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User: Karmashock

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  1. Kill them all. on FDA Wants To Release Millions of Genetically Modified Mosquitoes In Florida · · Score: 2

    Mosquitoes, fleas, ticks, etc.

    Here someone will say "but that will damage the fragile web of life and kill mother gaia" or some other drivel. The biosphere is quite stable and can survive the loss of all these species without crashing the food web.

    Look at a remote tropical island that doesn't have any of these species. They exist. And guess what... they're fine. Will something that eats these things likely have a harder time finding food? Sure. But if the species isn't already on the brink of extinction then it will adapt. If it was already on that brink then chances are it was doomed in any case. Adaptive species don't get into positions like that.

    And beyond that, species go extinct all the time. Always have. New species fill their niches or existing species simply expand to fill vacant niches which tends to cause them to splinter and create new species.

    Here again, someone will say "but the rate of extinction has increased!" Yes it has. The biggest reason is human transport and trade. You let loose a rat from the mainland onto some little island and it is probably going to go sickhouse on the local species that likely haven't had to work as hard to survive on their little island. And yes, that rat or other relevant more vital species is likely to eradicate or out compete its rivals. Evolution at work.

    Beyond that, we are also destroying habitats. And that is sad... We should try to limit that sort of damage when and where possible. However, the mosquito can go fuck itself sideways with a rusty chainsaw. I have literally zero sympathy for that species. And I am quite comfortable geo engineering the world to the extent that nightmare species like that simply don't exist. Mother nature has come up with some very impressive things over the eons. But she has also birthed some monsters. And I am quite comfortable aborting those little experiments.

    Here again, someone will say "but humans are the biggest monsters"... then kill yourself. Shut up and kill yourself. I have zero patience for that drivel.

    Kill all the mosquitoes.

  2. Re:Government Intervention on Ask Slashdot: When and How Did Europe Leapfrog the US For Internet Access? · · Score: 1

    Free market has no chance when the government creates government backed monopolies. Try to run cable throughout most of the US and you'll be served with some sort of court document to shut down your operation.

    The free market would and will sort this out. But the government is getting in the way. Even google and Qwest are having a hard time laying cable. They keep getting dicked around with by government officials. Most of it is local at this point.

    We passed some laws in the 90s that made it illegal for the feds to fuck with people trying to lay cable. So that was good. Sadly, the big ISPs just went local and set up a million road blocks across the whole country. A lot of it revolves around small ISPs cutting into the profits of big ISPs which means the big ISPs can't offer discounted service to poor people. So to support the subsidies they are effectively granted monopolies.

    it is of course a bait and switch because the poor people aren't given discounted internet because they don't even know how to sign up for it. The discounts are not advertised. So no one signs up for them. And so the big ISPs get a monopoly for the price of bribing every politician from San Diego to Seattle to Portland to Miami. It sound expensive until you realize how cheaply they can be bought. Prices seem to be about 100 grand for large cities, 5 to 10 grand for small towns, and then the bribes only need to be paid when the ISPs want something. A law hits the city council... kill it and get 5 grand.

  3. Re:Faraday cage? on Georgia Institute of Technology Researchers Bridge the Airgap · · Score: 1

    There's no reason it shouldn't work with a power cable going into it. I don't know what you're talking about.

    If the cage is grounded and has only very small holes in it then it shouldn't matter.

    Correct me if I am wrong. This is my understanding of the principle.

  4. Re:Faraday cage? on Georgia Institute of Technology Researchers Bridge the Airgap · · Score: 1

    If sufficiently attenuated then whether it is totally eliminated or not becomes irrelevant.

    What is more, if specific frequencies are specifically interfered with then snooping on the radiation becomes pointless.

    The two things people are saying works is kicking out some interference and/or blocking the signals. But really in either case you only need to infer with it to a point. Once it is garbled or attenuated enough that it cannot practically be detected/decoded then who cares. Listen to the white noise at 2 inches from my system all you like. The trick is to reduce the listening range to a couple feet at most with line of sight.

