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User: Hlewagastir

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Comments · 17

  1. Re:Commoditizing teachers on Stanford Classes Now Available on iTunes · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Wow, that'd be great. I can see it now: Student A, who has plenty of money, pays for regular "tutoring" sessions with the instructor, and thus recieves an excellent education. In contrast, student B is barely scraping by because he can't afford tutoring very often, since now that University is "free", there's no need for the government to offer financial aid, or at the very least, it can be drastically reduced, thus creating an economically stratified society the likes of which hasn't been seen since pre-englightenment Europe. Wow, where do I sign up? Just curious though, if the students aren't paying tuition any more, who is paying the professors to record lectures? I guess we could just hire a professor to record the lecture once, and then replay it for the next 20 years or so, kinda like a textbook. Awe hell, I've got it, let's just pay voice actors to read the text book out loud, and then distribute that to students, and call it a college education. Of course, with zero student contact outside of paid tutoring sessions, it might be hard for the instructor to maintain any semblance of objectivity when it comes time to grade all the essay papers at the end of the semester. I mean, are you really going to fail your meal ticket when there is a direct correlation between how often they show up and how much you make? And then there's the issue of who's going to pay the instructor to do all the administrative work, i.e. grading. If the sum of all the knowledge you gained in college could be replicated by a couple books on tape and a tutor, you got fleeced.

  2. Re:Why you want to watch the ads on Tivo To Also Offer Ads Your Way · · Score: 1

    Sure, most commercials are annoying and deserve to be skipped, but some are actually entertaining, interesting, and (rarely) even informative.

    You've hit the nail on the head. Advertisers seem to have this strange belief that we should all have to watch commercials even if they are bad. If commercials were entertaining, interesting, or even -gasp informative, people might actually be willing to watch a few now and again. Instead we have crappy, idiotic advertising that the ad execs are trying their damnedest to force us to watch by whatever means possible. These are people who probably mistook A Clockwork Orange as a creative training film.

    There might be something to allowing consumers to go to an advertiser's section on their PVR and select ads to watch, it would at least force advertisers to compete with one another for entertainment value, to get you to watch their ad, rather than that of their competitors. If it were implemented properly, which it won't be, this could be a good thing. Ad's would have to compete for viewership just like the shows themselves. Some people watch the Super Bowl every year just for the commercials, why wouldn't this model work for everyday viewing? Make it entertaining enough, and people will watch. What an ass-backward system that the advertisers get pissy when we don't want to watch their stupid commercials. Perhaps they should take a look at themselves in the mirror and ask themselves if it's really the viewers who are to blame.

  3. Re:Hmm... on Diebold Threatens to Pull Out of North Carolina · · Score: 1

    The problem with that is that the votes get counted by a human being and human beings have prejudances. Anybody who tells you that they are 100% impartial is lying. sic. This is why you have observers, e.g. a Republican and a Democrat, looking over the shoulders of the counters to make sure things are kosher. It works for Europe, why can't it work here? I used to live in Austria, and as I recall, elections were done by handwritten ballot. Results were usually finalized within a few hours of the polls closing.

  4. Re:Bring your own container! on Barenaked USB Drive · · Score: 1

    errmmm..not to be a wise aleck or anything, but .shouldn't .25/gallon be 1.25 dollars for a five gallon container? Twelve bucks seems a little steep for water. That costs almost as much as five gallons of milk, complete with containers.

  5. Incorporating limits liability. on Texas Sues Sony BMG over Rootkit · · Score: 1

    As a corporation, Sony's employees would be very difficult to charge criminally with the actions of the corporation. IANAL but as I understand it, the whole purpose of incorporating a business is to limit legal liability to the people who run the company. That way if the company gets sued, the principal officers don't end up being bankrupted, or for that matter sentenced to jail time for the actions of the corporation. Of course, some would argue that this is what makes corporations so evil.

  6. Re:Obligatory... on Man Cures Himself of HIV? · · Score: 1

    Who are you who are so wise in the ways of science?

  7. Isn't tin toxic? on Smart Optical Fibers Could Save Lives · · Score: 2

    I'm sure they've considered problems such as this, but it occurs to me that tin isn't exactly good for the human body, is it really wise to run what amounts to a wire sheathed with tin into the body, particularly when the system is designed so that the tin will begin to melt if the system is about to fail, thereby releasing tin into the blood stream? On the other hand, the tin sheathing should help protect the fiber optic cable from mind controlling signals from the government much better than aluminum would.

