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User: JoeMerchant

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Comments · 6,280

  1. Re:Correct me if I'm wrong... on Making It Hard For Extraterrestrials To Hear Us · · Score: 1

    What about light pollution? Not sure about the absolute lower limits of detection, but if anyone swings a probe inside Neptune's orbit with even our lame levels of detection capability, they're going to see funny patterns of optical light emission on the 3rd planet, like a fungal growth or something.

  2. Re:This has its perks on Making It Hard For Extraterrestrials To Hear Us · · Score: 1

    Scary, yes, but if there is no FTL travel, the probability of this being a problem becomes vanishingly small. You're talking about a 200 year "problem" window out of a 4 billion year development time, there are a lot of stars in the galaxy, but I don't think we've got 20 million habitable planets within 200 light years.

  3. Re:Depends on specialization and responsibilities on Is Programming a Lucrative Profession? · · Score: 1

    Check rates of pay at odesk.com - C++ tops out around $30/hour...

  4. Re:"Nuclear" Winter on Humans Nearly Went Extinct 1.2M Years Ago · · Score: 4, Interesting

    But, the effect was spread on all H. Sapiens level species more or less equally, giving the more adaptable group the advantage of a sparse landscape. If the near-extinction event hadn't happened, H. Sapiens would likely have been out competed by entrenched specialists.

  5. Re:Reeedeeeculous on Heat Engines Shrunk By Seven Orders of Magnitude · · Score: 1

    I doubt they're trying to oxidize fuel in that volume - more likely they are transferring heat from one volume of gas to another.

  6. Re:FTL Information? on FTL Currents May Power Pulsar Beams · · Score: 1

    Take a laser, point it at the moon, sweep it across quickly, your laser dot can move faster than the speed of light, but the photons that create it do not. This is a similar phenomenon, except cooler because it is the emission point that is moving FTL, just like a supersonic aircraft that emits sound while it travels at supersonic speed - the sound never travels faster than the speed of sound, only the emitter.

  7. Re:"Free" like I say on US Blocking Costa Rican Sugar Trade To Force IP Laws · · Score: 1

    You no longer live in a true democracy,

    I never did, lobbyists were in control long before I was born.

  8. Re:Dark background on Programming With Proportional Fonts? · · Score: 1

    Did I mention how old I was??? Them newfangled IDE autoformatters are a) one more thing to learn b) not really capable of reading my mind. I do occasionally break "formatting syntax" rules in the interest of visual clarity. I stick to a standard style, unless the standard style is obfuscating what I am doing in the code - which happens more often than you might imagine. These "custom style" blocks will often turn 10 pages of repetitive code riddled with copy paste error potential into a single page table where the errors literally jump off the page at you.

  9. Re:Dark background on Programming With Proportional Fonts? · · Score: 1

    in conclusion, go with what you're comfortable with; what do a bunch of dorks on slashdot know anyway?

    Yep, let me open with "GET OFF MY LAWN!"

    As the eyes age, all that extra light from a white background constricts the pupils, which makes it easier to focus without corrective lenses... all a matter of personal taste and physiology.

    On the other hand, true tabs in source code is a continued source of annoyance in my life - yes, tabs are superior to spaces, short term. Longer term, that source code will be opened on different editors where different settings make the tabs seriously annoying. And, why the tab rant? Because, the only way I would program with proportional fonts is with tab alignment for "tabular" blocks of code.

    Fixed space fonts are just easier to manipulate, especially with column/block selections - and if your code doesn't need column manipulation, you're not fully using one of the two dimensions available to you to organize your information.

    So, is it 14% faster to read a proportionally spaced novel, or 14% faster for an experienced programmer to read a block of code in proportional fonts? I know it's more than 14% slower to correct a hosed up file full of wrongly tab-spaced code, even if it is a sort of zen-like walkthrough to fix the spacing while getting familiar with the code.

  10. Re:High Fructose Corn Syrup on Organ Damage In Rats From Monsanto GMO Corn · · Score: 1

    If things haven't changed, UK coke uses cane sugar, not HFCS.

    US coke would too probably if corn weren't so heavily subsidised with taxpayer money.

    And so, I'm just a little bit sadder to be living in the U.S. after knowing this. I thought by now we would have corrupted the whole world with our "cheap corn" output, glad that we haven't.

  11. Re:How Thick is the Display? on Forget LCDs and LEDs, Here Come LPDs · · Score: 1

    Re: both refresh rate and resolution, if you want more, just add money (additional laser/scanners with nasty alignment issues, etc.)

  12. Re:How Thick is the Display? on Forget LCDs and LEDs, Here Come LPDs · · Score: 1

    My current display is approximately 3/16" thick, and it will bend up to 1/2" if you push it - so, I'm reasonably certain that the laser and mirror arrangement won't do that. Whirr is in the ears of the beholder - not a problem on a notebook that already runs a wind tunnel past the processor(s), but I'm kind of a silent freak in my living room, any noise is more than what my current LCD TV produces.

  13. Re:Mitsubishi LaserVue on Forget LCDs and LEDs, Here Come LPDs · · Score: 1

    I suspect your answer lies in the respective patent portfolios - and my guess is that the new guys have a phosphor formulation that works at high brightness levels, which would not be suited to living room use, or consumer price points.

