Slashdot Mirror


User: Goonie

Goonie's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
2,139
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 2,139

  1. Re:Smart guns - a smart idea on Hardly Anyone Is Buying 'Smart Guns' · · Score: 1

    You do understand that the only people gun control has any effect on are the law abiding citizens and they're the least likely to commit gun crimes, yes?

    That's not actually true. While a relatively small number of hardened criminals in Australia use illegal firearms for their crimes, the vast majority of junkies, teenage hotheads, small-time drug dealers, and so on do not. Even more importantly, they mostly don't have concealable handguns that they can carry on a city street.

    Consequently, our murder rate is a tiny fraction yours is.

  2. Do the ICBMs still work? on Fear of Thinking War Machines May Push U.S. To Exascale · · Score: 1

    Yes they do.
    Does anybody have strategic BMD yet, or anything approaching it?
    No they don't.
    Does any nation have the remotest intention of attacking the territory of the United States?
    No they don't.
    Can we go back to sleep now without giving this guy enough money to fund thousands of postdocs doing more useful things with their time?
    Yes we can.

  3. CIA helped build up the cult of monarchy on In Praise of the King: 1.7M Social Media Comments In Thailand · · Score: 2, Informative

    The King of Thailand has long had an officially-backed, and in early years American-assisted, cult of personality. It's illegal to criticise the king in Thailand, and hundreds of people are convicted of insulting the King every year, and in many cases thrown in jail for extended periods of time.

  4. Drone only on Hybrid RotorWing Design Transitions From Fixed To Rotary Wing Mid-Flight · · Score: 1

    It seems to me that the transition between rotary and fixed wing modes is a bit "exciting". Can't imagine that you'll get pilots prepared to try it, let alone passengers. Maybe it'll be useful for drones, if anybody needs a VTOL drone with a long-range cruise mode.

  5. Instantly readable display on Ask Slashdot: What Features Belong In a 'Smartwatch'? · · Score: 2

    The only point of a device like this is that it gives you a UI that doesn't require fishing through a pocket or handbag. However, pretty much all smart watches have foundered because the screens couldn't display enough useful information beyond the time, and the buttons were too small and fiddly to be convenient. Is there enough useful information that you don't want to fish out your smartphone for that you'd be prepared to get one of these? I dunno. Short messages (SMS, Twitter), appointment notifications, some of the location specific stuff proposed on the Google Goggles video maybe. And it's a bit less creepy than Google Goggles, too.

  6. Looking at their stats their pilots can produce about 6W/kg for 2 minutes with the aid of those handcranks. That's not particularly impressive, to be honest. Wander down to a club cycling race and you'll find plenty of guys that can do better than that. If the point of the exercise was purely to break the record, the assistance of an elite athlete or two would make the job a whole lot easier.

  7. Surely you troll on Domestic Drilling Doesn't Decrease Gasoline Prices · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yes, supply and demand is important, but you may remember that a few other things happened in late 2008? Things that might have had a little more impact on the supply and demand balance than the piddling amount of oil that offshore drilling might produce.

  8. Another word on Domestic Drilling Doesn't Decrease Gasoline Prices · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Rubbish.

    Storing large quantities of oil is very expensive, unlike, say, gold or diamonds. You can't hoard the stuff. Ultimately, the stuff has to be sold to consumers, and if high prices drive demand down (and demand for fuel is elastic, despite a lot of nonsense to the contrary) speculators will lose their shirt.

    The reason why oil are prices are at historicallly high levels, and have been for the past few years, is that global demand has not kept up with global supply, mostly because China and to a lesser extent other parts of the developing world is buying more of it. Incidentally, this is exactly the same reason why a bunch of other commodities, including other fossil fuels, metals, and agricultural products, have gone up in price.

  9. What works? on X-Prize Founder Wants Ideas For Fixing Education · · Score: 1

    As in many areas, perhaps the United States doesn't need to invent anything radically new, just copy what works elsewhere.

  10. may work differently in Arts. on Academics Not Productive Enough? Sack 'em · · Score: 1

    As I understand it, a number of the academics in the firing line for this work outside science and engineering. I wouldn't proclaim to know what a reasonable minimum output of a history or music theory academic is.

  11. No, it's not on Obama Pushes For Cheaper Pennies · · Score: 1
    It's an artifact of moderate inflation accumulating over a very long span of time without a rebasing of the currency.

    If you really want valuable pennies, pass a law that says the official tender of the United States is changing to the "New Dollar" (or, to get the GOP on side, "the Reagan") and that the Federal Reserve will exchange 1 US dollar for a 1/100 of a Reagan.

  12. Problems with this... on Doctors "Fire" Vaccine Refusers · · Score: 0
    I'm glad you and your endocrinologist are able to manage your health so effectively.

    But I don't think I could possibly be happy with medical treatment provided under the terms you've described. What would be your reaction if your endocrinologist told you, say, you had to give up having orgasms because it increased your risk of blindness at age 70 by 1%?

  13. The USA *can* afford it on Candidate Gingrich Pushes a Moon Base, Other Space Initiatives · · Score: 1
    If the US government decides it wants to go back to the moon, it can. A NASA moon program is small change in the context of the US federal budget.

    The question is whether the money would be well spent compared to, I dunno, just about anything else.

