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User: JollyFinn

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Comments · 516

  1. Re:Bullshit on Underground 'Cold War City' For Sale · · Score: 1

    Just wanted to make sure you understand one thing.
    It should be nuclear proof so there is expected lots of stone between halls.
    2ndly. The ROAD there might mean a pathway perhapts UPTO 10 feet wide, except in few MAJOR pathways of 20 feet wide. You know the underground nukesafe facilities just WANT to have VERY wide areas that could be collapsed in relative ease compared to more tight places.
    30 feet is definitely a too much for merely a path way.
    I think road there would be
    WIDTH of a SINGLE vehicle. Like 2-3meterers. thats about 10 feet. And there would be another road going in opposite direction with some distance from previous road, so that if one road would collapse the result wouldn't be devastating. Its just a common sense.

  2. Re:Disappointing... on Sid Meier Responds · · Score: 1

    The EASYNESS for Civilization AI is that there is no human who has practiced playing with those rules for last 40 years. In Civilization there are a LOT more degrees of freedom than in chess, so basicly exhaustive search isn't going to help. Fortunately for AI developers it takes time for humans to adapt fully for new rules. And with random starting positions SOME ai has better position than the player.
    Finally if AI:s have somewhere in their ruleset things that favour other AI:s over humans, the game becomes immediately harder for humans. Lastly they could cheat a litle, and youd never knew it.
    Like giving AI:s a 10% research boost. So with civilization there are ways of making AI more challenging without making it giving better solutions.
    And what I think that the AI:s in these games are just made by emulating the strategies of best human players.

  3. Re:This is a great step on PTO Eliminates "Technological Arts" Requirement · · Score: 1

    If medical business would be selling stuff AT costs I wouldn't invest in that since they wouldn't make anyprofits. And with your model they would be making LOSS!

    Lets think about little. Mfg for a drug thats about 5$ for threatment.
    Investment in creating life saving drug 0.5B$.
    Market for treatment in US 10 000 patient per year.
    Investment per potential patient per year 50 000$.
    Now add 100% more costs for potential of failure and potential lawsuits.
    Then reduce that to 1/4th so that you estimate making profits on 5th year after making the drug.
    So overall costs of treatment should be 25k$ inside united states.

    Now consider another suggested investement. BETTER PILL FOR HEADACHE!
    investement 0.5$ MFG costs 1$ a shot.
    Potential market 100M patients, estimate take 5 different purchases per year.
    Hey fuck the dying people, lets invest in THIS research it gives a LOT better return on investment.
    Uhh there is lots of competition in this arena so we should make something else too just for getting more revenue there. Now lets give those dying people a 100M$ research grant perhaps they produce something we can sell with that.

    Now lest change the picture after denying the patents for treatments of deadly diseases.
    ANY deadly disease that do not affect atleast 10M patients per year will be ignored, and if researching it costs more than 1B$ it will be ignored.

    The problem here is *NOT* that the treatment is patented but that it COSTS to develope the treatment, and its not with HIGHVOLUME product. If they couldn't patent it for reasonable time they wouldn't develope the treatment. Even at costs for the developer of treatment is thousands, then they need to coup all the developements that failed to produce sellable treatment+ the 10-20% that the stockholders want.

    Medicine for deadly diseases typicly.
    Developement costs HUGE
    Volume SMALL. [Or there would be epidemia.]
    Mass production costs SMALL.
    Without patents the developement costs would be always waste of money for corporations.

  4. Re:I echo the above statements on Arrays vs Pointers in C? · · Score: 1

    Well theoretical answer VS practical statistical answers are two different things.
    Lemons end up on top of the bag, since they are put back here, and come more often than probability suggests.
    Anyway this is a math problem with an algebraic answer. Unfortunately I don't remember enough relevant infromation from the course than there exists algebraic answer for this problem.
    So answer probably is done under 1000 clockcycles, in C on athlon64. [If not counting for time to load the program from disk to cache.]

  5. Re:Great AMD is quit is doing fine. on Big-Iron to Open Up for AMD · · Score: 1

    I wanted to add one thing.
    I'm having cheap ass Athlon 64 computer under my desk at home.
    And I think its great, but its still a very low end computer.
    And I think linux is a lot better than windows, and use it but its still no where near the mainframe OSes.
    Yes the mainframes have linux as one of their guest os. Running on top of a real os, but thats another story.

