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User: bill_mcgonigle

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Comments · 18,097

  1. Re:Alarming amount of propaganda on Sesame Street Begins Teaching Math and Science · · Score: 3, Interesting

    There's an alarming amount of pro-liberal, pro-government and pro-business propaganda on Sesame Street in addition to the lessons of childhood. I wouldn't trust it any more than late Soviet propaganda.

    No there isn't. I'm fairly well attuned to these things and watch Sesame Street with my kids.

    Prove me wrong with five examples.

  2. Re:Senator Charles Schumer is correct on Senator Goes After 'Brazen' OnStar Privacy Shift · · Score: 1

    Citizens should not be required to rip out the electronics to prevent a previous business partner from illegally spying on them.

    Just pull the fuse. I verified, at least in 2005, that this really disabled the OnStar systems (it would be possible to install a fake fuse but they didn't).

    And they said I was paranoid for doing so...

  3. Re:Is this significant? on The Dead Sea Scrolls and Information Paranoia · · Score: 1

    But it ought not be the important part...

    TFTFY.

  4. Re:Where are the shareholders? on HP Spent Over $80M To Get Rid of Its CEOs · · Score: 1

    I have experience at a fairly small company where one of the investors was a large state's pension fund. We saw the assigned manager every couple months and he asked lots of deep, probing questions.

  5. Re:Where are the shareholders? on HP Spent Over $80M To Get Rid of Its CEOs · · Score: 1

    Right, that's why the institutional investors are important. The New York Pension Fund might own a billion shares, for instance. If there's ever a successful shareholders' revolt, they lead it.

  6. Re:Wait for the -9 on Boeing To Deliver First 787 Today · · Score: 2

    It was in one of the articles about the 787-8 delivery. The -8 had unexpected weight problems. The -9 is currently spec'ed on WP as being 6 tons heavier. The article said that Boeing now expected that the -8's weight problems had been solved, and the technology would be first delivered in the -9, making the first -9 an equivalent weight to the -8. Then the newer -8's would receive the weight reductions after that (which would make the -9's heavier again).

  7. Re:spot on on Boeing To Deliver First 787 Today · · Score: 4, Informative

    Guess what airlines, 32.5 does not fit into 31 especially on 12hr sectors. Now where's my lawyer?

    Telling you to buy a seat you fit in, I hope. I'm taller than you and I don't go about suing car companies who make many nice cheap cars that I can't fit in - I buy a car that fits me.

    Tall men have plenty of advantages in life - we have to let the little guys win once in a while.

  8. Re:"bendy winged"? on Boeing To Deliver First 787 Today · · Score: 1

    Being able to see through all the baggage will be a neat trick. The stewardesses are going to be miffed about having to Windex the floors between each flight.

  9. Re:"bendy winged"? on Boeing To Deliver First 787 Today · · Score: 1

    I once read somewhere that commercial jetliner wings are unbelievably strong, they can be bent almost till they touch at the top before breaking. I recall that they are tested this way, and that on occasion they are tested until failure (in a heavily shielded test facility I hope!).

    There's quite a bit of mechanical, plumbing, and electrical inside an airplane wing, plus fuel. I doubt it's all that flexible.

  10. Wait for the -9 on Boeing To Deliver First 787 Today · · Score: 1

    The 787-8 is over-weight. That's understandable on a brand new design, but the 787-9 is in the wings (sorry) and will offer a longer airplane at the same weight. Many airlines are switching their orders from the -8 to the -9 since the 787 is supposed to be about efficiency, and the -9 is more so.

    Speaking of which, as a bonus the 787 has a bleedless engine (more efficient), which means by side-effect that the cabin won't be filled with air that's been warmed by flowing through the engines. You can get all kinds of lovely solvents, lubes, and de-icers in the cabin air that way.

  11. Where are the shareholders? on HP Spent Over $80M To Get Rid of Its CEOs · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The Board keeps choosing bad CEO's. Why do the shareholders keep re-electing them? Where are the institutional investors on this? I guess it's their company to destroy, if they really want to.

  12. Re:What if light travels at slightly less than c? on Faster-Than-Light Particle Results To Be Re-Tested · · Score: 1

    A GPS clock is accurate to within 14ns. Your proposed variation from c would throw it off more than that.

    The value of c has been well established over the past century through experimental measurement. That said, I'm not sure how many of those experiments have been done through solid rock. Could the mass in the rock be tunneling the neutrinos somehow?

    Oh, no, the Italian lady could be technically right.

  13. Re:I did think of it. on A Few Million Virtual Monkeys Randomly Recreate Shakespeare · · Score: 4, Insightful

    One thing the Internet has taught me is that (nearly) all my ideas are non-unique. It's the execution that counts.