    Then the first rule of computer security comes into play. Physical security. If an enemy agent has penetrated your network to such an extent that they are placing bugs a couple feet from your systems then you've got bigger problems then van eck radiation.

  5. Faraday cage? on Georgia Institute of Technology Researchers Bridge the Airgap · · Score: 1

    Seems like there are some really easy ways to prevent some sort of EM signature from leaking.

  6. Re:You nerds need to get over yourselves on Why Coding Is Not the New Literacy · · Score: 1

    I can't have this discussion with you if you're just going to make excuses for ignorance.

    Airplanes are not sky donkeys. They're airplanes. The people making decisions shouldn't need to resort to crude and painfully inaccurate analogies to understand technologies they presume to regulate.

    If they want to surrender their power and then chat about things from a position of relevance, then that is fine. If however they presume to dictate the terms of the technology then it is completely unacceptable that they don't actually know how it works at least generally. And no... a series of pipes is not generally right. They need to have a basic knowledge of how information moves through the system.

    If you want a better analogy since you're determined to be stubborn on the issue... the mail system is also better. It is still bad for various reasons but one does not bill people for road wear.

    As to your point that it is wrong to bill per byte over the internet, that runs counter to the fact that billing that way is very common. Most cellphone internet plans include a relatively small amount of data and then they bill by usage. In Australia and Alaska it is also quite common to do that with cable based internet.

    Look... this argument bores me. Really. I'm not interested in it at all. Enough.

  7. the firmware can be altered... they're not hardcoding that.

  8. Re:You nerds need to get over yourselves on Why Coding Is Not the New Literacy · · Score: 1

    All I would need are skilled craftsmen, access to foundries, and the freedom to go through some experiments.

    I know what they look like on the inside and I know roughly the principles that drive them. What is more, they had turbine engines at that time period.

    And do not forget that drawings of steam engines can be found dating back to antiquity. Much of what holds people back is not realizing what is possible.

    If you told a bunch of steam engine engineers that a jet turbine was possible... then I don't see why I couldn't relay to them what I had seen from the future and have a good shot at making one.

    To cement my point:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    Kids are building these things out of tin cans for school projects. They're a precocious bunch and I wouldn't presume to be able to do it myself with only my own resources. But don't assume that engineers from the 1860s were less competent then some teenagers from 2012. If you told them roughly how it worked they should be able to rough a prototype out.

  9. Re:You nerds need to get over yourselves on Why Coding Is Not the New Literacy · · Score: 1

    The analogy is terrible. If you want a better one, try roads and trucks. Water or gas in pipes doesn't discreetly route to given addresses.

  10. Re:You nerds need to get over yourselves on Why Coding Is Not the New Literacy · · Score: 1

    I'm not saying you need to understand everything well enough to personally build it yourself. I'm saying you need to understand it well enough to know roughly how it ACTUALLY works.

    For example, jet engines work by very rapidly compressing hot gas to create a very high pressure exhaust which is what drives a jet plane forward.

    I'd expect you to know that it involves some very precisely engineered bits of machinery that spin around very quickly under very high pressure and temperature conditions. I would expect you to know that it requires oxygen from the atmosphere and that it requires a special fuel source which the engine requires for operation.

    As to why jet engines require jet fuel. They don't. You can run a jet on almost any fuel. They just work better with very rapidly combusting fuel.

    Ever tried to light a camp fire using gasoline? It basically just explodes or burns so fast that it doesn't really light anything on fire.

    A much better gas for that is diesel because it burns more slowly and is more likely to get the wood going.

    Jet fuel is to gasoline what gasoline is to diesel. It burns very quickly which as you can imagine makes it useful for an engine of this type.

    Now could I build a jet engine? Give me a factory and a team of engineers from the 1860s and I could probably build a jet engine. Lots of trial and error but I understand the gist of it.