  6. Great AMD is quit is doing fine. on Big-Iron to Open Up for AMD · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So where I can buy the AMD server with near full redundancy?
    Or the server which can run highly debugged application written in mainframe assembler in 60's or 70's ?
    Or atleast AMD computer with SINGLE memoryspace atleast 1TB in size?
    And also how many decades of uptime is for the operating system which is used with the new AMD computer?
    The horus is more or less getting close to midrange server in number of processor while it won't bring it to the reliability requirements of midrange server, to get that it would have to run its own memory controllers instead of cheap ass opteron controllers which lack for example hotswappable memory.
    Sure you get speed, but after taking the speed there is eventually a crash.
    The big iron is all about gettin continuing to function no matter what comes.
    Only problems outside of box, like earthquake or something similar could bring it down.

    Yeah. AMD is doing just fine...
    Its eating the cheap ass market, not the big iron.
    The price is cheap and its bought where the crash proof means better than windows which is like saying saying its unsinkable since it does better in open seas than normal rowboat used in lakes.

    Lets put it this way. x86 is just used in low end boxes and in clusters of lowend boxes. And those things are not for everything. They can do much but not everything. They are cost effective when you compare only the purchase price. But not so cost effective when downtime costs a lot.

    There is probably order of magnitude or TWO orders of magnitude of what joe slashdotter thinks big iron and what businesses have in big iron as in price range.

  7. Re:This law sux. on Finland Adopts New Copyright Legislation · · Score: 1

    I'm planning on voting christians.

  8. This law sux. on Finland Adopts New Copyright Legislation · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm not so jolly Finn anymore.
    This made my future voting decision simple.
    Christian democratic party and Nationalists(Perussuomalaiset) where ONLY parties which all voted against the law.

  9. Re:cdr cdr car? on LispM Source Released Under 'BSD Like' License · · Score: 1

    The guy was obviosly joking.
    Look at what he says about the Java there.
    Besides he wrote EVERYTHING in a way that slashdotters wouldn't do.

  10. Re:The question that's on all of our minds: on Ask Sid Meier · · Score: 1

    Thats one is easy. In hills they drop some HEAVY stones on top of a tank, they just need to be lucky enough to hit them. In cities, they hide inside, and in close quarters, throw some torches and mineral oil directly to the top of tank. They jump on top of a [OLD] tank and some how figure how to open a hatch and then kill everyone inside. 3rd They just throw a spear at every truck trying to bring fuel and ammonition to the tank, so that eventually in the time frame (one year) the tank crew gets starved to death.
    There are millions of options how a small number of armoured units could rendered unusable by primitive people with some dedication, luck and ingenuity. Easiest is attacking unarmoured support units and let em burn. The tanks would sit iddle on battlefield after loosing their support. 2nd is immobilizing the unit, and then put large fire around the tank so that EVERYTHING inside the tank would be over boiling point of water, including the crew.
    Yeah there is SMALL odds of doing any serious damage to tank, if the native uneducated people just try hard enough.
    BTW: The main defense in winter war against soviet tanks that was employed by finnish military was a weaker improvisation of things that already where used by ancient greeks in military sence. You know putting some oil in container, and setting the oil on fire after hitting the target.
    Now even neanderthals had technology to destroy modern tank armies with lucky circuimstances. Just set fire in proper places at NIGHT time. If the fire hits the army strongly enough, it doesn't matter if few tanks survive the assault, the ARMY that came with the tanks is gone, including the support units.

  11. Re:Transmetta on Why Apple Picked Intel Over AMD · · Score: 2, Funny

    Who is she?
    The lady friend of Transmeta?

  12. So thats the time frame for sending men to Mars. on Visiting Our Red Space Neighbor · · Score: 1

    When we are sending women to Venus?

