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User: Livius

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Comments · 2,750

  1. Re:Let's get this out of the way... on Magnetic Stimulation Boosts Memory In Humans · · Score: 1

    So maybe if you loaded the magnets into a shotgun, then fired them through your brain, you'd notice an effect.

    I suspect you wouldn't notice anything. Ever.

  2. Narrow use case on Robot Printer Brings Documents To Your Desk · · Score: 1

    I'm sure there are places with a valid need for this, but...

    If you need to print confidential documents all the time, then you have a legitimate business case for your own printer (it's not like they're expensive).

    If you don't have that need, getting up and walking to the printer is probably healthy for you.

    There are already printers that will hold confidential material until you walk up to it and authenticate yourself.

    And if there's a lot of issues around the security of what you're printing, maybe there's a staffing issue you need to look into.

  3. Re:ROLF! on Canada Tops List of Most Science-Literate Countries · · Score: 2

    Canadian health care has its problems, but it's still better than most of the alternatives.

    However, the problem with public health care is that Canadians generally do not think about how their medical services are provided, and thus they are unaware of how much they cost, whether they are cost effective, and whether they represent the latest technological advances. The last point is why the summary's suggestion is laughable.

  4. Redundant on Brian Stevens Resigns As Red Hat CTO · · Score: 1

    *Every* job termination, voluntary or involuntary, involves pursuing new opportunities.

  5. Re:The Lonely Assassins on Death Valley's Sailing Stones Caught In the Act · · Score: 1

    Sure you can kill a stone. Enough heat and it melts, or just shatter it.

    Unfortunately, I suspect Weeping Angels aren't actually stone in the geological sense.

  6. Re:Seriously? on Fish Raised On Land Give Clues To How Early Animals Left the Seas · · Score: 1

    I'm guessing there is some interesting science being investigated but there's no way to know from the summary's statement of the obvious.

  7. Re:central storage or n^x security guard costs / s on New NRC Rule Supports Indefinite Storage of Nuclear Waste · · Score: 2

    Or even more likely, by then we will have figured out economic uses for many of the waste components, and the "waste" will no longer need to be disposed of.

    Bear in mind that we have the waste storage and disposal problem we have now because everyone made that same assumption back in the 1940s and '50s.

  8. Re:Is this the missing "dark matter"? on Brown Dwarf With Water Clouds Tentatively Detected Just 7 Light-Years From Earth · · Score: 1

    No, they have not eliminated the possibility that dark matter does interact with electromagnetism weakly

    If it's violating Maxwell's laws, then 1) whatever else it is it's not ordinary matter, and 2) that's far-fetched and cool the same way the dark matter hypothesis is.

  9. Re:Is this the missing "dark matter"? on Brown Dwarf With Water Clouds Tentatively Detected Just 7 Light-Years From Earth · · Score: 1

    No.

    Dark matter is matter that does not interact with electromagnetic forces. It isn't mass that's gone missing.

  10. Simulation is latest metaphor on Fermilab Begins Testing Holographic Universe Theory · · Score: 1

    'Simulation' is simply a recent metaphor that sounds cool and high-tech.

    In earlier times, people would have been talking about whether the universe was really a telephone switchboard or a clock.

    The universe, and everything in it, including ourselves, doesn't become less (or more) real because we find some math connecting a N-dimensional representation of the universe and an N'-dimensional representation.

  11. Re:Much Confusion on Fermilab Begins Testing Holographic Universe Theory · · Score: 1

    On top of which, special relativity tells us that, from the outside observer's perspective, nothing crosses the event horizon, but just stays frozen on the 'surface'.

  12. Literally stuffing physical cash in pockets, yes.

    But there is no shortage of ways to get the money to the right people. In fact not giving money to certain people is often enough to achieve the same result.

    You are not paying close enough attention.

  13. "destroy American capitalism altogether'"

    I find it amusing that when people want to say a totally over-the-top lie but they don't put any effort into it, they end up saying something true about themselves.

  14. Re:Didn't these people watch Futurama? on Climate Scientist Pioneer Talks About the Furture of Geoengineering · · Score: 1

    Not difficult, providing you don't care whether it's a fair election or not.

  15. Re:How did they build the pyramids on How the Ancient Egyptians (Should Have) Built the Pyramids · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The labour was not expendable. When the River Nile floods and your whole population is 1) homeless and 2) unemployed, and public works projects in the desert start to sound like very good ideas, but you needed that labour in good condition to return to the farms once the annual flood ended.

  16. Re:Corroborating Hieroglyphics? on How the Ancient Egyptians (Should Have) Built the Pyramids · · Score: 3, Informative

    Basic fact that any hypothesis needs to allow for:

    Dragging things across sand is easy.

    Rolling things on sand is hard.

  17. Critical Path on Why Do Humans Grow Up So Slowly? Blame the Brain · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I would speculate that it's simply that, for humans in their eusocial foraging societies, brain development was the priority and there was no point in reaching sexual maturity and adulthood before the brain had developed and the individual had learned enough to be a full member of the community. The brain and the rest of the body are not competing for glucose, the brain is simply the critical path and the rest of the body has no need to develop faster.

  18. Re:Working backwards from a "known" result on 850 Billion NSA Surveillance Records Searchable By Domestic Law Enforcement · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The media has never been critical of a liberal administration.

    Because there hasn't been one in living memory.

  19. Re: The world we live in. on New Nail Polish Alerts Wearers To Date Rape Drugs · · Score: 1

    The straight alcohol is being consumed voluntarily, the other drug by criminal deception.

  20. Re: The world we live in. on New Nail Polish Alerts Wearers To Date Rape Drugs · · Score: 1

    There are no statistics that back that claim up

    That was his point, which you obviously missed.

  21. Re:Do they? on ACM Blames the PC For Driving Women Away From Computer Science · · Score: 1

    I would say that is more a problem of perception in HR and hiring managers than reality.

    I would say that is a reality not a mere perception.

    The legal profession has put enormous effort into retaining women, but 90% of women simply prioritize parenthood and career differently.

  22. We don't know on ACM Blames the PC For Driving Women Away From Computer Science · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I think the biggest problem is that people aren't willing to just admit we don't now why computer science has the male-female imbalance that it does.

    There are differences between men and women in terms of temperament and aptitudes, but those differences are small and don't seem to explain it.

    There are aspects of the culture in computer science that are inconvenient for parents, and usually wives expect husbands to make compromises (which not all men and not all women are happy about). That doesn't seem enough to explain it either.

    There is certainly no lack of encouragement and support for women in the profession, so it's not that any of that is lacking.

    We don't know, and that means we don't know what the solution is, or even if there is a problem in need of a solution.

  23. Re:Okay... and? on For Microsoft, $93B Abroad Means Avoiding $30B Tax Hit · · Score: 1

    They should have forfeited and been required to repay any research credits or expense deductions when the intellectual property was sold.

    But it didn't happen by accident. Lawmakers knew perfectly well what they were doing.

  24. Re:Okay... and? on For Microsoft, $93B Abroad Means Avoiding $30B Tax Hit · · Score: 1

    If the money actually is abroad, then it shouldn't be taxed.

    But I have a feeling there's something about the definition of 'abroad' that we might be missing.

  25. Share the blame on South Carolina Student Arrested For "Killing Pet Dinosaur" · · Score: 1

    Could we at least put some of the blame on the teacher for giving such a lazy, vague, open-ended assignment?

    (I *hated* those in school - I work best with structure.)