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User: 140Mandak262Jamuna

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  1. It is still better than the alternative on Internet Search Engines May Be Influencing Elections · · Score: 3, Insightful

    These low information voters usually stay out and do not vote at all. Or they vote based on inertia, "we always vote for DMK or BJP or CPI-M".If they take the trouble do a minimal google search before voting it is a step in the right direction. Do not make the perfect the enemy of the good. They may have a long way to go. But at least they have started the process.

  2. It was just a violent time on The Bog Bodies of Europe · · Score: 4, Informative
    The stone age tribes that survived without contact into 20th century were are very violent. The Kalahari bushmen, the Fore people of the Papua New Guinea, and the ones from Brazil were all very very violent. The New Guinea highlanders had routine chronic war. The casuality rate is not as high as the battles of civil war or WW I and II. But warfare week after week after week takes its toll, and an obscenely large fraction of the population died due to wars.

    So it was just a very violent time. The article asks the question but does not even begin to answer it.

  3. It does not creep on Tesla's Creepy 'Solid Metal Snake' Robotic Charger Slithers Its Way Into Model S · · Score: 0

    Creeping means slithering on the ground. It is not slithering on the ground. It sort of moves like a snake coming out a basket.

  4. Just use Stuxnet on Ask Slashdot: Patch Management For Offline Customer Systems? · · Score: 1

    It somehow jumped the air gap and ended up in the industrial controllers in the Qum nuclear facility in Iran. It will find a way to get to your customers.

  5. Wait for the next 10-K filing on Windows 10 Start Menu Wins IDSA Design Award · · Score: 1

    Just hold your horses. Just check the 10-K filings of the past and the coming quarters to see if IDSA is a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft run from the garage of the home of some Redmond executive.

  6. Do you think it happens only in tech? on Tech's Enduring Great-Man Myth · · Score: 5, Insightful
    It is common in upper stratosphere populated by MBAs. Do you think all those entry level hacks who glean through excel spreadsheets till their eyes gloss over get acknowledged come bonus time?

    Or even in place constantly in the public eye, like the movies. Except for a few movie buffs no one can name the assistant art director or the sound editor. You really think George Lucas personally coded up the spec for Lucas Theater Sound after slogging in the anechoic chamber for months on end? People at asst art director level get paid about 200$ per shift or so. Is that true? Is the pay that low?

    Or in politics, or in sales, or in coding....

    [Quick question about the word "only". English is not my first language, and I get confused about the proper use of only. For example in the subject line, the word only applies to what? To the verb happens or to the phrase "in tech"?]

  7. Re:Prayer can help your code life. on Lessons From Your Toughest Software Bugs · · Score: 1

    God is Real... ...unless previously declared as integer

    -Old Fortran joke

    Shouldn't that read, GOD is REAL ?

  8. Go ahead, blame the machine. on Researchers: The Thermostat In Your Office May Be Sexist · · Score: 4, Insightful
    It is the people who control the thermostats, and you call the thermostat sexist? Next you would blame the guns for shooting deaths and not the triggermen/triggerwomen.

    Anyway, at temperatures below 28 deg c, simple fans can make people feel a couple of degrees cooler. Most offices do not permit space heaters, but I find people sneaking it in anyway, but small personal fans are usually permitted. I have always depended on these personal fans to control the micro climate of my personal work space. Can be used to deflect the air from the vent away sometimes, towards me other times, towards the office door to encourage circulation...

  9. Good move Nokia on Nokia's HERE Maps Sold For $3.2 Billion To Audi, BMW and Daimler · · Score: 4, Interesting
    The maps business is useless now. Even mighty Apple could not dislodge the king of the hill of the map Google maps. So it was facing an 8.1 billion write off. Somehow managed to dress it up to be sold to the auto giants for 3.2 billion.

    The auto giants are in their typical auto giant mentality. "Ha, ha, haa, this chump has plunked down 25, 35 or 45 K to buy our car right? Now we can squeeze him dry. Want a nicely integrated map/system with the car audio and built in screen? That is special-nav package 3200$ for you. And we will stick you up for 200$ a year for map upgrades".

    Google on the other hand gives me traffic update that is so granular and so up to date it boggles ones mind how they do it. Google paints the highways yellow, green or red, each section between exits gets independent updates. Last week, there was an accident in a non freeway some three lights ahead of us. The google map clearly showed the backup exactly up to the point, told us there is an accident ahead. It seems to be using some real time data about the number of cell phones passing in and out cell towers to determine the backup. Against this, goes our European wonders who bought Chrysler for 36 billion dollars and then sold it to Fiat for 6 billion dollars!

