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  1. Re:Nice idea, but... on Engineered Bacteria Glows To Reveal Land Mines · · Score: 1

    If everything's faintly glowing green in an area, then there's a spot where it's bright green, you'd take special care around that spot.

    Still no go. That bright spot is either uneven application of the mystery bacteria, or its a piece of shrapnel from the artillery shell/grenade/whatever.

  2. Re:too erasy in the daytimes.. on Engineered Bacteria Glows To Reveal Land Mines · · Score: 5, Interesting

    They don't turn green, they glow green.

    Kind of like the goo inside a green chemlight...

    In the old days, if you wanted to do the area denial thing, you had to buy these expensive, heavy, hard to install landmines.

    Then it was discovered you could scare the other guys away merely by using signs that say "landmine". In fact there is a UN standard / requirement for posting landmine signs around a minefield, scary white triangles, if I recall...

    Now, technology marches on, and all you need is a big pack of green chemlights from walmart... crack them, drip the liquid in a field, and instant, cheap, area denial... Its also economic warfare, since mine field clearing is very expensive compared to buying a bunch of chemlights. Its also very demoralizing to the troops to know that glowing stuff might or might not be fake.

  3. Re:This could make things worse... on Engineered Bacteria Glows To Reveal Land Mines · · Score: 1

    Now they'll either lace the entire field with C4, or they'll start using remote detonators when people move in to disarm.

    The real problem is there is no magic biological way to detect explosives, like the force, or some DnD "reveal invisible" spell.

    So, what'll happen, is anywhere the mines have degraded and cracked open and are thus probably inert, will glow green, so people will avoid those "dangerous" areas, and anywhere the mines remain hermetically sealed, will not glow, thus it looks "safe" but is actually very dangerous.

    Even worse, its not failsafe. If a spot is not glowing, is that because coverage was not 100% because a vehicle was parked there, or maybe the heat from a fire killed the bacteria, or ...

    Safest thing to do, is just ignore the results. No one benefits but the contractors, which was probably the whole point to begin with.

  4. Re:oh, please! on NASA Attempts To Assuage 2012 Fears · · Score: 1

    One time I convinced a tech (with a college degree in electronics) that LED's also doubled as cameras.

    The best BS is the BS with a bit of truth... Depending on the color (which depends on the materials) they make a cruddy, high capacitance very low efficiency photodiode (a light sensor, essentially a 1-D camera). Interestingly, for some weird quantum reason, the color they emit is not necessarily the color they are most sensitive at (and I'm not just talking about the phosphor based emitters).

    If you are convincing enough (or evil), (not sure if I am convincing or evil) you can make many people who are normally rational, believe some of the most outrageous claims.

    You know, in the good old days, you would have founded a major world religion, but here you are F-ing around with LEDs... apply yourself!

  5. Re:How this scam works on NASA Attempts To Assuage 2012 Fears · · Score: 1

    But the consensus is that we've hit bottom with residential real estate.

    Because net job losses have stopped and employment is increasing?

    Or because generational low interest rates have already reverted to normal, and might drop in the future (increasing rates make prices crater, so having low rates now means prices must crater later)?

    Because the supply of empty condos and empty houses has disappeared?

    Because there is a shortage of development ready land?

    Because monthly rents are now over 100x the asking sales price? Until then its economically unwise to buy.

    Because real after-inflation incomes have reversed their multi-decade slide and are now increasing?

    It's a good judgment test. All the economic issues are aligned and show they've got a long way to fall... And on the other side, a bunch of journalist and marketing fools say its all good. So using good judgment, the answer is...

  6. Re:Do not go out for this show in North America on Leonid Meteor Shower Peaks Early Tuesday Morning · · Score: 1

    but I fear all the press on this one will disappoint people for being misled.

    Most people are used to the press misleading them, it'll be OK.

  7. Re:You must be new here. on Leonid Meteor Shower Peaks Early Tuesday Morning · · Score: 1

    Just don't forget to tell the girl to tilt up the camera when it gets interesting!

    And wear a skirt?

  8. Projector? on Are There Affordable Low-DPI Large-Screen LCD Monitors? · · Score: 1

    I'm the first post to suggest a projector?

    Its really not that expensive, compared to salaries, ADA lawsuits, etc.

