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User: emagery

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  1. Closer to sub warfare on Ask Slashdot: What Would Real Space Combat Look Like? · · Score: 1

    Given the scale of space and the ease of refracting light, combat in space will probably resemble long-distance submarine warfare more than anything else. Silent light-refracting source-seeking missiles guided by spherical cameras with intensely high resolution looking for occlusions (i.e., the silhouettes of ships passing in front of the stellar background.) Since it's so easy to coast, and ships would have to be superiorly insulated ANYWAYS, looking for heat signatures would require extremely sensitive instruments... but would probably be viable in tandem with silhouette detectors. All in all, it would likely be a matter of extreme hiding, long distance (many many thousands of miles at the closest probably, and more typically hundreds of thousands.)

  2. Re:I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger tod on Test-Tube Burgers Coming Soon · · Score: 1

    Assuming this technology pans out, why would you call it fake? Just like a lab-grown emerald, it is chemically identical to the natural source without all the damage to the landscape, infection(inclusion) exposure, or unnecessary cost. (sure it costs a lot now, it's an experiment. In a couple decades time, it'll clock in at a ten, maybe a hundredth of the cost of 'real-but-otherwise-inferior' meat off the killed organism.)

  3. Glad on Test-Tube Burgers Coming Soon · · Score: 1, Interesting

    This is good progressive news; global demand for meat far outstrips the resources, which pushes producers not only to destroy wilderness to attempt to supply, but convert to factory farming, abject cruelty, increase contamination likelihood, et cetera. If you want meat in your future, and have no plans to breed a little bit less for a few generations to give the poor planet a break from the burden of trying to supply for our desires, then this is basically your only course of action. Frankly, I'd feel better eating a hunk of muscle cells that never to experience pain or required the flattening of the amazon or the draining of giant aquifers to provide.

  4. I do actually want a reworked internets that requires a unique honest 'token' for all users; not to surveil them, but to help services believe you are a real person and have something to do to the authorities with if you commit a crime using their service. The police know where your house is (or can find it easily enough) and yet, this doesn't mean they're looking in your windows all day every day watching everything you do. I want all sites, services, providers, and users of the internet to be ACCOUNTABLE and demonstrably not a bot or a virus or what have you. My job writing code trying to safeguard my organization's site against these contingencies would be a lot easier if not for 'privacy,' spoofed IPs, etc. /rant

  5. Why the skepticism? on Followup: Ultraviolet Vision After Cataract Surgery · · Score: 1

    We're effectively talking about corrective adjustments made to the shape of the eye; should it be adjusted enough in such a way as a tighter bandwidth were better scattered in the eye, then it kinda follows that some of it may be picked up. The question is, do purples, indigos, and violets seem stronger to you then before?

  6. Hum... on Nano-Scale Terahertz Antenna May Make Tricorders Real · · Score: 1

    I see the benefits, but... they're already unwilling to tell us about the toxic results (not to mention, cancer clusters among workers using them) surrounding the existing 'chertoff porno-scanners' as hartmann likes to call them.

  7. Re:as an American... on New Record High Temperature At South Pole · · Score: 1

    Wait, nevermind... it just occurred to me that an addiction to fans may have been caused by the lack of air conditioning.

  8. as an American... on New Record High Temperature At South Pole · · Score: 1

    I can say that, aside from the pleasure of moving air (not necessarily cool air), having a fan on my face was fairly integral to being able to sleep. I've since beat the habit, but still... not sure where it comes from as I did not grow up with air conditioning. *shrug*

  9. Well... need is a subjective term on Do You Really Need a Smart Phone? · · Score: 1

    I don't NEED it any more than I NEED anything else in live other than shelter and calories. That said, what I WANT is to get rid of the phone service and simply be able to take and leave voice messages via something more like an iPad... a mobile work-facilitating communications hub. I find it a false necessity to have to put down a gorram phone number on legal forms, etc... especially when, given the fact that I don't place or receive calls, even GOphones cost me on the order of $50 a minute since their minutes expire. My smartphone has been an invaluable resource to me, though, on many occasions... I just don't need the gorram minutes that I have to have to use the damn thing. And I'm not making it up at all when I say that I've lost 115 lbs through the use of an iphone app.

  10. before deriding them too much... on Tesla Motors Announces Prices For Their Upcoming Models · · Score: 1

    ....keep in mind that ALL brand new techs had to start out as playthings of the rich to help fund the perfection of the tech and the technique such that reproduction could be affordable enough for all. And before YET ANOTHER PERSON starts signing about chestnuts over a volt/tesla fire, keep in mind that thousands of combustion engine vehicles are catching fire every year.

  11. Re:Commercials and On-Demand on TV Isn't Broken, So Why Fix It? · · Score: 1

    I was just having a nearly verbatim discussion regarding voice communication; I'm willing to pay for wireless data plans and a VOIP connection (say, in attempting to make an ipad or similar by SOLE computing/communication device)... but not for a single damn voice minute. Prepaids typically run me about $30/minute... my iphone about $90/minute. So yeah, I empathize!

  12. I dunno... on TV Isn't Broken, So Why Fix It? · · Score: 1

    I've kept the promise to myself that I won't be buying another TV until I can literally roll it onto an entire wall like wallpaper. The precursors to that technology already exist, so there's plenty of room in perfecting and economizing the concept.

