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User: Chuckstar

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  1. Re:No plans ... on Hertz Puts Cameras In Its Rental Cars, Says It Has No Plans To Use Them · · Score: 1

    They do have a vague idea what they might use it for. They were pretty clear about that. They also said that they haven't done anything to implement their vague idea, except having the hardware in the device.

  2. Re:No plans ... on Hertz Puts Cameras In Its Rental Cars, Says It Has No Plans To Use Them · · Score: 1

    Of course it gives them wiggle room to make plans later. That's kind of their whole point.

    When they do change their plans, though, they'll tell us what the new plan is, and we can decide whether or not we like it. If we don't like it, then we stop renting from Hertz. There are a half-dozen other national rental companies to choose from.

    It just seems silly to get worked up today about some potential thing Hertz may or may not decide to do later. It doesn't make sense to punish them for what we imagine they might do in the future.

  3. In other news... on Homeopathy Turns Out To Be Useless For Treating Medical Conditions · · Score: 1

    In other news, water turns out to be wet.

  4. Re:in other news... on US Navy Authorizes Use of Laser In Combat · · Score: 3, Informative

    According to stuff I've read before, dust particles are mostly a problem inside the system, on mirrors and on targets. This is because dust hit by a laser tends to accelerate away from the beam source, as the side of the particle that is illuminated by the laser vaporizes first. So dust on the near side of a lens, on a mirror or on a target would get blown into the object's surface, causing pitting. But dust on the far surface of a lens would get blown off of the lens. Inside the system, this would be a problem because that dust would get blown into the next element in line. But on that last lens/window where the beam exists, I think mostly the external surface dust merely gets accelerated off of the surface. I'm sure they make an effort to keep that surface clean, but I'm not sure it's as crucial an issue as your post makes it out to be.

  5. Something wrong with those numbers on US Army May Relax Physical Requirements To Recruit Cyber Warriors · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There's something wrong with their numbers.

    There's no way that only 30% of Americans are high school graduates who are not obese and don't have criminal records. It's just not possible.

    The U.S. high school graduation rate is 80%. About 30% of the population have been arrested. Many of those will be found innocent, charges never pressed, or convicted of very minor charges, such that 8.5% of the population ends up with felony convictions. Does obesity account for all the rest?

    The stats they are using are ages 17-24. Is it possible they are skewed by the fact that many 17 and 18-year-olds simply haven't finished high school yet (even if they are on track to do so)?

  6. Another way to think of it on The Problem With Positive Thinking · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Positive thinkers already get some of the mental-benefit of the task being complete. Imagining being finished is just a little bit like being finished. That saps some of the motivation to finish, since they've already received part of the payoff. Negative thinkers have actually increased the payoff even more, because they get the additional payoff of having been wrong about their negativity.

  7. Re: mathematically equivalent ? on How Curved Spacetime Can Be Created In a Quantum Optics Lab · · Score: 1

    At the risk of being snarky, you seem to have no idea what you're talking about. So why did you bother with the post?

  8. Re:One crap audio brand battling with another on Despite Patent Settlement, Apple Pulls Bose Merchandise From Its Stores · · Score: 1

    Except to truly appreciate what the artist "meant", you'd have to use exactly the headphones they used when mixing. If they used Beats, and you use ones with "flat" response, you're still getting the "wrong" experience. Even more complicated, you really need to be using the headphones that an artist thought you'd be using. They might be using headphones with "flat" response in mixing, but purposefully dialing back on the bass knowing what the effect would be for fans listening through Beats, such that the experience the artist "meant" is best experienced through Beats.

    Probably makes the most sense if people just use the headphones that provide sound they like, and not try to act all self-righteous when posting on the internet about headphones.

  9. Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been on Despite Patent Settlement, Apple Pulls Bose Merchandise From Its Stores · · Score: 1

    I always think it's funny when people get really snarky making wrong grammar corrections.

    "Their" refers back to "Apple and Bose", although "stall" should be plural. The sentence is saying "so why should we care about which crap is pulled from Apple and Bose's respective stalls".

  10. Re:mathematically equivalent ? on How Curved Spacetime Can Be Created In a Quantum Optics Lab · · Score: 1

    Which is why this line was included in the description:

    "Creating this kind of curved spacetime in the lab won't reveal any new physics but it will allow researchers to study the behavior of existing laws under these conditions for the first time."

  11. Re:Not so much, maybe. on Independent Researchers Test Rossi's Alleged Cold Fusion Device For 32 Days · · Score: 1

    I know this is off-topic, but that girl is amazing.

