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Comment Re:Snake oil (Score 1) 213

I've heard this too, though on mine it was only audible when amplified to absurd levels (well, relatively).

Have you ever had a computer that made odd sounds though the speakers when you move the mouse cursor? In my case, it was a very similar sound. Again, quiet - but if you have it loud enough or it's otherwise quiet enough, you can hear it.

I believe this was a Sansa e200r. It didn't have an SD card, but flash memory - in either case still a lot of digital signaling.

Comment Re:That's unpossible. (Score 1) 212

That's less for comfort and more for not breaking the engine. Generators tend to have a coolant heater as well.

If the coolant system is frozen, it doesn't work, and the "ambient" heat transfer from the engine to the auxiliary equipment isn't fast enough. The engine will damage itself before the coolant system is thawed enough to begin functioning.

Comment Re:I hereby declare... (Score 1) 127

I would say "sold" but with BTC in the $250 range that works out to roughly $0.000025 so it isn't worth the hassle of setting up an account, and it's too small to withdraw. Besides, agents of His Majesty Felipe VI are the ones who really need to do the collecting.

Comment Re:why? (Score 1) 677

Ditto. Any significant C I've written had "cleanup:" at the end of many functions, and "goto cleanup" wherever you had to bail out of the middle of such functions. Once I got over the "never use goto" mentality that was drilled into my head, I realized it was the most maintainable way of dealing with things that had to be released such as file handles, graphics contexts, memory, etc. Anybody who analyzed my code should have quickly picked up on the fact that this was an idiom for something like destructors in a language that doesn't have them.

Comment Re:prison is as prison does (Score 1) 176

Isn't the point of prison to separate criminals from the general population?

This; but with some very important caveats. First, the separation must be as humane as practical. Why? Well there's the obvious "don't be a sicko and mistreat anybody, even a prisoner because it's immoral" argument. There's also the "hey, they might be innocent" argument. Everybody, even the most hardened "tough on crime" person should understand this. Every single one of us is potentially a victim of mistaken imprisonment. What, not me? Yes. You. If you disagree, please refer back to the definition of "mistaken imprisonment". Thus, we all have a personal stake in safe, humane treatment of prisoners.

Second, we should carry out this humane separation only when necessary, and in a way that isn't too costly.

The policy as described in the article summary seems neither humane, nor necessary. In the long run it will be costly too. Extended solitary can lead to severe mental conditions. Severe mental conditions are costly to society, either because of new crimes when released, or the need to turn the prisoner over to an expensive psychiatric facility for the rest of their lives.

If they're concerned about people running gangs from prison, they could monitor their networks. Collect all the information and trade it with your friends... then collect their friends and put them in the same cell. Of course there'd be less of this if we weren't waging a war on drugs; but that's a separate rant.

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