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User: lars_stefan_axelsson

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  1. Re:Only a few left.... on Marking 125 Years Since the Great Gauge Change · · Score: 1

    But, for the highest power devices in US homes (water heaters, clothes driers, ovens, etc) they are already on 240V.

    But those are (were, it differs and is changing) on 400V three phase here. As is industrial equipment, bigger motors, welders etc (some of which are not uncommon in home workshops). And you don't have that available. The "European" system is 230/400V, not just 230V.

  2. Re:Free as in BSD on 2 RMS Books Hit Version 2.0 · · Score: 2

    The BSD is neutral on the matter and allows everyone to do whatever THEY want with code.

    No it doesn't. I would for example like to put it under the GPL, but the license forbids me from doing that. I'd also like to claim it as my own work, but you don't allow that either.

    All of you BSD=true freedom people should eat your own dogfood and put your work under the public domain if it's true freedom you're after. Until you do you need to realise that you only like a different set of restrictions than those of us that prefer the GPL. Which we incidentally thinks promotes more freedom than your particular set of restrictions.

  3. Re:Bullshit on No U.S. Government Shutdown This Week · · Score: 1

    Check the comments for some of the more obivous flaws in that analysis. It's the other way around. In order to learn about that you'll have to read something like http://www.undp.org/publications/hdr2010/en/HDR_2010_EN_Complete.pdf rather than random bloggers citing Swedish ultra right wing think tanks.

  4. Re:GPL is the problem on Apple Remove Samba From OS X 10.7 Because of GPLv3 · · Score: 1

    Look, as the GP said, it's very simple. A society that forbidds slavery is more free than one that doesn't. Freedom has very little to do with the number of rules in a society and everything to do with the nature of the rules of a society.

  5. Re:GPL is the problem on Apple Remove Samba From OS X 10.7 Because of GPLv3 · · Score: 1

    No, we don't allow slavery, and we don't allow indentured servitude either. Because it's basically the same shit under a different name. Even if you want to be one.

  6. Re:The penalty for an excessive lawsuit should be on Limewire Being Sued For 75 Trillion · · Score: 1

    The penalty for an excessive lawsuit should be >= the difference between the claimed damage and the actual damage.

    In Sweden it's somewhat like that (i.e. not at all). We have a loser pays system, as in loser pays the other party's legal fees (within reason). And, if you "win" but are awarded less than half of what you sued for, then you're considered the loser from the perspective of having to pay the other party's fees.

    So that gives at least some incentive to keep the claimed damages somewhat reasonable.

  7. Re:A stain on my country's tattered honor on Bradley Manning Charged With Aiding the Enemy · · Score: 1

    Unless you watched the entire unedited clip, you saw an editorialized, and biased view of that encounter.

    I did watch the whole thing. I saw (and heard) an appache crewman lie to his chain of command "They're picking up dead bodies and weapons" (not exact quote) to obtain permission to fire on a van that was in actual fact only helping the wounded.

    No need to editorialise as the violation against the Geneva convention (and US rules of engagement) is clear as day. Something one must assume the apache crew was well aware of, otherwise they wouldn't have felt the need to lie to their chain of command to obtain that permission to fire.

  8. Re:What scientists... on New Mexico Bill To Protect Anti-Science Education · · Score: 1

    OK, an example please. Should be easy to find.

    Sure, examples abound: See e.g. http://talkorigins.org/faqs/behe.html , esp. e.g. http://www.talkdesign.org/faqs/Evolving_Immunity.html and that's just for starters.

  9. Re:What scientists... on New Mexico Bill To Protect Anti-Science Education · · Score: 2

    Why would you bring God into this. I never mentioned God. It's no wonder why religious people get offended when an evolutionary discussion is brought up. Assholes like you try to use evolution to disprove their religion, even though many people, scientists included believe in both God and evolution. It is possible to support two points of view.

    Indeed. Since religion is not a scientific proposition it is impossible to "disprove" it. All he said was that there was no need for a God for the system to work. If you want to believe in one, fine. Go ahead. But there's no need for the rest of us in order for our view of the world to be internally consistent. Now for the question at hand.

    Great! Now if you could just provide an example of an creature who has an organ necessary for the creature to survive, that is obviously adequate or the creature would have gone extinct, evolving two more organs independently of eachother, neither of which form any function on their own, hanging on to these two separate, worthless organs, they both combine to perform the already adequate function of another organ, AND, the original organ slowly being evolved out of existance.

