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User: Ioldanach

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  1. Re:what do you think? on Scientists Wonder What Fingerprints Are For · · Score: 1

    And how do you call someone who tells you "I don't care whether there are any gods or not, because I don't have a need to believe in a deity"? Isn't this atheism, too?

    An atheist actively believes there are no gods. An agnostic believes that, in essence, whether or not there is a god is not knowable or testable, and is therefore merely a point of theological discussion with no useful result. Your posited person would probably fall into nontheism. Personally, I'm an apathetic agnostic most of the time.

  2. Re:Prepare for identity theft on Buying a Domain From a Cybersquatter · · Score: 1

    A business partner did this, and a month later he had $6k of bogus charges on his credit card.

    That's what third party escrow is for. Never give out your credit card info to a private party like that, and use a trusted escrow source so you can confirm the transfer actually occurred before they see any money.

  3. Re:So? on Voyager Clue Points To Origin of the Axis of Evil · · Score: 4, Informative

    Does that mean that to get a clear view we need space crafts beyond the boundry?

    Not necessarily, we just need glasses. Knowing our observations are being altered by what is in effect a lens is the first step. Once we know the actual shape and properties of that lens we can mathematically apply alterations to our observations to correct for the distortion and end up with representations of our galaxy, other galaxies, and the background photons and radiation of the universe with much more accuracy than ever before.

    Of course, stationing observatories beyond the field would be the best option, much like observatories like Hubble that are outside our atmosphere are better than ground-based telescopes. It is possible that not everything is actually making it through this lens, so even applying corrections won't yield a 100% perfect picture.

  4. Re:Meh on The Hard Drive Is Inside the Computer · · Score: 1

    If it were my friend, I'd be happy to. If they mentioned it to me before going off and just doing it and then mentioning it in passing a few months later.

  5. Re:Meh on The Hard Drive Is Inside the Computer · · Score: 1, Insightful

    You're again presuming the consumer has the slightest clue. The salesperson might well give them the cost of fixing their current computer with the services they want to try and sell them, without the consumer fully comprehending what the costs entail. This is not at all unusual. In the end, the consumer will have two computers and probably ask a friend how to get their old files over, since they don't actually care about most of the files on their old box. I've had to deal with this myself on more than one occasion. Relatives that bought new computers because their old ones didn't work well any more and they need help getting their 'my documents' and 'desktop' folders moved over and that's pretty much it.

  6. Re:Meh on The Hard Drive Is Inside the Computer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Haha what!? You build up an entire argument based on the fact that his only choice is to actually buy another PC and then shit on your own face in the end? Why!? Of course he should pay someone to fix it, if it's a perfectly functioning PC with a missing hard drive, why wouldn't he!? You're weird man.

    Because this friend knows so little about computers that they're going to end up asking the Geek Squad, or a similar outfit, to do it for them. They're going to need their hard drive swapped out ($100 for the part, $50 for the labor), data mirrored ($160), they'll probably get convinced they need their operating system reinstalled ($130), primary office suite reinstalled ($50), and antivirus software ($30). Of course, all these numbers are presuming they still hold the disks and license keys the various software started with. At a cost of $520 for a machine that's probably at least 2 years old, they might notice in the store that they could just get a brand new system for less than that.

  7. Re:Barely, just, feasible. on 220-mph Solar-Powered Train Proposed In Arizona · · Score: 1

    Which means we seem to have even less data that it at first appeared. 110MW means something, but we have no idea what. My best guess is that they either need 110MW to run as many trains as they want on all tracks (4 tracks could probably support 10 trains with switching), OR they need 110MWH per train per day.

  8. Re:Barely, just, feasible. on 220-mph Solar-Powered Train Proposed In Arizona · · Score: 1

    I'm not saying don't make the train electric, just that generating the electricity with thermal solar is more efficient than solar panels in this application.

  9. Re:Barely, just, feasible. on 220-mph Solar-Powered Train Proposed In Arizona · · Score: 1

    Oh noes! And the architectural drawings are so much less pretty!

