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Comments · 47

  1. Re:Math Seems Very Odd on Climate Change Will Cause Beer Shortages and Price Hikes, Study Says (vice.com) · · Score: 1

    That sounds about right. It's true for about every food commodities. Relatively small shortages give rises to large prices increases. A shortage of 10% in produce can easily double the price.

  2. Existed in the 60's on Startup Aims To Commercialize a Brain Implant To Improve Memory (ieee.org) · · Score: 1

    This already existed in the 60's. There was a documentary series on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

  3. Re:This is well known from Formula One on Can Maintenance Make Data Centers Less Reliable? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Those cars, to be competitive, were engineered to fall apart on the other side of the finish line. Without maintenance they would have failed. They are now engineered to last a few races instead of just one. Odds are they are slightly slower in one form or the other but it being a level playing field, it doesn't matter.

  4. A 20 year old fight. on Making War On Light Pollution · · Score: 3, Informative

    Tucson AZ has been fighting light pollution for more than 20 years. This isn't exactly a new fight. That said, it's gaining momentum. In part thanks to the IDA. That having been said, this won't be won until the general population sees light pollution as a bad thing. We aren't there yet but with more general public articles there are chances that light pollution becomes as well known as air and water pollution.

    For what it's worth, some estimate that there are about 700,000 amateur astronomers in the US. It's not a huge number. But it's much bigger than the just a few geeks that some would make you think.

    It's a good fight and it starts at home, you can do your part by turning off the exterior lights of your house when you don't need them. With 2009 the international year of astronomy, if you help now, maybe we all will get a better view of the night sky to celebrate the 400 years of telescope observing of the night sky.

  5. Re:Dell on Notebook PC Manufacturer Who Will Sell Parts? · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    And getting the french tech support in Canada does mean that you will speak to someone who is pretty much local, not some guy lost in india. For that alone, the french tech support is more than worth it.

  6. It's the genetics not the color or the chemicals on Apple Gene for Red Color Found · · Score: 3, Informative
    Apples taste is chiefly controled by their genetics. Essentially, watery and tart apples tend to be early summer apples and crips and sweet ones are late fall varieties. There is, essentially an direct correlation/tradeoff with maturing time and taste. Everything else that the farmer does only affect this a tiny bit. Otherwise they could turn their Melbas into Cortland just by spraying them which simply doesn't happen.

    The weather that year also plays an important role, mainly rainfall and the amount of sun and heat. That's easily demonstrated as the main factor by the simple fact that all the farmers in a region get the same kind of results for a given year (small red apples, big lightly colored ones, fragile things that fall on the ground).

    In fact chemicals are very expensive to an apple grower so you can bet that they try to use them as little as they can.

    That's not to say that they don't spray, they do spray a lot but it's in their best interest to spray as little as possible and many are trying to limit their use of chemicals.

    If there is anything wrong, it's the association in consumer's mind of the red color and ripeness. You can have perfectly sweet and ripe fruits but that aren't all that red. This has lead to variety (like the delicious) that is very red but has no taste. To each his own.

  7. Re:How to protect yourself.... on How to Protect Yourself with Startups? · · Score: 2

    I disagree he went in with absolutely no risk. He had riskier long term job prospects which impacts his overall earning potential because of the real risk to fall on his ass for X months earning nothing. That's opportunity cost. As opposed to a gouverment union job with life employment guarantees.

  8. Re:why not from inside-out? on Projecting Data on a Sphere · · Score: 1

    You mean something like this. I've never seen it in person but friends who have say it's cool stuff. If you are a true geek, that's something you should have in your livingroom to entertain the kids!. Don't know the price though but I haven't seen them at the dollar store yet!

  9. How it's Made on Glimpses of How it's made, 6 Minute Manufacturing · · Score: 1

    Discovery Canada (and Canal Z in french) show How it's Made.

    There is nothing to download, you can't purchase them on DVD either but maybe they are available somewhere on bittorent.

    At 3 subjects per 24 minutes you get an entire 8 minutes (not 6!) dedicated to a specific topic.

    Too bad Discovery US doesn't pick it up. Their loss!

  10. DVDs more widely available? on Ask The Mythbusters · · Score: 1

    Are there plans to make the Mythbusters DVD more widely available like in regular DVD stores? So far I can only find them at the Discovery Store. If Monster Garage can do it, you should be able to do it too and they might even be more popular!

    I have some of season 1 and it's too bad that they aren't all 16:9 aspect ratios. The 16:9s look awsome. Much better than the image I get though cable, almost HD quality. Any plans on broadcasing on the Discovery HD?

  11. Any chances of seeing Geo again? on Ask The Mythbusters · · Score: 1

    Any chances of seeing Geo again as a guest mythbuster? He was great as a JunkYard Wars specialist and did great work at mythbusting. Would love to see him again

  12. Always shippable is not new on Microsoft Lauds Scrum · · Score: 0

    Having a product that is always shippable is NOT new. In fact I've been doing this since the early 90's and I am sure that it's how it was done decades before that.

    I mean this is the core concept of source control. What you have under source control is shippable, and ideally QAed enough to know for sure that it hasn't been badly broken. If you can't acheive that, you have absolutely no control over your sources and I seriously doubt you have any idea about what your schedule will be 4 weeks down the road.