    No, that's not what he said. The animal started with an "adequate" organ A. Acquired organ B which in combination with A worked better. Then acquired (doesn't have to be an intrinsic mutation, could just as well be a virus) organ C which worked in conjunction with A and B, and finally lost A which didn't have much purpose anymore.

    Now, if you add the complications that B and C could develop to serve another purpose altogether and that they only need not have a detrimental effect on the other system as a whole you can end up with a very complex and interdependent system indeed once you've gone through a couple of thousand iterations. Just look at the human immune system which is at least a couple of overlapping systems with bits missing.

    The other mistake you allude to is the "obviously adequate or the organism would have gone extinct". No organism exists in isolation. What's adequate in one situation given surroundings and all the other organisms can be woefully inadequate just next Tuesday. It's survival of the fittest (on average etc. etc.). If one species achieves better fitness it will most certainly tend to out crowd the competitors. This can of course be seen in painful detail today when one foreign species is introduced in an area where it has not previously been. Local species can and do go extinct in such circumstances. An genetic trait that has even been slightly harmful can and have been very useful in such a situation. (A human analogue is sickle cell anaemia, which while it has negative consequences makes infection by malaria less likely.

  10. Re:overhead wires or third rails on Ski Lifts Can Could Help Get Cargo Traffic Off the Road · · Score: 1

    Yes. That's what I meant. You can either put the bearings on the "train", i.e. move the engine and have the track stationary. Or you can put the engine on the ground, but then you have to move the "rails", i.e. wire, and that has to move on rollers. That has to have bearings. And if you're moving over a flat surface you need more towers than in the mountains, hence more bearings. (I used to be an alpinist, I'm well aquainted with "le telecabine".)

    So of course it will work. I was only arguing that not having to move the engine around isn't necessarily as great a win as you might think. Instead you have to move the "rails" around. And that's more complicated and incurrs losses of its own.

    It's an old technology, if it worked much better than e.g. rail, we would still be using it. Instead all the lines in Sweden, Norway, etc. has been dismantled and replaced with trucks etc. There's probably a reason for that.

  11. Re:Where we should have been years ago already on China Starts Molten Salt Nuclear Reactor Project · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I like the fact that this salt bath solution in that it is passively safe in that heat distorts the geometry slowing reaction rates and also they can drain the bath into subcritical loads quite easily (and I'd imagine you could make the drain plug out of a material that would melt above your normal reaction temp but well below critical level).

    Indeed. You can even make it from the salt itself. Just by cooling a plug of it in the drain. The original US experimental reactor worked that way. A simple fan cooled the drain plug. When the reactor lost power, the fan would stop, the plug would melt and the reactor would stop. That's no theory either, it was how the reactor was routinely shut down during the weekends. They just pulled the plug and went home!

  12. Re:overhead wires or third rails on Ski Lifts Can Could Help Get Cargo Traffic Off the Road · · Score: 1

    Simple, with a ski lift, you don't have to haul the engine everywhere you go. While a railroad involves massive engines which travel back and forth with each route, the motive force in a ropeway is provided by fixed elements and used to pull the cable around a cycle.

    And a drawback is that you take the friction loss everywhere the wire rope travels. In a train you only need one bearing per wheel. Here you need one bearing per every unit length of wire. You can either move the engine on a rail, or move the the whole rail with a fixed engine.

    That's not to say that this couldn't work, only that you make different trade-offs. TANSTAAFL.

  13. Re:I wish it weren't true, but on Famous British Autism Study an 'Elaborate Fraud' · · Score: 1

    I said the shot did. The shot, clearly and demonstrably, contains more than just that. The fact of the matter is that I simply do not care what part of the act makes me get sick. I can demonstrate that it does. Maybe I'm allergic. Don't care. It does me more harm than good,

    Yes, specifically it's the adjuvant. The point of which is to increase your immune response. So in the case of flu shots you're actually supposed to feel sick (most people do), that's paradoxically a good thing, as it means that you've had a strong immune reaction to the vaccine, ensuring good immunity. (The reaction should be milder and shorter though, i.e. like a mini flu for 24 hours).

    Now, reactions to the adjuvant varies, myself I tend to get a fairly strong reaction, and I don't routinely get vaccinated as I rarely (if ever) get the actual flu. But when I do get the shot, such as last year, I just load up on paracetamol (e.g. Tylenol), grin and bear it, taking consolation in the fact that I'll at least get the benefit in the vaccination.