  10. Re:Barely, just, feasible. on 220-mph Solar-Powered Train Proposed In Arizona · · Score: 1

    The article wasn't clear to me whether the operation of the track required 110 MW continuously for all trains, or 110MW per train while the trains were running. I've also seen a lot of articles that lose things, like writing MW when they mean MWH. Also, GWH/day (or MWH/day) is an important number when converting to solar because you don't get a continuous feed of energy, you have to take the energy you get for the day and spread it out to meet your needs. If you're consuming 110MW for 11 hours per day, you'll need 12100MWH/day, which you can then convert into the size of your solar installation by dividing by your region's solar insolation.

    The real key to all of this is exactly how much they intend on consuming. Throwing 110MW out there isn't very helpful without more conditions. How long is that drain for, how many times per day does that drain exist, etc. With two tracks running express and a 30 minute run consuming power at 110MW, the express trains alone could consume upwards of 3080GWH/day if they run continuously for 14 hours (6am-8pm). They'll need a wider footprint than I specified to keep up with that (70 feet for plain solar panels), and would certainly be better off with a thermal solar installation than solar panels.

  11. Barely, just, feasible. on 220-mph Solar-Powered Train Proposed In Arizona · · Score: 1

    I'm a little unclear on the requirements of the train, it says it needs 110 megawatts but not for how long, how many trains, etc. At its most conservative, I'll specify that the trains will each require 110 megawatts per run, and 11 runs are made per day. (Because that means I get to work with the magic 1.21 gigawatts number, which is just funny.) Ok, so, we need 1.21 GWH/day. Solar insolation in the Phoenix area averages 5.78 at its minimum, so we'll need about 210 MW of solar panels.

    Taking a reasonably competitive Kyocera KD180GX-LP 180W panel as an example, at $688 each, retail, we'd need about 1.2 million of them. They're 52.8"x39", stringing them 6 wide on their long length we need a swath of land 27 feet wide, and we have a swath to work with 116 miles long. That will fit 1.13 million panels, generating a total of 1.18 GWH/day, at a cost of $778 million.

    Though, I should point out, if you're already building the infrastructure to suspend the panels and you have a swath of land like that, you're probably much better off going with a thermal solar system. Incidentally I don't see the point in suspending the panels in the air. They should just be on the ground, and the tracks should poke up between them. You're not going to get much loss from the train going over the panel because the train is tiny compared to the size of your aggregate panels. Much less installation cost, too. For the thermal solar design, you can make mirror strips in a fresnel arrangement all aimed at a common heat sink containing your circulating fluid. You'd only need to suspend your heat sink, then.

  12. Re:MPAA incentive to limit access on Can Cable Companies Store Shows For Us? · · Score: 1

    Optimist. They want Blu-Ray and all physical media to become obsolete, so they can implement a strong DRM regime where you have to pay for the movie every 10 times you view it, or every 6 months just to keep it around (or both).

    Optimist. ... where you have to pay for the movie EVERY time you see it. And, as icing, your device tells them who watched it so they can send them marketing to get them to watch more things you have to pay for.

    Optimist... they want you to have to pay and get ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in return

    Optimist... (Yeah, I'm calling myself an optimist too)... they want the government to enforce a tax on you so you pay them no matter what you do and they can give you whatever they feel like, up to and including nothing, in return.

  13. Re:MPAA incentive to limit access on Can Cable Companies Store Shows For Us? · · Score: 1

    Optimist. They want Blu-Ray and all physical media to become obsolete, so they can implement a strong DRM regime where you have to pay for the movie every 10 times you view it, or every 6 months just to keep it around (or both).

    Optimist. ... where you have to pay for the movie EVERY time you see it. And, as icing, your device tells them who watched it so they can send them marketing to get them to watch more things you have to pay for.

  14. Re:Time will tell on Is a $72.5m Opening Weekend Enough For Star Trek? · · Score: 1

    (Splitting this comment into two, and reversing them, since one follows from the other.)

    • The Kelvin crew should have reported an attack by a strange ship populated by Vulcans with tattoos and emotions.

    It is established elsewhere in the movie that the Romulan transmissions were unique, as Uhura had to decode their transmissions later. (I'd expect the transmission protocols of any race to be essentially unique, at least until they've been integrated with other races for ease of communication.) Thus, the fact that they were being attacked by Romulans would have been obvious by their transmissions, which they were already aware of from the Earth-Romulan war, some 75 years earlier.

    • The fact that Starfleet knew that Romulans were related to Vulcans before Stardate 1709.2

    It appeared to me that the transmissions to Starfleet from the Kelvin were video and audio. We're in an alternate timeline now, and they've had 25 years to ferret out the relationship between Romulans and Vulcans.

