Slashdot Mirror


User: iMactheKnife

iMactheKnife's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
127
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 127

  1. UHf gear? on The Mexican Drug Cartels' Involuntary IT Guy · · Score: 1

    The antennas look like UHF gear, not cell phone gear. Same with the handi talkies.

  2. Proof: zero METS on Treadmill Performance Predicts Mortality · · Score: 1

    The statistics are accurate. Dead people score zero METs.

  3. Detecting aliens on Ask Slashdot: How Could We Actually Detect an Alien Invasion From Outer Space? · · Score: 1

    Easy. They will not have valid credit cards.

  4. Still not a safe ship on The US Navy Wants More Railguns and Lasers, Less Gunpowder · · Score: 1

    Lack of a powder magazine does not a safe ship make.

    Whatever powers those lasers and railguns has to pack the equivalent energy. Nukes, jet fuel or anti-matter converters all have containment issues. You can't pack all that power in a small space safely.

    Then there are torpedoes. Every navy needs them. They carry explosives.

  5. Re:Article did not discuss downsides on Testosterone Increasingly Being Used To Fight Aging In Men · · Score: 1

    Contrary to popular opinion, correct dosage of testosterone does not enlarge the prostate or decrease fertility. However, if you have prostate cancer with cells that have testosterone binding, you will be feeding the cancer cells.

  6. Boat schooling on Ask Slashdot: Pros and Cons of Homeschooling? · · Score: 1

    I cruised a large sailboat for a few years in the Paciifc and the Atlantic. We met a lot of kids who were being "sea schooled" using one of the fine correspondence schools that caters to cruisers. These were happy, well adjusted, kids whose basic education included multiple cultures and languages, a deep sense of responsibility as crew, and plenty of socialization experiences.

    Many of these cruisers "swallowed the anchor" eventually and put their kids in public schools to meet the various state qualifications for university entry. According to the teachers in the San Diego public school system that I spoke to, these kids were usually a grade or two ahead and far more mature that their peers in age.

    This is different from some parents that are sheltering their kids from protective or religious reasons, but it points to the fact that the quality of home schooling depends on the parents, the kids, and the actual curriculum. Generalities will be misleading.

  7. Freezes on Mac under Parallels on Closure On the Linux Lockup Bug · · Score: 1

    I had the freeze bug in a VM system on a Mac running Parallels. I downloaded Ubuntu 14.04 from Parallels and could not get around it. Then I downloaded directly from Canonical and it worked just find. I assumed it was a bad download from Parallels, but perhaps it is more subtle. The virtual machine has the same vulnerabilities - is that a clue?

  8. Re:Stop trying to win this politically on Michael Mann: Swiftboating Comes To Science · · Score: 1

    That's not science, its a wrestling match.

  9. Re:Stop trying to win this politically on Michael Mann: Swiftboating Comes To Science · · Score: 1

    Mod this up.

    Warmists are mostly political and much of the "science" published consists of projections and cherry-picked data. The outcome is not any kind of climate science but a big push for a new, and onerous tax on energy at all levels. I have yet to see:
    1. A climate model that includes taxes
    2. A warmist posting for baseline energy sources such as thorium reactors or LFTR's.
    3. Local use of local power sources, as opposed to huge grid projects
    4. A warmist decrying the waste of resources and the dangers of "smart" meters

  10. Re:Look for what you can see. on The Search For Starivores, Intelligent Life That Could Eat the Sun · · Score: 1

    Sure.
    I lost my watch down the street, but the light is better under the lamp-post.

  11. Re:And? on Unbundling Cable TV: Be Careful What You Wish For · · Score: 1

    Wrong. The specialty channels will multiply and get delivery by streaming. Broadcast cable is for broadcast, which means popular.

  12. Skeptical of cable monopolies on Unbundling Cable TV: Be Careful What You Wish For · · Score: 1

    Unbundling the various entertainment packages is not what I want. I want the internet connection and to hell with the entertainment. There are only a very few programs I watch and the rest is just crap and profit redistribution.

    If the cable monopoly is broken (Comcast and TWM in my area) there is sufficient competition to deliver entertainment to picky people for a reasonable price.

  13. Guns s.b. mandatory on airplanes on TSA Has Record-Breaking Haul In 2014: Guns, Cannons, and Swords · · Score: 1

    Every capable passenger should have an airline-approved gun with airline-approved ammo, and be forced to fire anything they brought with them into a test cabinet at the airport to make sure it is the right stuff. It should be small caliber, FMJ, subsonic. It should be carried openly where it can be accessible.

    This will cause would-be terrorists to stick to external methods, like missiles.

    Think of the money and hassle we would save over the TSA.

  14. Hmmm. there is a lot more noise in the global temperature data than there is the atmospheric concentration of CO2.

  15. Re:Iain M. Banks Culture novels FTW on Overly Familiar Sci-Fi · · Score: 1

    I did not find them communistic, fluffy or lovely. More like porcupines with adamantine quills.. The Culture is innately competitive and meddlesome. Wage-slave rituals are no longer applicable because resources are almost unlimited. the former is a plausible outcome of the latter, which is also plausible given the Culture's technology.

