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User: dasunt

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  1. Re:Big Generator???? on Space Elevator Prizes Proposed · · Score: 1

    Re: Satellite with tethers generating energy and later using energy to "lift" an orbit up.

    There was a SF short about this I remember. Where basically there was a space station that had funding problems for orbital fuel, and solved it in this manner.

    Forget the name and author of the peice. Anyone remember?

  2. Re:Why Harry? on Top Banned Books of 2003 · · Score: 1

    I think what the grandparent poster was trying to say is that community norms affect what is considered to be proper and not proper for children.

    In some communities, there is a lot of rather traditional religious folks who find books like Harry Potter to be improper.

    Before you start to criticize them, take a moment and consider what you think is proper and improper for children. We all tend to be culturally biased. Historically, what children should and shouldn't do, and what children should and shouldn't know have varied widely.

  3. Re:Seems legit to me on Build Your Own Hybrid-Electric Car? · · Score: 1

    What confused me about their website was that they kept talking about regenerative braking but didn't describe any interface to the car's brakes (and if they did it would make me nervous).

    Seeing how you are utterly confused on how an engine can slow down a car without being hooked up to the brakes, I think its safe to say that you have never learned how to (properly) drive a stick.

  4. Re:The way of the future. on Grow Your Own Replacement Bones · · Score: 1

    One of my complaints about Star Trek is, that for all the nifty stuff they have in the future, their medicine isn't that advanced. (Haven't been watching Enterprise though...)

    Consider -- they have teleporters and replicators, yet in Next Generation and DS9, their medicine is basically reduced to hyposprays and medical tricoders.

    Wowee.

    Then again, this is Trek, which technologgy is either the plot device that saves the day, or fails horribly in ways that aren't consistant with the everything else.

  5. Re:probably change towards good on MIT Names First Female President · · Score: 1

    Well evidently a college degree isn't the end-all-be-all, since it's clear that women still have a long ways to go til equality.

    When comparing the same job, same experience, same education, for every $1.00 a man makes, a woman makes $.97 to $1.01.

    Not that far to go in workplace equality.[1]

    The recent USA Today had a statistic that for every $1.00 a man makes, a woman makes $.74. Which sounds horrible, until you realize that they are comparing the average wage a full-time woman worker makes compared to the average wage a full-time man makes[2]. It is comparing apples-to-oranges.

    [1] I'm ignoring the glass ceiling effect at the moment. I've seen some of the numbers, but haven't looked into the reasons behind them. I suspect there is some cultural bias at play ("A man needs to support his family, even if it means that he spends less time with his family") as well as an old-boys network at play, but that is speculation on my part. OTOH, it might just be the result of a lesser percentage of degrees among managerial-age women, as well as being a hold-over from the sexism of the 60s and 70s, leading to a lack of experience.

    [2]Due to biology, any childbearing women will need to take off time for pregnancy, this is reinforced in our culture, and in our legal system (how many places have paternity leave?) For divorced parents, custody is usually awarded to the mother.[3] (This is in the US, other countries might differ.)

    In addition, it is expected that men will spend the best years of their lives working to support their families, while women are permitted to spend the best years of their lives taking care of their children. When the roles are reversesd (stay-at-home dad with a working mother), a lot of society looks down on the man while praising the mother.

    I consider parenting one of the most important "jobs" out there -- it is raising the next generation, showing them the right values, etc. It really annoys me that this is still considered to be the job of only one gender of the parents.

    [3]Incidentally, this is why I have a problem with some feminists. Some of their goals are admirable, but they don't realize that in order for gender equality, they must promote equal rights for both women and men. For example, they should promote equal custody rights in divorce courts, as well as matching paternity and maternity leave.

  6. Re:Speaking of bloat... on KDE Plans 'Google-like' Search Capabilities · · Score: 1

    grep can't search through formats other than text, of which there are a lot of (OpenOffice, KOffice, etc formats come to mind)

    Googling, it appears that OpenOffice and KOffice are just a zipped collection of xml files.

    Therefore, find, grep, and unzip should be able to search them.

