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User: fyngyrz

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  1. You're really missing the fundamental issue on Senator Who Calls STEM Shortage a Hoax Appointed To Head Immigration · · Score: 1

    but then the cost of living is a lot less in India.

    So is the quality of life. We'd like to avoid that.

    There are two paths: We degrade our QoL opportunities to rice/noodles/curry+hovel, or they increase their QoL to steaks+home+car+retirement. Either path can be taken, or both with a meeting somewhere in between.

    Right now, though, because they have access to our economy for marketing -- selling skill and product -- but they are not operating in our economy for cost of manufacture/labor, we simply cannot compete. Either we break the cycle or this will destroy the rest of our economy just as it has already eviscerated various high profile sectors: rare earths, copper mining, electronics, cars, engineering work, monitors/televisions/displays, pretty much anything China makes, etc.

    At this point, the best -- as in, most effective and sure to work -- option is to completely deny foreign access to our economy so we can rebuild. But in order to do that, all those free-market idealists will have to admit they were wrong. And like most things of every class of issue, people really don't like to do that. So probably what you're witnessing here is a complete economic collapse in the making, one that can only be diverted by a major paradigm shift, such as full conversion to an economy of plenty. Robots everywhere, money no longer used to represent work because work doesn't matter, AI, etc. Unfortunately, that looks far enough off, and we're already far enough down the path of economic collapse, that we're not likely to catch such a shift before we shit ourselves and fall in it, economically speaking. At which point, about 1% of the US will move elsewhere, and the rest of us will fight -- most likely literally -- over whatever remains.

    Free trade was a nice idea. But it wasn't a good idea.

  2. Not so difficult on Senator Who Calls STEM Shortage a Hoax Appointed To Head Immigration · · Score: 1

    It's a tough problem to fix. If we come down too hard on companies for hiring guest workers, they'll often open off shore offices.

    It's simple (not the same as easy) to fix. (1) Raise trade barriers. (2) If you're in the US, you bank in the US, you invest in the US, you use US materials, you hire US workers, you buy US manufacturing equipment and tooling, and you sell to the US market. (3) If you're not in the US, you don't get to sell to the US market. Period. So if company A moves out of the US, company B will simply take over the market company A abandoned.

    We have the resources, we have the workers, and we have the market. What we have to stop doing is bleeding work into other economies, while expecting our standard of living, which was based on our economy, to be retained. We cannot do that while economic systems we have no control over are low-balling the cost of our consumables.

    So we either lower our standard of living so we can become employable (doubtful); or go without (that's happening... many of us are unemployable at practical wages); or we develop our job market in the same economic context as we develop our consumables market.

    That last is what I'm suggesting. If we do not do that, then until other country's standards of living rise to the standards of ours, we will continue to bleed jobs and prosperity in their direction. Equalization can occur in two ways: Our standard of living can drop to rice+hovel, or their standard of living can rise to house+car+retirement. Presently we are 100% engaged in the former, with no sign whatsoever of being able to get free of the fall. There's little to no sign of the latter.

    If we do do that, then we can keep the barriers one way until our economy stabilizes again, and then when it does, drop them just far enough that foreign countries have access to our markets at our prices for items we also sell (only those. If we don't make the item, they can't sell it here. That way, if our market wants it, we get a fair crack at manufacturing it.) In this way, they can compete on quality and style, instead of the economic leverage a piss-poor underclass gives them.

    They also have the option to take the higher earnings for their products back and spin up their economies. They probably won't, and frankly, it shouldn't matter to us if they do -- but the opportunity would be there. Give the peasants something to revolt over.

  3. Hmmmm on Researchers Moot "Teleportation" Via Destructive 3D Printing · · Score: 4, Funny

    Can you think of an instance where you would actually want the capabilities this machine claims to offer?

    Yes. Yes, I can. Let's use this as the new transport mechanism for congresspersons. What a problem-solver!

  4. Re:efficiency on Ask Slashdot: Has the Time Passed For Coding Website from Scratch? · · Score: 1

    Mine is similar; however, I've come to the conclusion that it's not the language itself, it is the use of incredibly inefficient building blocks from elsewhere. If you don't do that, you can do pretty well in c++. Personally, I have little use for most c++ idioms; what OO I find useful is generally better handled directly.