  14. Do you know what the spending was. on Candidate Gingrich Pushes a Moon Base, Other Space Initiatives · · Score: 1
    Much of that is driven by demographics. As the population ages, health care and social security spending goes up. As health care technology improves, health care spending goes up. Military spending also went up, but that's actually relatively small beer.

    The long-run US federal deficit is an issue because of health care costs. Social security will push things up a bit, but only a bit (in fraction of GDP terms) Everything else, including NASA, is essentially noise.

    So if you're arguing for spending to be kept at current levels, you're essentially proposing to get rid of some part of Mediare, Medicaid, or VA health (the most cost-effective health care system in the US, by the way, and 100% socialized medicine).. But here's the great part. While the cost to government might go down - your "spending" sacred cow - costs to individuals are going to go up more, because that tax-eating behemoth the federal government buys healthcare a lot more efficiently than the private sector does.

    Implicit in Republican proposals to cut healthcare costs is the notion that poor people should just fuck off and die. The only "death panel" necessary is the one that checks whether your credit card is good.. Which would indeed solve the healthcare cost issues. Try articulating that in public, though.

  15. Union doesn't like A380s on World's Largest Passenger Plane May Be Unsafe, Some Say · · Score: 3, Informative
    Some of the more alarmist comments about the A380 are coming from the aircraft engineers union IIRC.

    There's a context here - the A380 heavy maintenance is not done in Australia (and so not done by their members) and Qantas and the union are currently in a massive industrial bunfight.

    So any negative comments about A380 safety have to be taken in that context.

  16. Don't even have to... on Ask Slashdot: Mirrorless, Interchangeable Lens Camera Advice? · · Score: 1
    DSLRs have "point-and-click" modes that are as easy to use as a compact. The only possible reason I can see to buy something other than a DSLR camera if you're even moderately serious about photography is the size and weight of the camera (+ lenses).

    For idiot-proof travel, a DSLR + a Sigma or Tamron "superzoom" will get you excellent pictures, and when you get home you can fit more specialized lenses for whatever it is you want to do.

  17. Mobilizing supporters on Slow Start For Mobile In 2012 Presidential Campaign · · Score: 2
    The point of having an app like this, is not so much direct persuasion to vote for a candidate, it's to help motivate and organize committed supporters.

    American elections are, in large part, decided not by persuading independents to vote for one candidate or the other, it's by which party can get its ideologically-aligned supporters to the polls.

    Committed supporters can be very useful in that - you feed them what are in effect talking points to persuade their less committed friends to come and vote; it makes organizing volunteers to, say, drive likely voters to the polls easier, and so on and so forth. That's where a mobile app might be useful.

  18. So? on Lax Security At Russian Rocket Plant · · Score: 1

    The Soyuz rocket family is now 45 years old, and liquid-fuelled rockets are of limited military utility. Virtually all modern missiles use solid-fuelled rockets because you don't have to sit there with the rocket on the launchpad waiting to fill it up. As such, the security implications of anyone getting a peek at a Soyuz would seem to be rather small.

  19. Water shouldn't be that hard to get... on Where Would Earth-Like Planets Find Water? · · Score: 1

    Hydrogen makes up roughly 75% of the Milky Way, by mass, apparently. Oxygen is a little rarer, about 1% of the Milky Way, but it's the third-most common element. When you put the two of them together, they form water pretty readily.

  20. BFD on Israeli Spyware Sold To Iran · · Score: 1

    If this firm had sold the Iranians the blueprints to something actually security-sensitive, there might be a reason to care. But, FFS, what's Iran going to do with this - inspect Israeli-origin IP packets to death?

  21. Not mutually exclusive on In Nuclear Power, Size Matters · · Score: 1
    1. There's a great deal of work being done on energy efficiency already
    2. We've already deployed a lot of energy efficiency technology.
    3. Even so, making large absolute cuts in energy usage is unlikely (it hasn't happened anywhere).
    4. America's population is still growing rapidly. So even if per-capita energy usage goes down, absolute usage will go up.
    5. Even if developed countries do make substantial absolute cuts in energy usage, it's unrealistic for the developing world to do so.
  22. Yes it can on Why We Need More Programming Languages · · Score: 2

    If we're nitpicking, C is not strictly a subset of C++, but it's close enough. Anyway, your argument is flawed. If a feature is unnecessary and makes programs harder to write, debug, and maintain, a language that omits it can be superior to one that includes it. Let's imagine, for instance, a "comefrom" construct that you can insert in arbitrary locations in your code. Would a language that supported "comefrom" be superior to one that doesn't?

  23. Offsets are problematic on The Problem With Carbon-Cutting Programs · · Score: 4, Informative

    For those that don't bother to read TFA, the one-sentence summary is that "offsets", where rather than paying the tax companies pay for credits obtained for emission-cutting programs in agriculture or in developing countries, are often dubious because the "offsets" are not properly audited and often just pay for activities that would have occurred anyway without the subsidy This is relatively easy to fix. Just tighten up the rules on offsets. It doesn't damn emissions trading in general.

  24. Not gunna happen this way on NASA's Next Mission: Deep Space · · Score: 4, Insightful

    SLS exists by Congressional mandate, to send cash to ATK and the other Shuttle contractors. It'll probably never fly.

  25. Will that still be true? on B&N Pummels Microsoft Patent Claims With Prior Art · · Score: 1

    I wonder how much of Apple's determination to use IP to force competitors out of the marketplace was due to Steve Jobs personally. A more pragmatic boss might take a different view.