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User: VolciMaster

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  1. Re:GMO trees... on What They Don't Tell You About Climate Change (economist.com) · · Score: 1

    need something not found in nature to grow -- thus preventing them from becoming an invasive species.

    Ah, yes the Lysine Contingency

  2. when AI *tries*? on When an AI Tries Writing Slashdot Headlines (tumblr.com) · · Score: 2

    You mean AI hasn't been writing /. headlines for years already?

  3. Code Warrior beat it 20 years ago on According To Star Trek: Discovery, Starfleet Still Runs Microsoft Windows (theverge.com) · · Score: 1

    Remember when you could use Code Warrior on your PowerBook to compile code for an alien supercomputer?

  4. Re:But 725$ for a Samsung is OK! on Ask Slashdot: Why Would Anyone Want To Spend $1,000 on a Smartphone? · · Score: 1

    For many, of course, they'll be looking to upgrade in 2 years. Between the two purchases, the income used toward a $1000 smartphone seems truly more "disposable".

    It's $41.66/month (when you use the device payment programs). That's less than what people are paying for their phone plans, cable/satellite subscriptions, internet service, and all kinds of other things

    Does that make a $1000 phone a smart purchase? Maybe. Maybe not. Depends on how much you plan to use it, what you plan to do with it, etc.

    But when you look at the - effective - device-as-a-service that you can do now (where you can upgrade every year for usually the same price (or only a small increase)), and that monthly fee becomes a highly-affordable option for lots of people.

    Effectively leasing a phone is very different from leasing a car -. you cannot reasonably expect a phone, as used by most people, to last more than 3-5 years, whereas you should reasonably expect a car to last 10-15 years with routine maintenance performed.

    that $2400 camera lens can last you a lifetime. An iPhone X you probably wouldn't use more than 4 years

    Odds are very good that you will not use that $2400 camera lens nearly as often as you'll use a phone. I'd wager the actual lifetime, when measured in used hours, for that camera lens is quite a bit less than the lifetime of a smartphone

  5. Sounds like Disclosure or Jurassic Park Who wants to browse the web visually?

  6. Re:Ahem. on Virtual Reality Experiment Wants To Put White People In Black Bodies · · Score: 2

    You want the hair, too, eh?

  7. Surrogates? on Virtual Reality Experiment Wants To Put White People In Black Bodies · · Score: 1

    Isn't this, more or less, the concept of the movie Surrogates?

  8. Re:An election this close? on Can Data Mining Win a Presidential Campaign? · · Score: 1

    I think the race is close, but the percentages are probably fixed. In short, Obama will likely win because certain groups would never not vote for him. Most women, the huge majority of blacks, Hispanics (other than Cubans) and union voters will simply vote for him because they won't vote for a Republican. The Republicans have their own base that will not budge either. There are independents, but they have probably already decided too, or are staying home.

    In short, the Democratic base is likely to be slightly bigger than the Republican one, so the Democrats will win, but the actual percentages will be close in an absolute sense

    Which really means it will depend on where the "majority" comes from. Remember, in this country we do NOT vote for president - we vote for electors who vote for president (the Electoral College). A "majority" does not guarantee a win.

  9. Re:Nuke it from orbit on Ask Slashdot: How To Clean Up My Work Computer Before I Leave? · · Score: 1

    That is correct - when reimaging is not an option, it's a [close] second

  10. Re:Nuke it from orbit on Ask Slashdot: How To Clean Up My Work Computer Before I Leave? · · Score: 4, Interesting
    For a Mac or Linux machine, I run a dd from /dev/urandom into a file until it crashes (that way apps are still "ok" .. but a reimage is an option, too).

    For Windows, I either reimage myself, or erase/uninstall everything and then run a simple script to dump 1s into a file till it crashes.

    If you're really worried people are going to be poking around your laptop, don't use it for personal work. It IS a work machine, after all.

    If you "need" to use the work machine for personal work, do it in a VM. You can move the VM off later, and then just overwrite that part of the disk on the host.

  11. Re:How long before Russia and China adopt the tech on The World's First Supercavitating Boat? · · Score: 1

    travel in a speed of over 100 knots per hour

    That's a heluvan acceleration! Knots == nautical miles per hour

  12. Re:WWWBD? on SEC Calls For Review of Facebook IPO · · Score: 1

    Thing is, in the Cayman islands you still pay taxes, just not income taxes. The people who use it as tax haven only exist there on paper so they avoid both the income taxes and the taxes involved with living there,.. though they also do not consume any resources there either. So for people who actually live there the tax burden (and services) are pretty comparable to the US.... but all people outside the territory see is 'no income tax' and make all sorts of examples from there.