  13. I'm hoping to do the same someday on Using a Tablet As Your Primary Computer · · Score: 1

    My 3 year old MacBook Pro has proven to be too heavy to be EASILY portable (portable, but dissuasively so) and it suffers a bit with some of my gaming on the side (i don't even dare try starcraft 2 on the poor overworked and now slightly damaged thing.) Still, I have some photoshop and flash work to do; I do a lot of python, perl, php and jquery work, etc... those probably would be fine on even the current generation of tablet. But yeah... I'm trying to run the macbook into the ground (as I want to abuse as few near-slave-labor foxconn workers as possible) so that hopefully in another year or two, the tablets will be up to all the tasks I want. Further, I'd rather that I didn't have to have it AND a phone. Quite frankly, if not for all these online and offline forms requiring a phone number, I wouldn't even have that... I ~never~ use the damn thing other than for such legacy issues.

  14. But what about what is currently law? on US Senator Proposes Bill To Eliminate Overtime For IT Workers · · Score: 1

    After first being acquainted with this amendment, I went to look at what currently is law... and, quite frankly, as an IT person, I ~already~ appear to be covered by the previous broader/more vague definition already in the code. Can someone analyze how impactful the difference in language ACTUALLY is?

  15. Re:Yes it is! on New Batch of Leaked Climate Emails · · Score: 1

    A proper scientist is a perpetual skeptic whose job it is to routinely test and attempt to disarm common knowledge, accepting results only through verification, not just once, but endlessly.

  16. Re:Carbon cycle, carbon shmycle. on New Batch of Leaked Climate Emails · · Score: 1

    There have been a number of articles (many of which passed through slash-dot) regarding plant growth in the face of added carbon dioxide. A few species do grow more... most simply cut back on the number of pores they grow so as to maintain their natural transpiration rates.

  17. Re:Yeah, sure. on New Batch of Leaked Climate Emails · · Score: 1

    And, thus far, quantifiable increases in temperature AND worldwide damage have EXCEEDED his early estimates. But then again, we're afraid of facts, now, aren't we?

  18. Change the world? on How Do I Get Back a Passion For Programming? · · Score: 1

    I can say much the same as you, @poster, and toss onto the pile that, in spite of 15 good years doing programming, my initial educational period was ... stormy? Incomplete, and not something I like to get into on my resume; though I tend to be frank about it (it's also a popular topic of complaint with me given the hostility from the financial aide department that didn't help at the time.) At any rate, I do impactful coding and really have no business complaining about my job, but I am ... I don't know... disenfranchised a bit from the project that, for years, I rescued, resurrected, breathed new life into, and now merely maintain and tweak. So what do I do? (with cyclically variably success), I do personal projects... Two years ago, I wrote a novel (though it sits on the shelf now waiting for an epiphany from myself in regards to the all important rewrite); this past year I've stewed up no less than three web/game projects (none of which are past the drawing board as yet) that I believe could be game changers in political, social, and entertainment arenas (we'll see how THAT goes, hehe.) I'm just saying... make your own interests; invent your own jobs, if you must. Just 'do it.' =3

  19. Re:Studied String Theory? on How Do You Educate a Prodigy? · · Score: 2

    pfff... even if string theory doesn't pan out; one of the best ways to discover 'what is' is to examine and study 'what isn't.'

  20. DONT EVEN TRY on How Do You Educate a Prodigy? · · Score: 1

    For god's sake, don't cripple the poor kid by subjecting him to our conveyor belt of education; he needs someone or someones who can keep challenging him... and, beyond that, the opportunities to teach himself using application. (Learn by doing.) Maybe he'll need a social and sociological curriculum on the side to make sure he can interact with the rest of humanity... but, all that said, our educational system is designed to create automatons who subject themselves to the whims of the few; opportunity is created as much if not more often than given, and he needn't necessarily rely on rote and proscribed methodologies to succeed or surpass.

  21. Re:Yes. on Should Science Be King In Politics? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No, not quite; It would get very few things done... nearly all of them the RIGHT things. Government is meant only to be the collective tool belt, replete with powers of leverage and enforcement, wielded by the citizenry for the benefit of the citizenry. One isn't meant to play with tools, nor use them any more often than any give job calls for.

  22. time to redefine on Robot Workforce Threatens Education-Intensive Jobs · · Score: 1

    I have some difficulty arguing against machines and robots, so long as they're ecologically friendly (renewably electric, no fossil fuels involved, etc.) But the question is valid... in a society that defines life by money, and money by labor, how is anyone to survive? The answer is to abandon those definitions, examine what human being truly needs not only to survive but to thrive, and organize civilization around that. Shelter? Healthy satisfying food? Productive activity? Relaxation? ... food production on earth is in serious trouble given the extraordinary burden seven billion inefficient souls place upon what little arable space we have... still, reorganization can make those souls more efficient, less stressed out and, frankly, less likely to breed (thus tapering off the dangers of overpopulation in the most kind of ways. (i.e., basically all post-industrial nations have stable or negative population trajectories.)

  23. Re:European Starlings on Wild Parrots Learning To Talk From Escaped Pet Birds · · Score: 1

    Oh absolutely; in the name of brevity, I just went with the first thing that came to mind.

  24. European Starlings on Wild Parrots Learning To Talk From Escaped Pet Birds · · Score: 2

    While E.Starlings are not as talented at it as other mimics, they can achieve a somewhat 'bad recording' style mimic of the human voice. They're also the ones notorious for producing large undulating clouds in the sky (consisting of thousands if not, in extreme cases, millions of birds.) Point being, I've always wanted to somehow snag a gigantic flock of these birds and train them all to say something creepy like 'i'll get you' before releasing them back into the wild.

  25. ahem on Purported FBI Report Calls Anonymous a National Security Threat · · Score: 1

    Starting to sound like the FBI is a threat to national security. I'm sure there are some really great people working there doing really important things; and investigating criminal activity (or protecting soldiers on the battlefield) is important! But when you start being afraid of the truth, you're also doing something wrong.