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Comment Re:So what's that in metric? (Score 1) 409

I'm with you. Lagunitas and Rogue are two of my top 5... add Stone, Speakeasy, Firestone, Mendocino, Bear Republic... apparently I can't even pick 5, and those are just my tops on the West Coast, heh.

Anyway, as you can see I'm not going to argue that the American microbrewery movement doesn't blow away anywhere else in the world. Just that US MACRObreweries are ironically also the worst in the world :)

Comment Re:Why now and not at release time. (Score 2) 193

More to the point, the CPU single-thread performance of the Xbone is also weaker than the XBOX360 clock for clock.

This sounds extremely suspect, especially since a quick search suggests that the XBox One has substantially lower clock speeds, which I would naively expect to be traded off for substantially better clock-for-clock performance, even if we assume that the XBox One favoured multithreading or GPU much more heavily at the expense of single-threaded CPU. Do you have a citation?

It's not just suspect, it's incorrect. I have developed apps for both and XBOne is definitely faster on single threaded code. The 1.75GHz x86-64 is faster than the 3.2GHz PPC (obviously clock rates aren't really relevant to the comparison, so his "clock for clock" is pointless) but a big part of it is a 32MB on-die cache on the XBOne CPU vs a 1MB L2 cache on the XB360.

Comment Re:So what's that in metric? (Score 1) 409

Sure, they have a bunch of labels, but they are all pretty poor to average at best:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

And of course Coors and Coors Light are still their signature brands. Just because they have a few decent niche brands doesn't mean they should be given a pass for the rest.

Comment Re:So what's that in metric? (Score 1, Insightful) 409

Not saying the US doesn't have good beer, but that "award" is clearly bullshit if COORS is considered the best "large brewery" in the world. IMO it's the worst in the *US*, and there are a lot of bad large US breweries.

Anyway, at the high end anyone can make good wine, beer, and cheese. Where Europe really smacks down the US is in the high quality of the basic, low cost items.

Comment Re:Tesla Is Good For All (Score 1) 356

I can't believe that I haven't seen a single comment pointing out Elon Musk's hypocrisy and denial that his success was largely based (or at least enabled) by public support.

One of many available articles on the topic: http://www.motherjones.com/pol...

A few gems:

1. as soon at Tesla paid off their $465M loan, he stated that he thought the government should no longer loan money to companies like that. How convenient...

2. SolarCity basically lives or dies off of tax credits - *income* tax credits. But he has come out against income tax and in favor of use taxes - a very regressive tax policy that overly burdens the poor while letting the rich keep building their fortunes at an ever increasing rate.

3. he claimed he "got rich" from his earlier companies (Zip2 and Paypal) and "got zero government anything" to do so. He did make a total of ~$180M (before taxes) from those companies , but is worth $13B now - due mostly to Tesla and SolarCity IPOs. He seems good at math, so he really doesn't notice that almost 99% of his fortune was from his highly-government subsidized ventures?

Honestly I really want to like Musk, but the most I hear from him the more he is giving off a real Steve Jobs vibe - business genius, douchebag human. If he'd just drop some of the hypocritical libertarian "self made billionaire" attitude I might change my mind.

Comment Re:I'm sure /. will ridicule it, but... (Score 1) 306

A general knowledge of chemistry is not going to tell you what "tocopherols" or "methyl salicylate" are,

A vague hint? Methyl salicylate would be a methylated salicylic acid (which anyone who has taken organic chemistry has heard of), aka an ester, so likely used for aroma/flavor which would be very common in foods and probably nothing to worry about in an ingredient list (though I have never seen it so I assume you are trying to be clever or it has a more common name?)

Ok, of course had to look it up. Wintergreen, eh. I think my above guess was fairly close. And why? CHEMISTRY! So, do YOU know what an ester is? If not, chemistry would have helped you. If so, chemistry DID help you.

Comment Re:I'm sure /. will ridicule it, but... (Score 1) 306

BTW, you call chemistry "basic"? Why is chemistry of any practical use to anyone but anyone but a chemist?

How about reading a basic food label and not being terrified? You wouldn't believe how many people are in favor of banning dihydrogen monoxide. Ignorance is ignorance.

Let's apply that same logic to computer programming. How often are these kids going to be interacting with computers in their lifetimes?

Another poster already made a similar point, but since you used the "let's apply that same logic" argument... do you really understand the engineering behind every technology you use in daily life? Of course not. And most people I assume understand even LESS, but can still use it just fine. Computers themselves are a TOOL used by non-engineers 100x more than by engineers. Learning to use one is like learning to drive, not learning to build a car.

Comment Re:I'm sure /. will ridicule it, but... (Score 1) 306

I was referring to subjects traditionally taught in school, of source. I'm pretty sure everything you mentioned is better learned by just LIVING.

Though I do believe some of those skills ARE improved via a good liberal arts education - as well as, IMO, the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT SKILL learned in college: research.

I don't care what your field is, if you have learned to be an expert in researching, you can quickly pick up a huge variety of skills/information you need in order to adapt to your specific job. It's always been important, but now with the Internet this skill has become an almost indescribably important tool.

Comment I'm sure /. will ridicule it, but... (Score 4, Insightful) 306

I mostly agree with him.

I (and I'm sure MANY of us!) didn't learn any programming skills formally until college (and some not even there). I learned basic skills on my own because I thought it was fun, learned more formally in college, and really only made the decision to go into software engineering soon before graduation.

I just think kids are better off learning more general areas - math, physics, chemistry, writing/literature, social sciences, economics, and BASIC (pun intended) computer science/programming. Leave the specialization to a time where they know what that even means.

Comment Re:Races must be competitive by definition (Score 1) 275

That's true if you think the race is "over". But it's basically more like the US won the first lap and decided to celebrate by throwing away its running shoes and binging on donuts for a couple decades. They have basically let China start to catch up and passed (thrown?) the baton to a bunch of 5 year olds hoping one catches it and has any clue which way to run. (ok, end silly analogies :)

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