  13. Re:Almost admissable proof of monopoly. on Bulky System Requirements for Windows Vista · · Score: 1

    Lets give it some perspective. I was using about 128+256MB of ram with my normal usage patterns on my old computer with debian. My new computer with AMD64 support and 512MB of ram swapped all the time with similar usage patters the OS was fedora in that case. What was wrong that resulted the issue.
    First things first, the shared libraries and below the surface grow over time. Another issue is that I have multiple versions of shared libraries on memory all the time. 32bit and 64bit versions. On microsoft world that alone should bring 100's MB for additional memory requirements for speedy usage Then there is increased size of pointers, and increased code on AMD64.
    Consider this you are running two sets of shared libraries in memory when running with both 32bit and 64 bit programs at a time which is currently happening with the 64bit desktop OS:ses.
    Then its the eye candy thing. The eye candy need more RAM. If microsoft made the 64bit requirements somewhat higher than 32bit requirements the end user can run with more eye candy in 64bit mode, the result is that they associate more eye candy with 64bitness.
    Besides the 2GB was RECOMMENDED size for 64bit and 1GB was RECOMMENDED size for 32bit and 512MB as bare minimum. The recommendations are typicly nicely rounded numbers.

  14. Re:You knew it was coming... on FEMA Demands Use of IE To File Online Katrina Claims · · Score: 1
    I don't get this "leader of the free world", I live in a free country (Brasil) and Bush is not my leader. There a many people in Europe for witch bush is not a leader also. I never voted for him, I don't like him, I am happy that my country goverment question his polices frequently. He is not the leader of the free world, unless free means something else I didn't learn while studing english.


    Perhaps you don't know the American definition of world. It begins in atlantic and ends in pacific somewhere, and there is northern limit with border of canada, and southern limit with border of mexico. Thats the world for the america. And Bush is leader of the free world. Thats my interpretion of its meaning. Any other interpretion is considered blasphemy for other countries.

  15. Re:SACD proves this wrong. on Blu Ray Drive Will Cost $100 Per PlayStation 3 · · Score: 1
    My sample is a bit skewed because I'm Canadian middle class which tends to buy stuff like big screens and we have nothing to do in our long long winters except watch movies and have sex.


    And you're slashdotter. This just reminds me something that Duke Nukem used to say:

    "Its time to kick ass and chew bubble gum. I'm all out of gum."

  16. Re:Get some priorities!!!! on Blu-Ray To Punish Users for Modifying Hardware · · Score: 1
    My *god*, people, GET SOME PRIORITIES!

    The bodies of 20,000+ dead people could give a good god damn about your network interface cards, your childish Lego models, your nerf toys and lack of a "fun" workplace, your Everquest/Diablo/D&D addiction, or any of the other ways you are "getting on with your life"!!

    Yeah, lots of people dead. People DO care about them being dead and have already taken it in consideration, or atleast some people have noticed and acted upon it.

  17. Re:Worst case scenario on Your Thoughts on the Great Ozone Debate? · · Score: 1

    Heres what some engineers in Finland do.
    0.5 mile= walk ->5 miles bicycle. We have good & safe public transport on large cities like 14 000 peple in size. But still large number of people drive to work. With taxes the Finnish price euro/littre is pretty close to a US gas price $/gallon. And that made people think something about the consumption of their vehicle, when they purchased it.
    Its quite rare for people to need the large cargo & people capacity. So for most of the time you could use some very modern car like LADA. Its The russian car. It has better fuel economy than the honda number you mentioned.
    But the chevrolet matiz should be the car you are looking for, its cheapest new car here and its 54 mpg. Its not *ALL* purpose vehicle, but it bring you and one other adult to work, and small kids to where they go. And it has enough space for weekly shopping items. And thats what matters it handles the things that most of the time car is needed.
    Thats the thing, most of the time there is no need for hauling large cargoes, and for those there are special purpose vehicles designed for doing that, its called van, and usually there is possibility of renting one. Like rent a van for a day when you purchase your furnitures and rest of the time drive that small cheap chevrolet consuming very little fuel.
    You don't do long trips in that car with more than 2 adults and one kid, but those things are first to go if we start thinking about world fuel economy, since long road trips don't produce anything, and most of the time the overall costs of doing those and having cars designed specificially for very long leisure thips out weight the benefit.
    What if I need more than X persons , its still more cost efficient splitting the group to two cars than driving a SUV.
    Yes its the pleasure, and leisure and image that truly drive the need for SUV. Of course the weight of a PERSON is another issue that needs to be fixed too, so that driving a smaller car don't feel cramped. Perhaps thats one of the reasons for better fuel economy in european cars. For each american you can fit 2 europeans in equal volume, so the internal volume of a car doesn't need to be so large.
    And engine doesn't need to be as powerfull as its hauling hundreds of kilograms less fat in europe.
    Also reducing food consumption helps in other ways too since there is less need to make food and less amount of food needing to transport etc...
    As MOST of the people live in cities, there is even LESS need for SUV:s there. And perhaps cars could be made obsolete there, by having good public transportation.

