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User: dbIII

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  1. Re:Boy toy on NPR: '80s Ads Are Responsible For the Lack of Women Coders · · Score: 2

    I suspect the reality was that as wages in the sector grew the women were squeezed out.
    As late as 1987 I was in a CS class with just over 50% women. Today I see more women in mining and heavy industry jobs, literally at the coalface instead of just in the office, than in IT. Pretty weird isn't it for something that was dismissed as "women's work" to the extent where I couldn't even do a class in typing at high school because that was strictly girls only.

  2. Re:Having a Surgeon General would help on Ebola Does Not Require an "Ebola Czar," Nor Calling Up the National Guard · · Score: 1

    With respect, an anti-gun viewpoint should not matter at all in a role like that since guns are not part of the job.

    Of course this was never actually about guns though, as with most of the US "gun debate" it's about being on the "right team", which in one case happens to contain a dysfunctional sporting club with far too much political power - and in the other case fill in whatever partisan insults you want to use. By being "anti-gun", or more likely just anti-NRA rant of the week, he's shown he's not "on the right team" so it's not really about guns is it?

  3. Re:Ebola requires not an "Ebola Czar" ... on Ebola Does Not Require an "Ebola Czar," Nor Calling Up the National Guard · · Score: 1

    There has been a bit of work on three approaches with at least one completing animal testing. It may not be in the news but some people have cared enough to put more than a decade of work in.

  4. Re:Until we upgrade the dumb bunnies on Ebola Does Not Require an "Ebola Czar," Nor Calling Up the National Guard · · Score: 1

    It would have helped if he'd used that time to actually come up with a plan........

    What plan then - help ISIS, help other groups backed by Iran or help Assad?

    I'm not sure time would have helped. A major worry now is ISIS went for deliberate provocation and seem to want us to drop bombs on the area and we are doing exactly what they want. Why they want it is a bit of a mystery, but those video nasties were designed for that purpose.

  5. Re:Politics on Ebola Does Not Require an "Ebola Czar," Nor Calling Up the National Guard · · Score: 1

    Effectively been done in a small way by sending a team and troops to isolate it at the source before it spreads to millions. More of the same is the sane way to do it (according to some medical professionals that call themselves experts in tropical diseases). Attempting to cut it off at the border didn't work with Spanish Flu after the WWI and would be far more difficult to attempt today. Cancel all flights in and out of the USA for a month and it may still come in via Canada or Mexico.

  6. Re:What does require those things? on Ebola Does Not Require an "Ebola Czar," Nor Calling Up the National Guard · · Score: 2

    There never where smart people here, just technicians and wannabe technicians with an inflated sense of self importance.

    Not true, when this site started I was a professional engineer - it's only now that I'm a wannabe technician with an inflated sense of self importance.

  7. Re: Conflict of interest is just what they do on NSA CTO Patrick Dowd Moonlighting For Private Security Firm · · Score: 1

    Good point, but I can only despair from afar at what you guys have lost and wonder why so few of you even bother to get off your arses to vote. I've also avoided visiting thanks to the TSA etc - I've soaked up enough rads without getting exposed to a radiation source set up by unqualified monkeys and not checked by any third party, let alone the consequences of maybe getting sick in a country where health care is a minor and relatively poorly funded side effect of insurance.

  8. Re:WTF, the antarctic gets FO before me? on Fiber Optics In Antarctica Will Monitor Ice Sheet Melting · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Maybe, but that's just a guess isn't it? Perhaps it's a good idea to let scientists take a look at it to understand what is going on instead of attempting to trump reality by some sort of political fiat. Even if some declare the climate has never changed since Genesis there's still a great deal of value for global weather forecasting in monitoring conditions in Antarctica - it's half the reason Scott etc went there a century ago after all.
    King Canute's lesson to his court over how political will cannot command nature is very apt. You can shout from the rooftops that nothing is happening but there is some reason why last month was the hottest September in more than a century. Putting on a blindfold is not going to help.

  9. Before replying with venom read this on Doctor Who To Teach Kids To Code · · Score: 1

    The above is an answer to a question along the lines of "what do people outside of the USA think about the Tea Partiers".
    It's an opinion derived from what has been filtered through the international media and should not be considered as reality.
    It's how the group is presented to people who are too far away to distinguish the reality through the noise.

    Either way it's not important since I don't know any more about them than what the media has decided is amusing enough to pass on and the topic should be getting kids interested in stuff via tie-ins. I'm all for it. Maths, politics whatever (since the original Dalek stuff was blatantly about fascism), if it gets the kids learning via activity that can stick more than other ways.
    Maybe Dr Who could be used to show me WTF is really going on in US politics :)

  10. Re:ps Good luck teaching AFRICANS to code... on Doctor Who To Teach Kids To Code · · Score: -1, Troll

    I'm not from the UK, but I think "Tea Partiers" really have so little grasp on their history and US politics in general that, for example, they have no idea why the original Tea Party dressed up as Indians. The extra irony is those "Tea Partiers" that want a "strong" authoritarian government resembling the sort of thing King George was imposing on the colonies.

  11. Re:Umm, what? on Help ESR Stamp Out CVS and SVN In Our Lifetime · · Score: 1

    He also tore CUPS authors and the open source user interface authors a new one in an infamous essay

    And comparing their work versus ESR on fetchmail is a classic case of glass house and thrown stones - but someone has to be a critic. Airing his political dirty linen and annoyance with investigative journalists in the "jargon file" was probably the point where he spent the capital of goodwill he had built up and was taken less seriously

  12. Linux was pretty if you wanted it to be on More Eye Candy Coming To Windows 10 · · Score: 1

    Actually linux back in the day, as in about 1997, resembled this sort of thing with the animated effects available for the Enlightenment window manager - however they were designed to be very easy to turn off if you didn't want them. It even had the little window snapshot images that are in win7, and of course the multiple desktops coming with Win10 (but even twm has those).
    Rob Malda had an popular web site for the Enlightenment application ePlus when Slashdot started which is why a lot of people who used it turned up in this place early on.