    Google/Android is working towards an integrated auto-infotainment system standard. Apple is muscling in. Once the standards are published by SAE it is curtains for the auto industry selling GPS system at 2000% markup.

  10. One more notch for that dentist? on Hitchhiking Robot's Cross-Country Trip Ends In Philadelphia · · Score: 1

    Wow, that Minnesota dentist gets around doesn't he? He can now boast one more unique "taking". He is a true sportsman, he picks as target only things that has the same level of intelligence as him.

  11. Soon. Very soon. on Epic Mega Bridge To Connect America With Russia Gets Closer To Reality · · Score: 3, Insightful

    A plan for an epic bridge connecting Russia's easternmost border with Alaska's westernmost border could soon be a reality,

    When asked to explain what is meant by, "soon", the Sijutech spokesman clarified, soon, for very large values of soon.

  12. Build it, but be on good terms with CC on Epic Mega Bridge To Connect America With Russia Gets Closer To Reality · · Score: 0

    It is alright to build such a bridge. But make sure you are on the good book of Chris Christie. Else, there will be... some.. eh... traffic problems for you.

  13. This is logical next step on Sharp Announces Sales of DC Powered Air Conditioner, Other Products To Follow · · Score: 5, Informative
    People in USA and Europe with excellent grid connections are not aware of it. But in places like India with unreliable grid, people have been using backup electricity storage for quite some time. Typically truck lead-acid batteries are used to store enough energy to power a couple of ceiling fans, a few lamps and the TV, never forget the TV, for a few hours. They put up with power outages using these contraptions.

    They use inverters to convert the DC to some square wave and approximate it to A/C using electronic gimmicks. Not a pure sine wave A/C, but close enough to run fans and the lamps. Energy conversion efficiency is not bad, the inverters do hot heat up too much. But they play havoc with the motors. So the Japanese A/C makers have been selling ruggadized air conditioners that can run on the inverter electricity.

    The logical next step is to create A/C to run purely on DC. Probably it would use AC to DC converters to use grid electricity. Again this DC would be poor in quality compared to battery DC. So this Aircon also would need to be ruggadized.

    All these calculations about when residential solar will become viable compared to coal or natural gas are completely different between G8 and rest of the world. Places like India will pay well over the current grid price for steady electricity supply. Not all of them. But the affluent population of India is about the size of Japan, some 120 million people. They have been making do with truck-battery-inverter contraptions, small gasoline generator sets etc. They would probably form the wave of early adopters who pay for the early fixed costs of solar panel factories.

  14. Caps Lock used to power a huge lever. on Ask Slashdot: Why Is the Caps Lock Key Still So Prominent On Keyboards? · · Score: 4, Informative

    The Capslock key inherited the position occupied by the Shift-Lock key. Some keyboards still mark it as shift-lock. In the old mechanical typewriters, the shift lock actually moved the entire framework holding the rack of all the levers that held the letters. It required considerable force to push.

  15. Problem will go away soon on UK Campaign Wants 18-Year-Olds To Be Able To Delete Embarrassing Online Past · · Score: 1
    Once these idiotic teens who post embarrassing things on the net reach the age and station where they are the hiring managers they would be more forgiving of the applicants with embarrassing on line history.

    It is only in the interregnum it is an issue.

  16. Re:Wonder what else is buried in the recording on Voyager's Golden Record For Aliens Now Available On SoundCloud · · Score: 1
    CE is NOT Christian Era, it is Common Era. BCE is Before Common Era.

    Of course it did not make sense to be proud of adding AD to the text, if you are seriously sending a message to be read by the aliens, who could not exist if Bible is literally true, then whats the logic? But it makes sense if you are charlatan trying to burnish your credentials in front of people who are not thinking logically.

  17. Wonder what else is buried in the recording on Voyager's Golden Record For Aliens Now Available On SoundCloud · · Score: 1
    William Safire was a political hack in Nixon administration, working as his speech writer. Later he wrote a NYT column in word origins and etymology. In one of those columns he was crowing about how he slipped a reference to God past the watchful eyes of the secular materialistic scientists of NASA. He basically got the year 1970 AD mentioned in the text. He was all agog that these NASA scientists did not realize AD stood for Anna Domini, the Year of the Lord, and he was proud of his little contribution in carrying the name of his God to the aliens who might encounter this spacecraft.

    Wondering how much more these political hacks have slipped into the message and the recordings.

