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User: jbengt

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  1. Re:what a difference a day makes on Nearly 2,000 Chicago Flights Canceled After Worker Sets Fire At Radar Center · · Score: 1

    The people you're talking about go through a ton of screening before being allowed onto an aircraft.

    If by "a ton of screening" you mean a fingerprint check and signing a statement saying you haven't been convicted of felonies like murder, arson, & hijacking in the last ten years, then yeah, a ton of screening.

  2. Re: Taxing the Congested Skies on Nearly 2,000 Chicago Flights Canceled After Worker Sets Fire At Radar Center · · Score: 1

    You do realize that most of the taxes and fees on your airline ticket go to things like building, maintaining, and staffing airports, traffic control centers, etc? So these are legitimate expenses of running an airline that would be built into the cost of a ticket one way or another.

  3. Re:Sounds "third-world" like... on US Patent Office Seeking Consultant That Can Stamp Out Fraud By Patent Examiners · · Score: 1

    Sounds more like private industry, where such behavior wouldn't even raise a hint of scandal.

  4. Re:WIl they use my tax money? on Tesla Plans To Power Its Gigafactory With Renewables Alone · · Score: 1

    1 HP is more accurately 746 watts.

  5. Re:Hahahahahahaha on Akamai Warns: Linux Systems Infiltrated and Controlled In a DDoS Botnet · · Score: 1

    well, Netscape didn't get over it quickly.

  6. Re:Batteries not inclu--- err needed on Power Grids: The Huge Battery Market You Never Knew Existed · · Score: 2

    Scientific laws are assumptions (based on observations). They are not confirmed theories.

  7. Re:Which shows that they are doing this wrong. on How Does Tesla Build a Supercharger Charging Site? · · Score: 1

    Yeah, just drop them in from high enough, and they even dig themselves into the ground.

  8. Re:That's not quick? on How Does Tesla Build a Supercharger Charging Site? · · Score: 1

    It's pretty quick even compared to demolishing a gas station.

  9. Re:End state and private capitalism. on Ask Slashdot: How Dead Is Antivirus, Exactly? · · Score: 2

    . . . but who would program the embedded systems in the lift pump system that keeps Florida from being underwater?

    You say that like it'd be a bad thing.

  10. Re:Why is on Netflix Now Works On Linux With HTML5 DRM Video Support In Chrome · · Score: 1

    I think "I could care less" is wrong, but I always thought it was supposed to be "As if I could care less"

  11. Re:Microsoft majority shareholder? on Satya Nadella At Six Months: Grading Microsoft's New CEO · · Score: 1

    No, he said individual stake.

  12. Re:Medallions on The Great Taxi Upheaval · · Score: 1

    Talking to a Chicago cab driver of 28 years, what happened was a Russian bought 80% of all cabs in the city. He talked to the mayor and a year later there was a medallion law in Chicago costing $800k to operate a new cab.

    I believe you have been misinformed. Chicago licenses cabs for a normal fee, not hundreds of thousands of dollars, but they have limited the number available (on some theory/excuse like that can drivers can't make a living if there are too many of them). Anyway, Many years ago, when Yellow Cab / Checker Cab had almost all the medallions, Chicago decided to expand the number of medallions, and held a lottery to give them out. Licensed cab drivers with so many years of experience had first shot in the lottery - not sure if the odds were weighted or not (for things like years of cab driving experience or military service). Anyway, my wife's step-father won one and sold it for $20,000. Medallions are bought and sold on the open market, and those prices have risen a lot lately. They are now around $300,000 each. The city of Chicago records the sales but does not make that money.

  13. Re:23% revenue growth! on Amazon's Ambitious Bets Pile Up, and Its Losses Swell · · Score: 2

    Accounting tip: infrastructure investment doesn't show up in a profit and loss statement.

    Actually it does show up there, but it's amortized over several years/decades.

