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Comment Re:Awesome! (Score 3, Insightful) 774

This should not be tagged funny! This should be tagged depressing.
What I really don't understand is "why is this part of systemd and not a separate program?" I can only see two answers:

-Because it has to be tightly integrated with systemd. In this case, I would rather we do not clutter a critical system component with more unnecessary code such as a console implementation.

-Because it is a tactic to get it deployed as part of the systemd package. In which case, systemd really starts looking like a attempt at conquering the world. I feel like that is exactly what it is here.

Comment Re:Nuclear power--the no carbon solution (Score 1) 652

Not sure if it is true or not. But I had read there was probably not enough nuclear material (see how much I know by my proper use of vocabulary?) in the world to power the world using nuclear power plants for a significant portion of time.

We certainly need a mix of energy and should certainly not disregard nuclear. But I am a NIMBY too. There is not enough room in my back yard to build a nuclear power plant! :)

Comment How does mesh network works? (Score 3, Interesting) 85

I am no expert in mesh networking, but I was under the impression that addressing in them does not scale well. The best technique seems to be BATMAN [1]. AFAIU it requires everynode to perform a full broadcast regularly and that each device stores a complete routing table to each other device. That will not scale to build a city wide network.

Somebody knows more?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B....

Comment Re:Is it just me... (Score 1) 365

Indeed, I am fairly disappointed by this video. This is pure BS. There is no actaul fact presented. Statements are not facts. You can do lots of that.

MYTH: the little girl droped the ice cream on the floor
FACT: In reality the cat made it fall.

Maybe it is a fact, but without any proof it is just a statement in the air.

Comment Re:are you sure there is no practical application (Score 1) 479

This is spot on! I do not believe there are parts of computer science with NO industrial applications. I work as a assistant professor and I saw hundreds of PhD students. All of what they were doing had some form of practical relevance.

Even if what you do is not directly applicable (yet), you have to have a wide knowledge of a chunk of the discipline. Even the most theoretical chunks have practical relevance. A friend of mine was researching complexity theory (some weird complexity classes that appeared since the PCP theorem came). And he works designing algorithms for planning (of both, nurses, schools, ...) He did not find anybody interested in complexity, but his understanding of complexity made him very useful to design models and build algorithms.

Comment Depends what you mean by "in tech?" (Score 1) 392

Would I give my heart surgery to a guy that does not have an MD, but has a bachelor in poetry? Absolutely not!

Does a bachelor in poetry have a place in a hospital? Yes absolutely!

In particular, liberal art graduate tends to be good communicators. And that is something pretty much all tech field need. We need lots of people to help the tech field communicate.

I am working in a university in a CS department, and I strongly believe that having people to help us "publicize" our work is very important. I'd love to have a youtube channel full of interviews of different members of the department. Maybe short videos explaining a particular paper I wrote. That would be cool and would fulfil our job to explain what we are doing to the public.

We had a couple of artist in our college last year who essentialyl tried to make a piece of art by taking a marionette and coupling it with a few camera to build an "interactive automaton".

Comment Re:power consumption? (Score 2, Interesting) 208

Well, I'd suggest the right question is, how much does this one benchmark matter?

Well, the article does not even convince me that the benchmark was properly executed. When going from a 32-bit to a 64-bit architecture, you certainly need the code to be properly optimized for the new target architecture. For instance, if you do not use the new instructions, it is unlikely you will see a major performance improvement. If you normalize the benchmark result to clock speed and number of cores there is not much difference between the 2 processors.

So my guess is: they did not properly compile the benchmark.

Comment Re:The issue isn't really net neutrality. (Score 1) 81

I disagree with that. What we want is to have net neutrality in practice. Now competition in the ISP market is a tool that could lead to net neutrality. It is an indirect way of getting net neutrality. But I strongly believe that net neutrality is important enough that we want to have a direct regulation about it.

Now, more competition in the ISP market woud not hurt :)

Comment Re:I never liked those state/city incentives (Score 1) 149

There is a similar law (in spirit) in North Carolina about public universities trying to hire a university professor from another public university. You can not make an offer more than xx% over what they currently have (I think it is 10%). The reasonning is similar, it cost more money to the state to get the same person they were already having at a similar position.

Comment Essentially a smartphone replacement (Score 1) 471

I already carry a tablet around. So if I need to have a watch AND a phone, then it is useless to me. I want it to replace my smartphone to keep only a watch and a tablet.

I want to be able to make a phone call with it. Not dick tracy style, but I could slide the watch to my hand and use it as a phone.
I want email/text message notification. (I don't care about composing if speech to text works fine.)
Appointment and todo list and reminders. (Once again modification using speech to text)
Time travel estimate to my next appointment (or home, work google now style)
Giving direction like a GPS.
Weather forecast.

ideally, battery life of more than 2 days. and something much smaller than what all smartwatch are. I don't want a half phone on my wrist. With modern screen resolution a quarter credit card is probably big enough.

Comment Re:Dear God, no (Score 1) 368

Let's be honnest here. If anybody is willing to buy anything I did for $2B, I'd sell it without thinking about it (even if it is a cure for cancer). Cash in your $2B and go explore some other crazy ideas you have that you release for free (you'll probably find a second way to cure cancer). You no longer need money at that point: you can live with $10M/y for 200 years...

Comment Re:container ships and bulk transport -- (Score 1) 491

We once had world trade based on sail. Much/ most of that cargo does not need to get to it's destination quickly..

That is something I actually wondered. If you go slower then you need more boats and more crews. Also you'll need to store more food on the boat. (I guess you could fish, but let's not go there...) So there is a fixed overhead which prevents you from going arbitrarily slow.

According to [1], it takes about 10 days to cargo from the UK to the US (east coast). That boils to to roughly 26Km/h. I don't know much about boats, but that seems fairly slow to me.

Anybody knows more?

[1] http://www.searates.com/refere...

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