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Comment Re:how calculus? (Score 1) 107

Some of us can tell exactly where it's going to land.

No, you can't. Calculus can tell you exactly how far the ball will travel down to the last millimeter if you account for all of the variables.

You can make an educated guess, but you'll completely fail to catch the ball if you then close your eyes and assume that it will be exactly where you predicted it to be. If you can tell exactly where is going to land, why would you need to see it and make corrections?

Only an idiot would believe that they can tell exactly where a ball is going to land from the instant they see it being thrown. And here you are claiming just that.

Comment Re:how calculus? (Score 1) 107

Fom the thrower's release, your brain has likely already determined 1) approximately how much time before the ball reaches you

Calculus will tell you exactly how long it will take for a ball to get to you, not an approximate guess.

You've confused "being familiar with thrown balls so that you can make a good guess" with "actually doing math."

Comment Re:how calculus? (Score 2) 107

you catching a ball is way, way more calculus.

It really isn't. Catching a thrown ball requires practice, during which you learn more or less how a ball moves after being thrown without any actual understanding of the math behind it.

If you were doing calculus, you'd know exactly where the ball was going as soon as you saw it moving and you could simply put your hand in the right place and wait for the ball to arrive.

In reality, you get yourself into what looks like it might be the path the ball is going to take, then you constantly correct your position as the ball gets closer. It's more like a series of guesses where you're constantly told whether you're getting closer or further away from the correct answer and that is not calculus.

Comment Re:CEOs (Score 1) 516

It sounds that way, but it's intentionally deceptive. The trick is that the income inequality that Greenspan is referring to is the inequality between skilled and unskilled workers, not the disparity between CEOs and everyone else.

He's arguing that programmers should be paid more like McDonald's burger flippers, not that CEOs shouldn't make hundreds or thousands of times more than their lowest paid employees.

Expanding the H1-B program would increase competition and drive down wages, but only in the middle class. In fact, the added profits from paying workers less would probably increase the bonuses that CEOs get and create even more income inequality.

Comment Re:Still Worth It (Score 4, Informative) 276

No, it has nothing to do with paying to continue using something.

Every month, members get to borrow a book that they don't own and keep it for the month. When they pick out a book the following month, they have to return the one they borrowed the month before. They don't buy the book, so they don't own it.

Comment Re:Alfalfa (Score 1) 545

No one is supposing that alfalfa growing is violating the conservation of mass or sending water into the fourth dimension never to be seen again.

Actually, that is exactly what the person I was replying to was implying with the question "what happens if the source is exhausted?"

The only demonstrations of the Dunning-Kruger affect here are the person asking what happens when the rivers run dry and you demonstrating that you couldn't comprehend the that I was responding to that person's question, not the actual problems with California agriculture.

Comment Re:Alfalfa (Score 1) 545

The main question is: Where does the water California is watering its crops come from, and what will California do if the source is exhausted?

The water California is watering its crops with comes primarily from rivers. The rivers are watershed from rain which condensed out of water vapor in the atmosphere. Most of that water they use then evaporates and becomes water vapor in the atmosphere where it eventually condenses and falls as rain again and feeds the rivers.

It's the water cycle that you should have learned about in elementary school.

The only reason the rivers that are the source of the water would be exhausted is if it stops raining. If that happens, it won't be because we were raising too much alfalfa.

Comment Re:Can we please not write it that way? (Score 1) 30

That's how it's written on the actual website, too. The only place it's in all caps is in the logo.

LabOnFoil is the acronym chosen to designate the project named "Laboratory Skin Patches and SmartCards based on foils and compatible with a smartphone"

The author of the gizmag article is a dumbass who copied and pasted text, then went out of his way to fuck up the capitalization and needlessly capitalize "on foil" when the people behind the project are doing no such thing.

But then it's an article on gizmag, so what do you really expect?

Comment Re:We already make robots without legs (Score 1) 122

That's not his point either. His point is that he thinks we should stop researching walking robots because they wouldn't work for making cheap vacuum cleaners To support his point, he makes the unfounded argument that research into walking robots is holding back the rest of the robotics field.

My point is that he's a short-sighted fool who is ignoring the fact that vacuum cleaners are not the end-all-be-all of robotics, nor are wheels always the best method of locomotion. My suggestion that he lose a leg (or have both broken) so that he spends some time in a wheelchair was a way of pointing out one of the most desirable outcomes of the research on walking robots; replacement of missing and damaged legs for humans.

Comment Re:We already make robots without legs (Score 1) 122

A bit extreme, perhaps, but consider the end result; the CEO who thinks that wheels are better than legs would suddenly have to contend with being in a wheelchair (at least for a while) and would get direct experience with just how limited wheels are and how versatile legs are in comparison.

So maybe instead of losing a leg, he just breaks them both and has to be in a wheelchair for a couple months.

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