  14. Re:phosphor burn? on Forget LCDs and LEDs, Here Come LPDs · · Score: 1

    Re:phosphor burn?

    Depends, if phosphor burn was due to constant electron pummeling and photons are gentler, then maybe not. I suspect they will have some effect, though - especially if they're achieving high brightness on static high contrast displays.

  15. Re:do not want on Forget LCDs and LEDs, Here Come LPDs · · Score: 1

    As a company, they're targeting the deep pocket markets (big displays - really big from the sound of the article). I don't read anything particularly expensive in their description, maybe the high power laser (or the fact that they're manufacturing in Massachusetts), for now they're touting low energy to operate and component longevity as their value-adds.

    In other words, the investors don't give a damn about selling you an inexpensive display for your peasant self.

  16. Re:How Thick is the Display? on Forget LCDs and LEDs, Here Come LPDs · · Score: 1

    Strikes me that we're back to the scanning electron gun, but this time it's photons... there will be a "whirr" from the scanning mirrors, otherwise it sounds like a reasonable idea - just need to put the phosphor on a reasonably rigid substrate and you're good to go. They'll never be as thin (or flexible) as my current LED backlit notebook screen.

  17. Re:Politics of GMO on Organ Damage In Rats From Monsanto GMO Corn · · Score: 1

    Check the history of tobacco money - they jumped into processed foods in a big way when the anti-smoking sentiment got strong in the U.S.

    Of course, those were all good people in the tobacco industry, straight shooters who were concerned about the general welfare of, well, themselves at least.

  18. Re:Ubiquitous Corn ... depending on what you eat on Organ Damage In Rats From Monsanto GMO Corn · · Score: 1

    If people don't drink soda, eat candy, or eat meat (fed on said corn), isn't there a sort of Darwinian solution to this? It seems like all you really need to do is not eat crap.

    Yeah, o.k., if we spend all our time growing our own food, we just might be able to do that (not eat crap.)

    We have a pretty strong wheat (gluten) allergy in the family, which cuts out about 60% of the products on the grocery store shelves and leaves corn as a prominent component of the diet - if you count meat, dairy, eggs, etc. as corn derivative products that pretty much leaves fruits and vegetables as your entire dietary choice, and being that restrictive has its own problems in nutrition.

  19. Re:Not completely surprising. on Organ Damage In Rats From Monsanto GMO Corn · · Score: 1

    If they are releasing a new never before ingested product onto the market shouldn't they be forced into similar regulations as pharmaceuticals?

    Should? yes. Do? no.

    Foods currently have a much lower regulatory scrutiny than drugs.

  20. Re:High Fructose Corn Syrup on Organ Damage In Rats From Monsanto GMO Corn · · Score: 1

    I'm so glad that Iowa corn lobby influence can't reach over here to the UK.

    Does anyone in the UK drink Coke? Are you sure they don't import the HFCS? At current subsidy and tariff rates (and fuel costs), I'd bet it's cheaper to ship US sourced HFCS to the UK than it is to make it locally.

  21. Re:Oh God, not the bourbon. on Organ Damage In Rats From Monsanto GMO Corn · · Score: 1

    tinfoil hat on

    But, if the insecticide components increase crop yield per acre while reducing costs, and don't cause any provable human deaths in the current business quarter, then it's all good for the shareholders, many of whom are also heavily invested in the biomedical companies who are diligently working on treatments for the syndromes brought on by these foods.

    tinfoil hat off

    See also: Food, Inc. available on Netflix to watch instantly.

  22. Re:hey! on Does a Lame E-Mail Address Really Matter? · · Score: 1

    Nice plug for your comic, but there's a big gap between cool and clueless. aol.com implies some level of tech cluelessness, or at least an apathy toward stuff that could be better. Yeah, ImAProfessional@Impressive.org is certainly blowing smoke where it just won't help and JoeFlysJets@ThunderMountainRange.Net might be cooler. Personally, I think things like e-mail addresses, fonts, paper color, clothing choice, etc. should be invisible during a hiring/interview process, if the interviewer is noticing that, you're usually doing something wrong. Personal hobbies, interests, etc. can be relevant and positive information, but not when it's something like upChuck@mondayMorning.com.

  23. Re:yes on Does a Lame E-Mail Address Really Matter? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    In 2001, the majority of job applications I received started including e-mail addresses, and, surprisingly to me, the majority of those addresses were far less professional than the cover letters and resumes they were on - things like "hotbabe74@aol.com" and "stonerick@hotmail.com". How could these people not think that something like that makes an impression?

    I guess the same way that the nerds of the world have always thought that a mustard stain on the collar is no big deal.

    The ratio of immature e-mail addresses has dropped over the years, but the clueless still abound. I especially loved the one who gave me a link to his homepage which detailed how he was an ongoing target of the mkultra project, thanks for the heads up man.

  24. Re:cultural information on A Peek Into Netflix Queues · · Score: 3, Funny

    You meta-moderate on Slashdot, I can tell.

  25. Re:cultural information on A Peek Into Netflix Queues · · Score: 2, Informative

    The "Milk compliment" would be Fireproof, a highly conservative movie which seemed to only go over big in Atlanta and Dallas.