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User: wiggles

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Comments · 665

  1. Re:Recycling on Is Carbon Fiber Going Mainstream? · · Score: 1

    So you have a choice - less energy use via lighter cars, or easily recyclable cars. Where is your particular environmental itch?

  2. Re:The bigger picture on A Look at Smart Gun Technology · · Score: 4, Informative

    > Please cite a source for that

    Hard to find a non-biased source for this, most of my searches pulled up anti-gun advocacy pages whose figures wouldn't stand up to scrutiny, but I did find this article from 2009 that cites a CDC report stating that around 100 children annually, on average, died from accidental shootings between 2000 and 2005.

  3. Re:If they programmed it correctly on EA Ending Online Support For Dozens of Games · · Score: 4, Insightful

    > If they programmed it correctly

    As a server admin, if this is your standard for correct server side programming, I've never seen a correctly programmed application in my entire 30 year career.

    In my experience, server application migrations rarely function flawlessly across OS versions. Most of the time, major application modifications need to be made.

    I agree with you on the server code, however. If they're going to abandon it, they might as well open source it.

  4. Re:What an idea on China May Build an Undersea Train To America · · Score: 5, Informative

    >My question is what purpose it would solve. By the time the route is finished, there won't be any way for the US to import anything from China. Food exports from USA to China, perhaps, as an attempt to pay the interest on what is owed?

    Your post displays a lack of knowledge of how the trade deficit works.

    In a nutshell, we don't borrow money from China. We buy goods and services from China, and we use US Dollars for the transaction.

    China can then spend those US dollars in the American economy - perhaps to buy American goods in exchange - but they choose instead to put those greenbacks into US treasuries, which is the single safest investment in the world. Other countries would sell those greenbacks on the currency markets to obtain their native currencies, causing currency prices to fluctuate accordingly, but China has decided to keep their exchange rates at artificial levels that advantage them and disadvantage the rest of the world, especially the United States. But I digress.

    The US treasuries that China owns can't be all called in at once. They can be sold on the open market, which technically could cause US treasury rates to rise, making borrowing more expensive for the United States, but in all likelihood they would not impact those rates by very much. The important thing here is that China can't roll up to the US Treasury with a briefcase (well, okay - trucks) full of bonds that haven't matured yet and expect to cash in. It doesn't work that way. While the US does pay interest on those treasuries, the interest rates are quite low right now.

    There's a lot more to this - but suffice to say, macroeconomics is not microeconomics - things you need to take care of at a household level often don't mesh with what governments have to do in order to keep the books balanced. It's a common misconception that the US national debt is necessarily a bad thing.

  5. Re:Lamborghini? Ha! on The Mere Promise of Google Fiber Sends Rivals Scrambling · · Score: 1
  6. Re:USA=Third World Internet on Internet Transit Provider Claims ISPs Deliberately Allow Port Congestion · · Score: 3, Interesting

    >providers are FORBIDDEN to upgrade any portion of their networks to IPv6 without NSA direct approval.

    Source? The signal you're picking up through your tinfoil hat doesn't count.

  7. Re:Why are people designing cores? on AMD Designing All-New CPU Cores For ARMv8, X86 · · Score: 1

    Pretty sure that firing all of the hot shot CPU designers and having such algorithms design their CPUs for them is how they wound up with the Bulldozer fiasco.

    Looky here.

  8. Re:plenty of water from reverse osmosis on California City Considers Restarting Desalination Plant To Fight Drought · · Score: 1

    There's a lot of stuff in those filters that can be processed into useful, marketable minerals. Just gotta figure out a good way to separate it all.

  9. Re:Radiation! on California City Considers Restarting Desalination Plant To Fight Drought · · Score: 1

    You know as well as I do that it's not the radiation, it's the radiotoxicity of the Strontium, Caesium, and other nuclear byproducts that's spewing out of that place.

    Of course, you also know as well as I do that all those nasties will be filtered out by the reverse osmosis membranes at the desalination plant.

  10. Re:And with that yoiu get POWER! on California City Considers Restarting Desalination Plant To Fight Drought · · Score: 2

    How is that any different from a groundwater well? How are those cost effective and is method isn't?

  11. Re:Are there any old drives around that read these on US Nuclear Missile Silos Use Safe, Secure 8" Floppy Disks · · Score: 3, Interesting

    IBM PC architecture never used the 8" FDD to my knowledge.

    I seem to remember those 8" drives on old DEC equipment - VAX minicomps and the like.