    Also, you may need one for yourself, for "evaluation" purposes (not lan parties and lunchtime movie theatre, no not that)

  9. Re:Can someone explain ZSK and KSK? on DNSSEC Implementation Held Up By Tech Delays · · Score: 2, Informative

    While you're explaining, can you tell us why DNSSEC makes the size of the DNS zones "unwieldy"?

    Probably the agony of setting up precisely one zillion NSEC records makes the whole thing "unwieldy".

    To properly return a cryptographically secure answer that there is no domain named silentdot.org, you need a line like:

    shitdot.org NSEC slashdot.org

    which is a pointer saying there is nothing between shitdot.org and slashdot.org.

    http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac123/ac147/archived_issues/ipj_7-2/dnssec.html

    Of course the only thing that is constant about DNSSEC, other than megatons of FUD, is constant change in how it works. Maybe NSEC is now as obsolete as MD and A6 records now are, I really don't know.

  10. Re:Partly a software problem. Erlang? on 100 Million-Core Supercomputers Coming By 2018 · · Score: 1

    I'm not expecting to see my example process (100 page PDF reports) scale up smoothly to 250,000 cores, but I sure would like to see it scale up smoothly to a dozen or two!

    Well, that's not very hard. Split the job like the ray tracers do, into 250K little parts of the 100 page report, have each core individually render its little bit, then mush all the rendered outputs together.

    You could do this now, more or less off the shelf, by separating your raw data into 100 raw input files, one for each page, then have 100 machines or cores or whatever render each separate page, then a big run of pdfjoin to turn 100 single page pdfs into one 100 page pdf.

  11. Re:Effect on games, etc.? on Copyright Time Bomb Set To Go Off · · Score: 1

    Will the record company/publisher/whatever still be getting paid even though they no longer hold the rights to the work, or will whoever it is licensed to be required to pay the original author/artist?

    Oh that's easy, all the money will go to the lawyers, and/or bribes to congress to get the law changed.

  12. Re:Effect on games, etc.? on Copyright Time Bomb Set To Go Off · · Score: 1

    they can't afford for the Eagles to show the world that they can do better than the label and -- *gasp* -- come up with something that resonates with the customers or other artists.

    Well, aside from all the fluffy "show the world their artistic resonators" or whatever, what they can't afford is to show future musicians that the Eagles are better off without the label, and by implication they would be better off without the label.

    We may be facing a future where the major record companies only produce garbage from talentless musicians (err, this already happened years ago?).

    Rather than the label being the gatekeeper of good music, they will become/have become the strong indicator that the music is bad? Kind of like anything you see on free network TV?

  13. Re:Effect on games, etc.? on Copyright Time Bomb Set To Go Off · · Score: 1

    How with this affect any games, movies, etc. that currently have authorization to use the music? Could this be used to require guitar hero, etc. to stop distribution of current versions because the original creator of the music doesn't want it in the game?

    For educational purposes, I found two apparently conflicting short sentences, a very tiny part of a very long public web page written by an attorney on this topic, and my criticism is I do not see how it explained this conflict. My guess, is this is one of those situations where it appears pretty vague in American English, but using precise legal definitions its crystal clear?

    "Despite termination, the right to continue to exploit previously-prepared derivative works (e.g., a motion picture based on a book) may be immune, or safe from termination."

    "That is, after transfer of rights in the underlying work is terminated, the owner of the derivative work (e.g., motion picture version of a novel) has no right to continue exploiting the work in any manner."

    http://www.copylaw.com/new_articles/copyterm.html

  14. Re:general relativity at work on "Pathfinders" Take Shape For Galileo, Europe's GPS · · Score: 2

    I like the subtle derogatory typecasting for "those people on the internet" (who disagree with widely held science).

    The funny part is the kooks are the ones who "believe" in general relativity... The history of physics is finding new explanations for weird exceptions.

    So, 99.999% of the time, especially for pretty much everything earthbound, Newtonian mechanics works great.

    Unless you happen to be moving at a fraction of the speed of light, in which case special relativity works great. Well, it works great 99.999% of the time.

    SR is great unless you're in a gravity well... Then you need general relativity. Now, the kooks think GR will work 100% of the time, the somewhat more realistic folks think it'll only work 99.999% of the time, we just haven't found that 0.001% yet.