    Playing around, I come up with this command:

    fine -name "*.sxw" -exec sh -c '
    unzip -c "$1" content.xml |
    grep "my_search_string" |
    grep "^Archive: "' {} {} \;

    There, wasn't that easy? *ducks*

    In all seriousness though, I did that in just a few minutes worth of time. Sure, the super-duper KDE find command will do it a lot quicker for noobs, but how many files formats will it support? I have intelligence, and that gives me an edge -- give me a format I don't know about, and I'll figure out how to read it, and thus search it. Will KDE?

    As for organization, I use directories and symlinks. ;)

    You are right though -- it is OSS. If KDE wants to take the time to code and develop this, its their choice. I might think the time is wasted, and I might suspect that the tool won't be as useful as it could be, and I will voice these complaints (as it is my right), but if they disagree, they will continue to code this feature.

    PS: If I wanted to solve the problem of making searching easy, I'd create a front-end for find, and add the option for searching KOffice/OpenOfficce files.

  7. Re:probably change towards good on MIT Names First Female President · · Score: 1

    Yeah, well as much fun as it is to be "politically incorrect" or whatever, men don't need promoting because they are doing just fine. Women still get the short end of the stick in this country

    Er? More women then men get college degrees.

    According to your logic, we need male-only scholarship programs.

    Replacing one form of sexism with another form of sexism isn't going to help.

  8. Re:probably change towards good on MIT Names First Female President · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I guess it simply follows the tried and true rules of political correctness in the US: As long as you're basing your opinions of prejudice against white males, you're not really discriminating.

    Case in point -- the article itself. Few people see anything wrong with MIT promoting one gender over another as long as the gender they are promoting is female.

    [PS: I've been called sexist for discussing this viewpoint before. ]

  9. Re:Nuclear fusion? on Odds-on Science · · Score: 1

    The problem is controlling and sustaining it.

    Dark horse candidate: Bubble fusion

    Think of it as "miniature hot fusion". Problem is that (1) we don't know why it works, and (2) oak ridge has had problems replicating t (but there are claims it was their setup, and it has been replicated at another site).

    Don't get me wrong, I'm not claiming that we'll see bubble fusion plants 20 years down the road. But it is interesting, cutting-edge science, with a slim chance of being an energy source.

  10. Re:Occam's Razor on What is this Strange Gadget in My Car? · · Score: 1

    I agree. It appears to be a wireless receiver.

    In addition to car alarms, have you considered garage door openers and remote start systems?

  11. Re:same on Education Via Video Games · · Score: 2, Insightful

    And anyone who can afford to buy (and blithely add to the electrical bill with) tv's and computers is not realisticaly poor.

    An older computer can be had for free, if you keep your eyes open. A TV can be had for free, or a few bucks at a garage sale.

    The poor do need entertainment, like everyone else. A TV and an attenna is damn cheap entertainment, even if the quality sucks. Considering the draw of a TV, the electric bill is roughly about $5 more dollars a month.

    Damn cheap entertainment.

  12. Re:Why doesn't welfare make them on Education Via Video Games · · Score: 1

    The error in the reasoning here is that 6 servings of eggs probably means more cholesterol than servings of chicken, oh and it's a certainty that 5 servings of chicken fills you up far more than 6 servings of eggs. Based on what fills you up, the 6 servings of chicken at $2.00 is the best deal.

    But the eggs are high in essential omega 3 fatty acids that the chicken will lack. ;)

  13. Two ideas on What is the Ideal Low-end NAS Solution? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I would consider two OS's for a low-end home NAS.

    First OS:

    Debian GNU/Linux

    Why? 1) Easy to update. 2) Wide selection of packages. 3) Possible to do a minimal install and have a pretty bare-bones OS.

    Second OS:

    OpenBSD

    Why? 1) Security. 2) Security. 3) Security.

  14. Re:PSU Breaks. on X-Connect 500W Modular PSU · · Score: 1

    It amazes me how many people will go to great lengths to spec out a system, and then thrown in any old power supply.

    Clean power drives your system. Clean power increases stability, decreases failures. Most importantly, if a cheap power supply fails, it can destroy every other bit of computer equipment in that case.

    I try to buy somewhat expensive, name-brand power supplies, and hook them up to a UPS.