  5. Yes, but on Blackberry CEO: Net Neutrality Means Mandating Cross-Platform Apps · · Score: 1

    So called 'positive rights' are entitlements that require that governments strips rights from some people in order to provide those 'free' entitlements to others.

    Agreed. However, this not a bad thing in and of itself. By stripping you of the right to arbitrarily murder me, they give me the right to not be arbitrarily murdered. And vice-versa. I call that a complete win.

    In the case of what many like to stuff in the same bag as "entitlements", the rights being stripped are fractional portions of income, and the rights being enabled are, quite often, the difference between life and death or suffering and no suffering, or disease transmission and no disease transmission. I tend to regard those entitlements as entirely worth my loss of right to my income. Others do not share my interest in the general well-being of the public. Debate ensues.

    It is not always clear that such rights-trading by force as government fiat is inherently bad. Some rights-trading is no doubt bad.

    For instance, part of my right to my income is being traded for bombing and otherwise harming foreigners for the sole purpose of subsidizing the MIC (extend their right to a cushy income), and I am dubious that an adequate defense could be made for this kind of thing.

    Net Neutrality is an entitlement, where people are trying to use force of government to strip rights from individual ISPs to shape their traffic on their networks the way they see fit.

    When an operation - electricity, communications, water supply, networks - consumes some portion of an inherently limited domain, and that operation is critical to the good fortunes of the public, then we may need to regulate what those given the opportunity to provide services in said limited spaces can do.

    The FCC regulates how wide and splattery a transmitted signal can be. This is an appropriate act of guarding the use of a privileged, limited resource for the benefit of the public, though it inherently limits the rights of the transmitting party. The PUC regulates prices charged for fuel. This is an appropriate act of guarding a limited, privileged resource for the benefit of the public, though is inherently limits the rights of the fuel provider. And so on.

    This is what makes the debate legitimate, and the potential application of limits / restrictions legitimate. Bandwidth providers are players in such a limited space. If they want to do something where they are not critical to the public good, and therefore responsible for the public good, and therefore held to limits designed to address the public good, then they should be in another business.

  6. Re:Seems... facile on The Paradoxes That Threaten To Tear Modern Cosmology Apart · · Score: 1

    Yes, I do. Because we have no such evidence; we can't make the measurements it would take to get said evidence.

    You are confusing assumption with evidence. They are not the same.

  7. efficiency on Ask Slashdot: Has the Time Passed For Coding Website from Scratch? · · Score: 1

    There are two types of efficiency here.

    The first is up front design efficiency. The time it takes to develop the code. This could be impacted by a combination of a poor c/c++ programmer and a decision to use it. You pay for this loss of efficiency once, if indeed it is a loss (likely it would not be much or any of a loss if the c/c++ programmer is competent.)

    The second is execution efficiency, that cost that is paid every time someone uses the facility. Here, using c/c++ can (should, again with a competent programmer) provide a much faster response time with all the benefits that accrue from that, and these benefits will be gained again and again, every time someone uses the facility. As compared to, for instance, Perl or Python.

    You can consider client-side execution, but if you choose to use it, you're locking out many potential visitors who will not be able to use your pages. There are huge numbers of devices out there that are old and/or small, and they simply don't do client-side stuff. Even knowing your site is targeting "only" owners of, say, IE, doesn't justify such a choice; because in the real world, people won't always have IE in their pocket. If someone can't browse your site at lunch with whatever is in their pocket, the odds of them coming back later -- much less buying / participating now -- drop precipitously.

    Part of the job is to determine what kind of traffic could be encountered, while knowing the capacity of the hardware you have available, and then figuring out which efficiency you're better of going after.

    If your web site serves one person in the organization, and they only check in once a day, then if Python is fast enough on your desk, its fast enough on their desk, too, at least if it doesn't impact the site's ability to do its other tasks, like serving WAN customers. But if your thing is WAN facing, and could potentially see any number of customers up to the max the server can handle, then you'd best consider execution time efficiency before you consider up-front development time efficiency (and again, if you hire a competent c/c++ programmer, there probably won't be a huge difference. Even less if they have already done this for you once or twice.

  8. DON'T Save to PDF on Ask Slashdot: Has the Time Passed For Coding Website from Scratch? · · Score: 1

    Make your websites a PDF file.

