Slashdot Mirror


User: tsotha

tsotha's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
3,283
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 3,283

  1. Re:China on Soyuz Ballistic Re-entry 300 Miles Off Course · · Score: 1

    They kept their currency values (read labor cost) low by buying up US debt, which kept the dollar high, Japan may have done the same thing.

    That sure was nice of them, though I'm not sure it's a good idea to trade actual stuff for little pieces of paper. Especially when the US government controls the value of that paper. Recently I've been wondering if the recent inflation of the dollar is nothing less than the theft of half of China's currency reserves.

  2. Re:Wrong way round on NBC to Create Programs Centered on Sponsors · · Score: 1

    I'm not sure the brand influence will be "unprecedented". Advertisers used to pay for just that kind of access, requiring, for instance, the main stars to smoke in every episode of I Love Lucy. Sounds to me like television is going back to its roots.

  3. Oh look on Senator Proposes to Monitor All P2P Traffic for Illegal Files · · Score: 1

    Oh look, there it is:

    13 TV/Movies/Music $178,358

    What a surprise!

  4. Re:This is not a law proposal, just loose talk on Senator Proposes to Monitor All P2P Traffic for Illegal Files · · Score: 2

    This is a lot worse than someone talking out of school. He's proposing to snoop on every packet that wends its way through the intertubes. Did you see how he wants to catch videos of rapes and molestation? Do you believe that for one second, or do you think it's more likely they want to catch people downloading Rocky XXIII?

    This is a "trial balloon". If he doesn't hear a lot of screaming you'll see it on your precious feed. Disgusting.

  5. Re:This ain't a charity on Monsanto's Harvest of Fear · · Score: 1

    I read the article. Did you? You're conflating the case of the Canadian farmer that made headlines with what's in the VF article. The farmer in question was deliberately cultivating Monsanto's strain. It wasn't a question of a few seeds blowing onto his property, or a guy who's just minding his own business getting sued for a few GM plants in his field.

    The farmers in the article are Monsanto customers. They've signed contracts, and they're being accused of breaking the contracts. This may or may not be true - clearly the writer's sympathies are with the farmers, but from this article there's no way to know what's really going on. If you buy seeds from Monsanto on the condition you won't save seeds from the harvest, then you need to live up to the agreement. If you're not prepared to do that, don't buy seeds from Monsanto.

    Now, could Monsanto use a little help in the customer relations department? Sure. But that doesn't mean they don't have a legitimate case here.

  6. Re:This ain't a charity on Monsanto's Harvest of Fear · · Score: 1

    This research is most certainly not worthless. Natural strains of food crops will only produce so many calories per acre. If new types of crops can be developed to increase that yeild, then that's a benefit to everyone.

    And there's nothing unfair or monopolistic about the way Monsanto does business. Farmers are not forced to do business with them, and as noted above, the widely cited case of a farmer being sued for producing Monsanto's seeds isn't a simple case of crop contamination.

  7. Re:the pharmaceutical industry on Monsanto's Harvest of Fear · · Score: 1

    see, in the field of morals and ethics, there is actually something more important than *gasp* profit.

    No. This is wrong. Profit is what allows companies to survive and grow. When there's no profit, there's no product. The rules don't change when it's a life-or-death product, either.

    When there is no next generation of AIDS drugs, and when companies come out with yet another round of profitable blood pressure and allergy medications to add to the thousands in existence, hopefully people like you will be around to explain to AIDS patients the ethics of convincing drug companies not to work on AIDS. But you'll have to talk fast, because by then the drugs we have now will be pretty much inneffective.

  8. Not a subscriber on Satellite IDs Ships That Cut Cables · · Score: 1

    Bah, this is the one time I wish I were an actual /. subscriber. Then I could go through my history and find the nutjobs who were expecting war with Iran "any day now" when the cables were cut. And publicly point and laugh at them. I suppose I'll have to settle for truthers on Digg.

  9. What are they looking for? on US To Employ Overhead Spying Domestically · · Score: 1

    I wonder what they're really looking for. This brings to mind the cat on I-5. Can you build radiation detectors sensitive enough to see nuclear bomb components from space?

    Some of you people need to get over yourselves. You're not important enough for the government to care about.

  10. At last on Climate Change Finally Impacts Important Industry · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    At last we have a falsifiable AGW prediction. So if the barley yealds don't go down, that's a strike against AGW, right?

    Or are we still discarding data that doesn't fit the theory?

  11. Re:Dear Canada, on Oil Deposit Could Increase US Reserves 10x · · Score: 2, Funny

    Yeah, except this is shale, which is a lot more like rock than a milkshake. You're gonna look pretty funny trying to suck that through a straw.

  12. Amusing on California Lawmaker Proposes Music Download Tax · · Score: 1

    This is kind of amusing. The state of California has been trying to collect sales taxes on internet purchases for years, and they're been pretty roundly ignored. Yep, there's nothing that engenders respect for the law like passing one you know everyone will ignore.

  13. Will I ever need one? on Sony Thinks Blu-ray Will Sell Like DVDs by Year End · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Sony has a small window where Blu-Ray is available and convenient, legal downloads aren't. They had better make the most of it, or Blu-Ray will join mini-disc in the "almost but not quite" category. Remember those?

  14. Junk Science on Former Crypto-Analyst Analyzes the Danger of Nuclear Weapon Stockpiles · · Score: 1, Informative

    Real scientists should shun these kinds of people. This guy has a completely unverifiable model and feeds garbage information into it. He's trying to predict the likelihood of deterrence failing. But it's never failed, so he has no data to go off of. Not only has it never failed, when we think deterrence has been close to failing, we have no way of knowing how close. There's simply no way to assign probabilities to complex chains of events involving humans.