  15. Re:lack of pulsatile flow and coronary vessles on Living Without a Pulse · · Score: 1

    The article doesn't go into depth about why the castrated live longer. Google seems to bring up reports that the lifespan of castrati singers vs non-castrati singers wasn't apperciably longer.

    There are several real-life conditions that will cause effective castration, such as Kallman's Syndrome. The jazz singer Jimmy Scott is afflicted with Kallman's, and has a voice similar to a castrato. (Nowadays, Kallman's Syndrome is easily treated with either testosterone injections or other drugs, so Jimmy Scott is probably going to be the last singer with his unique voice).

  16. Re:He's Dead, Jim. on Living Without a Pulse · · Score: 1

    Wouldn't they check for a medical bracelet?

    I'm not that familiar with medical bracelets, but it appears to be the default way of letting medical personel know about any conditions that you have when you are unable to respond.

    Considering that some of these conditions can cause coma and even death, and these conditions have specific treatments, I am assuming that the existance of a medical bracelet would be checked if someone keeled over.

    But I am not a medical professional, so perhaps one on /. can clue us in.

  17. Re:lack of pulsatile flow and coronary vessles on Living Without a Pulse · · Score: 1

    reproductive system is one system that can be tinkered with or even removed without too much harm to the rest of the body (re: castrations and all).

    Er, no. Without testosterone, the male body is prone to osteoporosis, low muscle tone, low strength, as well as a lot of other nasty side effects. The quality of life will plummet, and the length of life is probably affected.

    With castration, the testosterone levels in the male body will plummet.

  18. Re:I think I've read this before on Feed · · Score: 1

    Hmm sounds like most of the books about dystopian future Americas out there... Since this one seems even less likely than the nuclear war caused one in the books I read as a kid, and even THAT one was thwarted by humanity, I'm only wishing kids had more books of inspiring futures than angst-riddled depressing ones. Last think a teen needs, another thing to be depressed about.

    Its easy to write about dystopian futures. In the "Tales of Known Space" series, the stories basically end with a gene for luck spreading through the human population, leading to a lot of happy lucky people, and the author, Larry Niven, said something like it was very, very hard to write stories about these people. (Not that known space was very dystopian...)

    But SF has varyingn outlooks on the future. In addition to the common dystopian futures (1984, Brave New World, Clockword Orange), and the more utopian futures (TNG), there are futures that are basically the same as the present (Star Wars, the Vorkosigan series) or futures where the problems of the present are around, but manifest themselves in different ways, due to technology (Diamond Age, most of the Light of Other Days, etc).

    The Diamond Age is an interesting example. It has utopian elements, such as the Vickys and the Crafters. It has the dystopian elements, such as the life of the poor underclass. But the lives of the people in it aren't that much different from those today -- we have elite gated communities, and we have the homeless.

    Dystopians are easy to right about. Since a lot of "real" SF is about how technology changes us, its easy to make the changes all bad. Its harder to sit back and write a future where the changes have good and bad effects. Take the average citizen from 1804 -- tell them about nukes, about chemical warfare, about poisoned rivers, about massive genocide, about the AIDS plague. The world looks rather dystopian, huh? Then tell the citizen about the doubling of life expectency, the increase in literacy, life saving drugs and surgeries, the increase in oppertunities. The world looks rather utopian. Or just scare the shit out of them and tell them about equal rights regardless of race or gender, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and about differing sexual orientations. (And yes, euro-slashdotians, the average citizen is from the USA. :P )

    Now, what's easier to write about? Living to 70? Or how people died horribly in Nagasaki and Hiroshima? Life-saving open heart surgery? Or genocide?

    The future is what you make of it.

  19. Re:Don't try to keep up with Microsoft and Apple on The Linux Filesystem Challenge · · Score: 3, Interesting

    As a linux user, I don't sit back and think "this filesystem sucks". For the most part, I'm happy with ext3.

    When I do try to make a wishlist, the only things I really want is KDE's IO Slaves integrated into the system at a lower level so that all programs can use it, and a more secure version of NFS. That's it. Perhaps some sort of revision control on certain files, but RCS works fine for me.

    I don't want data forks -- it creates more problems (with transferring files) then it solves.

    For a similiar reason, I don't want my filesystem to be a DB. I'm happy with files. Damn happy. I don't see what problems a database solves.

