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Comment Re:I despise the blame the human idea (Score 1) 386

You are correct that usually complicated recipes are necessary for good stuff.

But you have incorrectly inferred causality. Things are not good because they are complex, nor are they complex because they are good. Nor are they bad because they are simple (or simple because they are bad.

What you are detecting is the lack of recipees that are both complex and bad. Because such a recipee has no redeeming qualities at all.

Comment Surgery is the business model (Score 1) 43

Currently a human can quite easily have a hip replacement, pacemaker, artificial breasts and a cochlear implant.

Some people are getting magnets installed in their hands - to detect electro magnetic fields and others get an NFCS chip in the hand - to unlock any electronic lock coded to it. Those tend be done in Tattoo parlors.

They can also implant other things. Real life Geordie is here - his name is Neil Harbisson. He was born color blind but has an antenaa installed in his head. It directly connects (physically sticks OUT of his head) to an electronic device which can send color signals to his brain, allowing him to know whether his clothing matches or clashes.

Comment I despise the blame the human idea (Score 3, Interesting) 386

This quote indicates the reviewer does not know what he is talking about: "If your C++ code is not good enough or Java code is painfully slow, it's not because the technology is bad - it's because you haven't learned how to use it right."

You don't give a 3'5" person an unmodified school bus and then say 'it's their fault for not having long enough legs'.

You design FOR the actual people that will use your product, not the mythical perfect user.

If people consistently make a set of mistakes, then a better designed product will prevent or at least warn/push them away from that mistake. Anytime there is a 'typical newbie error', that means that your product is bad - or at the very least should come with better free training. Minimal training required is one of the key functions of any product.

If I give you a frozen dinner, that if properly prepared, is the most delicious thing in the world - wouldn't a version where 'properly prepared' means "Open package and wait 30 seconds for it to warm" be a lot more valuable than "Open package, season to taste, poor into sauce pan, heat until it you smell the cinnamon begin to burn, transfer to microwave, cook 5 minutes at 1000 watts, return to freezer and let sit for 2 minutes, before slicing and serving on individual plates"?

"Open package and wait 30 second" is clearly the far superior product.

Similarly, a variant of C++ that stops common errors is better than one that lets you do things that no one ever wants.

Comment Re:Navy? Warships? (Score 1) 101

The secret to much of modern technology is paint. We take materials and cover them with other materials to get the best properties of each, creating micro layers.

I am absolutely positive that they will paint the magnesium foam with non-flammable, water proof substances to keep both water and flame away from the core.

Two or three layers of protective coatings, and the only way the foam touches water or fire is if it is penetrated by a weapon that would sink the boat no matter what it was made of.

At the very least, it could be used on internal structure points, if not the hull itself.

Comment Not for animals or locations (Score 2) 186

Makes sense. You name a disease for a location and nobody wants to go there.

You name a disease for a creature and it's open season on that creature - and the destroys any business that uses them.

These things happen even if the location/creature is only tangentially related to the disease.

But there is no reason not to name a disease after the first patient/doctor that gets/discovers it.

Worst case scenario, they have to change their name.

Comment Re:Editorializing... (Score 1) 408

They listed every accident the vehicles were in. They were there to demonstrate that the cars had been in service long enough that if the cars were as bad as driving as a human was, they would have been in multiple accidents.

You did however bring up a very significant issue - were the humans driving the vehicles during the 'dangerous' times, destroying the validity of the comparison.

Comment Never talk about feminity crisis. (Score 5, Insightful) 950

I overheard a conversation recently. There were a girl upset that a guys at a party totally missed the fact that she wanted to be asked out. She flirted shamelessly, but the guy ignored her and instead asked out her friend - who promptly turned him down.

They then both called the guy "an idiot".

They missed the fact that SHE could have asked him out. It's the 21st century, not the 18th century.

The reason guys spend all their time playing video games instead of out is that the video games are better than real life. Women expect men to be the 50's guy - bring flowers, etc. But they don't want to be the 50's girl.

The crisis in Masculinity is concurrent with a crisis of femininity. They feed off each other like a viscous cycle. As long our culture continues to complain about men not acting like it thinks men should act - all the while encouraging women to do what they want, we will have no progress on this issue.

Please note, I am not saying that women should act like a 50's girl. They are free to act like a modern woman. But don't complain about what men do and ignore what women do. (In fact, I think women should act like a modern women - and includes asking men out and buying them dinner for a first date. You want equality, you have to actually act equal, not insist on special treatment).

Comment Re:Editorializing... (Score 3, Informative) 408

You missed a rather significant point in the article. Two of those accidents happened when a human WAS in control of the car (which was how they know it wasn't the car's fault), so NO, a human would not have done better at avoidance.

The fact that of the 4 accidents that happened, none of them were the car's fault is more significant than the 10% rat.

When any specific humans has 4 accident driving cars, on average exactly 50% of them were caused by that specific human. If I drove long enough to have 4 accidents and none of them were my fault that would be significant evidence that I am a far superior driver than the average human

Comment Aren't they called Currents? (Score 1) 61

Generally when talking about water, the definition of a wave specifies it is on the surface:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/wave"a disturbance on the surface of a liquid body, as the sea or a lake, in the form of a moving ridge or swell."

If you are using another definition of the word wave (such as that used by physics to refer to light, sound, etc.) when talking about water, you really should specify what you mean.

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