressed one iota.

  21. Re:I can't believe you're saying this either on Reaction To the Sony Hack Is 'Beyond the Realm of Stupid' · · Score: 1

    "Comments owned by the poster." is a legal structure which requires a legal institution in order to have any interpretation whatsoever. The real issue here is that there are two legal institutions: the USA one, and the Korean one.

    So which set of laws are you going to choose to enforce? Yours or theirs? You'll choose yours. They'll choose theirs. That's a pretty solid Nash equilibrium whereby lots of people die purely because lots of laws conflict.

    So if you're going to prioritize life and blood, instead of freedom and liberty -- some wold argure that life and blood are the very basis for freedom and liberty, others would argure the exact opposite -- then you're going to need to do something to avoid the war. Since all it would take is a couple of words, that would seem to be the most cost effective solutions. And since the entire copyright and freedom of expression is there to protect economies and blood, it would stand to reason that the diplomatic solution would be the most rational of actions.

    Now, like I said, I don't at all expect your country to take that route. It's just not in your nature, as you've so directly stated. And so, if the movies are released, I will 'conveniently' take my family and friends on a trip far far far away from your borders.

  22. I can't believe you're saying this either on Reaction To the Sony Hack Is 'Beyond the Realm of Stupid' · · Score: 0

    No one ever said that they could co-ordinate 18'000 attacks simultaneously. No one's worried about that.

    What we are worried about is that they'll try, miss, and hit 100 random non-targets instead.

    On a very different side of things, Sony's doing the right thing. As an entertainment company, indeed as any consumer/commercial company, Sony should not be creating a war -- rightfully or not. If it gets to that level, as it just did, Sony ought to back off and your government ought to step in to do something -- I know exactly what my country would do: publicly apologize for the insulting movie, as a sign of respect, and move on.

    But your country doesn't like $50 solutions. Your country has always preferred $50 billion dollar solutions. So your president will likely escalate matters with a display of power. And if things do escalate, as we all know that they have in the past, you'll lose a few thousand soldiers' lives, instead of a few thousand movie-goers' lives -- as though that's somehow better, or any different at all.

    Of course I'm all for freedom of expression. Of course I'm against slander too. And maybe, just maybe, it's a bad idea to insult an enemy while he's holding a few nuclear guns. Just maybe.

    But hey, your country fought for its independence, with a lot of lives lost. Mine waited 100 years, and then asked politely.

  23. Re:DNS was always optional on Sony Leaks Reveal Hollywood Is Trying To Break DNS · · Score: 1

    HOSTS file.

  24. Re:DNS was always optional on Sony Leaks Reveal Hollywood Is Trying To Break DNS · · Score: 1

    HOSTS file, like I said.

  25. DNS was always optional on Sony Leaks Reveal Hollywood Is Trying To Break DNS · · Score: 1

    So, instead of saying: "Hey Joe, check out vids.com", I'll say "Hey Joe, check out 74.238.38.132". Because that's somehow so much harder to do, especially in a link. Welcome to your HOSTS file.