  8. Re:How often does this happen? on Smart Optical Fibers Could Save Lives · · Score: 5, Informative

    AFAIK lasik doesn't make use of fiber optics, the application for this, as I understand it is the use of fiber optics to guide high intensity laser beams internally to attack tumors directly without the need for highly invasive, potentially dangerous surgeries. The problem with using fiber optics in the past, and the reason why this has not been done, is that fiber optic cables can fail, and "leak" the energy from the laser beam into other nearby organs, potentially causing grave damage. This development allows one to detect when a fiber optic cable is about to fail, and shut down the system before severe damage is done, allowing doctors to make use of a technology which was not previously available to them due to concerns about safety.

  9. Re:What about pollution? on Arianespace Ready for Liftoff · · Score: 1

    Yeah, you're absolutely right, I think I'll go out and buy myself a land yacht, knowing that no matter what, driving to the grocery store in it will pollute the environment far less than a rocket launch. All sarcasm aside, methinks when you add up all the cars on the road today and how much they pollute in chorus, you'll find that rocket launches are the least of our concerns, not to mention that AFAIK a large portion of the propellant burned by many space craft is a H + 02 reaction, which doesn't exactly create much pollution.

  10. Solution: A gun with nearly unlimited ammo. on Space Lichens · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I would hazard to guess the odds of ejecta striking another planet at much worse than 1:1,000,000. Be that as it may, if I were given a gun that could shoot 1 billion bullets in the stadium, and I fired those bullets randomly while blindfolded, I would be very surprised Not to have hit the target a few decades later when I expended all of my bullets. Just the same with the example of a planet ejecting material over the millenia. It is highly unlikely for any one rock to hit anything, however the odds of one out of an astronomical number of rocks to hit another planet becomes significantly more plausible.

  11. RTFA on Space Lichens · · Score: 1

    The lichen survived for fifteen days in space, were returned to Earth, and resumed thriving after undergoing a dormant period while exposed to space. This means that the lichen can survive for _at least_ 15 days, it is entirely possible that they can survive much longer but that was outside of the scope of this experiment. Don't be too quick to assume that the scientists running the experiment are so much more obtuse than you apparently consider yourself to be.

  12. Re:Think Defense Research on No More Science on the ISS Until Further Notice · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Somehow I doubt the US government, as tightfisted as it is with information, would turn the ISS into an "area 51" for space militarization. I'm sure the countries which helped bear the burden of getting the damned thing up there in the first place would love that. They do after all have their own keys to the apartment, so to speak. I hope this was intended as sarcasm.

  13. Pro Bono on RIAA Suit Rejected With Prejudice · · Score: 1

    As I understood it, the lawyer took this case Pro Bono, which means, in effect, that there are no legal fees for the defendant. All this did was prevent the lawyer from charging the RIAA for his time.

  14. Bingo on Music Labels May Seek Higher Download Prices · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You see, if they make it painful enough to buy tracks online, we'll all revert back to the old model of taking it up the rear at our local record store for a 25 cent chunk of plastic. Online music sales scare the crap out of the recording industry because they become obsolete the second somebody can simply make their music available online to whomever wants to download it. If recording industry can kill online music sales early, they won't slowly fade away into obscurity as recording artists choose other venues to promote their wares. iTunes has somehow, despite the industries best intentions, (through extremely high prices for what you're actually getting), become a viable alternative to the old way of getting music. Therefore, they raise the price even higher to discourage sales. If the price is high enough, people will return to the old business model.

  15. NOW they want to profit off of others??? on Music Labels May Seek Higher Download Prices · · Score: 1

    "now they want to profit on top of all of others hard work" What exactly is new about this? This is what they do, profit off of other people's work. From day one, this has been the overriding purpose of the recording industry. Pay an artist a (relatively) miniscule amount of money to create a CD, and then charge an exorbitant fee to the public, while at the same time screwing over the musician who was stupid enough to sign a contract with them in the first place.

  16. Re:Read the source instead of the article for trut on U.S. Scientists Say They Are Told to Alter Finding · · Score: 1

    And if the DC-n crashed thirty percent of the time, would the media be sensationalist to report a history of crashes?

  17. Old technology, but not obsolete. on How GPS Is Killing Lighthouses · · Score: 1

    Great idea, and while we're at it, why not kill all those pesky lights on airport runways. I mean, honestly, all the planes have GPS right? They can land just fine in the dark.
    I've been sailing most of my life. GPS does not replace aids to navigation, but rather supplements them. Any boater who is 100% reliant on electronic navigation is a hazard. GPS can be finicky. A hand bearing compass and a chart, along with the skill to make use of them, are extremely important to this day, but can only function when one has objects such as lighthouses to make fixes on. I hope Germany's actions are not a precursor to similar changes in the rest of the world.