  18. Is it like Romney's 2$ gasoline? on Clinton Promises 500 Million New Solar Panels · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Romney in 2012 made dramatic and what he thought would create shock value by promising 2$ a gallon gasoline. Obama actually saw 2$ gasoline for a brief period! Free market has a way of doing things no one predicted.

    The current trend is 500 million new solar panels without any special action by any legislator/executive. Simple market forces and trend lines. Residential solar is becoming competitive with subsidies and net metering. Utility scale solar is on track to become competitive with natural gas in a few years. It is already competitive with coal for fresh installations. No new coal plant has come on line this year and last. The pipeline is dry too. Number of coal plants have fallen from 633 to 518 in the last decade. Coal has lost 20 GW of capacity in that time, and is on track to lose another 40 GW. Natural gas providing base load and solar meeting the peak load is going to become the norm in the next 10 years. No new breakthrough in energy storage, no battery wall made by Elon Musk, no widespread investment by home owners needed. Simple existing technologies, free market forces, interest rates and world flush with 2 trillion in capital not knowing where to invest for good returns.

    So half billion new solar panels might happen no matter who wins, Hilary or Jeb! or Walker or Trump or Bernie. We might even look back and see Hilary's half a billion solar panels the same way we look at Romney's 2$ gasoline.

  19. Re:Export of contacts is their prodict on LinkedIn (Temporarily) Backs Down After Uproar At Contact Export Removal · · Score: 2

    ... But isn't that the whole point of LinkedIn? To give recruiters your contact info so they can spam you?

    /quote> The point of LinkedIn is to give them your contact info so that Linked can spam all your friends, family, acquaintances, their dogs and cats. If random third party affiliates, channel partners and other assorted anonymous entities that are always pitching "new and exciting" (exciting to them) products muscle in on to their game, Linked in would be upset. No?

  20. Coming up with a joke is hard on Twitter Yanks Tweets That Repeat Copyrighted Joke · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Creating a joke is truly a very creative innovative activity and jokes deserve full measure of copyright protection. Anecdotes are not data, but still: I have so far created less than 20 jokes in total in my life (if you don't count joining the threads like "Nate Silver is so geeky, when his code throws an exception, he catches it before the debugger").

    Having said that, most people would like their jokes to be told again, if possible with attribution. So unless the creator has gone through the process of copyrighting the joke and enforcing it, it seems to be an overkill to enforce it suo motu.

  21. It would start like this... on EU May Become a Single Digital Market of 500 Million People · · Score: 0
    We all know how this will end. It starts with noble intentions, and fancy presentations with large numbers like "500 million first world citizens" blah blah blah.

    Then Germany and UK will claim Greece and Spain are free loading on the great programming created by their virtuous tax payers and demand that they too pay the wireless receiver license fees. Greek population will be limited to half an hour of TV per day and people will line up with their thumb drives in front of TV stations to download their daily quota of programs. Old pensioners without the stamina to stand at all those lines will break down and bawl like babies in front of the world TV cameras. CEOs of apparel hawking companies in USA will ship emergency supplies of programs....

    Wonder why they insist on creating a fiscal/mercantile union without creating a political union. They envy the USA with its large market, but they don't seem to take the lessons of urban population putting up with the antics of Ted Cruz or the rural folks putting up with SCOTUS ruling on same sex marriages.

    Yeah, we have a large unbroken market. And we paid for it in blood at places like Chancellorsville, the sunken road, the stone bridge, the corn field, multiple times at Manassas, Shiloh, Antietam, Vicksburg, Gettysburg...

  22. Private collection, illegal mining... on Four-legged Snake Fossil Stuns Scientists, Ignites Controversy · · Score: 1
    The controversy does not seem to be related to evolution or anything about it. Looks like the specimen is in some private collection and it has only sketchy notes about the location of the find. Some suspicion that it was mined illegally and the real source location is obscured, either to avoid the law or to hide it from other fossil seekers. Thus dating of the fossil is confused and there is some speculation.

    Title seems to be simple click bait meant to attract creationists and their opponents.

  23. Fixed it for you. on NY Mayor Commits To Reduce Emissions 40% By 2030 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    New York mayor Bill de Blasio pledged this week the mayors succeeding him will [to] reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by 2030.

  24. Re:Come on, complete the mystery. on US Court: 'Pocket-Dialed' Calls Are Not Private · · Score: 1

    Thanks. Good the conspiring cabal caught their comeuppance.

  25. Come on, complete the mystery. on US Court: 'Pocket-Dialed' Calls Are Not Private · · Score: 1, Insightful

    What happened to the woman CEO of the airport? Looks like this guy was conspiring to replace her and discriminate against her because she was a woman. What happened to that more interesting thread?