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User: Lab+Wizard

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Comments · 29

  1. Optometrist's advice on Computers, Long Hours and Vision Problems? · · Score: 1

    I started seeing double after about five years of ridiculous hours, so I went to see an optometrist. She told me to look away from the monitor and let your eyes relax now and then! It worked fine. You should spend at least 15 minutes out of every two hours with your eyes focused on the horizon (i.e. "infinity"). If your cubicle doesn't offer you a horizon, just close your eyes and let them relax naturally.

    And for goodness sake, stop working so hard and robbing yourself of sleep. It isn't worth it! You're young now but you'll destroy your health if you keep it up. And your company has a short memory of past achievements... all it takes is a reorganization to blank it out! So why kill yourself?

  2. Re:Outside the Box? on Milestones and Trends in Renewable Energy · · Score: 1

    I'll believe in Randell Mill's Blacklight Power once his company finally offers a commercial product. It's been strangely long in coming considering his prior statements. I doubt that he's profited all that much from his efforts, though. He probably could have made more as a medical doctor.

    But I don't think Eric Lerner deserves to be called a crackpot. Are you sneering reflexively, or have you actually looked into what he's trying to accomplish? Do you happen to possess a degree in advanced physics (with specialization in plasma physics) to add weight to your condemnation? Have you actually read "The Big Bang Never Happened"? Or is your entire response based on the fact that he's published some notions contrary to mainstream views?

    I don't know, maybe you are a physicist with sound reasons to scoff. There are so many responses like this one, though, that not all of them can be informed opinions by a long shot. I wish people would stay quiet on complex subjects instead of trying to contemptuously dismiss them, unless they have some actual basis to speak from.

  3. Re:It's interesting on Milestones and Trends in Renewable Energy · · Score: 1

    Out of curiousity, has anyone considered approaching a group such as the Mars Society to provide next stage funding for, say, Focus Fusion (especially given its prospect for improved propulsion)?

  4. Re:I've Gotten Two... on NASA Seeks Geniuses and Visionaries · · Score: 1

    But do they ever go anywhere? Or does NASA or whoever just sit on them? Why is NASA proposing to go back to Apollo-era technology with its CEV, if not for a lack of ideas?

  5. Not all frozen on Where Do All of the Old Programmers Go? · · Score: 1

    I escaped from the Sandmen, found Sanctuary and retrained as a biologist. In graduate school now.

  6. Big Brother bullshit on Device Stops Speeders From Inside Car · · Score: 1

    Only one step away from having the car transmit its location to the police at all times.

  7. *sigh* on Canadian Ex-Minister Calls For Serious ET Study · · Score: 1
    Just fodder for Americans to use in fermenting the "contempt for Canada" climate down there.

    What is PRWeb, anyhow? A web-based equivalent of a tabloid? Never heard of it before.

  8. Not so much different from retinal scans on Faster DNA Testing · · Score: 1

    This technology doesn't sequence your entire genome, so that shady corporations can make ill-founded predictions of a nervous breakdown when you reach 52 and not hire you on that basis.

    It's just looking at specific markers, probably in a manner similar to current forensic tests. If you include enough markers in the test, each person will have his own unique 'fingerprint', enough to verify that person is really who he claims to be. Of course, they need a prior, verified sample to compare it to. More reliable than carrying documents which can be forged, but not so much different from fingerprinting or retinal scans.

    The markers used aren't even coding DNA (genes).

  9. Dilbert on The Prodigy Puzzle · · Score: 1

    This reminds me of a Dilbert comic, in which he's asking the head of Mensa why, if they're so intelligent, don't they more or less rule the world.

    The reply was, "Intelligence is less useful than one might think."

    Being able to absorb information and solve little logic puzzles quickly may give some measurement of the facility of the brain, but persistence is a necessity, as is a deep interest in (love of, even) the area in which accomplishment is hoped for.

    After all, it's hard to do well at something you don't like or don't put much effort into. And the rewards for doing, say, esoteric physics are rather abstract, so it takes a rare breed.

    Maybe it's not so much a case of hoping every extra bright kid will flower into an Einstein so much as that, by exposing them to a wide range of interests, those annointed few of them won't miss their golden chance.

  10. Re:Discovery Channel on A Flu Pandemic? · · Score: 1

    Yes, but it's only the worst cases that drag themselves into the hospitals and get reported. How many threw it off and didn't get included in the count?

  11. Re:What kind of medic? on New Discovery Disproves Quantum Theory? · · Score: 1

    He has an MD, obtained from Harvard.

  12. Re:Slashdot Needs a Science Editor on Alternative to Tokamak Fusion Reactor · · Score: 1

    On the other hand, scientists are notorious for scoffing at and resisting radical new ideas that challenge the scientific status quo. I remember a saying that more or less stated that a generation of scientists has to die off before a rethink is truly accepted.

    It's a hard fight to champion an idea that contradicts what many scientists have vested in. Too hard for many.

  13. Re:Wow. on Mars Swings Unusually Close to Earth · · Score: 2, Funny

    Woman won't go to Mars until there are shoe shops waiting for them.

  14. Re:Example of moving the pollution elsewhere on The Car That Makes Its Own Fuel · · Score: 1

    "The metal must be refined, at great cost to the environment."

    The key is that it should be possible to recycle the metal oxide, rather than mine more metal (which would also be bad from an energy usage standpoint).

