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User: Linknoid

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  1. Re:Mod TFS as flamebait on Help ESR Stamp Out CVS and SVN In Our Lifetime · · Score: 1

    Visual SourceSafe would start corrupting repositories once they got above the 2 GB barrier. My last job had a 17 GB repository, and spent months trying to convert it to a different source control because of all the corruption issues.

  2. They Forgot to Plant an Acorn on the Moon on NASA Will Send Seeds to the Moon In 2015 · · Score: 1
  3. Early inspirations on Interviews: Ask Ray Kurzweil About the Future of Mankind and Technology · · Score: 1

    What were your earliest childhood experiences/activities that foreshadowed your future as an inventor?

  4. Re:Wrong on Hugo Awards Live Stream Cut By Copyright Enforcement Bot · · Score: 1

    For the longest time I never really understood what people meant when they're talking about rights, they're a very abstract notion. But I recently read a book about the Bill of Rights, and discovered that the term "right" in this context is the opposite of wrong, i.e. "right and wrong". So if you say someone has a right to do something, you're saying that it's right for them to be allowed to take that action (instead of wrong). That doesn't mean that anyone is required to give you those rights, but by saying it's a right, you're saying that if someone takes it away, they're doing something wrong.

  5. Re:Relearn an OS? on Aero Glass UI No More On Windows 8 · · Score: 1

    What stuff is now broken? I'm just curious. I just upgraded from XP to Windows 7 (new computer) last week, and the only thing I've found actually broken is the audio won't send to multiple devices at once (headphones/spdif). Are there other things broken that are less obvious?

  6. Re: as the temperature of the Earth goes up...!? on Is the Earth Gaining Or Losing Mass? · · Score: 2

    Ever look at the periodic table of elements in detail? Notice how hydrogen is not exactly one, helium is not exactly 4, nitrogen is not exactly 12, etc.? Well partly that's because of different isotopes (carbon 12, carbon 13, carbon 14, etc), but even if you had a pure isotope, it wouldn't come out exactly. That's because part of the mass of an atom is tied up in the binding energy in the nucleus, and the binding energy between the electrons and the nucleus.

    If you take hydrogen and oxygen and react them together, it will give off heat, and the resulting water will have a mass reduced by the amount of heat given off. I think I've even read that most of the mass of protons and neutrons is tied up in the binding energy of the quarks, and that the quarks by themselves don't weight that much.

    Like another reply said, the only reason you don't notice this effect is because a even a few hundred degrees temperature change is so minuscule compared to c^2.

  7. Re:Real problem? on 3D Printers To Save Hermit Crabs · · Score: 1

    Oyster shells are ground up and fed to chickens as a source of calcium. Chickens need a lot of calcium to keep laying eggs every day, and if they get deficient, they can lay the eggs with thin or even no shells.

    Actually, I wouldn't be too surprised if they actually used them in human calcium supplements as well. (I have no idea if they do, but it would seem reasonable.)

  8. Re:The Ritchie Array... on Renaming the Very Large Array · · Score: 2

    I think it would be more appropriate to name a sea after him.

  9. Re:wow, what insight... on Hand-Mounted Sonar For the Blind · · Score: 2

    Yes, the human ear can distinguish vertical position as well. Ever wonder why the outer ear (the pinna) is shaped so weird? It's so it will distort sound coming from different directions differently.

    Here's an demonstration I saw at the Exploratorium in San Fransisco, but you can easily reproduce this at home.

    Close your eyes, and have someone standing beside you jingle a ring of keys near your ear, above, below, and adjacent. It's easy to tell where the sound is coming from.

    Now bend the top cartilage over, so the shape of the ear is distorted, and repeat the previous experiment. Now the easy task of detecting direction becomes almost impossible.

  10. Re:According to the NSA... on The Truth About the Polygraph, According To the NSA · · Score: 1

    I'm not claiming that you're wrong, I honestly don't know enough about the subject. However, I don't understand how Reagan could sign an executive order in 1989 since he was president from 1980-1988. Am I missing something?

  11. Re:Greatest? on Homer Simpson Named Greatest TV Character · · Score: 1

    Of course he's Homer the Great, haven't you see season 6 episode 12?

  12. Re:Why put tabs in code anyway? on Visual Studio 2010 Forces Tab Indenting · · Score: 1

    I used to indent parameters across multiple lines like that, but they're just too much of a hassle to maintain like that. I think it's just as readable and less work if you put each parameter on its own line, just give it normal indention:

    if (AThing)
    {
    --->MyFunction(
    ------->parameter1,
    ------->parameter2);
    }

    or normal indention + 1 indent:

    if (AThing)
    {
    --->MyFunction(
    ----------->parameter1,
    ----------->parameter2);
    }

  13. Similar calculation on Man Uses Drake Equation To Explain Girlfriend Woes · · Score: 3, Funny

    I once did a similar calculation for my city of 200,000, and came up with an answer of approximately 2. At that point I concluded I would never find either one of them, and gave up.

