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Comment Re:Atlas Shrugged (Score 1) 700

Atlas Shrugged
fantastic book
Atlas Shrugged part 2 is in theaters today as luck would have it

Yes, "as luck would have it" that misanthropic bile is in theaters today, and the timing with the ongoing US elections is purely coincidental.

I also assume that you were just as "lucky" to get first post with this book recommendation, and that you have absolutely no connection with the person who submitted this to Ask Slashdot in the first place.

Comment Re:C'mon man... (Score 1) 396

Yes, it's a (piece of a) spaceship named Curiosity. Seriously, the robot finds a metallic piece of something close to where it landed... what are the odds that part is not from Curiosity itself? (answer ~0%)

So you're saying Curiosity found a piece of Occam's razor? :)

I mostly agree with you, but just to play devil's advocate: assuming there actually are interesting chunks of metal lying around on Mars, it isn't exactly a coincidence when they turn up close to Curiosity ...

Comment Re:Thorium reactors? (Score 1) 226

Very good summary of the arguments against Thorium, but your first point can be put more succinctly:

1) They are more complex than Uranium reactors we use now. The fuel is cheaper but fuel is not a major contributor to the cost of running a nuclear power plant.

1) There is no economic advantage to Thorium reactors.

And make no mistake: the main factor holding back nuclear all over the developed world is not safety issues, public opinion, waste management or proliferation, but cost.

Comment Re:Saw this (Score 4, Informative) 68

After a minute or 2 it started getting bigger and brighter still coming directly towards me.

You need to share this info. A few more people like you and we'll be able to triangulate the site of impact (if there is one). To quote the Bad Astronomer:

And if you did witness it, you should file a report with the IMO, so they can collect all the info - it may help lead to finding meteorites, pieces that have made it all the way down to the ground!

Or at least contact the BadAss himself, see links in TFS.

Comment Re:Attention whoring for funding (Score 4, Informative) 114

OK, it might take more energy to make a solar panel than we'll ever get back from it, but ...

Will you JUST FUCKING STOP spreading this lie? The energy payback time for photovoltaic modules according to most studies is between 1-4 years, depending on the material and manufacturing process used. Their technical lifetime is 25 years or more.

(I know I'm late to the party and hardly anyone will read this, but this is for the three of you who will.)

Comment Re:'Fair Use' is not sufficiently well defined (Score 5, Insightful) 194

But the RIAA/MPAA has already dictated the terms of fair use: Any use that brings us revenue is fair, and all others are not :)

Funny, but unfortunately the RIAA/MPAA aren't that clever. If they were, they wouldn't issue takedown notices to all the free advertising they get in fan videos on Youtube of movie scenes and teens dancing to pop songs, which would be deemed fair use in any sane legal universe.

Also, definitely not fair use but still remarkable: it's astonishing how they happily piss money away in their idiotic war on pirated films and music - imagine what this word-of-mouth marketing would cost them if they actually had to PAY for it.

Comment Re:There is NO WAY this is correct. MATH INSIDE (Score 3, Funny) 464

Sorry, I'm SO not clicking that link. When you have a story about a game manufacturer claiming 95% piracy rates, and say "Data pulled from here:" with a URL, I just assume I'm gonna get goatse'd.

Comment Re:When Domination Isn't (Score 4, Informative) 738

68% of the market is occupied by almost all the other smart phone companies put together. In other words, they're all tiny minorities. The iPhone rules.

Umm, no. If you had actually RTFA, you would have seen that the iOS market share in the same quarter was only 17% (RIM, Symbian, Windows, make up the rest). I'm pretty sure one or two of the major Android suppliers (Samsung? HTC?) can match that 17% figure all by themselves.

(But yes, this was measured in Q2 - expect iOS to do much better in Q4 when the next model is released. Also, matching Apple's smartphone *profits* is a different story.)

Comment Rottentomatoes (Score 4, Interesting) 131

By that logic, Rottentomatoes (which averages reviews using only a binary fresh/rotten scale) should be utterly useless. Except it isn't. It's IMHO the most dependable rating site on the net.

It seems the magic lies not in the rating resolution, but in the quality and size of the reviewer pool (100+ for Rottentomatoes). In other words, make the law of averages work for you.

Comment PV comparison (Score 1) 359

I'm with Musk on this one. It's really easy to underestimate the growth of emerging technologies.

In the 2000 World Energy Outlook, the International Energy Agency forecasted that the installed capacity of PV solar cells in Europe in 2010 would be 1.6 GW (see page 294). To hedge their bet, they also included an "alternative policy scenario" where PV capacity reached 2 GW in 2010, corresponding to an average capacity growth rate over 1997 levels (0.5 GW) of 11.3% per year. So, what really happened? In 2010, there was 28 GW of PV capacity in the EU. And just last year Europe installed another 22 GW.

Sometimes, revolutions happen.

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