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User: Valdrax

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  1. Re:Healthy fat and marketing on Bring Home the Biotech Bacon · · Score: 1

    You need to read up a lot more on modern knowledge of nutrition if you think that high fructose corn syrup is healthier than regular sugar and that omega-3 and other polyunsaturated fats are just as unhealthy as saturated fats and should be avoided at all costs.

  2. Obligatory on New Jet Engine Tested · · Score: 1

    For people not to see to it that a link to The Onion was posted would be a crime against comedy.

  3. Old Jokes 101 on New Griefer Punishment - Crucification · · Score: 3, Informative

    In my day, we put their heads on a pike and fed their bodies to the dogs, and we liked it.

    If you're going to use an old formula for a joke, get it right. The formula is:
    In my day, [we did something horrible and exaggerated to ourselves] and we liked it.

    Examples:
    - In my day, we walked ten miles to school in sleet and hail, uphill both ways, and we liked it.
    - In my day, we played computer games off of LP records. If you wanted to write your own, you'd have to get a needle and a magnifying glass, but we liked it that way.

    The whole joke is doing something ridiculous and unpleasant and liking it ('cause you weren't spoiled like rotten kids today). It's not really all that incongruous to say that you did horrible things to other people and liked it. That's just human history right there. What exactly implies that kids are spoiled today for not getting to put their enemies' heads up on pikes?

  4. Re:Next story... on Claria Leaves Adware Business · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Actually a quote in the article does raise an interesting question about that:

    On July 1, Claria will shutdown the GAIN network and inform their users they can either uninstall their software or pay for it.

    So, does that mean that if you installed ad-supported freeware that uses Claria's spyware to help pay for it, that that's what they're talking about when the say "pay off or shut off?" Does that mean that they're going to trip off whatever mechanism prevents you from using such software after Claria's uninstalled without uninstalling the client software? What about software that uses multiple spyware vendors?

    Okay, well honestly, I don't really care that much about people careless enough to use programs that install spyware, but it does beg an interesting question of liability if they attempt to technologically enforce their suggestion that one should either pay or uninstall.

  5. Re:remember kids: on Software Developer Beats Pirate in Boxing Ring · · Score: 1

    Suggestion: a little less frothing-at-the-mouth conspiracy ranting that makes you look crazy and out for a fight with authority figurues and a little more calm, rational explanation of what you did that led to a confrontation with the police in which you were in the right and fighting for the good cause.

    You might've been doing something really noble, but right now it sounds like you went out to pick a fight with the government without enacting the "civil" part of "civil disobedience."

  6. Re:Supposedly, yes, Heim theory. on First Steps Toward Artificial Gravity · · Score: 1

    Yes, but the Earth's magnetic field is a tiny, tiny fraction of the field necessary to see this sort of effect on a practical scale. The Earth's magnetic field is 30-60 uT, with the paper on the theoretical drive requiring 13 T for a theoretical 10,000 kg space ship to escape Earth's gravity -- tens of thousands times weaker. Also, the Earth's core is not a superconducting material.

    I'm sure that if the Earth's core would have a measureable effect, then there would already be a proposed experiment to test this.

  7. Re:remember kids: on Software Developer Beats Pirate in Boxing Ring · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Would have been slightly more interesting if the outcome was the opposite.

    No it wouldn't. Continuing the fight was the pirate's idea (no idea who started it). It's poetic justice that the thug who wanted to keep fighting got a beating for it.

    Of course, I much prefer living in a country where the cops tell both sides to cool it off, but maybe that's just me.

  8. I just read the paper you linked. on First Steps Toward Artificial Gravity · · Score: 2, Informative

    I just realized after getting halfway through the paper you linked that it's by Dröscher himself, and it's describing the very loop + torus device and hyperspace transition mentioned in the New Scientist article that I linked.

