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  1. Re:darn on Graphene Super Paper Is 10x Stronger Than Steel · · Score: 1

    Come down? If it breaks, wouldn't it go up? (at least all the heavy bits)

  2. Re:Superman! Faster, longitudinally, than a speedi on Graphene Super Paper Is 10x Stronger Than Steel · · Score: 2

    Also, why would he ever 'leap' if he can fly?

  3. Mead on Aussie Brewery Creates Space Beer · · Score: 1

    The correct answer to this problem is to drink mead instead of beer. Mead doesn't need to be carbonated at all to provide its vaguely beer-like flavor. Also, while it's brewed like beer (no distillation) it is much higher in alcohol, so you needn't carry as much of it on your launch vehicle.

    Plus I've always wanted to know what Space-Berserkers would be like.

  4. Re:Que the "Can you hear me now" jokes on Verizon Drops 10,000 911 Calls During Blizzard · · Score: 1

    I've seen land lines go out. Tree or car hits pole, lightning strikes lines, or, with new fiber land lines, power goes out and battery backup dies.

    But yeah, I agree they don't go out as often as power goes out.

  5. Re:As the old saying goes... on Top 10 Things You CAN'T Have For Christmas · · Score: 1

    Domes are cool, but they're expensive to decorate. Have you priced conic-sectional couches?

  6. Re:advertising? on Top 10 Things You CAN'T Have For Christmas · · Score: 1

    The whole site was an ad. Don't you feel an overwhelming urge to buy pointless, expensive crap?

  7. Re:advertising? on Top 10 Things You CAN'T Have For Christmas · · Score: 1

    This is even more correct than you may have intended. The way my (and most people's, I would imagine) ad blocker works is by blocking third party content. If the site makes the ad their own content it'll display just fine. I actually DO see a few ads from time to time because of this. So far they have not been the horrifically intrusive ones of the types I used to see.

  8. Re:What about Ricola? on You Have Taste Receptors In Your Lungs · · Score: 1

    Remember also... that General Mills called the FDA's bluff and kept right on marketing their snake oil as a miracle cure despite their health claims being provably bullshit. "Our cereal lowers your cholesterol if you also do 75 other things everyone already knows lower cholesterol"

    So while you certainly have a point about big companies trying to bully small companies out of "their turf", in the example you cite General Mills was big enough to demonstrate that the FDA doesn't have the power to enforce their own demands (at least against BIG corporations).

    So the solution is clear: Get a big food company like General Mills to market the bitter inhaler.

  9. AND LAWNMOWERS TOO! on Mom Arrested After Son Makes Dry Ice "Bombs" · · Score: 1

    No kidding! And if you think a 6 foot cardboard tube with a few ounces of fuel in it is a public safety hazard what about LAWNMOWERS. Some of those things have 52 inches of spinning metal blades and are self-propelled. They're supposed to have "dead-man" switches on them, but those are annoying, easily disabled, and seldom work quickly anyhow. Think of all the horrifying disasters that might happen if people are allowed to continue using lawnmowers the same way they have been doing for decades! I think we can clearly make the case that lawnmowers should only be approved for use by trained professionals in closed, non-residential areas.

  10. Re:LoL at article... on Study Claims Cellphones Implicated In Bee Loss · · Score: 1

    Also, since Varroa mites are suspected conspirators in CCD, keeping a mite count for each box would be good data too. Albeit another one that would be hard to automate. There are several manual techniques that are good for estimating mite counts. My favorite is the "sugar roll". (you roll a handful of bees around in a jar of powdered sugar, then the mites fall out through a mesh screen)

  11. Re:LoL at article... on Study Claims Cellphones Implicated In Bee Loss · · Score: 1

    No, I didn't have any feeders installed, but I would have tried that if I'd suspected what was happening. Incidentally, it looks like a similar situation may occur this summer because the 'early nectar flow' has ended surprisingly early in this part of the world. I'm going to offer some syrup today to see if they're hungry enough to go after it. If so I'll probably have to start feeding them regularly for a while.

    The datalogger idea sounds great. Everything you mention is worth recording. I would think the ingress/egress data in particular would be nice to have. If you can come up with a trick for distinguishing between them you can check to see how often bees leave and never come back.

    Some other data that would be tricky to automate, but is important to know, is how the nectar and pollen in the area are doing. You can see the pollen on the bees when they come back, but nectar would be especially tricky to measure (implicit in weight of the hive perhaps?). If the hive starts losing weight perhaps you can trigger an alarm notification?

  12. Re:LoL at article... on Study Claims Cellphones Implicated In Bee Loss · · Score: 5, Informative

    While similar in appearance, neither of the cases you describe are typical of CCD.

    What likely happened here was war (beekeepers call it "robbing"). The hive you describe from March was the defender in an all out war with another hive, the other hive likely took heavy losses as well. The pile of dead contained bodies from both. That was the battlefield. The attacking hive may have also died completely during the war, which is why there was still honey in the victim hive.