  14. Re:I'm sure they're on North Korea Says War With South Would Go Nuclear · · Score: 1

    Yes, but that's not how it works. Starvation, sickness, poor living conditions, social upheaval are the major killers in the post nuclear strike world. Initial losses would be far less.

    Read; http://homepage.mac.com/msb/163x/faqs/nuclear_warfare_101.html (and following, 102, 103 etc.) or watch "Threads" etc. for a more realistic treatment. "On the beach" for all it's qualities, is not a realistic treatment.

  15. Re:Dead Hand on North Korea Says War With South Would Go Nuclear · · Score: 1

    And cheaper. And have higher yield. Cobalt was a very early speculative idea that never left the drawing board. By the time there were thermonuclear devices it was long forgotten.

  16. Re:This is tech news? on North Korea Says War With South Would Go Nuclear · · Score: 1

    I'm pretty sure the CCP is basically going, "We gotta stick up for North Korea! It's Red, we're Red..." and that relationship is more about the show of bolstering China's communist credentials at a time when it seems more and more capitalist than any actual strategic gain China thinks it's getting out of the deal.

    I think it's more a question of realpolitik. The Chinese doesn't want the entire North Korean population as refugees if the border was to come down. That's pretty much what they'd end up with. Even now it's the major route out of NK and the Chinese are already not that happy about it.

  17. Re:bad writing, bad acting. on Stargate Universe Cancelled · · Score: 1

    You've hit the nail on the head but failed to realize that this is probably EXACTLY how real humans would act in this situation. It's like a fiction reality show.

    If you selected people randomly of the street maybe, but only maybe. But that's not what supposedly happened here. There shouldn't be single person on that ship that wasn't way above average in many if not most respects. Otherwise they wouldn't have been anywhere near that original star gate.

    Put another way. If this were a reality show it ought to have been "A day in the lives of the crew of the international space station", not "Big Brother 17". There's quite different selection processes at work here.

    So no, having everybody acting like incompetent, needy, stupid, children doesn't make for either "depth of character" nor actually "realism". Quite the opposite. Read some real military history or real survival stories for how this think ought to have played out had the writers not been brought up on the emo reality soap shit that is the current trend. There's plenty of room for both strong and deep emotion and a "get on with it" attitude without it turning into Biggles or the Commando comics.

    Good riddance I say.

  18. Re:So, the system works? on Retailers Dread Phone-Wielding Shoppers · · Score: 1

    For some reason, "not expanding" is the same thing as "a business slowly dying", a concept which always eluded me. I mean, come on...if you're posting a profit, who cares if you're growing by 5% or 10% or whatever; you're still making a profit.

    Because that's how even the worst alternative, i.e. interest work. If you put your money in a bank account you get a certain percentage as interest. If you let that accumulate you have exponential growth. And that's what all other investments have to compete with. So it's not only growth but exponential growth. Otherwise you're just not keeping up with other investments that your investors could have put their money in.

    Now of course, given that we have finite resources, this can't keep up forever, or even for very long. But as long as there was room to expand (earth's population is still growing so some say there's still room to expand) that's what we ended up with.

  19. Re:Socialism never disappoints on Venezuelan Gov't Seeks Internet Content Bill · · Score: 1

    Statoil's the biggest offshore oil company in the world, they're pretty f-ing dominating in the Norwegian oil industry. That's not to say that Shell, BP etc. are non-existant. But the government calls the shots, and have their own business available to take their ball and go home if foreign/private interests should start to obstruct. (So no Anglo Iranian oil company black mail is possible like the Iranians had to put up with in the fifties.)

    And while you can buy shares in Statoil the company was founded by an act of law by the Norwegian government and they still to this day maintain majority ownership (note, not just a controlling interest, they're the majority owner). So however many shares you buy, you still won't have a say unless the Norwegian government happens to agree with you.

    The construct isn't that uncommon in the Nordic countries. There is a sliding scale from "a branch of government", via "a branch that does business", i.e. even though it's a part of government it isn't funded by taxes and have to show a surplus etc, through "a wholly/partly government owned company". That's where the "mix" in "mixed economy" comes from.

  20. Re:Doomed on Michael Moore Posts Julian Assange's Bail · · Score: 1

    My answer to that is quite simply. "No man is an island". It's the same reason that I do a weekly commute to the other side of the country, rather than move. I have friends and family where I live now. I guess it's the same with most everyone else. Even though I have opinions (sometimes strong) about what could/should be different in my own country, and even though I use other countries as an example of what is possible/could be done better, that doesn't mean that I want to *leave*. I find the suggestion preposterous. To wit, Michael Moore likes Canada, he likes the Canadian system and since it's on the same continent and similar in many other respects he holds that up as an example that he thinks all of you should follow. That doesn't make him Canadian.