    My point with regards to coding is that I just want people to know enough about technology to not be utterly clueless as to how it works. And so many people are just clueless. It is basically just magic to them.

    My father for example is a brilliant man. He was a lawyer before he retired. Knows a lot of about history, law, finance, and business. To him, computers are almost literally magic. He has no clue at all and it does sort of kill me. As much as he's a genius with some things he shouldn't ever be in a position where he telling anyone dealing with technology how to do things. By all means, he can say WHAT he wants it to do but the how of it is off limits since he has no idea how the thing actually works.

    And that is okay for him because he's not managing anything where such a thing might happen. How many 70 year old politicians are there legislating on the internet or 70 year old CEOs that are telling their various IT flying monkeys how to do things. It isn't sustainable.

    Our leaders either need to delegate authority to people that know better or they need to be better informed themselves. And as to the general public, it would be nice if the common citizen were not a baboon wearing wearing flip flops and sunglasses.

  11. Re:You nerds need to get over yourselves on Why Coding Is Not the New Literacy · · Score: 1

    While amusing, I'm not sure what this post was supposed to be about? A rant against MS? It really doesn't matter. I don't care what people code in so long as they understand how programming languages work and could follow along with the code if you put a gun against their heads and counted to ten Mississippi.

    Again, I'm not saying they need to do this so they can be coders. I'm saying they should do this so they can UNDERSTAND what coding is and how it works. They currently have no god damn idea what they're talking about.

    And I'd frankly extend that to a really basic primer on how computers execute code and how computer networks work and how the internet works. I'm talking about something you could teach most people in about a week. REALLY basic stuff. They have no idea. As much is obvious by the way they conduct themselves.

    And the older generations are frankly shocking about it. Though even people a lot younger then me are unforgivably clueless. Especially the female of the species which has decided at some level that computers have cooties. It is not okay.

  12. Re:You nerds need to get over yourselves on Why Coding Is Not the New Literacy · · Score: 1

    To your first question: yes.
    To your second question: yes.
    To your third question: what portion of the fridge? The air compressor, the insulated box, or the electronics? The air compressor is mostly just a compressor with temperature exchange blocks. The insulated box is nothing special. Typically just a steel box with foam filling the middle. And the electronics have a temperature sensor that kicks on the compressor when the temp rises above the desired temp.

    To your fourth question: Are you asking me if I know how a package is shipped from a factory, to a container ship in asia, to a port on the west coast, to a truck or cargo train, to a regional warehouse, to a retail store, and then to my home? Because... yeah. I understand that as well.

    I know these things because I'm not an ignorant savage or a man shaped monkey. And understanding these things helps me to understand how what is possible, what is reasonable, and what is problematic about doing things one way versus another.

    If we want to have any hope of our civilization not devolving into a idiocracy full of ignorant barbarians then it is in the interest of the state to educate children in how to be citizens in a 21st century society. That includes having some BASIC coding knowledge so they know that the computers don't run on elf magic.

    Oh and I'm not arrogant... I only think I'm better then you because I am. That isn't arrogance. It is awareness of reality.

    Have a nice day, twit.

  13. Re: You nerds need to get over yourselves on Why Coding Is Not the New Literacy · · Score: 1

    Lots of businesses are cut throat without the managers realizing they can't operate like it is 1950. Advertising is cut throat but they haven't figured out that advertising doesn't work anymore the way they were doing it.

  14. Re:You nerds need to get over yourselves on Why Coding Is Not the New Literacy · · Score: 1

    You're conflating literacy with writing professionally at a high level.

    They're not the same thing.

    When people say literacy they mean people being able to understand the code and understand how computers work. They mean being able in a pinch to write some basic code if they need to do it. But they don't mean someone that writes the code professionally.