    The winter loss you describe is indicative of the attacking hive in a similar war. An attacker that didn't win. Or perhaps did, but didn't gain enough honey for the queen to survive the winter. For some reason they lost all their honey stores (This can happen if yet another hive robbed them, or if the queen kept laying too many workers for the stores to support for too long after the nectar flow stopped). After the hive eats all its stored honey, it turns on neighboring hives.

    CCD looks similar to these losses, but both honey remains (until it's scavenged by others) AND there are no dead bees to be seen. Such that it looks as if a perfectly functional hive just up and left.

    My two hives went to war last summer, and the carnage was unbelievable. Hundreds of thousands dead in a pile in front of the "victim" hive. I didn't know why they went to war at the time, but now I know that 70,000 bees can consume a massive store of honey pretty quickly if they have no work to do. And I've also learned that if 3 days don't go by without rain, flowers don't produce enough nectar for bees to have any work to do. (It was VERY rainy here last summer)

  13. Re:It doesn't explain losses at remote apiaries... on Study Claims Cellphones Implicated In Bee Loss · · Score: 1

    I sprinkle powdered sugar on my bees. It's remarkably effective at getting rid of Varroa mites (the blood suckers you mention). For some reason powdered sugar makes them fall right off. Also, bees LIKE sugar. So it's win-win.

  14. Re:It was DETENTION on 3rd-Grader Busted For Jolly Rancher Possession · · Score: 1

    Seriously.

    When I was a kid my entire class was given detention because someone farted and wouldn't own up to it. Tyrannical teachers have been handing out detention for all manner of insane reason since the Dawn of School. Usually it doesn't make the news though. I would have loved doing a TV interview for the flatulence incident.

  15. Density is also a factor on Arizona Backs Off Its Speed Camera Program · · Score: 1

    At lower speeds, people drive closer together. This dramatically lowers visibility and actually increases both the likelihood of, and the number of cars that can be involved in any single accident. But yes, the greater number of injuries will mostly be less severe.

  16. Verified by Visa is just horrible on What Can Be Done About Security of Debit Cards? · · Score: 1

    Check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3-D_Secure#Criticism for just some of the problems.

    Visa are doing something about it, so much so that they are enticing people to use it by accepting the liability of fraud themselves - rather than leaving it firmly with the merchant as it is today.

    If only this were true it might be worth it. However, the terms of the agreement presented to me whenever Verified by Visa tries to force me to join require that I, personally absolve both Visa AND the merchant of any responsibility for fraudulent charges and agree to pay any and all such charges while waiving the fraud limits on my current "unverified" card.

  17. Re:Just make courses more fun. on Professor Ditches Grades For XP System · · Score: 1

    If your slicing skill is too low, you often don't get an intact liver from a frog.

  18. Re:"Active Windshield" - what I want on GM Working On Interactive Windshields · · Score: 1

    The risk of failing in "dark mode" on windshield glass is far too great to be worth implementing. So I went with an LCD sunglasses approach which I comment about elsewhere in this thread. If those fail you can pull them off your face. Sure beats having to stick your head out the window to see.

  19. I've built sunglasses that do this on GM Working On Interactive Windshields · · Score: 1

    The test model was just regular sunglasses with a pair of small paper dots stuck in the relative position of the sun.
    The production model will use LCDs to blacken an equivalent region actively determined by a built in low res camera.

    The paper dots work. The LCDs should work even better. Hopefully a way to de-uglify them can be found, but then again people seem to love ugly sunglasses.

  20. Re:Whoa.. stop! on What Belongs In a High School Sci-Fi/Fantasy Lit Class? · · Score: 1

    I was expelled from honors English for disagreeing with the teacher's interpretation of "Ozymandias".

    I still read books (But not sonnets).

  21. Re:Competition on Wireless Network Modded To See Through Walls · · Score: 1

    That's why you didn't get the job.

  22. Re:Isn't the point of advertising on Americans Don't Want Targeted Ads · · Score: 1

    It depends on the product. It doesn't make sense to waste money advertising highly specific networking equipment to someone looking for cookie recipes, unless you already know that person has looked at networking equipment before.

  23. Exactly on Americans Don't Want Targeted Ads · · Score: 1

    What matters to companies is not whether targeted ads are what consumers want but whether they generate sales. No sane person wants any kind of ad, targeted or not.

  24. Lift vs. volume on The Rocky Road To Wind Power · · Score: 2, Informative

    The lifting power of an airship goes up with it's volume (3 dimensional), while its weight only goes up with surface area (2 dimensional), as a consequence the ship doesn't need to get much bigger to substantialy increase its lifting capability.

    So while this thing is just over 6 times longer than the blimp you were in, it's able to lift 160 tons of additional weight.

  25. Re:don't believe it on Artificial Brain '10 Years Away' · · Score: 2, Funny

    It shouldn't be hard. All we need to do is program it to say, "What?", and "Where's the tea?" and no one will know the difference.