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User: Surt

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Comments · 8,792

  1. Re:The idea of removing impurities is cool... on Optical Furnace Bakes Better Solar Cells · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Solar panel efficiency is nearly good enough to make a lot of applications viable. If they can make the jump they claim from 16% to 20%, that would be huge. Needing 20% less roofspace/panels for the same power, and with the panels themselves cheaper to boot? It could bring the price of rooftop solar into the reach of millions more American households.

  2. Re:Not a very new problem. on Malicious QR Code Use On the Rise · · Score: 1

    I install a link expander for my browser.

  3. Re:Just like evil hyperlinks on Malicious QR Code Use On the Rise · · Score: 1

    New vulnerabilities for IE9 show up pretty much weekly. If you're browsing in the month-long vulnerability window you can get arbitrary code execution happening on your system.

  4. Re:Just like with TinyURL... on Malicious QR Code Use On the Rise · · Score: 1

    You install firefox mobile and an expander?

  5. Re:Don't live in places without water, stupid. on Melting Glaciers Cutting Peru Water Supply · · Score: 1

    No, I merely meant to contrast it with when migrations sometimes didn't mean war.

  6. Re:Don't live in places without water, stupid. on Melting Glaciers Cutting Peru Water Supply · · Score: 1

    I agree with you completely. I'm only suggesting that smart people be preparing for this outcome.

  7. Re:Don't live in places without water, stupid. on Melting Glaciers Cutting Peru Water Supply · · Score: 1

    I'm not assuming. The evidence is already out there. Look what happens every time there is a starvation situation. People hoard food, and people die. Thinking that the solution to the impact of climate change will be to handle it differently is wishful thinking, things aren't going to get better, they're going to get worse as we multiply food shortages by water shortages.

  8. Re:4 FOOTBALL FIELDS ARE NOT ENOUGH? on Melting Glaciers Cutting Peru Water Supply · · Score: 1

    You think 4 football fields is enough. Yikes. That is cramped as hell.

  9. Re:Don't live in places without water, stupid. on Melting Glaciers Cutting Peru Water Supply · · Score: 0

    Umm ... yes. The earth is not literally packed with humans shoulder to shoulder one deep. There isn't, however, enough of pretty much anything to go around any more. The earth has 148,940,000 km^2 to go around if wikipedia is to be believed, so that's .021277 km^2 per person, or 21,277 square meters, or a square 146 meters on a side. Not a lot of space. It gets much worse when you consider only really conventionally usable land, which loses you about 2/3rds of the total. Suddenly things start to look really cramped even if westerners are willing to give up wallowing in their luxury.

  10. Re:Don't live in places without water, stupid. on Melting Glaciers Cutting Peru Water Supply · · Score: 1

    So no freedom then? Because free people will act selfishly, and keep more than they need (in case of a rainy day, or perhaps more apropos to this case, a droughty day). People will rightly (in terms of their self interest) turn to hoarding if their assets are threatened by migrants. It's a terrible misfortune, but your choices really are limited to war, oppression, or radical change in human nature.

  11. Re:Don't live in places without water, stupid. on Melting Glaciers Cutting Peru Water Supply · · Score: 2

    So we're at a mere 60% of the absolute maximum capacity even now? You realize, right, that at max capacity, one extra person born means one dies. Now think about the mechanism of how that happens. Now think about whether or not that mechanism would be operating even now. Now you're getting it.

  12. Re:Don't live in places without water, stupid. on Melting Glaciers Cutting Peru Water Supply · · Score: 4, Insightful

    These are people who lived in places with water. And that water is going to go away, suddenly, as could happen to literally any source of water other than desalinated ocean.

    The history of the human race has involved a great deal of migration. Unfortunately, the earth is now full, and there is no place to migrate to anymore which is not already oversubscribed. Migration from now on means war.

  13. this is an entirely personal decision on Ask Slashdot: Handing Over Personal Work Without Compensation? · · Score: 1

    You just need to weigh the pros and cons for yourself.

