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Comment: Re:To FCC (Score 5, Interesting) 285

by chipschap (#48661491) Attached to: Hotel Group Asks FCC For Permission To Block Some Outside Wi-Fi
I always find that interesting. The high-end hotels, charging hundreds of dollars per night, also charge outrageous fees such as $20 for 24 hours of internet access, two dollars for a local phone call, etc. The $50 motels give you all of that for no extra charge. The only explanation I can come up with is that the high rollers just expense it all and don't care about the cost.

Comment: Re:limited resource (Score 1) 93

by chipschap (#48650513) Attached to: Librarians: The Google Before Google

I am an "old guy" and in "my day" (don't you love these geezer expressions?) the library was all there was. If you lived in a big city the amount of information and knowledge available to you was much greater than if you lived in a small town with a small library. Up to date reference books? Most of them were a decade or more old.

It all had a certain quaint charm to it--- I always loved visiting the library--- but it was unbelievably ineffective. It is so much better today, when incredible amounts of information and knowledge are available to just about anyone, anywhere. And if you want an honest to goodness up to date reference book, Amazon and the Amazon marketplace will have it and can get it to you quickly, and, at least much of the time, affordabley.

(As alluded to in posts above, sometimes too much --- sorting through the chaff is the issue now.)

Comment: Re:The return of Cthulhu might be really bad... (Score 1) 329

by hairykrishna (#48574033) Attached to: Warmer Pacific Ocean Could Release Millions of Tons of Methane

From a quick read it appears to be data from; World Ocean Database 2013 (National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC). Apparently available here;

In the paper they specify what program they used and how they processed the data. It is the first part of their 'methods' section.

What was the problem?

Comment: Re:Not unexpected. (Score 2) 141

I'm neither an Apple nor a Microsoft user. There is no need for me to criticize either of them (especially from a standpoint of a non-user with limited knowledge). I just ignore them and go on my own way. I'll leave the complaining to people who actually use their products.

On the other hand, I can see complaints from non-users on the basis of compatibility. I do get tired of people saying "send me a Word document" and the like, but they just get whatever LibreOffice puts out and that will have to do. It generally becomes a non-issue. (I don't deal often with complex formats that use every feature on the menu.)

Comment: Re:Sounds more like technical short-sightedness (Score 1) 250

by chipschap (#48526341) Attached to: Apple Accused of Deleting Songs From iPods Without Users' Knowledge

I left my iPod Shuffle in a pants pocket and put in through a wash and dry cycle. It didn't survive[1]. Am I better off or worse off? I certainly never used iTunes, though; I managed it with a Linux application.

[1] Apple's hardware is pretty solid, but this was a little too much.

Comment: Re:Deliberate (Score 1) 652

by hairykrishna (#48465385) Attached to: Two Google Engineers Say Renewables Can't Cure Climate Change

Sorry, but that’s a terrible idea. Submarine power plants are designed to meet a totally different set of design requirements than you want to set for a land based power generation plant. They need to be very small and quiet. Everything else, particularly cost, is secondary. Their fuel has to be highly enriched (>90%) U235, which is massively expensive and a proliferation problem. They are not designed for refueling – typically the whole core is replaced. Their ultimate safety feature in an accident relies on them being surrounded by an unlimited amount of ocean water.

If you take a submarine reactor and redesign it to be more suitable for a power reactor, you end up with a standard PWR.

Comment: Re:The biggest news was left out (Score 1) 68

"One of the most famous examples of the human artificial boundary phenomena is running. For the longest time, a four-minute mile was considered physiologically impossible. When the record was broken, it was swiftly broken again by another bloke a month later. Within a few years, everyone was running four-minute miles. It's now a standard, and the record is much lower than four minutes. "

The progress in mile records over time is linear. There's no evidence that people believing that it was impossible held anyone back.

Comment: Please get it right, it's not $200 (Score 1) 134

$200 for the 40-year old paper includes membership. Non-members get the paper for $15. Can you please not misrepresent?

Not that I'm defending this. The article should be free, and $15 is way too much (even the 24-hour "rental" for $3 is too much). But it isn't $200.

Comment: Re:Gallium? (Score 1) 260

Galliums a mild reactor poison; it's thermal cross section is a couple of barns. When it comes to super prompt criticality induced by fast neutrons in a bomb core it'll make next to no difference. I don't think it's a misinformation trap.

I totally agree with your point that nuclear terrorism is massively unlikely. This article is ridiculous scaremongering.

Comment: Re: Time To Change That Windows Icon (Score 1) 192

I'll politely disagree. I've been using Linux Mint Mate for a number of years with great satisfaction, doing anything from writing novels to hacking Lisp code to maintaining my websites. I don't mind the Chrome UI, but if I did, there would be other choices, such as Pale Moon.

I watch people struggle with Windows 8 and I'm glad I'm not there.