    Well..they are in space. So is Earth.

  16. SF invents worlds on Overly Familiar Sci-Fi · · Score: 1

    A good writer invents interesting characters and lets them interact. A good SF writer invents whole worlds and plants the characters in it. All the excuses about character-driven stories are just that - excuses, often by authors who don't understand enough about science to carry a good SF world line, and who can't do the research to find a good SF "hook" and make it work. Look up SF or go into a book store and you will see Star Trek, Star Wars and other space operas.
    Clarke's "Childhood's End", or Niven's "Ringworld" are real SF. "Blood Music", "Neutron Star" are about worlds that are scientifically plausible but far from human. There are too few like that.

    I write SF, and I know, first hand, how hard it is match that standard.

    Look at Kay Kenyon, "Bright of Sky" and sequels, look at Iaian Banks "culture" series. I won't tout my stuff here, but you can reply and get references.

  17. Selfish culture does not survive on Game Theory Analysis Shows How Evolution Favors Cooperation's Collapse · · Score: 1

    Population statistics show that a culture where there is a somewhat inflexible elite class with a great deal more resources than the commoner class does not survive when the fitness landscape gets rugged and the carrying capacity of the environment gets tight. This type of culture has a population implosion and a pretty good possibility of extinction. (ref, the "HANDY" model).

    I seems to me that a selfish model leads to just such a state and it will eventually collapse. The article does not deal with such issues as the environment or the establishment of elites.

  18. Ageism, yeah on Ask Slashdot: IT Career Path After 35? · · Score: 1

    I was drafted into becoming a coder when the IT department at a huge company failed to come up with a working payroll system in time to pay 500 people. I wrote it in a week.

    I've had to learn over 20 languages, from Cobol to Lisp to GPSS to ADA to C. I've worked on operating systems, compilers, real-time systems and IT. Now I'm learning Python, Django and writing an IOS app.

    Oh, yeah, I'm 72 years old. No certs - they didn't exist and I never got any. Anyone want to challenge my credentials?

  19. AI vs Other on Elon Musk Warns Against Unleashing Artificial Intelligence "Demon" · · Score: 1

    I spent years working on AI. It was the wrong problem. Elon may be right that AI could be a hazard, but artificial intelligence is not nearly as big a problem as natural stupidity.

  20. Gecko evolution on High Speed Evolution · · Score: 1

    The GEICO gecko evolved speech with a strange pseudo-Brit accent in just about that length of time. I hear he is mated to a female, Elizardbreath. But he has a reptile disfunction...

  21. Re:Not to be outdone on Computer Scientist Parachutes From 135,908 Feet, Breaking Record · · Score: 1

    Putin will then be the first President to join the orbit of the space station with a ten second lag. Will Medvedev then ascend?

  22. Fudge factored on Wind Power Is Cheaper Than Coal, Leaked Report Shows · · Score: 1

    You can always get the "correct" number by adding a fudge factor in to the actual data. TFA is a good example.

    First, the "externals" are larger than the real costs of several sources. By far the largest factor in external costs is "climate change" which is itself a fudge factor on the real data. Finally, TFA shows an error bar in the externals which is about the same size as the externals. In other words, the external cost COULD be close to zero.

  23. Common mode failures on Snowflake-Shaped Networks Are Easiest To Mend · · Score: 1

    TFA says the snowflake is a good model for networks that are inexpensive to repair, not necessarily robust. Considering that most repairs will happen at level 2 or level 3, that may be true ON AVERAGE. As the number of total nodes grows, I bet there is a point where the central node, which supports the most connections, becomes the expected common failure mode of this kind of network. Not only is the central node, by necessity, the most complex and by far the most expensive to repair (every level 1 function is down at this point), because of its complexity it may also have the shortest mean time between failures.

    As soon as you see this and try to go back to a redundant central node, the next level nodes become vulnerable. And so on. Vulnerability propagates down the levels. The snowflake, er, melts down.

    Maybe there needs to be a limit to the number of branches per node....but then you will have more than 3 levels.

  24. Context is important to history on Bill Gates Wants To Remake the Way History Is Taught. Should We Let Him? · · Score: 1

    I think it;s a great idea. Context is essential to history. The parched, knothole view I got in high school was worthless. This big view is right on. Let's hope some revisionist scum do not try to make this into political ideology.

    Except for the money, Gates seems to be staying out of the lesson planning.

  25. Re:Straight to the pointless debate on Out of the Warehouse: Climate Researchers Rescue Long-Lost Satellite Images · · Score: 1

    I've never used a marine GPS that could not correct for magnetic variation and display the magnetic course. If you have one that can only display true north, it is an el cheapo.

    Your compass probably needs to be swung.

    With all those errors, you probably shouldn't be going 14.4 knots. Or, if you are, I should be aboard to calibrate your instruments correctly. I'm a USCG Master with thousands of hours of blue water sailing and race experience.

    Respondent who says you must publish your raw data and the methods you use to smooth or adjust that data is correct. You need to give others
      scientists the full facts to reproduce your experiment or it goes into the Journal of Unreproducible Results.