    When someone is literate at a language that doesn't mean they automatically seek employment in a writing profession or that they are competent to fill such a profession. Being literate does not mean being able to be a playwright, a poet, or even a journalist. It means first and foremost being able to READ the language and understand it at a reasonable level. And then to write usually at a lower level then their reading ability.

    Teaching everyone some basic is enough in most cases. Just so the people understand how the computers work.

    The problem with not teaching people is that we have far too many in far too lofty positions in our society that are utterly ignorant of how any of this technology actually works. And because of their position in society they are ultimately making decisions about things they do not understand. Which is unacceptable.

    Either we need to give tech sector workers the same classification given to doctors and lawyers where they have a presumptive veto on non-expert opinion within their field. Or tech literacy has to be a prerequisite to power.

    The alternative is having ignorant people with all the power making decisions based on the assumption that the internet is a bunch of tubes.

  15. Re:You nerds need to get over yourselves on Why Coding Is Not the New Literacy · · Score: 1

    Yep. How many bonehead leaders and managers are fucking it up by the numbers because they frankly aren't competent to run anything in the 21st century?

    Its fucking astounding.

    The music industry killed themselves by dragging their feet when it came to embracing the future.

    Same thing with movies.

    Same thing with TV.

    Same thing with news.

    Finance shockingly seems to be mostly adapting to the new realities though they are resisting bitcoin. But they're very much embracing the internet otherwise.

    That whole thing with Sony's pathetic network design and that memo that read "why would we spend 10 million dollars to fix a problem that might cost us 1 million dollars"... In the words of Michael Jackson... its just ignorant.

  16. Re:You nerds need to get over yourselves on Why Coding Is Not the New Literacy · · Score: 1

    Get used to being increasingly confused by a world you increasingly will never understand.

    When people say coding is the new literacy they are not suggesting that everyone become professional programmers anymore then saying someone should be able to read and write means they should become professional writers.

    Rather, as we progress into the information revolution, citizens of this society will increasingly be expected to understand how the technology actually works. In same way that people that lived at the dawn of the industrial revolution were increasingly expected to understand how machines worked.

    Airplanes are not magical sky birds and the internet is not a collection of fucking tubes.

  17. Re:Harddrives on UHD Spec Stomps on Current Blu-ray Spec, But Will Consumers Notice? · · Score: 1

    You're ignoring the cost of new reading drives.

    Assuming you sold me the new UHD drive for 30 dollars, that might be acceptable. But since you're probably going to ask me to spend upwards of 400 dollars, the economy of the issue takes a dive.

    Add to that, the corner video rental store isn't really a thing anymore. If I want to rent a movie, it will probably be digitally streamed to my home theater. At which point the disc media of the day becomes irrelevant since the data will actually be stored on a harddrive or cached in ram as it is streamed.

    The discs are done. If you don't want to sell the movies on little cheap thumb drives, consider this as an alternative. Ask consumers to come to the movie store with their own thumb drive. Stick it into one of the store machines and the store could write the movie onto the thumb drive.

    Here someone will pitch some sort of DRM fit. But that war was lost years ago. They might as well sell unencrypted movie files. Any moron can pull the file out of the ether without any trouble. So who are the movie publishers fooling at this point? A few baby boomers and older? Hardly your market for new 4k movies considering that such people mostly want to watch much older movies.

  18. Re:Force women at gun point to join tech on Lies, Damn Lies, and Tech Diversity Statistics · · Score: 1

    That is a supposition. You don't know why they are doing it at all.

    It could be a conscious rational decision based on known and empirical patterns.

    Suggesting that of course men and women must be identical is actually a given assumption on your part and is neither proven nor especially examined in your thought process or argument.

    I grant that women should have equal opportunity. However, what that means can change from one context to another. For example, in the Olympics as an extreme example, it means getting a sex segregated women's league where women compete against women.

    There are professions where men are discriminated against for various reasons and very few men would call it sexual discrimination even if with reversed genders the feminists would certainly make that argument.