  14. That's no moon on Strange New Objects Seen In Saturn's Rings · · Score: 4, Funny

    It's a budong.

  15. Re:Quality of simulation on Can We Build a Human Brain Into a Microchip? · · Score: 1

    Attributed to Lyall Watson:

    "If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn't."

  16. Re:Zomg on AMD Phenom II Overclocked To 6.5GHz · · Score: 1

    Q: Why don't jokes work in octal?
    A: Because 7, 10, 11

  17. Re:The problem solved by QWERTY makes faster typin on Dvorak Layout Claimed Not Superior To QWERTY · · Score: 1

    You make very good points about alternating between hands. The strength of the Dvorak keyboard is that a high percentage of English words are typed in an alternating pattern. In QWERTY there are a lot of words that require typing two consecutive letters with the same finger. In Dvorak, there are quite a few words which can be "rolled". In fact, my most common typing mistakes in Dvorak are hitting the keys in the wrong order because I can basically "press" the word, and it's a matter of the keystrokes landing in the right order. QWERTY typing has a much rougher rhythm to it.

  18. Re:Tax dollars on Feds To Offer Cash For Your Clunker · · Score: 1

    No, they've already spent all the tax dollars you pay them, long ago. Any new program like this is just printing new money at the cost of diluting old.

  19. Re:Need a way to un-highlight on (Useful) Stupid Vim Tricks? · · Score: 1

    :noh

  20. Re:Not about rights, but rather usefulness on US Courts Consider Legality of Laptop Inspection · · Score: 1

    But NSA and other such agencies can monitor information travelling over the internet a lot easier than they can monitor the contents of a hard drive crossing the border. This would kind of close that loophole.

  21. Re:Starcraft 2 on Blizzard Announces StarCraft 2 · · Score: 1
    I was a huge fan of Starcraft in college, spent many hours reading forums before it came out so I already knew all the units and how to use them before the game came out. The point is, I was really in to Starcraft. But then some friends discover Kohan: Ahriman's Gift, and the game play was so much more fun. The art isn't as good as Starcraft was, but all the stuff you mention Starcraft missing: formation tactics, lines of supply, flanking, morale, they all exist in Kohan and were quite well done. After playing Kohan for a while, I went back and tried Starcraft, and the user interface of Starcraft was completely horrible.


    When my friends told me about it, I thought the lack of individual unit control would make things less fun, but it turns out that it actually made things much more interesting, strategically and tactically. It's an older game, made in 2001, but if you can get a copy, I recommend it. (Just don't buy Kohan 2, it wasn't anywhere near as good.)

  22. Re:The other side on Is Daylight Saving Shift Really Worth It? · · Score: 1
    If I have to wake up when it's dark out, the first thing I do is get up and turn on all the lights (something like 9 incandescents and 2 flourescents, for about 1 1/2 hours). That's the only way I can start waking up, by tricking myself into thinking it's already daylight. If the sun is already up when I have to get up, the only light that gets turned on is in the bathroom.

    Alternatively, in the evening, I might have a single bulb running until I go to bed just to keep it from getting too dark and causing eye strain from my computer.

    Daylight saving time is a horrible idea, and should be permenantly abolished. Or at the very least, made to last only as long as sunrise occurs no later than 6 AM. I don't understand all these people saying that they'd rather have an extra hour of daylight in the evening at the cost of having to wake up in the dark.

  23. Sounds like they listened on RIAA Claims P2P Has Been Contained · · Score: 1

    Maybe the RIAA actually listened to Hilary Rosen when she said it was a bad idea for them to be suing customers. It sounds like they're trying to pull back on their litigous behaviour for the good of their business without admitting they were wrong.

  24. Re:Pretty cool, but... on Bellagio Fountains Recreated with Mentos and Coke · · Score: 1

    Dry ice and water will do the same thing as the hydrochloric acid and aluminum foil (possibly a bit slower), with the advantage of not spraying hydrochloric acid everywhere when it explodes.

  25. Re:Bit Versus Byte on ISPs Offer Faster Speeds, Why Don't We Get Them? · · Score: 1

    I don't know much about the protocols used over these high speed connections, but back in the days of analog modems, the standard protocol for communication was 8N1, which means 8 bits of data, no parity, and 1 stop bits. I wouldn't be suprised if there were something similar over ethernet/cable modems/DSL, not even including the packet headers/etc.