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User: demonlapin

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  1. Re:What? on 3 Congressmen Trying To Tie Up SpaceX · · Score: 1

    No one argues that the government does not create specific jobs. The argument is that because the government must get its money from either borrowing or taxes, it is either bidding up the price of money or taking it directly from taxpayers' wallets. In either case, it makes it more difficult for private citizens to do what they want with their money by either increasing the cost of borrowing or directly taking it from them.

    In this case, the fact that Congressmen are willing to fight very hard to keep a steady stream of federal money flowing into their districts does not mean that spending that money is a wise idea, nor that the federal government is spending that money in a more job-creating way than the taxpayers from whom it was taken would have.

  2. Re:And yet here I am on For Fast Internet in the US, Virginia Tops the Charts · · Score: 1

    ... not because they're black. Because they're idiots.

    Kinda like the Ashe statue on Monument. The neo-Confederates didn't want to put it up because he was black. The professional complaint class wanted it there because he was. Nobody ever just came out and said to throw it away because it's a fugly piece of shit.

  3. Re:And yet here I am on For Fast Internet in the US, Virginia Tops the Charts · · Score: 1

    Installation costs (tearing up the street rather than stringing on poles), plus - if the Richmond city council is anything like it was twenty years ago - nobody is going to make the company provide service at bargain-basement rates to all low-income areas before they're allowed to run the first line in the West End?

  4. Re:Actual entropy explanation on New Process Promises Ammonia From Air, Water, and Sunlight · · Score: 1

    On the advice of an ex-girlfriend, my lab partners and I got together and had Irish coffee the morning of our final PChem class, the one where the professor did a sort of view-from-orbit of everything we had learned during the second semester (quantum mechanics). She was right, it did make more sense if you were slightly drunk.

  5. Re:This could be great on New Process Promises Ammonia From Air, Water, and Sunlight · · Score: 1

    If you're crazy enough to play around with peroxides, you might want to read Ignition! An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants .

  6. Re:+1 for this Post on Ask Slashdot: Life Beyond the WRT54G Series? · · Score: 2

    Factory firmware is a lot more capable now than it was ten years ago, since the developers have been cribbing from DD-WRT, OpenWRT, and Tomato over the intervening time. Ten years ago, the stock firmware was much less capable than the hardware it was controlling; today, that's not nearly so much the case. However, if you want to, there's Shibby's tomato, or Merlin, or even DD-WRT itself. All support popular modern routers.

  7. Re:Oblig. StarWars on Harvesting Energy From Humidity · · Score: 4, Funny

    What you're saying is that Owen and Beru were running a massive grow op?

  8. Re:It is safer to fly on Train Derailment Dumps Two 737 Fuselages Into Clark Fork River · · Score: 1

    A 737 costs around $90 million. And a 767 is close to two hundred million.

  9. Re:It is safer to fly on Train Derailment Dumps Two 737 Fuselages Into Clark Fork River · · Score: 1

    You're talking about a final product selling for hundreds of millions of dollars. Transportation is a rounding error.

  10. Re:I smell a rat. on Use of Encryption Foiled the Cops a Record 9 Times In 2013 · · Score: 1

    He was asking about the US. So I told him what happens in the US.

  11. Re:I smell a rat. on Use of Encryption Foiled the Cops a Record 9 Times In 2013 · · Score: 1

    They can't punish you for not revealing your keys. They can, however, throw the book at you on any charge they can prove.

  12. Re:Uh, sure.. on Ask Slashdot: Correlation Between Text Editor and Programming Language? · · Score: 1

    That 16 MB cost over $700 in 1993. Most people couldn't afford 16 MB.

  13. Re:waste of time on New Chemical Process Could Make Ammonia a Practical Car Fuel · · Score: 1

    Sorry, I should have clarified that I was comparing a roundabout to a signal, not a stop sign on the side road only.

  14. Re:waste of time on New Chemical Process Could Make Ammonia a Practical Car Fuel · · Score: 1

    The one part of his comment that has merit is that if you have a major arterial road intersecting with a side street at a roundabout, the arterial will completely dominate the traffic if vehicles within the roundabout have the right of way.

  15. Re:Massive conspiracy on IRS Lost Emails of 6 More Employees Under Investigation · · Score: 1

    The difference is that the existence of birthers is actually a pretty good boost to the Democratic base. "Look at these crazy Republicans, they're so nuts they think he's not an American citizen! Donate to help us fight the hordes of ignorance!".

    This comes off a lot more like "People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook." And then cue the missing evidence. Nixon was sunk by less than twenty minutes of audio. Two years of email?

    After all, in Washington they're not bothered if you're corrupt. They're bothered if you're corrupt and can't hide it.

  16. Re:Warning: Snarky comment on Artificial Pancreas Shows Promise In Diabetes Test · · Score: 1

    Roux-en-Y is a weight loss surgery, so there's no reason to believe it would do anything for a type I. Just out of curiosity - obviously, your experience is your experience - how low was "minimal" carbs? I generally aim for under 20 g/day.

  17. Re: $300 = free? on Google Fiber Is Officially Making Its Way To Portland · · Score: 1

    VPN is your friend.

  18. Re:Government shakedown on Google Fiber Is Officially Making Its Way To Portland · · Score: 1

    It's the "some" that's troublesome. Look, you want to require free service for all nonprofits? Fine. No problem. Some? Now you've got everything you need for corruption.

  19. Re:Warning: Snarky comment on Artificial Pancreas Shows Promise In Diabetes Test · · Score: 1

    Type 2 is actually fairly easy to cure if you want to get rid of it.

    Stop eating digestible carbohydrates.

  20. Re:And hippies will protest it on "Super Bananas" May Save Millions of Lives In Africa · · Score: 1

    If you wanted to make people fat, the Food Pyramid is a damned fine way to do it.

  21. Re:Competition Sucks on Uber Demonstrations Snarl Traffic In London, Madrid, Berlin · · Score: 1

    The guy who flies a private plane has already undergone an FAA medical exam. In my state, at least, the medical exam and a slightly more strenuous road test is the only real difference between a private driver's license and a taxi/limo driver's license (vehicles holding 16 or more people are different, which is why they make 15-passenger vans). That's not a big barrier to entry.

  22. Re:Competition Sucks on Uber Demonstrations Snarl Traffic In London, Madrid, Berlin · · Score: 1

    I get (and mostly agree with) your point, but a license to drive a cab/limo is barely more expensive than a regular one - in my state, $5 more every four years. It does require a medical exam and a scheduled road test, but those are one-time expenses. It's not like a year-long training program.

  23. Re:Competition Sucks on Uber Demonstrations Snarl Traffic In London, Madrid, Berlin · · Score: 1

    That's more like UberBlack and UberSUV. We're talking UberX, where you're picked up by a normal person using their personal vehicle.

  24. Re:Competition Sucks on Uber Demonstrations Snarl Traffic In London, Madrid, Berlin · · Score: 1

    You certainly do where I live in the US. A standard individual car insurance policy does not cover commercial activity - for example, delivering pizzas.

  25. Re:Competition Sucks on Uber Demonstrations Snarl Traffic In London, Madrid, Berlin · · Score: 2

    Because we routinely hold people who engage in some activity for profit to a higher standard than those that do it for fun. It's the difference between flying yourself and running an air taxi, between having friends over for dinner and opening a restaurant.