    Or if you're looking for the best way to get paid, I'd say:

    Create a little website to sell your application, at a license price 2x what you'd like to get paid. Suggest that you could either buy a license to said software, or develop it yourself for X (and get the source code and full control as a bonus), or continue maintenance effort without software support, which you can document taking Y yearly man-hours at cost Z (presumably in the ballpark of at least 1/2 X, otherwise with a more than 2 year recoup you are not going to win this sale).

    Given a rational choice between 3 options, most organizations will choose. And once they've chose, you either know you can get paid for one of the 2 earlier choices, or you know that the organization would prefer to continue throwing away money on the manual process.

  14. Re:20,034 transferred in the same day on Go Daddy Loses Over 21,000 Domains In One Day · · Score: 1

    Indeed. But that wasn't in TFA unfortunately.

  15. Re:Advertising? on Warner Bros Sued For Pirating Louis Vuitton Trademark · · Score: 1

    LV sells ugly bags at high prices. Having a superior counterfeit advertised as LV undermines their marketing efforts because it creates the impression that those nice bags you can buy near the airport are actual LV.

  16. Re:curious case on Warner Bros Sued For Pirating Louis Vuitton Trademark · · Score: 1

    I'd say their best defense would be to call it a documentary about fake LV bags. It clearly wasn't a comedy, so it works out.

  17. Re:Control the devices on Ask Slashdot: Is E-Learning a Viable Option? · · Score: 1

    Agreed on all but the dogs who bark at squirrels. Anyone who has spent time interviewing such dogs about their political ideologies will have discovered the truth of that.

  18. Re:20,034 transferred in the same day on Go Daddy Loses Over 21,000 Domains In One Day · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is probably the most important thing you miss if you don't read the article. GoDaddy lost only about 1k domains.

  19. Re:Valued by Results on Why the Occupy Movement Skipped Silicon Valley · · Score: 1

    I don't think you understood me, but your conclusion is so crazy it's hard to know exactly where you went off track.

  20. Re:Valued by Results on Why the Occupy Movement Skipped Silicon Valley · · Score: 1

    Some things have pretty straightforward costs.

  21. Re:And then there was truth on Why the Occupy Movement Skipped Silicon Valley · · Score: 1

    Calling Santa Clara SV is stretching it a bit. Almost none of that is real SV territory, and the part that is, is the most expensive part.

  22. Re:Valued by Results on Why the Occupy Movement Skipped Silicon Valley · · Score: 2

    I favor taxing of tobacco and alcohol exactly to the extent that their use costs the rest of us money (paying medical bills for cancer caused to self or others, and the victims of drunk driving for example). I'd be perfectly happy to switch that to an insurance model where you were legally obligated to buy alcohol/tobacco insurance before use, though. Either way, it's all about society having some way to recoup the costs being created by those habits, costs which unfortunately aren't accounted for in the base price of producing those items.

    Likewise, I favor a progressive tax system, going up to about 100% for billionaires, because it more accurately reflects the cost of those individuals to our society. Fundamentally, every person with that kind of wealth is getting it because they are leveraging an existing inequity in negotiating power, where people with less assets cannot negotiate a fair price for their labor, because they cannot afford to walk away from the negotiation, while the richer person can, resulting in the richer person getting richer via the exploitation of the poorer person.

    I would be on board with a pure progressive tax, however. No exemptions, just higher and higher percentages paid on all income (must include all kinds of investment income and capital gains).

  23. Re:Mob rule, groupthink on What Do We Do When the Internet Mob Is Wrong? · · Score: 2

    Sadly, all they wound up with was a new form of tyranny of the minority.

  24. Re:Subscribe to regulated integrity on What Do We Do When the Internet Mob Is Wrong? · · Score: 1

    By what law?

  25. Re:Please, tell me why I'm wrong on Why the Occupy Movement Skipped Silicon Valley · · Score: 1

    Your statement seems to be an affirmation rather than a contradiction of the original claim. SF/PA are considered SV. The home prices are highest in the nation. They have remained that way thanks to holding their value.