    There's nothing to be learned from a model like this. It's just a good way to lie to yourself and others. It's not falsifiable. It's not science. It's politics.

  15. Quantum Python on Qutrits Bring Quantum Computers Closer · · Score: 1

    Bah! Back when I was a kid we had only two logic states and we were happy to have them!

  16. Re:And you thought it was bad on Space Elevators Face Wobble Problem · · Score: 1

    Escpecially since getting to the top would take weeks already.

  17. Re:And you are surprised because ... ? on US Ignores Unwelcome WTO IP Rulings · · Score: 2, Funny

    Yeah, sure, but you saddled us with William Shatner. We're not budging on the lumber until you take him back.

  18. Re:Any purpose Left? on Multi-Channel Communication Patent Up For Sale · · Score: 1

    Not at all - it serves the purpose quite well. The point of the system is to give people an incentive to invent things. Inventing things and commercializing them are two different processes - the inventor might not be set up to actually deliver a product. So selling the rights to a patent allows him to make money for his invention and facilitates the delivery of the product to consumers.

    The problem is although you're only supposed to be able to patent inventions "non-obvious to an expert in the field", the USPTO appears willing to issue patents for "inventions" that are obvious to the most casual observer.

  19. Re:Remember the Concorde on Space Planes to Meet 'Big Demand' For Tourism · · Score: 1

    American identity seems to be gung-ho invade-istan Jingoism, or flat out racism and segregation.

    Talk about rubbish. Have you ever been to the US? I don't know anybody who's thrilled about the wars in the Middle East, and even supporters (which include myself) view the Iraq war as a necessary evil. I see a lot more "blame America first" people than people you'd consider Jingoists.

    Of course there's side benefits of this sort of thing, developing SST gives you advances in other areas, not least in terms of prestige and therefore extra orders from other countries. e.g. Europe currently builds the largest commercial air plane and has built the only commercial SST - so who do you look to first when you want to buy a new fleet (ask Singapore airlines who just bought a bunch of A380s - something they probably feel a great deal of pride and gain prestige = business = money for)

    More rubbish. The spinoff argument is the least compelling of all, since every Euro you put into some fanciful spaceplane is a Euro that doesn't go into something usefull with just as much spinoff potential, like Fusion Research, high-speed rail, or basic science projects like LHC. Also, "the only commercial SST" didn't involve any new technology - it was simply military tech adapted for civilian use. How much national pride is a bomber with seats worth?

    And the A380? Where to start? The A380 has been an unmitigated disaster for Airbus. Barring some currently unforseen miracle, the consortium will never recover the money that went into its design. Sure, Singapore Airlines is probably happy with it, but it's not clear to me taxpayers should be forced to hand over part of their incomes to make an air carrier on the other side of the planet happy. The A380 never made economic sense even under the rosiest of scenarios. Now, with the dollar so low against the Euro it will take massive arm-twisting by governments as well as a constant infusion of cash to keep it in production at all. But the cost isn't just monetary - even without the falling dollar the A350 would be in trouble because of all the resources that went into the A380.

    In fact, if it weren't for projects like A380, EADS might not be in the position of having to beg for money like this. There's no big demand for space tourism, and EADS knows it. But they need something in the pipeline or they'll have to start laying people off. So the associated governments will pitch in a bunch of money, and only after it's all been spent the taxpayers will realize they've been had (again) and stop funding it. Just like Concorde.

    Bah! The problem with getting old is you see people falling for the same scams over and over. It's depressing. Real national prestige flows from excellence in artistic or useful endeavors, not busywork programs like the American shuttle or this proposal from EADS.

  20. Re:Cutting to the chase on Researchers Design Microchip Ten Times More Efficient · · Score: 1

    For the most part, you get a trade-off between voltage and speed -- with a higher voltage, you can charge up a more reactive load more quickly, giving faster rise and fall times. That translates directly to higher bus speed.


    I've been out of it for awhile, but yeah, that's what I was thinking. Unless they've really pulled out some whizbangery, they've just made a really slow processor that doesn't take much power. Meh. How much different is this, really from making a CMOS processor with a low-voltage external power converter? Sure, they put the converter on the chip. Again... meh.
  21. Re:PC gaming is dying on Why Aren't More Linux Users Gamers? · · Score: 1

    Oh, I have no doubt there will be more MMORPGs on consoles. And they'll suck, just like FPS games do.

    I'll never be over Deus Ex II.

  22. Re:PC gaming is dying on Why Aren't More Linux Users Gamers? · · Score: 1

    Yeah, PC gaming is dying... as long as you pretend MMORPGs don't exist.

  23. Re:Non-reusable vehicles on European Space Agency Launches New Orbital Supply Ship · · Score: 1

    Not necessarily true. There's no real reason the rocket can't be reused - SSTO is probably the only way we can do practical things in space instead of the vanity projects we have today. You wouldn't throw away the 747 you fly from the US to Europe - why do you think it's necessary to throw away the rocket that takes you to orbit?

  24. Re:From TFA on NASA Running Out of Plutonium · · Score: 1

    I agree with the others: spysats. And I'd add this: with all the problems DoD has had lately as a result of people on the ground picking up satellites with binoculars, I'm guessing they'd rather have radio-thermal powerpacks than solar cells.

  25. Re:received "wisdom" is wrong on Moore's Law Is Microsoft's Latest Enemy · · Score: 1

    That's what I thought. Anyone who's actually familiar with Word will hate Star Office, which is a much inferior product.