  14. Re:Third-Party cookies on Facebook Cookies Track Users Even After Logging Out · · Score: 1

    And (shockingly) Facebook Like and Recommend buttons required third-party cookies to be on. They used to work without them, until, oh, about 6 months ago. Can't imagine why...

    I'd like to be able to be a bit more specific with my third-party cookies between 'on' and 'off'. Heck, just a toggle button in the status bar would be useful.

  15. Re:what a shame on The Mythical Tunnel Between CERN and Central Italy · · Score: 0

    These are the people who are prosecuting geologists for not predicting the earthquake.

    As a man of reason, I'd advise you to flee, but it seems you already have. Good move.

  16. Re:The future is here at last on AIDS Vaccine Breakthrough · · Score: 1

    There's one thing the Internet has taught me - there are very few unique ideas. In the end, it's all about execution.

  17. Wrong Article on Swedish Daycare Tracks Kids With GPS Devices · · Score: 1

    but not on the scale that the submitter has everyone worried about. Congratulations, you all have been trolled.

    Yeah, TFS chose the wrong article to link to this week. He wanted the one about Rhode Island.

  18. Re:Why is there still microwave oven interference? on Wi-Fi Cards Can Now Detect Microwave Ovens · · Score: 2

    Even if only 0.01% of the microwave is leaking it is still more powerful than the WIFI.

    Usually it's not any leaking from the cooking chamber, those are pretty well shielded, but the power supplies, which aren't well shielded.

    I've read that it has to do with the AC duty cycle, but I previously had a Panasonic that ran on a DC inverter (supposed to make the microwave cooking better, but didn't) and it had terrible WiFi interference.
      'Microwave robustness' and 802.11g didn't do a darn bit of good (maybe because there was no duty cycle?).

    Anyway, I set out to buy new microwave ovens and return them until I found a clean one, and got lucky on a Kenmore the first time. It's the gigantic one with the rounded inside corners, and I can sit at the table less than 10 feet away and not see a dB loss on the WiFi. IIRC it's made by one of the Korean companies (LG, Samsung?) It can handle a 9x13 casserole dish too, so double-plus good.

  19. Video of Re-entry on NASA Satellite Falls Back To Earth; Landfall in Canada · · Score: 1

    is here. Not the best camera in the world (I think he said iPhone) but it clearly captures the break-up and large pieces burning.

    As of now, YouTube is significantly ahead of NASA and Air Force intelligence (it has a much larger workforce).

  20. Re:Android Intents on Windows 8 Introduces a New Cross-App Data-Sharing System · · Score: 1

    It sounds like OLE reinvented for the web.

    This is Microsoft. Every two years they re-invent OLE for whatever is popular.

  21. Re:I know it's hard to calculate, but come on... on NASA Satellite Falls Back To Earth; Landfall in Canada · · Score: 1

    Are you suggesting that the GP doesn't actually have a working prediction model of the Sun's activity and its interaction with Earth's atmosphere? Why, that would mean he's just talking out his uars.

  22. Re:OK that article is a canned article on EPA Bans CFC-Based Asthma Inhalers · · Score: 1

    Thanks, that's what I thought. Not sure why the GP thought OTC and CFC were exclusive. At least that's how I parsed the near-English.

  23. Re:So... on OCZ Wants To Cache Your HDD With an SSD · · Score: 1

    .Consider 2 terabyte hard drives are under $100, $500 sounds like a mountain of cash for a storage solution. $500 is more than your average decent desktop costs now days.

    A bare drive is on one end of the 'storage solution' continuum. The slow, unreliable, hot end. The OCZ hybrid storage device is $500 itself, for 1TB unmirrored.

    Wait, have you ever priced out reliable storage? The cost of a desktop PC isn't really relevant unless you're going to do a big storage cluster like Google does.

  24. Re:OK that article is a canned article on EPA Bans CFC-Based Asthma Inhalers · · Score: 2

    a) There is a non- CFC primatine mist coming out.

    http://www.empr.com/update-on-primatene-mist-discontinuation/article/208381/ [empr.com]

    That article says, 'pending FDA approval'. Last article I read said the FDA was going to require an [expensive] clinical trial before approving it, and the manufacturer didn't have the revenue stream to support that. But, good for them for making it FDA's problem. If the FDA has backed down, good for them.

    e) the only impact CFC inhalers, not over the cuonter inhalers. So you will see OTC inhalers, probably soon.

    Hrm? Primatine Mist is OTC and CFC. Clarify please?

  25. Re:Nothing significant on One Third of UK Kids Under 10 Own a Mobile Phone · · Score: 1

    Is she really addicted to texting, or does she constantly communicate with her friends as 11 year old girls have done for decades (if not since the beginning of time)?

    Probably both. She neglected her schoolwork and responsibilities and ran up multi-hundred-dollar phone bills for her parents several months in a row, after being told to knock it off. I think her phone got taken away and she had to get a summer job to pay off the phone bill.