  14. Re:If dimples have this big an effect on Will Your Next Car Be Covered In Morphing Dimples? · · Score: 1

    Aircraft are not blunt objects, so they don't need as much help in keeping the airflow attached. Wings often have little angled vanes, (which do a better, more precise job of mixing high speed air into the boundary layer than dimples do) in order to keep the flow from detaching, and to keep the air moving across the wing rather than along it.

  15. Re:11% fuel efficiency improvement on Will Your Next Car Be Covered In Morphing Dimples? · · Score: 1

    Aircraft designers already pay attention to separation of the airflow from the vehicle body (which is what the dimples reduce, by mixing higher velocity flows into the boundary layer). The long, streamlined, tapers at the tail do a better job than blunt objects with dimples. And many wings have small, angled fins along their length to ensure that the flow stays attached to the top of the wing and flows across the wing camber rather than following along the length of the swept-back wing.

  16. Re:Wi-Fi Is Less Expensive on FCC Approves Plan To Spend $5B Over Next Five Years On School Wi-Fi · · Score: 1

    Not if you're installing the wiring in a school built in the 20's with masonry walls, no dropped ceilings, and flat arch clay tile floors.

  17. Re:college has lot's of BS classes that not really on Ask Slashdot: Does Your Job Need To Exist? · · Score: 2

    Not all subjects worth learning are well taught.

  18. Re:college has lot's of BS classes that not really on Ask Slashdot: Does Your Job Need To Exist? · · Score: 1

    You didn't have a choice of which 'English' class to take?

  19. Re:That's totally how it works on Ask Slashdot: Does Your Job Need To Exist? · · Score: 1

    you can see that actual employment has been steadily falling since the 1960's in the USA, typically taking a dive after each recession, then regaining some but not all of the previous employment

    Bull. In the sixties, most married women were not "employed", yet were not counted as "unemployed". The workforce per capita has increased greatly since then (yet real income has not risen commensurately).

  20. Re:i interpret it to mean on Can Science Ever Be "Settled?" · · Score: 1

    Replying to undo a fat-fingered moderation.
    A law is not a theory. A scientific law is based on observation, but it is more akin to an assumption or premise, taken as a 'given', while a theory is an attempt to give an understanding of reality that explains observations and allows predictions.

  21. Re:On the other hand on Midwestern Fault Zones Are Still Alive · · Score: 3, Informative

    The current building code in St Louis is written with earthquakes in mind, it's ust that there are a lot of older buildings that are still vulnerable.

  22. Re:Way to state the obvious on Sun Not a Significant Driver of Climate Change · · Score: 1

    false, the Sun and insolation drives climate and climate change, greenhouse gas effects are secondary

    Invalid, that does not contradict TFS or TFA. The point being made is not that solar activity is a minor influence, but that that changes in solar isolation cannot account for the patterns of climate change over the last millennium in the northern hemisphere, and that effects of volcanism and greenhouse gases fit the data better.

  23. Re:NSA failed to halt subprime lending, though. on NSA Says It Foiled Plot To Destroy US Economy Through Malware · · Score: 1

    Except of course for the fact that the words themselves . . . actually do mean a form "raises the question".

    Maybe if the phrase was something like ".. which begs to ask the question. . . ", otherwise, the "plain English" meaning of words themselves is that you are talking to a question, begging for something from it. (please, Mr. Question, may I have a dollar for a cup of coffee?)

  24. Re:NSA failed to halt subprime lending, though. on NSA Says It Foiled Plot To Destroy US Economy Through Malware · · Score: 1

    People forget that the NSA has actually done a _lot_ over the past century that has been of extreme benefit

    The NSA has only been in existence about 60 years. Yes, it had it's precursors in code-breaking military intelligence units in WW1 & WW2, but it was President Truman who secretly established the NSA (known as "No Such Agency")

  25. Re: Human error on About 25% of HealthCare.gov Applications Have Errors · · Score: 1

    Except with Obamacare, it's the law that you have to use the 1.0 buggy release.

    It seems like you are conflating the website with the law. You do have to get insurance, but you do not have to use the website.