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User: AlecC

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  1. Re:That gigantic sucking sound... on Google To Lease and Refurbish Naval Air Base For Space Exploration · · Score: 0

    So why are you not complaining about Google Maps, the self driving cars, attempting to digitise all books ever etc.? They do a lot of things that are about wild new ideas, or just raising the brand identity. You sound very confident of your own knowledge - if you cant thing of a good use for it, there cannot be one, Nice to be omniscient.

  2. Re:Let lawyers do it free, in exchange for % damag on GNOME Project Seeks Donations For Trademark Battle With Groupon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It may seem clear cut to you, but it does not seem so to me nor several other contributors.

    A Trademark does not provide a universal protection for the word, only within a limited, named, commercial field. Sun Oil and Sun Computers co-existed using the name Sun. Gnome has trademarked the word for software and seoftware related services. Groupon's tablet is not software. No overlap.

  3. Re:Foldable tail? on SpaceShipTwo's Rocket Engine Did Not Cause Fatal Crash · · Score: 3, Informative

    Because the foldable tail puts into a very stable configuration, removing the need for attitudinal jets, because reasonable sized flaps would not work in the very thin atmosphere.

  4. Re:How much? on DHL Goes Live With 'Parcelcopter' Drone Delivery Service · · Score: 1

    And are such things, with autonomous capability including docking, available now, as autonomous quadcopters are? The point is that this is not a research exercise, this is going into day by day carrying parcels people urgently need delivered safely. If the sphereboat is available off the shelf (and as well as being unsinkable can also not be wrecked on the shore or washed out to the open ocean)), it might make a good alternative.

    Of course, this is also a tryout for more generalised future delivery systems which, being overland, would not be appropriate for a boat.

  5. Re:How much? on DHL Goes Live With 'Parcelcopter' Drone Delivery Service · · Score: 2

    Certainly German police would take a much stricter view than US police, and random people are much less likely to have guns within grabbing distance.

  6. Re:How much? on DHL Goes Live With 'Parcelcopter' Drone Delivery Service · · Score: 2

    Standing in the sea? People on boats tend, usually, to be a little more responsible. Ad at below 50m, they will either have to be expecting it or be pretty fast at grabbing their guns - I doubt it will be in sight for more than perhaps 10 secs.

  7. Re:How much? on DHL Goes Live With 'Parcelcopter' Drone Delivery Service · · Score: 1

    According to TFA,, it is specifically intended for times when the sea prohibits the normal boats; there is no reason to believe an RC boat would me more seaworthy.

  8. Re:How much? on DHL Goes Live With 'Parcelcopter' Drone Delivery Service · · Score: 1

    According to TFA, it is continually monitored, if not actually flown, so they already have a human in the loop.

  9. Re:Emma Watson is full of it on Emma Watson Leaked Photo Threat Was a Plot To Attack 4chan · · Score: 1

    Only if there were positive discrimination. If there is no discrimination, employers would hire, or not hire, unqualified men in the same proportion as unqualified women,

  10. Re:Emma Watson is full of it on Emma Watson Leaked Photo Threat Was a Plot To Attack 4chan · · Score: 1

    Which would go the other way: of only the most determined stick to the workplace, they should be the best. That pressure would weed out underachievers, leaving a biased population of high achievers to be compared to men.

  11. Re:Emma Watson is full of it on Emma Watson Leaked Photo Threat Was a Plot To Attack 4chan · · Score: 1

    My point is that studies have allowed for this pressure, and have been conducted only amongst women who have not disqualified themselves. If you compare only women without children to men, men still get paid more for the same jobs.

  12. Re:Emma Watson is full of it on Emma Watson Leaked Photo Threat Was a Plot To Attack 4chan · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This has been allowed for in the various studies of the subject. Even among childless women there is a significant discrepancy in salaries for similar jobs. Thoug, from one article in the Economist, the discrepancy almost disappears for childless women not in any relationship.

    This, as has been pointed out, the discrepancy never flips the other way, as would be the case in a truly fair environment, In such an environment, necessarily finite studies should show results randomly either side of equality.