    What you're doing here is making sure that a whole raft of smaller/older devices won't be able to display your pages. Which is exactly the same thing as intentionally reducing the customer base of your client.

    You want PDF printables? Put a link to a static PDF version on any HTML web page the user might actually WANT in PDF form. HTML pages should be in either HTML, HTML+CSS, HTML+CGI, or HTML+CSS+CGI. HTML and HTML+CGI produce the best quality -- most usable -- pages. Use of *any* other technology cuts off some number of smaller and/or older clients at the knees, but of those technologies, pure front-facing PDF would be difficult to beat for complete failure of a website to show up for the person trying to look at it.

  9. Re:About 7-8 years ago? on Ask Slashdot: Has the Time Passed For Coding Website from Scratch? · · Score: 1

    If you think an indication of when someone joined slashdot (/. UID) gives you a reliable insight into how old they are, or how long they've been doing technical work, or what technical work they can do, you are one thoroughly deluded human being.

  10. Re:Seems... facile on The Paradoxes That Threaten To Tear Modern Cosmology Apart · · Score: 2

    Nah, I just bought one from Dyson. Works great!

  11. Re:Seems... facile on The Paradoxes That Threaten To Tear Modern Cosmology Apart · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The energy of the vacuum HERE would be decreasing over time,

    You can't assume that everything everywhere behaves the same. You can't assume that energy drawn from one location will show up as a deficit in another (you find running water in the street's gutter... you learn Joe's pool is draining. Assuming Mark's pool is also draining doesn't follow.) You can't measure anywhere but (very) locally, which also means you can only measure data very near temporally -- and so you really have no bloody idea what is going on without resting your conclusion on assumptions made entirely free of supporting data.

    What you're claiming is equivalent to saying you know exactly what's going on on a planet orbiting some star in Andromeda because you've done some observations as to what is going on here. Evidence is utterly insufficient to your claim.

  12. YIC on The Paradoxes That Threaten To Tear Modern Cosmology Apart · · Score: 1

    It might be simulated turtles all the way down.

    It's virtual turtles, you insensitive clod!

  13. Re:I don't get it on The Paradoxes That Threaten To Tear Modern Cosmology Apart · · Score: 1

    Because empty space is full of particles

    No, see, by definition, that's non-empty space. Empty space is... empty.

  14. Re:"inescapable conclusion" on The Paradoxes That Threaten To Tear Modern Cosmology Apart · · Score: 1

    I am pretty certain that calculations of the vacuum energy do not depend on the size of the universe.

    I am pretty certain the idea's never been tested. And may not even be testable. So you might want to adjust your confidence level a bit. At least until we can go everywhere and measure everything. Breath-holding doesn't seem to be called for.

  15. Seems... facile on The Paradoxes That Threaten To Tear Modern Cosmology Apart · · Score: 2

    How can we definitively tell if the vacuum over there has the same energy density as the vacuum over here?

    Further, how can we tell if the energy we think we find in vacuum here isn't energy that arises from particulate contamination? Or, for that matter (ha) is coming from somewhere else? Has someone managed to (a) create a perfect vacuum and (b) measure its energy and (c) determine that whatever was measured as appearing at X, definitely hadn't disappeared from all the possible Ys? Somehow, I doubt it. If for no other reason than our access to some of the other Y (say, around Andromeda) is... limited. As well as non-contemporaneous -- if something disappeared from that region, to appear here, we wouldn't have any indication it had happened for about 2.5 million years. And even then, our ability to measure vacuum precisely at that distance... not so good.

    My (admittedly not very deep) understanding of vacuum is that it is defined by a lack of content, and that a perfect vacuum would be defined by a perfect lack of content -- and were that simplistic idea correct, then I don't see why how much perfect vacuum there is has any bearing at all upon the total amount of energy.

    And, if vacuum is indeed empty when perfect, but we think there is energy detected in what we consider a perfect vacuum, then perhaps we're simply misinterpreting the goings-on within an imperfect vacuum. Perhaps there is more to get rid of than the molecules and particles we know of at present.

    Or, perhaps space is infinite and at least somewhat plastic to start with, and our situation (going with the idea that the space we can observe seems to be expanding) is more like adding a thimble of water to a planetary ocean (let the ocean conceptually be infinite for the sake of an example.) Perhaps space over there is contracting, while space over here is expanding.