    Just my $.02.

  20. Re:BETTER QUESTION: Why do we even need FreeBSD? on FreeBSD Moves to X.Org · · Score: 1

    Modern Linux systems tend to be highly unstable with large numbers of known issues and overall poor testing.

    Are you ignorant? Or just a troll?

    This is done intentionally to help Linux reach a competitive stage more quickly. But one does have to wonder: Is it worth completely reinstalling your OS every three months?

    Lets see -- the linux server behind me was installed Winter of 2001-2002. Probably around January, IIRC. Its been through one binary release upgrade, and will go through another one soon.

    The whole reason of ditching windows was to get away from reinstalling, DLL hell, and system instabilities. So we've made things better by replacing these 'problems' with reinstalling, RPM hell, and system instabilities.

    I don't reinstall. My distribution handles dependencies. As for instabilities, the only downtime that I (don't?) see is when the lights go out. I'm unsure what this "RPM" is that you speak of -- my distribution doesn't use it.

    Free Clue #1: Windows is good. Linux is good. *BSD is good. They all have strengths and weaknesses.

    Free Clue #2: Don't criticize a system you don't know.

  21. Re:friends say that it is OK... on Experiences with Laser Eye Surgery? · · Score: 1

    a friend who is a kempo teacher told me that, it worths a research...

    i think it also depends how bad your eye is .. he is almost blind without glasses/lens but he won't go with the operation since he gets kicked in the head 100 times a week ...

    Does he turn into a duck if he gets wet?

  22. Re:Meanwhile... on Ted Turner's Beef With Big Media · · Score: 1

    This man is in no position to talk about big media. This is like Bill Gates bemoaning monopolistic business practices in the software industry.

    RTFA

    He admits he's big. The current lax regulation does not hurt him much. He talks about how, after deregulation, he tried to buy up the whole market. Yet, at the same time, he complained about the government not doing their job.

    What he is complaining about is that the current deregulated climate does not encourage new stations, nor does it encourage stories that the mainstream media doesn't want to cover.

    Turner has more to lose then to win with increased regulation.

  23. Re:Where are the zealots lately? on Mars Had Surface Water for Eons · · Score: 1

    Quite apart from details like the length of a day, order of creation, etc. the Bible also says that death entered the world through the Fall, and that specifically is what Jesus repaired when he allowed himself to be sacrificed. (Of course, there are many interpretations of the relevant parts of the Bible but to the best of my knowledge, that is the traditional Calvinist - i.e., Southern Baptist - approach.) Many creationists cite that as the main reason they reject the theory of evolution. If death is natural, and if we are basically apes, then there was no original sin, and therefore nothing for which Christ could atone. Our selfish and sexual instincts are normal and not, in fact, the result of the moral decay of the flesh. The ICR has a typical presentation of this viewpoint: http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-209.htm

    I think the existing dogma covers it.

    Consider this passage: "For the wages of sin are death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus." (Romans 6:23).

    Now, its pretty obvious that the true believers still die. So, this passage (and others like it) are taken as referring to the immortal soul, instead of as referring to physical death.

    That's a quick rundown, if you are curious, googling for Catholic theology might help, since Catholic theology states that nothing in Catholic doctrine is contradicted if one species evolves into another (Pope Pius XII). Paul II goes further then Pius XII did and seems to accept the theory of evolution as a fact.

  24. Re:A particularly distressing example... on I, Robot Hits the Theaters · · Score: 1

    Well, lets see (spoilers, for old, old stories -- if you haven't read them by now, oh well).

    Other then the laws themselves being able to be weakened by robot logic (Giskard and Daneel's Zeroth Law, for example), and the laws being weakened by the builders (such as the Solarians narrowly defining "human"), I think the Asimov's Robot series can be summarized as the following:

    1) [ Early Asimov ] Robots are useful, productive aspects of society and the only problem is the damn "Frankenstein Complex" that people have towards them.

    2) [ Later Asimov ] In the long run, robots lead to the downfall of society (re: Spacers).

  25. Re:RTFA on Sega Dreamcast Gets Rogue RPG Conversion · · Score: 3, Funny

    "No save support."

    Just play for 15 minutes more -- that should eliminate the need to save the game.