  13. Video: successfully burned something with mirrors on Archimedes Death Ray in San Francisco · · Score: 1

    The MIT kids did manage to burn some wood boat replica. Here's the video of successfully burning a model. It's an interview with the faculty member that setted up the experiment. It shows that it actually was possible, if not practical, to burn something using mirrors.

    This was on the October 20th episode of Daily Planet a daily science news show on the Canadian Discovery channel. A show worth watching if I can say so myself. You can basically see it all a few days later on the web.

  14. MOST: Canada's First micro satellite on Mini Satellites Could Revolutionize Space Industry · · Score: 2, Interesting

    MOST (aka the Humble Space Telescope) is the space telescope Canada can affoard: a small one. MOST was Canada's first space telescope and the first micro satellite I've heard of.

    We had a full size replica at a star party this summer and this thing is small considering what it does. Really impressive. Small means also very affoardable.

    I hear that there will be a competition for time on the MOST so maybe someone will be the first amateur to make use of a micro-satellite.

  15. Severance as long as non-disclosure? on Legal Arguments Can Hurt Tech Job Mobility · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Maybe it should be law that if a company wants to bind you to a long non-disclosure, it should also be forced to agree to a golden-parachute clause as long as the non-disclosure?

    Say you work in search engine technology for Microsoft, how are you going to earn a nice living elsewhere? Afterall your skill is searches and that's what people are willing to pay for. Well if your employer wants to prevent you from earning a decent living, it should pay for it!

    I am sure that there is a flaw in that argument, and I understand Microsoft's position in the matter but in these circumstances doesn't it make the employee a virtual slave of the employer if he can't use his skills elswhere?

  16. It's the FDA that adds the costs on Vietnam Medic Makes Homemade Endoscope · · Score: 1

    Blame the extra cost on the FDA. Manufacturing medical equipement isn't a matter of putting white box parts in the shipping carton.

    Both the design process and the manufacturing process must be highly documented and tracable for the equipement to be allowed for sales in the US. All this red tape takes time and that costs money.

    We could be complaining about this, but when you consider that poorly performing medical equipement can harm or even kill the patient (and has in the past as in the well documented case of the XRay machine), it's a good thing that some process is in the loop to prevent dangerous, or even just plain risky equipement on the market.

  17. Re:Again nothing new on Japanese Develop 'Female' Android · · Score: 1

    Actually you meant these dolls

  18. Alacritec is making accelerated adapters on Is There a Place for a $500 Ethernet Card? · · Score: 1

    Alacritec is/was making such accelerated adapters so the answer to this is yes, there is a market for them since there already is a competitor.

    However their website seems to have gone dead so maybe the ultimate answer is: No there is no place in the IT market for accelerated network cards.

  19. Sorry, Canada will take that DCMA really soon now, on U.S. Rejects Canadian Rejection of DMCA · · Score: 1

    The current Liberal cum communist gouverment is about to be toppled over the party financing scandal

    They will be replaced by a far more conservative goverment that will quite likely bow to the US interest. So the US need not worry, we will take the DCMA aferall :-)

    If that's a good thing, that's another matter.

  20. A black out period on Who Will Pay For Open Access? · · Score: 1
    With the advent of ADS there has been strong incentives to go electronic in astronomy.

    From what I can understand, the models that has worked best is to have a blackout period. Turns out that pros are really interested in papers about a year old. Older stuff gets dated. Therefore to keep up your research library still needs to subscribe but it's free for everyone if it's old enough.

    This way the journals still make their money on subcriptions and the information is freely available at some point. It's not clear that this is the final model that has been settled on but it's on out there for the moment.

  21. Means no more satellite forecast on U.S. Withholding Satellite Data · · Score: 2, Informative

    No orbital information means that you can't make and especially share satellite observation forecasts with your friends

    Site like Heavens Above will need alternate source to make their forecast. This is a shame, accurate forecasts were a bonus to amateur observers and essential to observe some satellites.

    Those who haven't observed a -8 Iridium are missing something. They are spectacular

  22. Motorola V710 phone hack here on RCA / Thomson Modem Hack Discovered · · Score: 4, Informative

    There are instructions on this web site on how to modify your v710 phone to turn on all the bluetooth functionality. You need to register though. Don't know if they work, I haven't tried them so you are on your own.

    If they work, let us know.

  23. Perfect for agregate forecast on Weather Data Available in XML · · Score: 1

    A friend of mine in the weather forcast business once told be that while their forecast were better than the NOAA forecasts (well you would expect that environment Canada can predict canadian weather than NOAA would you) the best forecast possible is the agregation (probably averaging) of forecasts from many different source.

    Perhaps this XML format, or one like it, will make it easier for anyone to build their one agregate forecast from many public sorces.

    That might actually improve the forecast.

  24. No more Canadian counterfit drugs on RFID Labels On Prescription Drug Bottles · · Score: 3, Informative

    RFID tags on the boxes means that it will now be easy for customs to deny entry of cheaper canadian pharmacuticals into the US since their history can't be guaranteed authentic. Remember that the Bush battlecry has been safety and with this you will be able to track drugs Canadian hands which are unsafe by definition since they aren't subjet to US laws.

    Looks like the plan is unfolding as it should

    Or is it just tin foil hat time?

  25. Montreal Botanical garden carving contest on Halloween Pumpkin Carving · · Score: 1

    The Montreal Botanical garden has an annual pumpking carving contest. You can see the results here. If you are in the area, you might prefer seeing them live.