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User: gumbi+west

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Comments · 2,026

  1. Re:Nice, on Laser Cannons Coming to an F-16 Near You · · Score: 1

    LN is quite cheap ($1/L ish). Plus, somebody else paid for the LN.

  2. Re:Power Source? on Laser Cannons Coming to an F-16 Near You · · Score: 1

    Well, lets see. The Prius has a 44 HP electric engine. That is about 32 kW... and it can run for quite a while with no gas (though they strongly discourage it). I mean if it already has room for a refrigerator sized laser, why not a CPU sized battery?

  3. Re:Opportunity on Textbooks With EULAs · · Score: 1

    right, which explains why http://www.siam.org/books/textbooks/">SIAM books, which are very cheap, are so popular with writers... except that they aren't. Normally, the person is flattered to have their first book purchased, then they are sucked in, and they have sold theiry copyright to a great book they wrote.

  4. Re:I think they just don't care. on Windows Vista May Degrade OpenGL · · Score: 1

    You must be new here. FYI, linux is an operating system. It probides and abstraction... well, as you said.

  5. Re:-1 Troll on Who Cares if Analog TV Goes Dark? · · Score: 1

    Uh, what OTA station has a news show anymore? I'm quite sure Daily Show is cable only.

  6. Re:-1 Troll on Who Cares if Analog TV Goes Dark? · · Score: 1
    1. In order to get welfare now you have to work 40 hours/week.
    2. Not many people are on welfare anymore, nobody wants to work for 40 hours/week for welfare.
  7. notes form a bottom feeder on Online Shoppers Naive About Online Prices · · Score: 1
    I always use those sites to find the best price. Here is how you do it.
    1. go to price grabber site
    2. find cheapest and those close by
    3. go to that company's site
    4. buy product for about 10% less
    Sometimes the last one doesn't happen, but it often does.
  8. Re:I really fail to see what the problem is on Online Shoppers Naive About Online Prices · · Score: 1
    uh, "Amazon promptly refunded my money no questions asked even though they were just the middleman and were taking a complete loss by it."

    If you read the fine print, they promise to do that. But, keep in mind, they will only do this five times durring your life, then you are out in the cold again.

  9. Re:Bottom feeders on Online Shoppers Naive About Online Prices · · Score: 1
    I always think it's funny. Everyone always complains when capitalism in action means that they have to be on their toes. Marketing experts, of all people, know how capitalism is supposed to work and know that these people essentially have them licked.

    Think of it as a sign of a job well done when you competition calls you a name.

  10. Re:I see a flaw. on Water Now More Awesome Than Previously Thought · · Score: 1

    Right, but regarding the maximum height of the intermediate point, you specifically said it doesn't matter, it says it does.

  11. Re:Linux? on Intel Head Recommends Apple · · Score: 1

    Impressive. How about the control panels? How do you turn on sshd? How do you check for security patches on the OS?

  12. Re:ichat a/v on Creating a High-Tech Meeting/Conference Room? · · Score: 1

    Do you know how to use this if your firewall filters out trafic it thinks is on the wrong port. i.e. the firewall checks the protocol and if it doesn't match it's lookup (from before VOIP and video conferencing/AIM)?

  13. Re:Linux? on Intel Head Recommends Apple · · Score: 1
    I logged in as root so I could use the GUI as root while doing an install and setup. I didn't know how to do that (still don't) nor did I know about su (it's not the sort of thing you have to know when you are learning old school *NIX b/c you don't have su access, it's just when you are thrown out on your own that you get to learn about stuff like that).

    Anyway, the Mac wraps it all up tightly so that I don't have to change my access level to do something, I do something and then it asks me for my password to change my access level it's like it says, "fine, but this is a big deal so you are going to need to verify that you really want to do this first." that is a heck of a lot nicer than the old school *NIX methods.