    Sooner or later someone will find that condition where GR doesn't work, and get their Nobel prize, after which history will repeat and the kooks will say the new theory is the final 100% answer, not merely 99.999% ...

  15. Re:general relativity at work on "Pathfinders" Take Shape For Galileo, Europe's GPS · · Score: 1, Interesting

    What argument are you trying to make? Are you saying that it would have been easier to build the system without understanding why it behaved the way it did?

    It would have been easier to build the satellites and ground stations, if GR/SR didn't exist, but individual receiver units don't much care one way or the other. Original post sounded to me like a positioning system can't be made unless it somehow uses GR/SR... Obvious counterexample would be the old LORAN system, which doesn't need GR/SR corrections because the transmitters are stationary instead of orbiting. GR/SR is an annoyance to work around, not an inherent part of location determination.

    GPS doesn't calculate position by using GR/SR, it uses time-of-flight to numerous known locations at a known time (downloaded ephemeris, and all the clocks theoretically have the same time). I'm 80 ms from sat 22, 10 ms from sat 15, and 75 ms from sat 19 that means I'm right here (vast simplification) So, GR/SR is not "how it works" or even "needed to work". The onboard clocks don't tick the same rate as ground clocks, so without correcting the satellite clocks, those times of flight would be wrong.

    I'm struggling to think of a positioning system design that would require GR/SR to work rather than time of flight... I think it would have to be an active transponder system, or some kind of weird gravity wave detector? It would be interesting.

  16. Time service on "Pathfinders" Take Shape For Galileo, Europe's GPS · · Score: -1, Redundant

    I'd like to buy a NTP appliance that averages together GPS/Navistar, Galileo, and GLONASS for reliability/precision reasons.

    I know I can buy GPS based NTP appliances off the shelf for years (decades?), but I'm interested in combined devices.

    Obviously Galileo based systems are only vaporware at this time, but someone must have announced something by now?

  17. Re:general relativity at work on "Pathfinders" Take Shape For Galileo, Europe's GPS · · Score: 1, Informative

    What I think is really cool about GPS is that without Einstein's theory of general relativity, it wouldn't work.

    Oh, it would work just fine alright, in fact it would be a heck of a lot simpler to build and maintain, and probably somewhat cheaper, too. The folks that built the satellites and the base station that sets each satellite clock would have much less headache.

    See:

    http://www.metaresearch.org/cosmology/gps-relativity.asp

    which claims to be a rehash of a chapter of the book "Open Questions in Relativistic Physics"

    "Rather than have clocks with such large rate differences, the satellite clocks are reset in rate before launch to compensate for these predicted effects .... Therefore, we observe the clocks running at their offset rates before launch. Then we observe the clocks running after launch and compare their rates with the predictions of relativity, both GR and SR combined. If the predictions are right, we should see the clocks run again at nearly the same rates as ground clocks, despite using an offset definition for the length of one second."

  18. Business plan is doomed in the long run on New Dating Sites Match People Through DNA Tests · · Score: 1

    The idea is that people tend to be attracted to those who have immune system genes that are dissimilar from their own.

    In the long run, if the kids HLA genes were an average of the parents, wouldn't this doom their business plan, along with the human race, once everyone had the same HLA genes?

  19. Re:Will health insurance use this to get pre-exist on New Dating Sites Match People Through DNA Tests · · Score: 1

    Will health insurance use this to get a nice pre-existing conditions list and black list you?

    They might deny coverage based on your likely future spouses medical conditions, even if you're currently single, on the theory that you and your theoretical ideal spouse might be a perfect match but unfortunately the theoretical ideal offspring might be x% more susceptible to some expensive illness, thus denied coverage.

    Or, they might just do business as usual, and collect high premiums because of the "high risk", and abandon you when a claim is made.

  20. Re:Matching DNA? Oh, sweet... on New Dating Sites Match People Through DNA Tests · · Score: 1

    ...so you marry your long lost sister...

    Even weirder, assuming my wife is "the one" for me, this genetic method would imply my ideal "second choice" would be my sister in law (whom is single...) and my ideal "third choice" would be my mother in law (whom is single...)