    Page 15 gives a picture of the device, and sections 3.3 & 3.4 give the "vague description" of "hyperspace" travel that the article mentioned. It has to do with the absorption of positive gravitophotons (a Heim theory predicted particle for the interaction between gravity and EM forces). By the theory, if this happened, then the only possible result would be transitioning to another space-time system with a lower gravitional potential since going faster then c in is impossible, and reducing the gravitional constant is impossible. This "parallel space" would scale differently from ours but still obey the same laws within itself, and transitioning to and from it would allow objects to appear to travel faster than light from our perspective since c would seem to be higher in that space than ours.

    I'm don't really buy it, but there's a lot of math there that I really don't understand well enough to attempt to debunk it. I'm going to probably be spending a lot time with books and the internet going over this paper trying to understand what he's getting at. It's a lot easier to read than I thought when I first glossed over it, but it's still too advanced for my C-in-Optics understanding.

  9. Re:Next thing you know on First Steps Toward Artificial Gravity · · Score: 1

    some bottled water swilling, cell-phone fearing, earth hugging idiot will be complaining that it's not as good as *real* gravity, or worse, that AG causes some vague and unspecific health problems that only *they* can perceive and can never be reproduced in the lab and yet they'll have enough collective political pull to keep it an ongoing issue and complete waste of time in the public discourse.

    You mean other than the required magnetic fields that are stronger than those used in MRI machines? I don't really worry about the health effects of a constant magnetic force, but I do worry about systems design for computers under multiple-Tesla fields.

    Also, fear the abandonded shopping cart when driving to the grocery store in your new hover car. <g>

  10. Supposedly, yes, Heim theory. on First Steps Toward Artificial Gravity · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What you're asking is not stupid, but where you're asking it might be. It's highly doubtful that anyone here on Slashdot knows anything more about Heim theory than what the Wikipedia tells us. It's obscure and mostly understood by German speaking physics doctorates. (I challenge you small handful of physics experts on Slashdot who might have actually read his math and understood it to prove me wrong.) Fortunately, Germany is part of the ESA.

    However, from what I've read on "teh intarweb" from laymen speculators about Heim theory, his theory does supposedly predict that a rotating magnetic field would have a gravitational effect.

    Another physicist, Dröscher, has taken his theory further to say that in a similar setup -- a rotating ring above a superconducting coil -- could theoretically lift a 150-ton spaceship with a magnetic field of "only" 25 Tesla. He also claims that this might allow "hyperspace" travel where the speed of light changes, so I -- in my layman's knowledge of physics -- put Dröscher in the crank science box. You can read more about it in this New Scientist article. Take it with a good-sized chunk of rock salt.

  11. No word... on First Steps Toward Artificial Gravity · · Score: 1

    No word on whether the device occasionally goes quiet only to explode in a "metal fork on chalkboard / screaming woman" sound everytime something "exciting" happens. Fortunately, scientists have been wearing their goggles to avoid potential overplayed eye-gouging events.

  12. Re:Why VoIP? on Vonage Puts VoIP 911 Caller on Hold · · Score: 1

    No. Not in the slightest. The special "kick someone else" response for a tower is hardwired into either the tower hardware or the local switch office and not into your phone. The assurance that you won't be billed is handled by the individual company's billing appications because the call record still goes through.

    I work on the billing system for a major cellular provider. 911 trunks go into a special numbers table used by the call rating program to make sure that a toll record is never generated for a 911 call and that the air record is zero-rated. We have had issues before where a 911 trunk was not in the special numbers table and customers were being charged for 911 calls. Bills were put on hold until that was fixed.

  13. Re:Competitor's Advertisement on FCC Backs a Tiered Internet · · Score: 1

    Most broadband markets have at least two providers now; If one goes to this approach and websites refuse to play ball, they'll lose market share.

    Yeah, but what if they all do that? I have BellSouth, Comcast, and Cox Communications for my only real alternatives in my area. All three big players love the idea of tiered internet. That doesn't really matter because there are alternatives, right?

    Well, there are a handful of DSL providers that all use Bellsouth's network but charge more, like Earthlink -- no advantage there. There's wireless companies that offer the choice of too little bandwidth, too expensive service, and/or hideous Terms & Conditions. Lastly, there's SpeakEasy which offers unbundled DSL at only 150-200% the price of BellSouth and openly advertises the fact that they've already tiered their service for their own VoIP offering.