  12. Re:But the price? on Bill Gates & Twitter Founders Put "Meatless" Meat To the Test · · Score: 1

    It's available at Whole Foods today for a MSRP of $5.29 for a 12 oz package.

  13. Re:Something wrong at the foundation - on Oklahoma Moves To Discourage Solar and Wind Power · · Score: 1

    It's not socialist, it's not communist, but it is authoritarian - which is why I oppose it. Government has no business forcing private citizens to do something that ought to be in their own best interests anyway - people should have the right to choose to make bad decisions if they feel it's in their interests to do so.

  14. Re:No escape from the tea party nomenklatura. on $42,000 Prosthetic Hand Outperformed By $50 3D Printed Hand · · Score: 1

    You, sir, are in the minority. Your mother would have had to have an active infection on her vagina right at your birth. It sucks that you were screwed over by her life choices, but alas, you must play the cards you're dealt. I hardly think that means that society should pay for it in any case.

  15. Re:obamacare says "no way" on $42,000 Prosthetic Hand Outperformed By $50 3D Printed Hand · · Score: 1

    Don't forget the new Obamacare tax on regulated medical devices adds a bit to the cost as well.

  16. Re:Have their findings been independently reproduc on In a Cloning First, Scientists Create Stem Cells From Adults · · Score: 4, Informative

    Actually, this is an independent reproduction of an experiment from Oregon in, I think, 2007. This would seem to be the real deal.

  17. Re:People getting wierd about liquid water on Kepler-186f: Most 'Earth-Like' Alien World Discovered · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Because the future of humanity depends on getting off of this rock eventually.

  18. Re:nuclear power means unintended geoengineering on Climate Scientist: Climate Engineering Might Be the Answer To Warming · · Score: 1

    If we were *completely* incompetent, every one we've ever made would have melted down. As it stands, I can only name 3.

  19. Re:Nostalgia on Introducing a Calendar System For the Information Age · · Score: 2

    Nostalgia ain't what it used to be.

  20. Re:Kickstarter skeptics eat your heart out on Minecraft Creator Halts Plans For Oculus Version Following Facebook Acquisition · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If you want to see the future of the internet, go read Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson. All these guys did - Carmack, Zuck, the Google guys - whatever, and they've all been trying to make Stephenson's Metaverse come to life ever since. Think of it as a kind of Burnham plan for the internet.

    Facebook is trying to produce the Metaverse, just like everyone before them, and the Oculus Rift will be the first incarnation of the Metaverse's headset.

  21. Re:Shoot it to the sun? on What Fire and Leakage At WIPP Means For Nuclear Waste Disposal · · Score: 1

    Because it's not unlikely to have a rocket explode in the atmosphere, scattering plutonium all over the place. Not only that, but what you propose is **really** expensive.

  22. Re:Sounds cool as long as it's not... on Conservation Communities Takes Root Across US · · Score: 1

    You may have a lower property tax bill, but your 10% sales tax is ridiculous. Combine that with city penalties such as the corruption tax, insurance fees, parking, wear and tear on your car and your body that city life brings, and it's about equal - not to mention the square footage you get for the dollar.

  23. Re:Sounds cool as long as it's not... on Conservation Communities Takes Root Across US · · Score: 1

    I found one of these houses for sale in the community listed in Grayslake, IL.

    Here's a link to the listing on Trulia.

    $200/mo HOA. Tax bill is INSANE for the area at around $12k/yr. House was 2300 sqft for around $250k, which is what I'd expect for the area.

    Not only do you have to deal with a HOA, you have to deal with a tax bill at 5% of the worth of the property.

  24. Re:It's not free on PC Game Prices — Valve Starts the Race To Zero · · Score: 1

    > Damn how I miss games with endless of hours of content

    Endless hours of content means that gamers spend too much time playing the game, rather than purchasing more games because the old ones got boring.

    The trick in the game development industry is to make a game interesting for just long enough to switch gamers to the next thing. If they offer endless content, they move to subscription models, like WOW.

  25. Re:How can the situation be improved? on Why Is US Broadband So Slow? · · Score: 1

    > You know, that's starting to sound a lot like local government.

    Gah. And have everything run by politicians, skimming off the top? Activists who think they own the joint, screwing it up more by muddying the waters at board meetings because they think their issues are more important than everyone else's? I'd sooner have my eyes cut out with a power drill.

    That said, I've been contemplating lately - government ownership and management of the last mile cables, and negotiated leases to cable companies might be able to add some competition to the mix.