    I'm sorry, but even if you're not saying "shut up or leave", I still find it too close to "love it or leave", where "love" is defined as the unhealthy unquestioning kind. If you have children you know that there are plenty of room for both love and scathing criticism :-) It doesn't mean that you want to abandon them just because you have issues with the way they're behaving. Quite the opposite. :-)

    I guess I'm just used to a completely different kind of discourse. I have virtually never heard the same sentiments expressed publicly in the Swedish debate, i.e. if you're so unhappy then shove off. And I think our debate is healthier for it. After all, what kind of an argument is that? When you've said that you've drawn your line in the sand; you've clearly not interested in discussing the issues; you're closing the door on maybe being able to meet half way or at least come to an understanding further down the line. It's a good way to further division and an "us vs them" mentality. And that IMHO is no way to build a nation.

    All above IMHO of course. I don't know Michael Moore and can't profess to any actual inside knowledge into his motives. Maybe he want's to emigrate, I just don't see why anyone would assume that's anywhere near the top of the list of anyone's motives. Maybe it's because you are fundamentally a nation of immigrants? Could it be that simple?

  21. Re:Notice how there is little relevance on Watch 200 Years of Global Growth In 4 Minutes · · Score: 2

    But not all, and those that remain can have a huge impact. Such as basic hygiene, or oral replacement therapy (saved millions of infants in India and is dirt cheap) to take just two examples. There are many others such as certain vaccination programs that are relatively cheap and of great value.

  22. Re:Doomed on Michael Moore Posts Julian Assange's Bail · · Score: 1

    As a bit of a side note, I find it interesting that the bits I've seen from Moore indicate that he seems to praise their healthcare system, relatively low firearm violence rates, and yet he hasn't emigrated there. I'd be interested to see his documentary on all that Canada does wrong to the point that he'd rather remain an American.

    This comes up time and time again in any debate in the US; i.e. a version of "Shut up or leave". I don't understand it. Where were you all taught that the road to progress and betterment is sweeping everything under the rug? How are you going to further your nation, or even maintain the one you've got without open, honest and healthy debate? For God's sake man, you can't ever maintain a healthy democracy without disagreement and open debate. Do you all honestly think you can?

  23. Re:Caution: car analogy follows: on Ukraine To Open Chernobyl Area To Tourists · · Score: 1

    wait, i can die from eating a banana?

    Yes, most likely by chocking on it.

  24. Re:Socialism never disappoints on Venezuelan Gov't Seeks Internet Content Bill · · Score: 1

    Scandinavian countries are largely capitalist welfare states. Most means of production are in private hands, although governments usually have partial or total ownership of some industries, so you can call them mixed economies, but almost every country in the world is a mixed economy. Under Chavez, Venezuela can be considered a socialist country as most means of productions are owned by the government.

    Yeah, unlike e.g. Norway where the government has nothing to do with the biggest Norwegian industry bar none (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statoil)...

  25. Re:Sorry, no "dirty tricks" campaign here... on Wikileaks Founder Arrested In London · · Score: 1

    Well considering they just robbed him of the money he would need to defend himself how EXACTLY is supposed to "fight the charges"? I don't know how it is in Sweden but here in the USA if you don't have money for a lawyer you get a "public pretender" which last I looked the odds of conviction with a public pretender is something like 98%. Hell you got better odds of winning $1000 with a scratch off ticket than winning with a public pretender.

    Fortunately that's not the case in Sweden. In Sweden you can have the defender of your choice on the governments money in all criminal matters (that's only fair, they have virtually limitless resources). As a result there is no public defenders office as such, none is needed. Indeed Julian Assange had a very high profile lawyer, Leif Silbersky, to start with, until he became unhappy with the handling of the case, and had another one appointed. (He was allegedly not feeling a 100% commitment from Silbersky, his first defender).

    Of course there are more details, but by and large, the defence in all criminal cases in Sweden are paid for by the state according to tariffs set by the state. There is no market for "higher priced" lawyers, as there are no clients with the means or willingness to pay extra. (The public defender is in fact not allowed to receive extra reimbursement from the client, above and beyond what the state pays).

    So, there's no great need to worry on that account at least.