    Okay, well let's assume that I pick one of these alternatives. Now, I'm free from the effects of tiered internet, right?

    Wrong. 99% of the customers in my area all still get their broadband from one of the cheaper, faster services and don't know/care about the fact that their favorite companies are being extorted. The majority of people use the biggest name brand services they know about already. They won't care if little niche companies or the next insanely great thing all get killed by being unable to afford to compete. They won't even know it has happened because they're snug in their world of familiar name brands.

    Popular products like music & video stores, VoIP, etc. will be replaced by offerings from the incumbent ISPs that somehow work better than that of competitors. ISPs will feel free to charge more than outside competitors because their service will actually work (and come in trial form with the connection). New things will simply remain untried because if they take off, then the ISPs will just clone and kill. The internet as we know it will simply fossilize into it's current state and fail to innovate.

    So, um, go free market!

  14. Re:Talking point for Libertarians on FCC Backs a Tiered Internet · · Score: 1

    Liberatarian

    Gah. I meant Libertarian.
    I gotta quit hitting submit accidentally when previewing.

  15. Re:Talking point for Libertarians on FCC Backs a Tiered Internet · · Score: 1

    So why are you a Liberatarian if you have a problem with the FCC saying that ISPs can do what ever they want with their property and that customers are free to switch (somewhere) if they don't like it?

  16. Re:All aboard. on CATO Institute Releases Paper Criticizing DMCA · · Score: 0

    The basic principal libertarians tend to apply when it comes to people hurting each other is "my right to swing my fist ends where your face begins".

    That's the problem -- the Liberatarian only sees direct violence as worth stopping. Right-wing economic think tanks regularly advocate the dismantling of consumer protections and public institutions meant to protect citizens from predatory behavior like the EPA, OSHA, and FDA.

    The right-wing economic definition of corporate misbehavior is very, very weak compared to more moderate definitions. As long as you protect investors (mostly), and protections for competition and for consumers can be dismissed.

  17. Re:All aboard. on CATO Institute Releases Paper Criticizing DMCA · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Libertarianism and Communism both suffer from the same problem: they expect people to behave.

    Communism fails because it expects people to work without much incentive. Libertarianism fails because it expects people not to do harm to each other. Both are unrealistic expectations and cause both extremist philosophies to lack credibility.

  18. Don't underestimate David Koch's money on CATO Institute Releases Paper Criticizing DMCA · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Don't underestimate the political pull of the Cato Institute and other lobbying institutions founded by the Koch family. They are very influential to the other business-friendly, anti-regulation political think-tanks including those followed by more Republican than Liberatarian politicians. In addition, the David Koch donates an awful lot of money to Republicans. If his think tank gets involved against the DMCA, we might see to chance of progress here.

  19. Re:Why use a GPU, use a PPU on NVIDIA Launches New SLI Physics Technology · · Score: 1

    A lot of physics processing is collision detection, which means constructing and positioning geometry -- part of what GPUs do anyway. Why not integrate this into the GPU?

  20. Re:NIH funding on On the Future of Science · · Score: 1

    Unfortunately our faith-based administration seems to have very little use for science and I think that active disregard will come back to haunt America's science programs in the years to come.

    It's not just our science programs. Our entire economy now rests on intellectual property since we've outsourced the majority of our industries to places where labor is cheaper and since the writing is on the wall for our farm sector. Without continuing to be more creative and more inventive than the rest of the world, our current economic and political dominance will evaporate over the next century.

    According to a Time article that I read recently, America has 6% of the world's population but graduates 41% of its PhDs. For decades, bright young people have come here to study and have typically stayed. That number has been falling for years, and more and more foreign grad students are going back home to work instead of staying here where regulations prevent a lot of work, where there is a general impression that scientists and other fact-finders will have their work downplayed or censured if it doesn't pass political muster, and where public and private investment in fundamental research has been falling in favor of short-term profits.

