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User: TheGavster

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Comments · 1,189

  1. Re:"Splitting atoms" on New Advances Bring Fusion Closer to Reality · · Score: 1

    Yes, but those massive products of fission plants is in a solid brick, which you can put into a box and leave somewhere. The release from the fossil fuel plant is straight to your air supply.

  2. Re:Years away on New Advances Bring Fusion Closer to Reality · · Score: 1

    The government really is the best entity to handle utilities. Look at what has happened any time electricity has been deregulated; in California it caused massive price increases and power failures, in Connecticut the power has stayed on but the prices continue to climb. You can't practically have multiple providers for something that has to run over lines on public land, so if the government isn't running the show, they basically hand a nice monopoly over to an arbitrary businessman. Private industry will always cost more; government supervisors get a fraction of the salary and bonuses.

  3. Re:Statistically invalid samples on Math Skills Survey Shows U.S. Lags Behind · · Score: 1

    Well, obviously. Probably had Diebold do the testing, with oversight by the GOP.

  4. Re:Getting banned on Beating Roulette With Computers & Lasers · · Score: 1

    However, you won't actually have to work for 8-10 years, or you could have a low-stress, part time job while still living decently for a long time.

  5. Re:cool, but not quite... on New Treatment Helps Cure Spinal Injuries · · Score: 1

    When you obtain embryonic stem cells, you're already killing off the embryo ... at least it died for something, ya know?

    Not that you need to use embryonic stem cells; there are other sources that work just as well, like cord stem cells, that don't have all these negative religious connotations.

    As for society 'giving a pass' on various forms of sanctioned killings, it was society that decided that killing isn't allowed in the first place. Same thing with the police impounding your car; society sanctions them taking it, but society decided grand theft auto was wrong to begin with.

  6. Re:cool, but not quite... on New Treatment Helps Cure Spinal Injuries · · Score: 1

    Necessary, yes, evil ... well, that's somewhat subjective.

  7. Re:Trouble with a Capital "T" on Chinese PC Maker Looks to Buy IBM's PC Business · · Score: 1

    Yeah, those worker's rights sure are a barrier to efficiency.

  8. Re:Malware is a Windows problem on Malware: Fighting Malicious Code · · Score: 1

    This is someone's only computer. They need it right now to be usable for what they do. They are not a computer scientist; they could care less how it works, simply that it does. Much as you use your car, but don't really want to get involved with selecting your valve timings and fuel mixtures.

  9. Re:No DVD on TV Piracy is Next · · Score: 1

    The key is time shifting, not recording once and saving forever. You tape it now to watch when you get off work. What people are doing under the pretext of time-shifting is taping it now to watch for the rest of time, rather than invest in DVDs or cable.

  10. Re:Malware is a Windows problem on Malware: Fighting Malicious Code · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Gentoo isn't exactly easy to get installed the first time. Particularly if you've been a Windows user for life, watching pages of compiler messages fly by isn't exactly an inviting experience.

  11. Re:pay? on Westerners Migrating to India for Jobs · · Score: 1

    You work for your entire life, in exchange for some coins. On return to the US, you can put these worthless coins in a sock, to use as a club in defense of your shopping cart.

  12. Re:Needs some codification on Westerners Migrating to India for Jobs · · Score: 4, Funny

    Because its not like two nuke-club members are fighting over Kashmir, or anything. Pretty vistas, sure, but the chance of one day seeing a sunrise way off schedule and shifted deep into the gamma spectrum just kinda kills it for me.

  13. Re:getting it backwards on First Mod Chip For GameCube · · Score: 1

    The other use for the outer edge of large discs is greater data integrity. On full-size laser discs encoded CAV-style (constant angular velocity), the image gets noticably clearer as you reach the outer edge, because each frame is alloted more space, so scratches don't have as much of an effect.

  14. Re:Uh. No. on Microgenerators Coming Soon to Electronics Near You · · Score: 1

    The idea isn't to get ALL of the power from the heat off the CPU, just to reclaim SOME of it. Reclaiming 5% of the energy is better than venting it out the exhaust port, isn't it?

  15. Re:Fossils on the Bench on Federal Judge: Keystroke Logging Isn't Wiretapping · · Score: 1

    The same is true if you put your tap inside the handset of a phone; you nab the signal before it gets whatever it is that telephones do with the signal done to it. Still counts as a wiretap, though.

  16. Re:Go for it on India Debating Manned Space Flight · · Score: 1

    Its not the government's problem if the people over-reproduce themselves into impovershment; socialism will work, provided you're ok with equalizing to the stone age (and then having capitalism rise again, as someone figures out that they can bang rocks together better than other people)

  17. Re:not trying to be flamebait but on India Debating Manned Space Flight · · Score: 1

    The Cold War was a lot of the driving force behind our dedication to the space race. The country that could get things into space fastest and develop the best rockets would be in a place to best fight a nuclear war. If we hadn't eventually planned to put spy cameras and nuclear weapons on them, a lot of our space tech wouldn't have been developed. 'Keeping up with the Joneses' isn't a reason inof itself.

  18. Re:Old Soviet Overlords on Soviet Space Battle Station Images Published · · Score: 1

    I mean, this is the administration that was honestly pushing for the ballistic missile defense shield.

    Because its not like there are countries with nuclear weapons on ballistic launchers out there, or anything.

  19. Re:From the article... on Linux Kernel to Fork? · · Score: 1

    Actually, yes, I've done that before. The couple of times its actually gotten all the dependencies it needed it managed to accidently kill some library critical to the system (KDE is amusing when libpng gets broken)

  20. Re:From the article... on Linux Kernel to Fork? · · Score: 1

    Sure, apps still come with the DLL version they want. Not so different from Linux, except that I have to hunt down the blasted right version, probably compile it, and sometimes even have to get new versions of libraries that the library is dependant on!

  21. Re:Google on Bringing the Library of Congress Newspapers Online · · Score: 1

    Whereas what we term 'news' right now was what they called 'court theatre' in the 19th century ...

  22. Re:So Ridiculous on TiVo to Sell Your Fast-Forward Button · · Score: 1

    What?! The FCC is mandating automatic restraints be installed on all new recliner chairs? I must stock up on legacy hardware ...

  23. Re:Hmmmm on The State of Natural Language Programming · · Score: 1

    VB (and Delphi and C#) is a normal programming language with a GUI designer attached. You can write a program in VB that handles GUI objects just like a C++ application does by calling Windows API, its just harder that way most of the time. The only NLP element that VB uses that C++ does not is the word 'Then' in if blocks.

  24. Re:Some questions I have... on X-43A Mach 10 Mission Scrubbed For Today · · Score: 2, Informative

    The first supersonic aircraft were carried to test altitude by bombers as well. With any technology like this, you want to be testing just the new part; we know that ground->40,000ft->100,000ft is doable with current tech, the new bit is accelerating to mach 10 once you get there. The Bell X-1 was a flying gas tank, so is this. But an F-22 is a complete system, integrating existing technology with new advances in supersonic airframe and engine design. I expect much the same from the scramjet technology being developed on X-43.

  25. Re:a winner? on Intel's BTX Form Factor Launched Today · · Score: 1

    BTX was in development long before Prescott debuted at its insane temps. Of course, the P4 line had been running progressively hotter for years, so something did need to be done. The other improvements are significant; at least now case makers acknowledge that you can make a case that opens on the right hand side (not too hard with ATX; even puts the components side of PCI cards up!) so that you don't need to take your box off the desk for maintenance if you're a righty (I keep my box on the right of my desk, so the access side is against the monitor ... easier to get at the CD/floppy)