  14. Re:I see a flaw. on Water Now More Awesome Than Previously Thought · · Score: 1

    So you are disagreeing with the article I linked to? Can you tell me the part of their equations you disagree with?

  15. Re:Linux? on Intel Head Recommends Apple · · Score: 1, Insightful
    Okay, I had about a year of experience with linux and one day I'm installing a program as root and accidentaly drag an essential root folder like 'bin' to another folder with a stray click while mousing across the screen. I didn't know what every folder was, so I didn't know how to fix it. I just had to reinstall. So I changed OSes.

    Contrast that with my Mac. When I need root access, it prompts me for my password. I'm never loged in as root, but if I try something in the GUI that requires root access, it asks me for a passworld. (it also hides /bin from me unless I reveal it).

  16. Re:Sweating pipes are just rain in another form on Water Now More Awesome Than Previously Thought · · Score: 1

    You could also evaporate water (this amounts to solar power) to make up for the loss. This costs in area though.

  17. Re:For all you Engineering Types..[clickable link] on Water Now More Awesome Than Previously Thought · · Score: 1

    Right, but is ocean water warm enough to boil water? would you call it "hot"? Even the surface water is often... cool.

  18. Re:I see a flaw. on Water Now More Awesome Than Previously Thought · · Score: 2, Informative

    It is a siphon. It doesn't matter how far down the pipes go, all that matters is how far above the top of the ocean the water goes. All you have to do is build a ditch (below sea level) and then it (the atmosphere) will pump to there. Then you just have to move it from there. Well, there is some friction.

  19. Re:This is fantastic! on Water Now More Awesome Than Previously Thought · · Score: 1

    With just over a billion cubic kilometers, that is about 1/10 of a cubic kilometer per person. If you want to use that over 10 years (give it some time to cool) you get about 27 cubic meters per day (that is for all your food, cooling, desalination, and power). Not sure that will cut it for all our power. But maybe you would care to 'do some math' that disagrees with mine?

  20. Re:This is fantastic! on Water Now More Awesome Than Previously Thought · · Score: 1
    When you are right next to the ocean the humidity is dictated by the water evaporating off the ocean, not some little building that takes a few hundred cubic meters of water out of the air every hour...

    Also, the 1.4 billion cubic kilometers of water will take a while to pump up and back out. That said, if each person requires a cubic kilometer every year... well we may have a problem.

  21. Re:Choices... on Chase Deploying "Touchless" Credit Cards · · Score: 1

    "carefully investigated", they make absolutely sure that the person with the reader has at least several thousand to pay for a reader. The investigation works 100% of the time, I have to admit it.

  22. Re:Demo it? on OpenOffice vs. MS Office for Education? · · Score: 1

    It's even cooler when figure don't jump into the margins every time you add a paragraph above them. Altnernately, I loved it when my word 2000 document opened in word 2003 with a large green triangle over one of the figures and a large red triangle over another. It printed that way too. It was GREAT!

  23. Re:Takes a lot more energy than it produces on Room-Temperature, Small-Scale Fusion at UCLA · · Score: 1

    Uh, first of all, a radioactive neutron source can be the size of the head of a needle and make more neutrons than you would want (Cf source that is). If ou want to be able to turn it off, there are already portable accelerators that make neutrons via acceleration. It isn't that hard.

  24. Re:Argh! on Room-Temperature, Small-Scale Fusion at UCLA · · Score: 1

    Just a piece of editor sociology... Taco (okay, a little off topic) gets mad when other editors correct his errors, he likes it that way. So this enables others. They think it is part of the site.

  25. Re:Potential Uses on Room-Temperature, Small-Scale Fusion at UCLA · · Score: 1

    Others could make the process more efficient, or happen on a scale that does better... keep in mind that all fusion generators opperating now have never broken q=1 or even close to it for more than a microsecond. And even that is a sort of budgeting slight of hand (i.e. it you hit it hard and then turn off the power and then get the energy out a few microseconds later and say q was superhigh for the later microseconds.)