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User: beanyk

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Comments · 171

  1. Re:If they're concerned on picking winners or lose on A War Over Solar Power Is Raging Within the GOP · · Score: 1

    AC is because it's dangerous to health to let it be 105F in a workplace.

    This is very true. But the problem is that often the AC systems overshoot massively. Usually in a large air-conditioned facility, I find myself shivering because they aim low. In my last job (Texas, a few years ago), several senior staff had space heaters in their offices to bring the temperature back *up* to the 68-72 F level, which is insane. They'd reset the thermostat if they could, but it was a building-wide system, with an idiot at the switch.

  2. Re:It is a broken system on White House: Use Metric If You Want, We Don't Care · · Score: 1

    However, what makes it s truly broken unit system is that it uses the unit pound for both mass and weight. Yes there have been "hacks" of the system to bring them inline with physical reality so you have the "avoirdupois pound" meaning a mass and the "pound" meaning force. However this means that the units are not clear: when you say "pound" do you mean force or mass?

    U.S. Physics textbooks sometimes (always?) use the slug as the standard imperial unit of mass. A force of one pound will accelerate one slug by 1 foot/sec^2. I'd never heard of this slug thingy before moving to the U.S., and I grew up in Ireland, which has the same half-assed approach to metric and imperial as the U.K.

  3. Re:Donglegate? Really? on Will Donglegate Affect Your Decision To Attend PyCon? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    She literally took food off the table of 3 children.

    Le sigh.

  4. A secular workplace is a good workplace. on JPL Employee's Firing Wasn't Due To Intelligent Design Advocacy, Says Judge · · Score: 1

    I work in a different NASA centre, and while I'm pretty sure two of my coworkers actively practice some kind of religion -- a couple of books in one's office, and the other one wears a yarmulke -- for the most part, I have *no* idea of anyone's religious beliefs or lack of same. Certainly nobody has brought it up in conversation, much less try to convert anyone else.

    This is how it should be everywhere outside a church/religious institution.

  5. Re:What they were doing in Canada? on Pakastani Politician Detained By US Customs Over Opposition To Drone Strikes · · Score: 2

    It happens in other cities as well. Dublin airport, for instance, has a U.S. Immigration pre-clearance section that I've used many times. Not necessarily for all U.S.-bound flights, though.

  6. Re:stop with the high school journalism headlines on Could You Hack Into Mars Curiosity Rover? · · Score: 1

    It's a question. Not putting in a question mark would be wrong.

    Rewording so that it's not a question would change the meaning too much ("How to hack into the Mars Curiosity Rover"), or be needlessly wordy ("Post on whether it would be possible to hack into the Mars Curiosity Rover").

  7. Re:Savvy study author ... on Belief In Hell Predicts a Country's Crime Rates Better Than Other Factors · · Score: 2

    The term you're looking for is "secular", not "atheist".

  8. Re:I'm not going to make the smartphone mistake ag on New iPad Jailbroken Already · · Score: 1

    You may have to read the grandfather post.

  9. Re:FTFA on Damaged US Passport Chip Strands Travelers · · Score: 1

    There are a lot of countries that recognize each others driver's licenses as proof or that don't require any documents when traveling between them (see all of the EU).

    Not "all of the EU", unfortunately. The U.K., for instance, has not signed onto the Schengen Accord that allows for this. And Ireland requires passports too (possibly because it wants to be in lock-step with the U.K., its closest neighbour).

    [This was already mentioned by an AC, but (s)he hasn't yet been modded up, and I don't have mod points]

  10. Re:Lame on How Stephen Hawking Has Defied the Odds For 50 Years · · Score: 1

    No Nobel prize

    Which at this point is surprising to me. He did pioneering work on the physics of black holes, and was the first to theorize on what is now called Hawking Radiation. That seems like a pretty good accomplishment. Do you suppose the relative lack of experimental confirmation keeps him from it?

    I think that's more or less it. BH thermodynamics and evaporation are cool ideas, and Hawking has been fundamental in finding links between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. But it's still just an idea, and impossible to verify any time soon, unless something cool happens at the LHC.

  11. Re:Remarkable on How Stephen Hawking Has Defied the Odds For 50 Years · · Score: 1

    a theoretical mathematician

    as opposed to an experimental mathematician?

    As opposed to an Applied Mathematician.

  12. Re:General Relativity is Wrong on OPERA Group Repeats Faster-Than-Light Neutrino Results · · Score: 1

    Yes, but special relativity is a special case of general relativity (the case where spacetime is flat), so if something screws up SR, GR gets screwed up into the bargain.

  13. Re:Einstein replied "Check your measurements, son" on CERN Experiment Indicates Faster-Than-Light Neutrinos · · Score: 2

    Only if (a) your equals sign is approximate (since you're neglecting terms in p^4 and higher) and (b) your "m" is the rest mass, which I would denote "m_0".

  14. Re:Science vs Religion: Contradictions? on Evangelical Scientists Debate Creation Story · · Score: 1

    Jesus wrote the bible with his own hand, neigh, with both hands writing at the same time, and he's still PISSED OFF over losing the whole "sun is the center of the universe" debate.

    Jesus was a horse?