  13. Re:Special pleading on UK Ham Radio Reg Plans To Drop 15 min Callsign Interval and Allow Encryption · · Score: 1

    Which shows that the word is undefined. But I would expect, whatever the actual details, "hardcore" means unsuitable for broadcast TV. I would agree that GoT might be defined as porn, but is being broadcastable automatically makes it not hardcore. My definitions would not include anything transparently consensual as hardcore, but explicit portrayal of sex is porn. But the "hard" in "hardcore" implies some level of violence or coercion.

    Anyway, I introduced the word into the conversation, and what I means was the sort of non-consensual violent porn which I think would be damaging to children. Whatever the words used, there are some extreme images which are capable of damaging children. While I accept that consenting adults should be able to access such stuff via moderately protected channels on the internet or similar, they should not, as the OP suggested, be transmitted free to air on any wavelengths the transmitter chooses, including those already in use for domestic TV. There is a need for a regulator of some sort - though the rulebook for that regulator is not obvious.

  14. Re:Efficient modulation on UK Ham Radio Reg Plans To Drop 15 min Callsign Interval and Allow Encryption · · Score: 1

    Of course. But the OP was suggesting people should be free to do whatever they wanted - which would include using bandwidth wastefully and overwhelmingly (i.e. at high power). Hence the need for some form of regulator to enforce the use of efficient modes, and power levels no more than necessary, not as the OP implied at complete liberty.

    I agree that modern technology makes possible a greater variety and greater number of uses of the available bandwidth. All the more reason for a good regulator to share it efficiently

  15. Re:Special pleading on UK Ham Radio Reg Plans To Drop 15 min Callsign Interval and Allow Encryption · · Score: 1

    No, I would not describe reasonably consensual sex of the sort required to make children as /hardcore/ porn. Hardcore porn probably requires strange ustensils, use of bodily orifices in ways that do not lead to reproduction, often blood, pain or simulated pain, obvious coercion.

    Children, not having yet developed the sexual drive, do not understand the motivation for sex. However, I do not think that seeing normal consensual sex, which I would describe a porn but not hardcore porn, would be seriously damaging to children. But the violence, simulated or real, common in hardcore porn is very frightening for children who do not understand the world but know that they are weak, uninformed and defenceless. I would ezpect it to be seriously traumatising for a majority of pre-pubescent children,

  16. Re:Scrap all the rules on UK Ham Radio Reg Plans To Drop 15 min Callsign Interval and Allow Encryption · · Score: 1

    I never claimed more moral authority. I claimed my right to express my opinion on /. I also suggested that I am probably in the majority. That is not a moral statement, it is a personal view. No, I think the OP is a short sighted selfish git, but I do not see it as a political statement, just an ignorant one. That, also, is a personal opinion not a claim of moral superiority,

  17. Re:Scrap all the rules on UK Ham Radio Reg Plans To Drop 15 min Callsign Interval and Allow Encryption · · Score: 0

    In, I don't need evidence for "Think if the children". As a parent, I think if the children. A purely emotional response, but one that I share with most of the human race. Which is how we got here - species that don't think of their children tend to go extinct, at least at our scale (insects etc do fine on lay 'em and leave 'em). It is one of my fundamental values, along with free speech and not being eaten.

    And I think expecting small children to work out what is happening and take appropriate action when Bugs Bunny is sudsenly replace by sado-masochistic sex is to have totally a unreasonable understanding of what children can and cannot do, and betrays someone who, so far as children are concerned, does not know what they are talking about.

  18. Re:Scrap all the rules on UK Ham Radio Reg Plans To Drop 15 min Callsign Interval and Allow Encryption · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I entirely agree one should supervise children. Children should only be watching safe channels, and adults should supervise them. But your proposal is to invade the safe channel - to replace Cartoon Network with snuff movies. This is not putting porn where the unsupervised can find it, this is forcing porn into areas where reasonable people would not expect to find it.

    It is not "children might", it is "you are forcing on children". The difference between consensual sex and rape, the difference between guns in self defence and firing at random in a shopping mall.