  15. Re:Windows has ESP? on First Look At Windows 7 On an Entry-Level Netbook · · Score: 1

    I wish there was a power user console which reported active tasks more transparently, like the linux "top" command.

    Task manager?

  16. Blocked ports, "home use only" on Cablevision To Offer 101 Mbps Down, No Caps · · Score: 1

    When I had them 3 years ago, they were blocking incoming port 80 and 25, do they still do that? It was incredibly annoying.

  17. Re:In a word... on Obama Proposes High-Speed Rail System For the US · · Score: 1

    Unfortunately, Acela shares tracks with slow trains, so it doesn't actually hit its advertised speeds. And that's when it is, in fact, working.

  18. Re:which state(s)? on The End of Tax-Free Internet Shopping? · · Score: 1
    But "state where the business operates" can be further divided, is it "state where the business maintains headquarters", "state where the business operates with customers (i.e., retail locations) or "state where the shipment leaves the business"?

    You can also have a company which provides goods as an eretailer but doesn't own any stock, instead they order from independent warehouses or manufacturers and have the products delivered directly to the customer. With a location in one state but third party warehouses throughout the country and no control over which warehouse puts the item on the truck, which state should they run taxes from?

    Really, the only way to do this is to assess tax based on the shipping destination of the product, though some states would rather it was either that location of the seller, depending on which gives them the tax. And under no circumstances should the item be assessed taxes from more than one state, its initial point of delivery should govern the tax jurisdiction.

  19. Re:Oblig on Time Warner To Offer Unlimited Bandwidth For $150 · · Score: 4, Informative

    The only promises which matter are those defined by your contract of service.

    "TWC has the right to add to, modify, or delete any term of this Agreement, the Terms of Use, the Subscriber Privacy Notice or any applicable Tariff(s) at any time." - TIME WARNER CABLE RESIDENTIAL SERVICES SUBSCRIBER AGREEMENT 1.b.

    You were saying?

  20. Re:Blasting Peter Gabriel? on STEREO Spacecraft To Explore Earth's L4 and L5 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Maybe they're rickrolling the solar system?

  21. Re:Remember, folks... on US Electricity Grid Reportedly Penetrated By Spies · · Score: 1

    Of course, at the same time, does anyone believe we don't do this ourselves, to Russia, China, etc? What's news is their software got found.

  22. Re:Float it on Offshore Windpower To Potentially Exceed US Demand · · Score: 1

    Excuse my ignorance... is mooring different from "anchoring"?

    Sort of. Mooring is attaching a vessel to a fixed point, typically a very heavy object on the sea floor or embedded in the sea floor, or a pier or other object. Anchoring is a more temporary affair, though the area between the two can be gray.

  23. Re:Conflict of interest on Time Warner Expanding Internet Transfer Caps To New Markets · · Score: 1
    1. Open source developers or enthusiasts pulling ISOs
    2. Artists who share their work with others
    3. Employees remotely accessing systems at their job using VNC
    4. Work-at-home investors who pull a lot of market data

    3 and 4 are violations of the TOS 4.b, which specifies the connection is for "reasonable personal, non-commercial use only". If you VPN into work regularly or otherwise work at home, they want you to buy a "business" account.

    2 might be a violation:

    4.b.iii, "I agree not to use the HSD Service for operation as an Internet service provider, for the hosting of websites (other than as expressly permitted as part of the HSD Service) or for any enterprise purpose whether or not the enterprise is directed toward making a profit."

    Of course, they also gave themselves the right to tier you, mess with your bandwidth, and so forth, in 6.a.ii.

  24. Re:Total War? on TomTom Sues Microsoft For Patent Infringement · · Score: 1

    No, the context in which it appears in the original article.

  25. Re:Wow... on Mississippi Passes Law To Ban Traffic Light Cameras · · Score: 1

    If he had to stop in the intersection, then either he wasn't positive he could get through, or he was positive and wrong. Either way, he violated the law by failing to clear the intersection. If there was an extenuating circumstance (accident right in front of him, say, that suddenly blocked all traffic) then he can take the ticket to a judge and argue that, and probably get off. But if the evidence that he broke the law is clear, then its up to him to present a case countering that evidence.