  15. Re:doesn't make much of a difference on S&P's $2 Trillion Math Mistake · · Score: 1

    What they did is like killing a chicken, looking at its entrails, and then declaring that because of the intestines, they are confident that 2 + 2 = 4.

    More like killing a chicken, looking at its entrails, and then declaring that because of the intestines, they are confident that the chicken is not too healthy.

  16. Re:PC? on Spiderman's Politically Correct Replacement · · Score: 2

    He represents the minorities. You know, the same minorities that get offered scholarships based on their race or gender; the minorities that get hired in order to fill a quota, with no regard for their actual qualifications; the minorities that can say whatever they want and play the discrimination card when someone calls them out, while the rest of us are told to shut up and be tolerant; the minorities that never seem to be at fault for anything, always shifting the blame to the persecution of the majority.

    The affirmative action policies I've encountered only state that minorities should be preferred only when two or more job candidates are equally qualified. How badly this is abused is, of course, open to debate (and liberal use of anecdote).

  17. Re:Refuse Permission? on Climate Unit Releases Virtually All Remaining Data · · Score: 1

    Credit scores are actually a pretty good example. Information that the credit companies collect about you, which can affect you greatly. In the US, they are considered important enough that laws have been written to require the credit reporting agencies to provide you with your score on a periodic basis (if you ask) at NO charge.

    I don't think that's true. The agencies are required by law to provide you with your credit REPORT yearly at no charge. The credit SCORE -- that single number presumably distilled from the report by whatever arcane algorithms they use -- is still privileged information that you have to pay for.

  18. paper for proper redacting? on State of Alaska Prints Out Palin's E-Mails; Online Distribution 'Impractical' · · Score: 1

    I thought the point of printing them out was to allow for effective redacting of sensitive information? I read recently that the Alaskan officials didn't think they could properly redact in the original electronic documents.

    Of course, they could print out, redact with Sharpie, then rescan the page image to PDF (making it much larger than it should be, of course), but that last step is time-consuming.

    (No, I haven't yet RTFA)

  19. Re:I'm going to go out on a limb... on Supreme Court Takes Up Scholars' Rights · · Score: 1

    I think you're ignoring part of the parent's point (which may not have been explicit). It's not just that the Supreme Court's decisions can be predicted beforehand, it's that the specific Justices' -votes- can be predicted beforehand.

    If the law were really like a computer code, and the Supreme Court Justices were all rational, knowledgeable and honest, we would them to render identical opinions on every question; in fact, there would only have to be -one- judge. Since we may not trust one judge to be sufficiently knowledgeable, we have nine instead, and take a majority opinion.

    But if you know that certain issues are going to split 5:4 or 6:3, with the -same- justices on the majority side each time, then there's a real problem. At least one of the sides is pushing a bias that has nothing to do with the law. At least one of the sides is failing in rationality, knowledge, or honesty; I suspect both are.

  20. Re:Maybe the Twits should apply for a super-injunc on Twitter Prepared To Name Users · · Score: 1

    Not true.

    If a tabloid decides to write about the affair they think he's having, then Mr Giggs has a problem. It doesn't actually matter whether he had an affair or not.

    The real problem is certain journalists (professional or otherwise) intruding on the private lives of celebrities. To my knowledge, Mr Giggs has no official business in promoting public morality. Ergo, the public has no reasonable right to know about his morals.

  21. Re:Wonderful! on Upscaling Retro 8-Bit Pixel Art To Vector Graphics · · Score: 1

    There was a wonderful send-up of this in an episode of Red Dwarf. Search for "csi zoom red dwarf" on YouTube ...

  22. "anniversary" IMPLIES "year"! on Microsoft Celebrates Feynman 50-year Anniversary · · Score: 1

    "50-year anniversary" is as redundant as ATM machine, PIN number, etc.

    And while I'm off-topic, they're not celebrating 50 years (or "50 year-years", if you're the headline writer) of Feynman; they're celebrating 50 years of his Lectures.

    [Off to mow the lawn with my lawn-lawnmower.]

  23. Re:There's only one Bond... on Ask Slashdot: How/Where To Start Watching Dr. Who? · · Score: 2

    IMO, Lazenby was a joke. He smirked his way through most of OHMSS just as badly as Moore did later on. He took it about as seriously as Karen Allen took the last Indiana Jones film (which as we know WAS NEVER MADE).

    It wasn't all Lazenby's fault, of course. The producers made half of the film (OHMSS) a tongue-in-cheek reference to the fact that Bond wasn't Connery any more (e.g. "this kind of thing never happened to the other fella"), when they weren't hammering home that YES THIS IS JAMES BOND, REALLY WE MEAN IT (long nostalgic montage of previous missions' mementoes in his desk).

    Once they'd gotten over that, and the interminable Louis-Armstrong-soundtracked love story, it was a decent film that was pretty close to Fleming's book.

    But I think Craig is much closer to the Fleming character. As close as you can get without making him unbearably sexist and pretty boring as well.

  24. Re:It's optional on Facebook Rolls Out Redesigned Profile Pages · · Score: 1

    Yep -- thanks. I should read past the abstract, I suppose.

  25. It's optional on Facebook Rolls Out Redesigned Profile Pages · · Score: 2

    ... so far, at least. My profile is just the same as yesterday. Only when I clicked on a friend's profile did I see the change.

    There was a button I could click to follow suit, but I ignored it.