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Comment Re:My god. (Score 2, Insightful) 806

Context is all. Would you call the police against Charles Fox and Norman Gimbel because they are killing softly Roberta Flack with their song?

When a mortuary science student says publicly on a blog that she is "looking forward to Monday's embalming therapy" it's obvious she is talking about her monday's class.

The context is there as well. Her other posting says "I still want to stab a certain someone in the throat with a trocar though. Hmmm ... perhaps I will spend the evening updating my 'Death List #5' and making friends with the crematory guy. I do know the code ..." Suddenly the context can be seen to shift from simply about class, to referencing her desire to do violence.

Keep in mind that earlier this year we had a mentally unstable student charged with murder. The offense? Poor lab protocol. So, a college student going off the rails isn't unprecedented. I see no harm in a little additional caution when an already stressed (by nature of university) college student is having violent thoughts or fantasies and is looking forward to their next classroom time with sharp instruments. She has the chance to appeal, as well.

Comment Re:Same Arguments, So Simply Discredit Them (Score 1) 565

Eminent domain is not a right, it is a power. Governments have powers, individuals have rights.

And when your house is condemed, what exactly is the difference? I understand your point, but its unnessary nitpicking, because it doesn't change the fact that the government can do it.

And as I have been saying - legal authority is not moral authority. The USC has its imperfections, but it's what we have.

Ya, so we should not be able to have a civilization because a few people can't be happy in another home? Checkout the Woodhaven Expressway, it's what happens when a few selfish people block improvements that would benefit many.

Comment Re:Some apps break at high DPI (Score 1) 496

Or you may have
- poor apps whose layout breaks at low DPI
- poor apps that don't resize icons for lower resolutions
- apps that down-sample resolution poorly
etc.
And so people should run their screens at high resolution. Not.

The point is that you shouldn't have to change your resolution or worry about resolution or its affect on your apps. The OS should put the resolution at an optimal value for the monitor that you are using. That's what Fedora does for me.
A GUI or app that assumes a fixed resolution or font size is a poor app. If you don't use or buy them they will go away.

Comment Re:Other Sensor Platforms (Score 1) 110

It's really a matter of how well your needs actually match the design. In some cases the price is worth it (or even necessary). In other cases where your requirements for accuracy, reliability, or ease of use are much less than the design goals, it's an outrageous price but the lower cost part with the looser design constraints doesn't exist. That's when it's time to get hacking.

Comment Re:There isn't really any homebrew on the 360 (Score 1) 453

That's utterly ridiculous. I bought a cheap second hand 120GB drive off ebay for half the price of a new drive. After a while I noticed that it wasn't actually a genuine 120GB drive, it was an off the shelf drive that had been reflashed with the official 360 HDD firmware and placed in a standard 20GB drive case. I'm still on live just fine.

If they had nefarious fan detection and banning routines, I'm fairly certain they'd have managed to do the same for the unofficial HDDs out there too.

The only detectable modifications are the drive firmware mods, that's what they were banning people for.

Comment Re:Why all energy efficiency regulations are wrong (Score 1) 619

More fun with Lighthouse10

Guess what?

Other factors contribute to a lack of savings too!

If households use less energy,
then utility companies make less money,
and will just raise electricity prices to cover their costs.
So people don't save as much money as they thought.

Conversely,
energy efficiency in effect means cheaper energy,
so people just leave TV sets etc on more, knowing that energy bills are lower,
as also shown by Scottish and Cambridge research
http://ceolas.net/#cc214x

Either way, supposed energy - or money - savings aren't there.

__________________________________________________________
Why all energy efficiency regulations are wrong
http://ceolas.net/#cc2x

Summary: Politicians don't object to energy efficiency as it sounds too good to be true. It is.

--The Consumer Side
Product Performance -- Construction and Appearance
Price Increase -- Lack of Actual Savings: Money, Energy or Emissions. Choice and Quality affected

-- The Manufacturer Side
Meeting Consumer Demand -- Green Technology -- Green Marketing

--The Energy Side
Energy Supply -- Energy Security -- Cars and Oil Dependence

--The Emission Side
Buildings -- Industry -- Power Stations -- Light Bulbs

Comment Re:Nothing to see here, move on (Score 2, Insightful) 882

While I've never seen anything like celebrating an opponent's death, in my social science experience, I've witnessed rampant conclusion-driven methodology.

"Do you think that because we included XYZ in our sampling that it's clouding the results?"

"Don't tell me what the data say; I know what's really happening and the data are wrong!"

etc.

The way science is funded is not amenable to honest science. If the track you're leading dries up, switching tracks isn't really an option because all the other tracks have people leading them already.

Comment Re:"Fixing the bombs fixes them!" (Score 1) 160

Good work telling everyone that fixing things fixes them.

I see you've never had a disagreement with a mechanic or plumber over the definition of "fixed".

Personally I'm very glad they went to the trouble to figure out that "fixing" them according to the procedure is the same as "fixing" them according to our long-term strategic nuclear stockpile goals. :P

Comment Re:Mount Stromlo all over again (Score 3, Informative) 125

I doubt it.

Mount Wilson doesn't just hold the observatory but also transmission towers for all of the major broadcast TV stations in Los Angeles, as well as a majority of the radio stations, along with transmission towers for a large percentage of emergency responder communications and commercial transmission, such as trucking logistics. Mount Wilson is a major asset, and the fire crews have been preparing the area for several days in order to save the area.

Nothing in life is guaranteed, but in the case of Mount Wilson, it's clear they've been concentrating as much effort saving the complex as they have in making sure the fires don't reach the residential communities in La Canada/Flintridge and La Crescenta.

Comment Mount Stromlo all over again (Score 1) 125

Anyone who was in Canberra around 2003 is going to find this spookily familiar. The Mount Stromlo Observatory was pretty much destroyed by a bush fire in that year. It was especially sad because it could have been saved except that the firefighters were focused on Canberra suburbs and towns like Tharwa. Also, a CCD they were building for an international telescope got left behind in the panic. Stromlo was historically important but past its best as an observational sight by that time.

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