    The quarterly obsession has led to the coring-out of companies like HP to leave behind services-only shells that will never again make an impact on the world. It has led to the de-funding of science programs across the nations because "we're at war" and "have other priorities," even though the Internet was invented due to research done at the height of the Vietnam War.

    The problem is the lack of a high-tech enemy like the Soviets to scare us into spending on technology combined with a slow backlash against the many problems that science has presented us since the end of WWII (nuclear scares, drug side-effects, once "safe" chemicals now pollutants, etc.), combined with a religious and political backlash against science that challenges beliefs, and combined with the aforementioned short-term profit obsession. The four of these factors are turning into a toxic cocktail for America's scientific leadership just as Europe and Asia are stepping up to try to claim the nation's throne.

    When our leadership in science and the arts is gone, there will be nothing left for our country to offer except our large army and our willingness to dig deeper and deeper into debt publicly and privately to continue consuming as if nothing's wrong. Think about that and how stable our national security will be when we're no longer #1 in GDP in the world even as our GDP becomes a more and more hollow construct.

  21. Re:The first thin wedge on SCOTUS To Hear Patentable Thought Case · · Score: 1

    Not necessarily. Remember the recent case about whether or not governments could use eminent domain to seize private property (like homes) and hand it over to another private interest (like Wal-mart or a housing developer) for community economical benefit reasons? The Court voted in favor of allowing this with the conservatives being most strongly against it saying that it gave government and corporations unprecdented power with the liberal wing saying that if government had the power to condemn slums using the same power, then economic benefit is no less valid of a reason.

    This is because the conservative wing of the court cares strongly about private property rights. In this case, they sided against big business because it was one of the rare cases where the interests of big business where in conflict with the expansion of property rights.

    That said, expanding patent law to cover more and more absurd things is an expansion of property rights. On the other hand, there is very clear reasoning for showing that this would not only fail to promote the Sciences and the Arts (a strict Constitutionalist approach). Furthermore, this would really screw over a lot of big businesses and lead to a strangling economic death of the USA. I wouldn't be surprised if they came out against it even though the court has generally been in favor of expanding the domain of patents to cover more and more things.

  22. Re:How you know you're at the wretched extreme on SCOTUS To Hear Patentable Thought Case · · Score: 1

    You'd think with all the big issues facing the country something like this wouldn't pass the laugh test. Yet it's made it all the way to the Supreme Court.

    No, you know we're at the wreteched extreme because the patent holders have WON at every level before the Supreme Court.

  23. Re:Creeeeeeeeeppyyyyyyy.... on Beware Your Online Presence · · Score: 3, Funny

    (Posting AC because the last thing I want is some crazy, vindictive stalker after me.)

    Well, f*$#-nuts.

  24. Creeeeeeeeeppyyyyyyy.... on Beware Your Online Presence · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Dude, you do realize that you overstepped the boundaries of overprotective, jealous boyfriend and went straight into creepy stalker land, right? You tracked down personal information on a person that you feared she might have been interested in, flaunted this in front of her, and then "[left] it up to the reader to determine what one can do with such information."

    Next, "you dumped HER" (I'm really hoping for her sake that this is a lie and she had the sense to dump you), you messaged the other person (who you give no indication of knowing personally) to say that he can have her (leaving the two of the them with a good story about her crazy ex to bond over), and then you post something showing how much you glory in the private information you collected about her behind your back by spying on their conversations.

    I honestly pity any girl that you next set your sights on. Get help. Get serious psychiatric help before you hurt somebody or leave yourself doomed for a serious of failed relationship because you have a serious combination of trust issues, possessiveness, and vindictiveness combined with a lack of empathy to see how your actions would affect another person.

    (Posting AC because the last thing I want is some crazy, vindictive stalker after me.)

  25. Could be worse... on Beware Your Online Presence · · Score: 1

    It could be worse. Your internet alias (picked while gaming in high school) could now sound like a brand of herpes medication that came out years later.