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Comment Re:The two I legally need to have to go about my d (Score 1) 380

Why is the Second Amendment allowed to be limited when the others are off limits?

It SHOULDN'T be, which is why I'm a border-line socialist, ACLU supporting person who thinks that gun ownership is a fundamental right that should never be given up - In the words of environmentalist Edward Abbey, echoing the great liberal Thomas Jefferson:

"Let us hope our weapons are never needed - but do not forget what the common people of this nation knew when they demanded the Bill of Rights: An armed citizenry is the first defense, the best defense, and the final defense against tyranny."

Comment The "B" in BI stands for... (Score 1) 339

The "B" in BI stands for "bullshit that drives away nerds". If we want business news, we'll go to WSJ or... hell I'm so uninterested in business news, I can't actually NAME another source for it. Your readers are nerds, they like robots and programming and Linux and video games and kinetic sculpture. We don't care about products and ROI and ... BULLSHIT. What the hell? Even goatse is better than this!

Comment "Safe" (Score 1) 267

Anything that involves digging a finite resource out of the ground and burning it is not economically safe. While I have concerns about fracking (although they are only "gut" concerns, as opposed to the certainty over the evilness of, say, coal mining and burning, in all its forms), I'm much more concerned about the desperate way that Americans refuse to put their efforts toward modern renewable sources of energy and toward efficiency in the way that the energy is consumed.

Comment 0 kWh net grid consumption over the last 12 months (Score 4, Informative) 498

I'm in Northern Virginia, and I love my solar photovoltaic system (installed awesomely by Solar Odyssey). And if the car companies ever make a decent plug-in hybrid car, it'll only take eight more panels to keep that fully charged - and the cost of eight solar panels would pay back in saved gas in less than two years.

Anyone who says "alternative energy isn't ready" is still living in the 20th century.

-brian

Comment Anyone own a house? (Score 0) 312

All of my movable possessions (including vehicles, appliances, library, and piano) fit in my house, but my house occupies about 1,100 cubic meters, and could not fit in a smaller space without disassembly.

Anyone who owns any amount of acreage probably has a larger challenge - to what depth do you possess your property? An acre is about 4,000 square meters, so if your home is ten meters tall and sits on an acre of land, you've got 40,000 cubic meters right there, assuming your land doesn't fold up neatly.

Comment Re:Phew... (Score 1) 760

More trains over land, more ship travel over sea, less personal automotive and passenger flight. That's the reality we're heading towards. Get over yourself.

I'd like to point out that passenger ships get about 37 miles per passenger per gallon at about 20 knots, while a Boeing 747 gets nearly 70 miles per passenger per gallon at over 500 knots. So unless you plan on sailing across the ocean, airplanes are still more efficient.

Sources

Ship

Airplane

Comment Rule #1: Draw a Picture (Score 4, Insightful) 241

I solve problems for a living. Rule #1 for problem solving is "Draw a Picture". Much easier to do that in my engineering notebook.

Any sort of mathematical derivation is easier to do on paper. Initial storyboarding is easier on paper (before you whiteboard it in front of a group). Diagramming data flow. The list goes on...

Sure, there are tools for putting together pretty presentation-worthy versions of these, but for rapid idea sorting throughout the day, pen and paper is the only way to go.

Comment Drinking and coding... (Score 2) 222

That only a third of you believe that sober coding is a virtue, would explain a great deal about the software I've been suffering through for most of my career. Save your beers for when your coding is done, and save me hours of pain and rewriting.

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