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User: hirundo

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  1. Old and busted: It's a cross between the virtual and the real.
    New hotness: It's a cross between Project Xanadu and the Segway.

  2. Re:In other news, dog bites man, politician corrup on SETI Fails To Detect Signals Coming From KIC 8462852 (examiner.com) · · Score: 2

    tl;dr: They saw something funny there at high frequencies. So it's news that they don't see anything funny at lower frequencies.

  3. This. on What Was the Effect of Rand Paul's 10-Hour "Filibuster"? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    We're talking about it. And a politician in favor of a little more freedom has a little more visibility. That's enough.

  4. Micro finished basement on Ask Slashdot: Building a Home Media Center/Small Server In a Crawlspace? · · Score: 1

    Treat it like a tiny room add-on. Frame it and drywall it, sealing it from the crawl space. Ventilate into the house to share the inside weather.

  5. github for laws on Ask Slashdot: How Can Technology Improve the Judicial System? · · Score: 1

    The technology of distributed version control should be applied to legal text much like it is to code. A proposed law is pull request. An enacted law is an accepted pull request. Various jurisdictions can fork and merge laws.

    And while we're at it, let's build domain specific languages for laws with with well defined syntax, in order to disambiguate law at least as much as politics will allow.

  6. not even a ninja on AP Test's Recursion Examples: An Exercise In Awkwardness · · Score: 1

    > So, do you tend to embrace or eschew recursion in your programming?

    "To iterate is human, to recurse divine.” -- L. Peter Deutsch

    Since the guy who has to debug and extend my code is human (me), I take pity on him and recurse only as needed.

  7. Re:Update to Godwin's law? on Obama Administration Argues For Backdoors In Personal Electronics · · Score: 1

    > How is the government not concerned about corporate espionage, terrorism, and other criminal activity, you'd think from a security standpoint, they would want encryption to be legit.

    Because such measures limits the capacity of the government to conduct corporate espionage, terrorism, and other criminal activity?

  8. A good news story? on Chinese Couple Sells Children To Support Online Game Addiction · · Score: 2

    If these parents preferred in-game geegaws to their children then even going to Fujian child traffickers there's a fair chance that the children would end up in more caring homes than they started in.

  9. designed by violence on Study: Male Facial Development Evolved To Take Punches · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I heard another theory on the way that violence has influenced our evolution. It was suggested that opposable thumbs were favored because they make some apes like ourselves capable of forcible rape, unlike most animals. The success of forcible rape as a breeding strategy led to the differential survival of more violent, impulsive men and more submissive (more likely to survive rape) women who ovulate monthly. And this male aggression has led to homo sapiens becoming earth's dominant megafauna. So if true, on evolutionary time scales the optimal amount of violence to promote species survival is greater than zero.

    This is depressing in proportion to its plausibility.

  10. Re:What does Obama know that we don't? on White House Pressures Legislators Into Gutting USA FREEDOM Act · · Score: 1

    It could be as easy as a credible threat that he must play ball or they'll have one of his daughters (add nasty bits here). Does anyone think that's beyond the moral capability of an intelligence community willing to indiscriminately kill anyone near a drone target? Based on such recent actions I think that there are plenty of such people in the permanent bureaucracy who would consider that to be an act of courage and patriotism.

  11. abaci on Ask Slashdot: What's New In Legacy Languages? · · Score: 4, Funny

    My old abacus is giving me splinters. I asked my boss for a new one and he said "cào n zzng shíb dài". I'm not sure what that means but I'm hopeful.

  12. Re:We are a colony organism on Gut Bacteria Affect the Brain · · Score: 1

    > That means that we're 90 percent microbial and 10 percent human.

    That's very eukaryotecentric of you. Given the proportions, why assume that only the cells with nuclei are human rather than the other way around. Maybe we're 90 percent human and 10 percent new weird stuff. Dude, let the prejudice go and embrace your inner prokaryote.