  13. Re:That is a very different material on No More Lee-Enfield: Canada's Rangers To Get a Tech Upgrade · · Score: 1

    which you can melt down and reform to sheet/billet/whatever

    Only if you've got a very hot furnace and can keep all oxygen and nitrogen away from the molten metal. Titanium is a bastard to work with which is why something so easily mined (there's a lot of it in beach sand) is so expensive.

  14. Re:That is a very different material on No More Lee-Enfield: Canada's Rangers To Get a Tech Upgrade · · Score: 1

    milled titanium alloy back when I had fuckloads of money to burn

    That pretty well sums up what you need to do when you choose titanium :)

  15. Re: Conflict of interest is just what they do on NSA CTO Patrick Dowd Moonlighting For Private Security Firm · · Score: 1

    If you don't like it, get off your couch and go get arrested for civil disobedience somewhere.

    But that may mean travel and getting testicles squeezed by the TSA!

  16. "Closing the loophole would likely collapse its e" on "Double Irish" Tax Loophole Used By US Companies To Be Closed · · Score: 1

    You didn't answer. What is your reasoning behind suggesting that their entire economy will collapse if this loophole will close?
    You did write "Closing the loophole would likely collapse its economy" after all.
    Insulting me for inconveniently remembering that doesn't make it go away and is rather pathetic I must say.

  17. Re: a quick search on No More Lee-Enfield: Canada's Rangers To Get a Tech Upgrade · · Score: 1

    I'd always thought that Polar Bears would transform into Cartesian Bears.

  18. That is a very different material on No More Lee-Enfield: Canada's Rangers To Get a Tech Upgrade · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Epoxy is a thermosetting plastic so is very unlike nylon. It's already as brittle as it is going to get at room temperature - it keeps the same toughness at lower temperatures because it doesn't have a glass transition temperature like nylon does. It's due to the two materials having very different structures. Epoxy has a lot of crosslinking, like a mesh, while nylon doesn't, like spaghetti. Cool the spaghetti down and there's a lot more resistance to it moving about on the plate until suddenly it's all stuck frozen together - glass transition temperature.
    Look up "thermosetting vs thermoplastic" for some ideas. What the holders of the nylon patent know is not relevant for something made of glass reinforced epoxy resin.

  19. Re:Overly broad? on Soda Pop Damages Your Cells' Telomeres · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It *could* be that HFCS is worse than some other sugars

    The mechanism is well understood - it's twice as bad for the liver as sucrose and the same as fructose from apples etc. As for the pancreas, it's not so clear but the liver situation is bad enough.

    Switching from HFCS to cane sugar is probably not a significant improvement

    Beyond a certain level you are absolutely right and there are plenty of people with a vast amount of sucrose or fructose in their diets. However below that obvious level of overconsumption it appears that HFCS is causing liver damage in children. That's not a "think of the children" plea, it just hits kids harder since their livers are smaller so that's where it's being noticed.

    It's a pretty nasty unintended consequence of protecting cane farmers from the free market - previously more expensive HFCS became the cheap sweetener of choice and you need a lot more of it to get the same sweet taste as cane sugar.

  20. Re:What you missed above - so much really on Lead Mir Developer: 'Mir More Relevant Than Wayland In Two Years' · · Score: 1

    I don't expect an actual discussion anymore

    I thought that was your aim when you replied with guesses and gut feeling without taking the majority of my short and simple post into account. Why shouldn't I object? VNC held up as an example of X - WTF?

  21. Re:Your standard of evidence is irrelevant on Lead Mir Developer: 'Mir More Relevant Than Wayland In Two Years' · · Score: 1

    Wayland is not a thing you should be fighting

    Who said I was fighting Wayland? I'm "fighting" against the misinformed "X is fundamentally broken" comments with something designed for slightly different tasks and still in early development held up as the instant replacement. It's not Wayland's fault that people take comments about using X on a phone out of context and hold those up as an example of why X should be instantly replaced with Wayland in all areas.

  22. Re:What you missed above - so much really on Lead Mir Developer: 'Mir More Relevant Than Wayland In Two Years' · · Score: 1

    You know that what you had written was just an uninformed guess - somehow the GL backend is faster than GL for instance - and you attempted to gold plate your guesses with someone else's name despite it being your guess and not theirs. Why expect a polite response to such disgusting behaviour?

  23. I did not misunderstand on Lead Mir Developer: 'Mir More Relevant Than Wayland In Two Years' · · Score: 1

    Do some background reading on the topic and watch it again.
    An unfinished powerpoint with a few mistakes left in - such as an implication that X is slow just because gedit on gnome3 is slow (as distinct from it being much quicker to start on gnome2), is not convincing.

  24. Re:Let's please stay on topic on Lead Mir Developer: 'Mir More Relevant Than Wayland In Two Years' · · Score: 0

    RDP/VNC does not do many to one like X does and are very inefficient screen scraping hacks - so not on topic at all you goalpost shifter.

  25. Re:What you missed above - so much really on Lead Mir Developer: 'Mir More Relevant Than Wayland In Two Years' · · Score: -1, Troll

    So you are speaking for Raster now - piss off you name dropping liar until you come close to having a fucking clue about the topic instead of pretending that others that have actually done some work on it agree with you.