  19. Re:Scrap all the rules on UK Ham Radio Reg Plans To Drop 15 min Callsign Interval and Allow Encryption · · Score: 1

    So you want to subject children to hardcore porn?

    I have no problem with adults viewing what they want, but children are different, and broadcast TV goes to children. I don't think I want to live in your world.

  20. Re:Scrap all the rules on UK Ham Radio Reg Plans To Drop 15 min Callsign Interval and Allow Encryption · · Score: 5, Insightful

    EM spectrum is a scarce resource, shared between all the community. If one person fills up the spectrum with high powered broadcasts, they deny others the use of that spectrum for potentially more valuable resources. You cannot buy or manufacture more electromagnetic spectrum: what we have is all there is, and more people want it than than there is space for. Would you be happy if, for example, I knocked out all WiFi and cell signals for ten miles around my house? Would you be happy if I overloaded the frequencies used by the emergency services? Would you be happy if I filled the TV frequencies with hardcore porn or a terrorist manifesto?

    You have to be a sociopath not to expect there to be some sharing of limited resources.

  21. Re:When is too soon? on Who Is Buried In the Largest Tomb Ever Found In Northern Greece? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The idea of regarding graves as automatically for ever is relatively recent.While the wealthy might have impressive, and supposedly permanent tombstones, in medieval times people would be buried only for a few years, and then the grave dug up, the bones transferred to an ossuary, and the grave reused for another person. hence the gravedigger scene in Hamlet - the digger is recycling Yorick's grave for another occupant. So I see no problem in digging up a grave site sufficiently old that we don't know who is buried in it. The question is, as with all archaeological digs, how much to dig up now and how much to leave for later, better equipped, archaeologists.

  22. Re:There are reasons for that on For $1.5M, DeepFlight Dragon Is an "Aircraft for the Water" · · Score: 3, Informative

    It is designed aircraft-style with positive buoyancy. So you don't flood tanks or anything like that, you "fly" down using control planes to keep you down just as an aircraft uses wings to keep you up. So, just as an aircraft will descend to the ground if the whirly bits stop turning, so will this return to the surface.

  23. Government doesn't understand IT on UK Prisons Ministry Fined For Lack of Encryption At Prisons · · Score: 1

    This is just another example of the way the UK government and Civil Service, as institutions, do not understand IT. Down at the bitface, there may well be some very competent IT people - but their voices do not reach up to the levels that have control. The people who actually make the decisions, both politicians and civil servants, have no gut fel for IT. The assume that if you had over enough money to a plausible contractor, you will get something that works. The contractors, of course, are building something that meets the spec. The idea that "something that works" and "something that meets the spec" are not the same thing completely escapes them. On a large scale, the NHS IT fiasco.

      In this case, they bought drives specified as encrypted, and assumed the job done. Anybody who thought through the problem would have realised that there is a second, administrative phase: who sets they keys, who holds them, what happens if they are ill or leave, should we change the keys if people who know them leave... A side effect of this thinking would have been to decide when to turn on encryption, who to do it etc. But because they had bought a box with "encrypted" on the side, they assumed that the technology fairies would do the rest.

  24. Re:Looks like a rock drawing to me... on Fossils of Cambrian Predator Preserved With Brain Impressions · · Score: 3, Informative

    I think the colour has been put on by the discoverers to highlight the high points and make the fossil easier to interpret. In the real world, the whole fossil is just rock coloured, as seem at the edges of the picture. I.e. you are tautologically right: the colour is mapping height.

  25. Re:Sometimes I wonder... on Tesla Aims For $30,000 Price, 2017 Launch For Model E · · Score: 1

    I would say he is in it as much for the fun as for the money. Of course, he wants to make profits, because that is the proof that your idea is good rather than a billionaire's toy. But I think his main motivation is to be the worlds coolest engineer. So I don't see him taking an exit any time soon. I think he will only exit when there is no more novelty to be wrung out. Which is probably when all the other manufacturers are treating electric cars as mainstream, not niche.