    Somehow, I think the legendary persistence of in-law and mother-in-law jokes would disprove the whole theory.

  21. Re:No-one is truly safe... on DNS Problem Linked To DDoS Attacks Gets Worse · · Score: 1

    Lets say I was able to sniff your traffic and see that you go to your Bank's web site based on the last DNS query your router did on your behalf

    What makes it worse, is you don't need such a precision attack. You could have a botnet randomly bombard everyone with "somebankname.com" is 1.2.3.4, and eventually you'd get a hit. Hit rate too slow, get more bots...

  22. Re:Algorithms on Are You a Blue-Collar Or White-Collar Developer? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You sure these two quotes go together?

    I will have no idea which algorithms have the best run time in O() notation

    I'm leaps ahead of some of the "schooled" developers in my company

    Your runtimes and/or program performance limitations will be pretty poor indeed if you don't have any interest in optimization.

    Kind of like being the worlds best bulldozer driver, vs being a civil engineer. Claiming there exists at least one civil engineer stupider than the worlds best bulldozer driver proves nothing. Also claiming the worlds best bulldozer driver is better at digging a hole than any of the civil engineers proves nothing.

  23. Re:Algorithms on Are You a Blue-Collar Or White-Collar Developer? · · Score: 1

    Pretty much every class I took for those two years applied to what I was going to do.

    So you thought at the time.

    4-year schools, this is obviously not the case. You are required so many electives that have nothing to do with your goals.

    Your goals at that time.

    You can try your best to minor in something that might closely indirectly relate to what you are doing, but that is still a stretch attempt to make it connect.

    Then you graduate, enter the workforce, and realize the most important skill you may have is being able to indirectly relate to your coworkers in other professions. With a close second, being able to apply "unrelated skills" to your profession.

    For example, in almost two decades, I've never used math beyond basic statistics on the job. But all those years of calculus trained up my logical thinking skill level, and I use that every day.

    If you're not applying at least some portion of your electives to your "real job", the problem is you're not trying hard enough, not that all electives are useless.

  24. Re:Three points on NIF Aims For the Ultimate Green Energy Source · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Look up neutron activation. When neutrons are flying around in a nuclear (of any type) reactor core, some of them hit the material in the walls, causing the atoms to absorb a neutron and change isotopes. Which tends to result in a reactor core that is radioactive, even though it wasn't made of radioactive materials and didn't absorb any isotopes.

    I know a lot about that topic. Lets make our reactor vessel out of iron. Nice and strong. We need a table of nuclides, but wikipedia is an adequate substitute. So, lets see what horrible long term waste results from neutron activation of iron.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_iron

    Most of the half lives are in the ms range. If you manage to strike the same atom simultaneously with five neutrons, you get a 44 day halflife, this is irrelevant in practice. Overall, neutron activation of iron is not a significant issue.

    Some materials can be neutron activated, some simply cannot. Don't worry about distilled water, or lead.

    The important point, is you choose the structural material so neutron activation is simply, inherently irrelevant. Hence the intense interest in material science in fusion reactors.

    You could intentionally make a fusion reactors walls out of U-235 and generate tons of contamination, but why?

  25. Re:Deuterium is hardly "endless" on NIF Aims For the Ultimate Green Energy Source · · Score: 2, Interesting

    deuterium refinement is still only done with stunningly high energy costs

    A buck per liter of pure D is not all that "stunning". In insulated liquid tanker car loads, you could probably buy it somewhat cheaper. True, there is an inherent lower limit regardless of bulk purchase or whatever, I'm guessing probably around 50 cents per liter wholesale. The manufacturers are not operating as a charity, they probably use 100% electrically operated machinery, and probably most of their costs are labor and capital, so I feel confident that a liter of D takes only a couple KWh at most. Perhaps you know so little about the topic that you're confusing stunningly high U-235 fission fuel refining costs with D refining costs? I'm thinking the fuel cost is not going to be an issue, like a rounding error in the budget.

    http://www.isotope.com/cil/products/displayproduct.cfm?prod_id=8827&cat_id=35&market=research

    Another way to put it, by volume, retail gasoline is about as expensive as D, but the same volume of D when fused generates exactly one zillion times more energy than burning gasoline.