    There's no one trick in there I haven't seen before, but the presentation is refreshingly new/fresh.

  12. Re:I don't think particulate contaminants evaporat on Antiperspirants Could Contribute to Particulate Pollution · · Score: 1

    First it evaporates. It photo-oxidizes once's its freely floating in the air.

  13. Re:I don't think particulate contaminants evaporat on Antiperspirants Could Contribute to Particulate Pollution · · Score: 1

    Have you read the article?

    I know... stupid question.

    The hypothesis is that evaporated siloxanes photo-oxidize (in the presence of hydroxyl radicals), then condense onto nanoparticles (that have been separately created by different sources), causing them to grow into the size range that's harmful for humans.

  14. Building materials? on Antiperspirants Could Contribute to Particulate Pollution · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This stuff is also heavily used in building materials -- sealants that keep water from soaking into concrete, for instance. I'd be curious to see why they dismiss such building materials as a source, focusing only on personal-care products. It's possible that there is simply so much more used in personal care products. But the one link that isn't slashdotted doesn't explain why the focus on personal-care products.

  15. Re:Your OWN air quality on Antiperspirants Could Contribute to Particulate Pollution · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This does not seem to have anything to do with method of application. The stuff evaporates off your skin into the air.

  16. Re:Signed Firmware on Hacking USB Firmware · · Score: 1

    The nerds are all off typing two-at-a-time on their keyboards. :)

  17. The future... on Nixie Wearable Drone Camera Flies Off Your Wrist · · Score: 3, Funny

    The future is now. And it's freaking cool, man.

    Oh, I'm sure some nay-sayers will be like "but who really needs this?"

    To which I say "need? Who cares about need?"

  18. I'm not saying it's aliens... on Spot ET's Waste Heat For Chance To Find Alien Life · · Score: 1

    obligatory picture of that crazy aliens guy goes here.

  19. Re:Right to be forgotten? on Facebook Experimenting With Blu-ray As a Storage Medium · · Score: 1

    The right to be forgotten should apply to Facebook as well. What it doesn't apply to is first-party stuff that gets covered by freedom of the press, as that is considered to trump the privacy freedom. Don't ask me how they decide whether or not to consider Facebook "press". I quickly get lost in the mind-boggling logic of telling Google not to list something in an index that is sitting publicly on a website.

  20. Re:Why not just use hard drives and then store... on Facebook Experimenting With Blu-ray As a Storage Medium · · Score: 1

    You could have a robot unplug/plug HDs, but once you're accepting the latency of disk changes and spin-up, I imagine Blu-Ray disks would be much, much cheaper than a similar capacity of HDs.

  21. Re:Get facts straight on Facebook Experimenting With Blu-ray As a Storage Medium · · Score: 1

    I think the point is that if you want access to stuff from an HD, it's got to be plugged into something. The more storage you have, the more of those "somethings" you need, along with the routers and logic to connect them all together. All of that stuff takes power, even when the HDs themselves are asleep.

    You could do something similar to the Blu-Ray setup, where a robot plugged/unplugged hard drives instead. But I'll bet once you're going to accept that kind of latency, a robotic Blu-ray juke-box with lots of Blu-Ray disks would be a whole lot cheaper than a robotic HD juke-box with lots of HDs (the lots of Blu-Ray disks vs lots of HDs being where the savings would really be found).

  22. Re:Everything old is new again. on Facebook Experimenting With Blu-ray As a Storage Medium · · Score: 1

    Tape may have better density, but Blu-Ray probably has better access time. Sounds like this is still stuff they want to have "live", they are just willing to have be a little "less live" than HD latencies.

  23. Re:So there is a problem... on Tesla Removes Mileage Limits On Drive Unit Warranty Program · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The point was that only the GM cars have the problem that heavy stuff attached to the key can turn your car off in the middle of driving down the road. It's especially a problem with rental cars, because they have heavy stuff attached to the keys as a matter of course.

  24. Re:ROI for drug development on "Secret Serum" Used To Treat Americans With Ebola · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There are government grants available for such research. Not all research is done by people looking for billion dollar paydays. Some people just want enough funding to get the research done and draw a salary.

  25. Appears elsewhere? on Qualcomm Takes Down 100+ GitHub Repositories With DMCA Notice · · Score: 1

    I don't know enough to comment on the validity of the claimed copyrights in general. But I do know one thing: The fact that material appears elsewhere online is not evidence that it is not copyrighted.

    The important question is not whether the stuff appears elsewhere. The important question is only whether Oracle's claimed copyright is real/valid.