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User: ColdWetDog

ColdWetDog's activity in the archive.

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Comments · 14,132

  1. Re:Oddballs... on Fossils of Cambrian Predator Preserved With Brain Impressions · · Score: 1

    When it comes up and tries to bite you, yeah, it's life.

  2. Re:Clean your data! on Your Personal Data Is On Your Phone -- In the Form of Bacteria · · Score: 1

    Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.

    Still a shitty idea, no matter how you slice it.

  3. Re:I have bad news for you on The Last Three Months Were the Hottest Quarter On Record · · Score: 2

    You leftist misanthropes are at the end of your con and you know it. The Central Valley used to be a breadbasket until the leftists started diverting vital irrigation water from farmers in favor of a minnow.

    And before that it was a desert.

    And before that it was an inland sea.

  4. Re:Handwriting on German NSA Committee May Turn To Typewriters To Stop Leaks · · Score: 1

    Nah, pharmacists can get it right 8 out of 10 tries.

    Think about that a bit....

  5. Re:So what? they can be tapped to. on German NSA Committee May Turn To Typewriters To Stop Leaks · · Score: 1

    Man, these AC's.

    Is there nothing they can't do?

  6. Re:So what? they can be tapped to. on German NSA Committee May Turn To Typewriters To Stop Leaks · · Score: 1

    Those who do not understand History are doomed to repeat it.

    - Santayana

    True for the Germans. And everyone else. Go ask your average 22 year old about the events that shaped WWI or II (or Vietnam, Korea or the first half dozen Gulf Wars).

    Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.

    - Douglas Adams

  7. Re:Well here we go again. on The Last Three Months Were the Hottest Quarter On Record · · Score: 2, Funny

    Don't know about you, but on MY systems, you don't need elevated privileges to get popcorn.

    Comes with that rack of Pentium IVs in the closet.

  8. One on Led By Nest, 'Thread' Might Be Most Promising IoT Initiative Yet · · Score: 4, Funny

    One protocol to supervise them all, One mesh to find them
    One protocol to bring them in, and in the darkness bind them.

    In Mountain View, where the Shadows lie.

    (Hey, sorry. It's early.)

  9. Re:the most secure password manager on Critical Vulnerabilities In Web-Based Password Managers Found · · Score: 1

    Do they have a sense of humor?

  10. Re:CmdrTaco would say... on Slashdot Asks: Do You Want a Smart Watch? · · Score: 2

    No FM Radio. Less storage than a Nomad. Lame.

    http://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-ipod

    This actually makes me nervous. Given the unbroken track record of Slashdot mistaking the market share for every major advance in technology since the iPod, I'm forced to believe that smart watches are going to be a hit.

    And I'm not sure I want to live in that world.

  11. Re:Not new, and not shocking. on Texas Town Turns To Treated Sewage For Drinking Water · · Score: 2

    The newer membranes need quite a lot less pressure than early versions (which is where the energy requirement was). That and membrane longevity has improved considerably. As is typical with high tech stuff, the costs come down and the quality improves over time.

  12. Re:because drinking water is so pristine on Texas Town Turns To Treated Sewage For Drinking Water · · Score: 3

    Or just plain ol activated charcoal. My sailboat has an RO system with a charcoal canister that I replace twice a year. Bigger systems have more complex pre filters. I'm sure that the system in TFA is at least cleaner than any river water or shallow well system. Possibly not as pure as a deep artesian system but if it passes EPA criteria, it's going to be pretty clean.

    Really Slashdot, RO systems are old hat. You can buy them on Ebay. Soon they'll be in breakfast cereal.

  13. Re:Ted Postol very bias opinion. on A Skeptical View of Israel's Iron Dome Rocket Defense System · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You don't expect a critical appraisal from the vendor, do you? Take his, and everyone else's reporting with some degree of skepticism.

    One notable fact that was tangentially mentioned is that one doesn't see any 'hits' in the media. I would think one would be able to see the effect of the missile intercepting the targets at least some of the time. Given the intense media coverage, one wonders. It's certainly possible that by the time the interceptor hits the target it's too small to visual, but there is one hell of a lot of energy involved. Kinetic energy often creates sparkly bits that can be seen.