    You begin with an unoxidized metal (maybe zinc?) and water. After you've run your engine and travelled for a while, you've gone through two chemical steps: (1) metal + H20 -> oxidized metal + H2, then (2) H2 + 02 -> H20. Net effect is that you've "burned" the metal in a controlled way.

    Then you take the oxidized metal and regenerate it somehow. metal oxide + heat -> metal + 02. Here is an environmentally friendly way: cook it with charcoal in a solar oven.

    Have a look at http://80.70.129.162/site/en/weizman.asp?pi=371&do c_id=4210

  15. Re:This is what government is for. on No One Wins NASA Space Elevator Contest · · Score: 1

    I am quite annoyed that $50,000 is all that NASA is putting into this concept right now.

    The only place a breakthrough is needed is in the material of the cable (ribbon, actually) itself, and this seems to coming into reach with carbon nanotubes. The rest is engineering.

    Yet NASA is basing its plans on the same technologies (and therefore costs) that got Apollo to the moon in 1969. Where is the forward vision? Where is the NASA space elevator program?

    Fortunately there are private companies willing to make the attempt. Furthermore, these existed as business units before the Elevator 2010 prize came into existence. I look forward to the day one of them dangles a ribbon from the sky and attaches it to an Earth anchor.

  16. Re:Lunar Space elevator? on No One Wins NASA Space Elevator Contest · · Score: 2, Informative

    A lunar space elevator isn't as simple as you might think. Given the moon's proximity to the Earth, the only stable place to deploy one is from the midpoint of the far side. Given the moon's slow rate of rotation, it's more difficult to keep the tether up. You'd need one pretty much as long as those proposed for an Earth-based space elevator.

  17. Roleplaying? on Coding and Roleplaying - Is There a Connection? · · Score: 2, Interesting

    How many actually roleplay, as oppose to powergame?

    Visit any MMORPG and you'll find a vast excess of "K3wLd00dZ" over those trying assume a role. They run around talking smack and looking to exploit any flaw in the game design that they can. In fact, often they don't even seem to want to play the game at all, so they beg for resources from other players to shortcircuit the advancement process.

    I suspect that the reward for the majority of players (if not most) is the advancement in "power" of their characters and the excitement of risk in "combat", rather than dialogue and character development.

    These advantage of these games is that the ruleset is well-defined, unlike life. Life and social relations are messy. What is social success? It's a state rather than an accomplishment. Its measurement is relative and subjective. You can never finish and move on to the next goal. It requires constant effort and it can still fall apart for reasons outside your control.

    So it's no wonder that people who have a strong affinity for defined structure (unambiguous, follows a logical ruleset, black and white) are less likely to find social situations rewarding, and more likely to find both games and coding (what could be more black and white?) very rewarding. The creative aspect of roleplaying games is just icing on the cake for some.

  18. Re:Don't you understand? on Congress Pays You $3 Billion to Keep Watching TV · · Score: 1

    Or become politically aware and active.

  19. Re:Useful and Reasonable? on Honda Fuel Cell Concept with Home H2 Refueling · · Score: 1

    Of course, this will only be useful for four months of the year. And I suspect that you'll need to burn more natural gas than you would purely for heating purposes, since you end up with an intermediate product (H2) that you can still derive energy from, rather than only final products (C02 and H20) that you cannot.

    The big benefit of this prototype is that it allows the system to bootstrap. Then the "I'll only do what profits me in the next quarter" business myopes can start building the hydrogen distribution system based on wind generation, etc.

  20. Re:My ideal car! on Honda Fuel Cell Concept with Home H2 Refueling · · Score: 1

    What I just want is to be able to reasonably afford a car in twenty years. It sounds like we're headed for mass public transport and bicycles, while only the wealthy will toodle around in private vehicles. Assuming the economy adapts gracefully, that is (no guarantee).

  21. Re:Wait wait wait... on Honda Fuel Cell Concept with Home H2 Refueling · · Score: 1

    "However the price of natural gas is the result of the frick'n energy companies since the 80's reducing the number of refineries and thus creating shortages(speculations) so they can reap the profits."

    Hmm... I wasn't aware that natural gas had to be refined.

  22. Only milliNewtons of thrust? on Magnetic Field Thruster Developed · · Score: 1

    Then it won't be useful for launching from Earth. Too bad, for a moment there it sounded like a new era in space travel.

  23. Re:Take it from someone who knows on When to Leave That First Tech Job · · Score: 1

    "at this one you'll make manager"... What do you once you realize that attending endless meetings, continually trying to justify your department's existence, soothing ruffled egos, playing politics at least to the extent necessary to stay afloat, and in general doing all the unappealing stuff that managers do is not the way you want to spend the rest of the working years of your life? Even if it does mean some extra pay and "status"?

    Moving into management is not the key for a lot of people.

  24. Tech career? on When to Leave That First Tech Job · · Score: 1

    I'd be curious to see some figures as to how many workers stay with IT into even their early forties. It might be a better strategy to treat tech employment as a ten-year deal. Live as simply as you can and bank the good income assiduously (easy to follow this path with all the overtime soaking up your youth anyhow). When you reach burnout or when age reduces your marketability, exit with a fat investment portfolio and start your life.

  25. Re:*sigh* on Bad Movies to Blame for Box Office Slump · · Score: 1

    Maybe you live in Europe, where ads have been a part of the movie-going experience for quite a while now. As I understand it, in Europe, the listed time is the time the movie actually starts. In North America, the listed time is the time the blasted ads start. You have to wait up to 30 minutes now before the movie begins.