    My own position is that any cosmological proposal that includes the phrase "arose from nothing" or similar is probably better filed under astrology until actual evidence is found of the idea -- not possible precursors or echos, but an actual example of what is being described. We seem to be pretty clear on the idea that matter and energy are essentially interchangeable, and we have no experimental data that proves stuff arises from non-stuff, so at least at this point, I see no reason to take an assertion of "arose from nothing" seriously.

  16. Scientific question on US Senate Set To Vote On Whether Climate Change Is a Hoax · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Regardless of specifics of the actual objective results, anthropogenic climate change is a scientific question -- whether certain consequences of our actions are leading to a fairly specific set of changes to climate.

    That politicians want to vote on it strikes me as a significant indicator as to their incompetence. As if we needed any more...

  17. Seems fine to me on Tracking Down How Many (Or How Few) People Actively Use Google+ · · Score: 3, Informative

    I post. Doesn't seem to suck to me. My family is there, my friends are there.

    It could be better. Faster, mostly, and a little better at blocking other users, but all in all, I find it adequate to my needs.

    Also, I wonder about the analysis. Perhaps all the active users are in the AI and other groups where I hang out; but somehow, I doubt it. Maybe I don't understand what he means by "post public content"; wouldn't that be a post to a group or a post to one's own profile? Because there's a great deal of that going on.

    Anyway. As long as it's there, I plan to use it. Meets my needs.

  18. Re:Wrong issue on Police Nation-Wide Use Wall-Penetrating Radars To Peer Into Homes · · Score: 1

    I think that's a wise position. Well put, too.

  19. Re:Joke's on you on The Most Popular Passwords Are Still "123456" and "password" · · Score: 2

    Is that a fox I see hanging off your left ass cheek by his teeth?

  20. Re:In other news on The Most Popular Passwords Are Still "123456" and "password" · · Score: 1

    Computer security is not a naturally intuitive domain for most human beings, absent some properly directed training and experience.

    It doesn't make them idiots. But it does make them vulnerable.

  21. Re:Wrong issue on Police Nation-Wide Use Wall-Penetrating Radars To Peer Into Homes · · Score: 1

    They're not. The Supreme Court ruled in the early 2000's that the police require a warrant for FLIR and wall-pentrating[sic] radar.

    The thing is, they regularly act like they don't need a warrant, and they will act on that basis. Just as they are... casual... about other restrictions, and manipulative in escalating confrontations. These things illuminate a severe problem with our present police culture. You may rest assured that these technologies will be misused, and not to the citizen's benefit.

    I suppose that doesn't make for a good headline: Police acquire new tech for performing searches; searches still require warrant!

    Skipping over the critical issue at hand never makes for a good headline, insofar as "good" incorporates the meaning of "responsible."

  22. Assembly on Justified: Visual Basic Over Python For an Intro To Programming · · Score: 1

    IMHO, starting with assembly is by far the best choice, but it takes about a year to cover it well enough to provide a solid foundation. Most autodidacts tend to skip it, and most college courses only brush by it quickly.

    From asm to c, and from c to Python, add in markup concepts (HTML/CSS), database concepts and SQL, and from there, you can go pretty much anywhere you want to go, language-wise.

    That's a lot of ground to be covered in just a few words, though. :)

  23. Wrong issue on Police Nation-Wide Use Wall-Penetrating Radars To Peer Into Homes · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The problem isn't the ability of the device. The problem is the lack of due process.

    For instance, if we know we've got a hostage situation, this kind of thing is entirely appropriate, and no judge should hesitate to enable it via a proper warrant. That doesn't mean the police should be free to use it at any time, at their own discretion.

    Same thing goes for any other search tech that enables normal privacy boundaries to be crossed on a whim.

    Search is like any other weapon in this way: a critical issue is how it is to be used, both in what the rules are, and in how well the rules are obeyed.

  24. Re: We built this city? on Sid Meier's New Game Is About Starships · · Score: 1

    Perhaps.

    But we rock and rollers burned so very, very bright!

  25. Re: We built this city? on Sid Meier's New Game Is About Starships · · Score: 2

    All those moments will be lost in time ...like tears in the rain.