    It is also hard to argue that this ISN'T just one more aspect of the public relations game that is endemic to this conflict. Both sides (as is pointed out in TFA) engage in trying to get the other side to look mean and nasty. It's way more complicated than that.

  14. Re:Subject bait on A Skeptical View of Israel's Iron Dome Rocket Defense System · · Score: 2

    It's Bush's fault.

  15. Re:that's not the FAA's job on FAA Pressures Coldwell, Other Realtors To Stop Using Drone Footage · · Score: 1

    That means that if you want to shoot down low-flying Amazon delivery drones, you should be able to do that

    Please run for Congress....

  16. Re:Not a rule on FAA Pressures Coldwell, Other Realtors To Stop Using Drone Footage · · Score: 2

    So, the FAA should kindly go fuck itself.

    Please don't say things like that. You might give them an idea (they won't think of them on their own). Godzilla was created under less extreme circumstances.

  17. Re:bill hicks said something like, on William Binney: NSA Records and Stores 80% of All US Audio Calls · · Score: 1

    Wow.

    You're good.

  18. Re:Jurisdiction on Asteroid Mining Bill Introduced In Congress To Protect Private Property Rights · · Score: 1

    Read Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy for why this won't ever happen.

  19. Re: Wait you mean the HQ for Dice isn't a casino? on How Google Map Hackers Can Destroy a Business · · Score: 2

    Burma Shave.

  20. Re:How much is Google paying for these promotions? on On the Significance of Google's New Cardboard (Video) · · Score: 1

    Ok, how about this:

    "Someone at Apple HQ sneezed."

    Better?

  21. Re:What is life? What is a virus? on Hints of Life's Start Found In a Giant Virus · · Score: 4, Informative

    Oh, now I went ahead and read TFA. It's all complicated and confusing.

    The current thinking is indeed that viruses are an offshoot of 'modern' life (modern being sometime after the archea). These critters, because they contain gene sequences that seem to predate the prokaryote - eukaryote split and because we know that bacteria just love to transfer genetic information 'horizontally' - that is by tossing bits of DNA and RNA around so some unrelated organism can incorporate it into their genetic apparatus as opposed to simply eating it - that it may be that these big viruses started sometime after the RNA hypothesis took hold and created the first self replicating organisms. Or at least helped those first 'organisms' diverge and multiply.

    At least it's a testable hypothesis. Once you have sequenced a number of the big virus genes and compare them you would presumably get an idea how old they are.

    It would seem that even if this mechanism held, the critters would have had a long time to morph into another ecological niche so it would be hard to pin down what their function was (if any) at the beginning of life. But perhaps the Central Dogma is barking up the wrong tree after all.

  22. Re:What is life? What is a virus? on Hints of Life's Start Found In a Giant Virus · · Score: 4, Informative

    It can't reproduce entirely on it's own, so it's not 'free living'. It does need a host. It's just it doesn't need the host for some of the tasks that most viruses need the host for.

    It would seem that, instead of being a primitive form that was at the base of the the genetic tree, it's more likely to be an offshoot. It hijacked some additional molecular machinery from an extant organism rather that figuring it out on it's own.

  23. Resurrection on Today In Year-based Computer Errors: Draft Notices Sent To Men Born In the 1800s · · Score: 5, Funny

    I see the plot of a new Micheal Bay (or maybe J.J. Abrams) movie: The US military, unable to get qualified recruits to fight the new Zombie wars, takes a cue from the Zombie playbook and develops the technology to bring life old soldiers. After a bit of a difficult start, the program exceeds all expectations until the previously dead soldiers revolt at being put back in the grave and bring Washington to it's knees by filing for Social Security benefits.

  24. Re:Another medium.com story? on Study: Why the Moon's Far Side Looks So Different · · Score: 2

    But this one has exclamation points!!!!!!

  25. Re:Failsafe? on Airbus Patents Windowless Cockpit That Would Increase Pilots' Field of View · · Score: 1

    I've seen a lot of different things in aircraft cockpits.

    A glove compartment isn't one of them....