  13. grunting truth to power on Chimpanzee "Personhood" Lawsuits Fail In New York Courts · · Score: 1, Interesting

    This isn't about giving power to animals. It's about giving power to guardians of animals. Just like organized religion is about giving power not to God, but to priests.

  14. Re:The reporter does not like electric vehicles on NY Times' Broder Responds To Tesla's Elon Musk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Musk has not published data, but charts...

    Those charts are data. They're representations of time series. Do you think it only counts as data when it's numbers in columns? Then measure the chart, write down the numbers, and make yourself happy.

  15. Huevos Magnificos on Ask Slashdot: What Tech For a Sailing Ship? · · Score: 2

    > Right now I am planning a 'round-the-world-trip and my ship (an 18 meter Skerry Cruiser sailing yacht) ... What kind of hardware would you recommend as necessary for a trip of this kind?

    #1 Balls of solid brass.

  16. Re:Very brief summary on MIT Fusion Researchers Answer Your Questions · · Score: 2, Interesting

    And what do you think would be a better use of $ 80 billion - fusion power, or so many more months of spending on our bloated Department of Defense ?

    Crazy idea, I know, but maybe a better use would be to leave it with the people who earned it?

  17. Re:Excited on Test-Tube Burgers Coming Soon · · Score: 2

    Beef Jerky. Reasonably low fat and low carb and mostly paleo diet. "Cow Chip" might actually sell as an extreme marketing term.

    I once made a meatloaf in a Pyrex pie plate. When I served it I discovered why meatloaf is traditionally formed into a rectangle, when my son said "Mmm, cow pie!"

  18. 25 million American diabetics: "Faster please." on Nano-Scale Terahertz Antenna May Make Tricorders Real · · Score: 5, Informative

    Seems like this story dropped the lede. The most significant use of this technology will be to detect blood glucose levels without lancing through the skin, making it a less dreaded process for millions of diabetics to monitor their conditions.

  19. Re:Cookie Cutter Concrete on Printing a Home: The Case For Contour Crafting · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Geez...just what we need...MORE cookie cutter homes that all look the same...

    You've got that backwards. Printing homes mean far more customizations. Bespoke your heart out on Sketchup, send it to be validated by a building code / physics model, and off to the printer. A room shaped like Einstein's hollowed out head? A bas-relief tribute to your dog on the living room wall? No problem! Try getting that kind of flexibility from a conventional contractor for conventional prices.

  20. On the internet nobody knows you're an old dog. on Ask Slashdot: Re-Entering the Job Market As a Software Engineer? · · Score: 2

    Remote jobs are your friend. I left programming for ten years, and when I returned found that my age and lack of recent experience was a definite handicap. Then I applied for a telecommuting job (advertising for a 'young' developer) and found that they really only cared about my coding chops and how well I play with others, but not much else. They never saw the gray beard. By the time they discovered that I'm not young anymore, it didn't matter. And it turns out that I really like working at home, and would hate returning to a cubicle.

  21. Glass Teat on TV Isn't Broken, So Why Fix It? · · Score: 1

    The problem is that 'glass teat' is too metaphorical. It needs to become an actual teat.

  22. Re:Boo Friggin Hoo on Court To Prisoner: No Xbox 360 For You · · Score: 1

    Asteroids?

  23. Sturgeon miscounted on Ask Slashdot: How Do You View the Wall Street Protests? · · Score: 1

    99% of everything is crap.

  24. Re:Palin is a media virus on Palin Fans Deface Paul Revere Wikipedia Page · · Score: 1

    The widespread hatred of her makes me want to watch her to find out why. Whatever it is about her that selectively traumatizes liberals should be isolated and weaponized. Also she's nice to look at.

  25. naughty dino on GameStop To Honor Ancient Duke Nukem Pre-Orders · · Score: 1

    What if my brontosaurus ate the clay tablet receipt? Will they accept petrified dung?