  18. Re:Man, I hope that's sarcasm. on Your Thoughts on the Great Ozone Debate? · · Score: 1

    No, I'm just a European who tries to put what Americans say about it in proper words.
    Its always the same, rest of the world says one thing, Americans say another, and claims that the other study is blatantly wrong, biased and acting on it hurts American economy. Yes, thats pretty much describes most questions on atmospheric pollution. Americans seems to promote idea that atmosphere is such a large system that hurting it truly by humans is nearly impossible and it will recover quickly.
    While rest of the world is in the side that we are disturbing balance and we must stop doing it, but exacly HOW we are getting those goals is argued about.

  19. Yeh the truth is. on Your Thoughts on the Great Ozone Debate? · · Score: 2, Funny

    Its the basic thing there is american news organisation giving objective information, while rest of the worlds news agencies gives simply blatant false information on their self interest that is contradiction to American political interest. Its something that everything that is published about pollution and atmosphere its the same thing. The rest of the world has VERY bad bias in there.

  20. Re:In Soviet Russia... on Ideas For Your Next Tech Startup · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yeah right there is a LOT to gain from that.
    Consider a first few programming class you took. Consider a average guy there. That's what you get when you try to build 25 person team plus all your time will go managing those twenty guys. However consider few nerd friends you got, and thats what you can get if you go for 5 person team. Next thing to consider is the communications thats more or less n style thing. There is only so many independent peaces you can split the application, and still those need to communicate with each other. In the end for us the 25 person team is a LOT worse solution than going for 5 person team.
    I think I'd go for 5 person team at beginning rather than VC:s just to have better productivity and higher code quality.

  21. GREAT. on Report Claims Men More Intelligent Than Women · · Score: 1

    Thats a new discussion topic besides computers in future dates for slashdotters.
    Yes. Getting a blind date is not impossible even for slashdotters, since in that case the date don't know nearly anything of you before date.

  22. HELL ADS on Laser Cannons Coming to an F-16 Near You · · Score: 1

    Wellcome to the hell.
    The hell is a permanent place for you to stay, we have plenty of room for you and all your loved ones you can take with you. We will raise strong emotions in you.
    We offer you a nice range of leisure activities, like scourging, crucifixion and impalement.
    We won't leave you hanging too long, since we have lots of activies available for you to enjoy.
    And you will NEVER get enough of it. The flames will affect your comfortability all the time.
    Remember this: forget Jesus, forget God. Come here. and WE have a great time with you.

  23. Re:So what if it does? on Laser Cannons Coming to an F-16 Near You · · Score: 1

    So where does large number relatively small high speed peaces of metal that comes from antimissile missiles after self-destruct go to?

  24. Re:It's Like a Presidential Election... on Sony and Toshiba Give Up On Unified DVD Format · · Score: 1

    As the parent poster so eloquently points out, format wars are inherently bad. One technology analyst on NPR said he estimates that format wars can reduce a potential market by "as much as 90%" - that is, the two formats combined sell up to 9 times fewer DVDs than if you only had one format.


    Do your math. reduction of 90% means 10% left which means that it would be upto TEN times difference.

  25. Re:Guise? on Lockheed Martin Hardware to Protect NYC Transit · · Score: 1
    Unless the person watching you through them just happens to know the person you're kissing passionately on the platform is not your spouse, and uses the facial-features database to ring your cell phone to demand payment for silence.

    But really, do the sort of people who'd do that live in New York City??

    Yes.