    I am an egalitarian. I believe in equality and that that equally should be rationally founded in practical and reasonable grounds.

    Feminists typically are often sexual supremacists that expect special treatment for women with less responsibility for women but equal power and rights to men. That is problematic because obviously rights and responsibilities must be balanced.

    In regards to this study and statistical female employment, we have been offered studies since the 1960s that have shown various things. However, these studies are typically issued by biased advocates that are more interested in a given conclusion then they are genuinely interested in what is actually going on.

    If you actually care... then you'll find it relevant as to "why" certain things happen a certain way and not simply fill in such conclusions with ideologically convenient assumptions.

    To make a moral judgment which a requirement for citing someone as sexist... one must know why they make such a decision. It is literally impossible for someone to be deemed sexist without a known "why".

    The why might appear obvious to you but that is merely because you have a strong opinion on the matter. The why, strictly speaking, is not something examined by this study and absent that they have an interesting statistic that lacks and conclusive meaning in regards to sexism.

    If you desire such a conclusion... find the "why" of it.

  19. Re:Yes, but not the flu on Should Disney Require Its Employees To Be Vaccinated? · · Score: 1

    The above point is relevant for anything but the seasonal flu vaccines.

    And again... those exist mostly protect the very old and the very young.

    The general population is better served by just having better hygiene.

  20. Re:Massively overpriced on For New Yorkers, Cablevision Introduces a Wi-Fi-Centric VoiP Network · · Score: 1

    given that they're providing service through wifi, what does that mean?

  21. Massively overpriced on For New Yorkers, Cablevision Introduces a Wi-Fi-Centric VoiP Network · · Score: 1

    You can get unlimited talk/text for 25 a month through GoSmart.

    For people that don't use the phone much you can get 2000 minutes which are good for a full year from PagePlus at a cost of 80 dollars. Or about 6 dollars a month.

    Telefonica offers some really cheap pre paid programs with roll over minutes that can see your actual costs per month around 6 dollars with perhaps more minutes from the roll overs.

    T-Mobile offers a prepaid 3 dollars a month program which is the absolute cheapest but you only get 30 minutes a month. Good for people that don't use the phone much and when they do finish the call in under a minute.

    In this context, a 30 dollar plan that doesn't even use the cellular network is a joke. Even at 9 dollars it is a joke.

  22. Re:you can't boil this down to one variable on Doomsday Clock Moved Two Minutes Forward, To 23:57 · · Score: 1

    You can't distill complex information down to a single variable. If you could, then you could see everything important in front of you with ONE pixel.

    You can't do that. Accept that it is complicated and deal with the complexity. Do not pretend you have magical powers that allow you to boil down very very complex datasets into a single variable.

    That is a big issue with the whole AGW debate. One temperature for the whole planet is unreasonable. You need to break the data out and show the regional surface data, show the sat data, show the ocean data... etc. And then looking at everything you can make an assessment. But boiling it all down to one variable is nonsense.

    Same thing happened in the economic crash of 2008. The stupid finance companies boiled financial risk down to ONE number.

    How did that work out?

    You cannot do it. Smarter men then either of us have thought they could have they've failed every time. Don't.

  23. Re:you can't boil this down to one variable on Doomsday Clock Moved Two Minutes Forward, To 23:57 · · Score: 1

    More likely coal companies. Coal is the real competitor to nuclear.

  24. Re:you can't boil this down to one variable on Doomsday Clock Moved Two Minutes Forward, To 23:57 · · Score: 1

    I agree the anti nuclear lobby is composed almost entirely of idiots on a level with Jenny McCarthy's vaccine conspiracies.

  25. you can't boil this down to one variable on Doomsday Clock Moved Two Minutes Forward, To 23:57 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    maybe when it was just the US vs USSR this might have been almost workable but at this point you really need a different clock for every nuclear power.

    And short of that, this stupid clock is meaningless.