    And if you're a US citizen, you're still taxed federally based on how you make and where

  13. Re:Mabye you should look elsewhere? on NY Times: 'FBI Foils Its Own Terrorist Plots' · · Score: 1

    ...Come on, they just admitted they're not very good at their actual assignment so they make something up to look good..

    Or maybe, just maybe, they don't have any real work to do, and are instead worried they'll lose their cushy government gig, so they make crap up to stay employed

  14. Re:Blatant corruption as usual on Congress Asks Patent Office To Consider Secret Patents · · Score: 1

    Though I'm not intimately familiar with the business workings of Ancient Babylon (and other civilizations), the vast majority had private enterprise (ie capitalism) in place long before the feudal system

  15. Re:Of course. on TSA Defends Pat Down of 4-Year-Old Girl · · Score: 1
    Then wikipedia has failed you - the Tamil Tigers did this, too: http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/may/21/newsid_2504000/2504739.stm

    It later emerged that a female Tamil Tiger (LTTE) suicide bomber had assassinated Rajiv Gandhi.

    Saw a great film about this in college, too

  16. cicadian rhythms? on Drugged Honeybees Do the Time Warp · · Score: 1

    What is this about a bee's cicadian rhythms? Bees are nothing at all like cicadas!

  17. Re:I'm an asshole too on US Unhappy With Australians Storing Data On Australian Shores · · Score: 1

    I try to never "thrust the US government" anywhere, myself - they tend to 'thrust' back

  18. so is this good or bad? on Scientists Discover Link Between Trees and Electricity · · Score: 1
    Negative ions at double the concentration sounds bad (who like negativity?). But positive ions sound good (I like positive).

    So - is this a Good Thing or a Bad Thing? Or is it just an observation?

  19. Re:heh on Why Linux Can't 'Sell' On the Desktop · · Score: 3, Insightful

    My experience is that Windows is missing lots of features. No SSH support; no support for filesystems other than NTFS and FAT; no low level disk tools (dd); poor NFS support; doesn't come with a decent text editor.... I could carry on, but you get the idea.

    fwiw, most people just do not care about what filesystem they run on. It doesn't matter to the vast majority of end-users. For that matter, it doesn't matter to an awful lot of the server world, either - if it really did, Window Server would not have the footprint in enterprise computing that it does.

    While I'd love to have something like ssh for Windows standard, the fact of the matter is that Windows is a GUI environment, and ssh access to that just doesn't make sense - especially when compared to RDP (which, btw, is quite secure).

  20. Re:It has to happen on The Risk of a Meltdown In the Cloud · · Score: 1

    At some point, there is going to be a massive failure. Someone big is going to lose *all* of their data. I still don't trust virtualization despite it being years old. It's still nascent in the grand scheme.

    Someone wake me when they invent the holodeck.

    "nascent in the grand scheme" ... of what, exactly?

    it's been in use in computation [nearly] since the beginning

  21. Re:How much energy? on Battery Turns Saltwater Into Drinking Water · · Score: 1

    Of course, it only works in parts of the world that get a lot of sunshine, so for example it would be a non-starter in northern Ohio.

    I think the fact that Ohio is not near any source of saltwater would be the real non-starter.

    Love how you excised the OP's context-clarifying statement that said, "Not that we need desalination in Ohio"

    Still pretty darn funny, though

  22. Re:The Obvious answer on Ask Slashdot: Open Source vs Proprietary GIS Solution? · · Score: 1

    I'd like to be worth $20K/month, but I'm not

    Are you sure ? If you're making $60k a year, the overhead in terms of benefits, insurance, employer half of ssi, etc bring you to about a total cost of $120k. That's $20k per month.

  23. Re:Chicken! on Wikipedia Still Set For Full Blackout Wednesday · · Score: 1

    Shut it down for a week and you'll be able to almost hear the roar of a billion college students having their term papers failed!

    A billion college students? Since when did 1/7 people go to college around the world?

  24. Re:Chose winner with weighted random sample. on Mathematics Says Romney and Santorum Tied In Iowa · · Score: 1

    Or do a ranking system - favorite to least favorite, and keep *every* candidate in until election day: no primaries, just an election. You get the number of points as you position on the list, lowest score wins. So, with ten candidates, you can get from 1-10 points from any given voter. If you have a tie after round one, you take the lowest three point getters and go again.

  25. Re:Does anyone really care? on Mathematics Says Romney and Santorum Tied In Iowa · · Score: 1

    Seriously, it's Iowa, the only thing this one's good for is showing who definitely should not run, and even that's questionable.

    They really should run all the caucuses in just a few days. There's no good reason, other than lots of opportunities to bribe, err, donate to your favorite candidate, that these should run more than a day or two for all 50 states. But, that would go against the political machine and those that keep it greased purposes.

    I've never understood why caucuses and primaries aren't run all on the same day across the country ... splitting it up the way they do makes for a very lopsided outcome