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Comment Re:And It's Our Fault (Score 1) 135

Nooo! Radioactive waste is warm, it would melt the ice ;)
You could pump the water out and allow it to freeze on the surface. Cover the damn thing with solar panels - less sun to reach the surface and melt the ice.
Water usually falls through cracks and lubricates the ground beneath the glaciers.
If we can remove the water maybe they won't slide into the ocean, and won't raise sea levels?

Comment Re:Anthropic Principle (Score 4, Interesting) 312

Yes. There would have been a lot more stars blowing up right in your vicinity, but more importantly, the newly-formed heavy elements would have been naturally accompanied by their usual radioactive isotopes, but why bother a physicist with the laws of biology, eh? :)
It is commonly thought that life evolved when it did because it's the time it took for radioactive elements to decay.

Of course, ratios of radioactive to stable isotopes vary from place to place, depending on which star blew up to create them and how old it was. But you can't really say the whole universe was a goldilocks zone. It would have taken a special place with more than just water - and the oldest galaxy we know of is 380 million years old. And let's not forget that 15 million old Earth was just a giant ball of magma... constantly being hit by giant asteroids. The Hadean period (Hades = the ancient greek version of Hell) is thought to have lasted about 600 million years.

I doubt a 15 million year old universe would have been little more than atomic soup. Water may have existed, but not as we know it. It takes more than 15 million years for a star to form and blow up, where would you have gotten enough heavy elements for a planet to arise? :)
The first stars are thought to have formed 100 million years after the Big Bang, not 15. Dude's on crack.

Comment Re:Pale Moon (Score 2) 381

That IS the whole point... building a 64-bit browser that's lean and fast. I don't want options and features and backward compatibility with 10 year old computers, I want the bare minimum that will run most sites acceptably. Note: "most". We shouldn't be burdened with obscure cases where people are still using IE 5.5 proprietary javascript extensions or dot-com era shorthand HTML notations.

Comment Re:Colombus discovering America is a myth. (Score 5, Informative) 63

In 1755, the strongest earthquake Europe had ever seen wiped out half of Portugal, including its main historical archives and an immensely valuable art collection, located in the King's riverside palace. If you think Japan had a tsunami, try having half of a 300 ft tall hill wiped out, 20 miles away from the sea.
 

Comment Re:pen and paper (Score 4, Insightful) 217

I concur. It's worked pretty well so far, why would it need to change...? Is there a specific problem you're trying to solve?
Do bear in mind, from my own painful experience with note taking, you should try to actually pay attention to your class. It's different for everyone, but I found excessive note-taking counter-productive. That's what people did before they had easy access to all the information in the world.

Also, get off my lawn you damn kids.

Comment I've never owned a TV. (Score 1) 443

Why would I buy more than one device if my laptop can do everything?
You can't seriously be expecting me to wait for someone else to decide when I'm going to watch something. That's not normal. You don't pull a book from the shelf at a certain specific time. At a theater, you can also choose where and when to watch whatever you want, within a reasonable time frame.

My great-uncle was a computer pioneer, punch-card programmer etc... born in the 30s, my mom was also in IT, born in 1958, spent her whole life playing computer games as far as I can remember. You do realize that the old Magnavox Odyssey was released when she was in her teens? I'm 33, I was born into a family who already owned a console. It's not my fault if technologically illiterate media moguls are 1 or 2 generations behind the times, but the people who should be leading us should be at the LEADING edge, not way behind the times.

The last time I needed a television was back in the NES days.

Comment You're not a citizen of the Vatican (Score 1) 266

Vatican being a sovereign state, it's really none of your business. The Vatican has an astounding total of 450 citizens, i.e. public servants, cardinals, diplomats, and the Swiss Guard. It's also not a Democracy, so even in the unlikely event that you happen to be a concerned Vatican citizen on top of being a slashdotter, it's really none of your business either.

Faith in Christ does not require you to be catholic, there are lots of protestant people. And being catholic only requires faith in God, Christ, whatever doctrine they have in their religion. As is my understanding, Christianity is essentially based on the premise that this is not the "real life", but rather a temporary earthly life, where you must prove yourself before God before being allowed into Heaven or whatever. Humanity is generally portrayed as being essentially sinful, and only God has the power to judge people according to whether or not they can control said nature and atone for their sins.

If the fact that Bishop X or Cardinal Y are fucking children lessens your Faith, then you're not a true Christian with an appreciation for Christ's essential message and a context of 2000 years of worship vs. X people and Y years of pedophilia. If you wish to become a Protestant or an Atheist, well, it's certainly your right to do so, but you should probably realize that it's not the PEOPLE you should be concerned about, but rather the Catholic doctrine or the Bible, or whatever separates believers from non-believers.

(I'm Agnostic, from a Catholic country, but never baptized or otherwise raised by religious people)

Comment UML (Score 1) 254

Well, if it's not documented, write the documentation. Skip the automated crap. You need to do this yourself in order to ensure that you understand it.
That's why people take notes in classes, etc.
I'd start with a class diagram, some sort of high-level flowchart, and grouping modules into layers.

Comment What is this thing you call "privacy"? (Score 1, Interesting) 584

Privacy is not a universal value. Different cultures have different notions of privacy. In some places, people use the toilet with the door open. In some other places, anonymous feedback is frowned upon, and people want to take responsibility for their criticism.
Slashdot must be completely detached from reality: the average person wants to be famous, voluntarily puts their entire life on Facebook etc.
People's lives are all the same and extremely boring. If you can't understand this, it's because you've never spied on people :D
Whenever I stumble upon people complaining about targeted advertising etc... I'm like... have these people never lived in a traditional place, bought their stuff at a traditional grocer, who knows everything about you and your parents and grandparents etc.?
Have you never lived in a small town where everybody knows each other? You do realize that is the norm, right?
Most cities are small, and truly large cities are an artifact of mechanized agriculture, having become widespread only in the past 50 years or so.
When you ask yourself, "Who watches the watchers?", do you not realize that you, yourself, are also a watcher? And that it is only by watching each other that social norms are enforced, so we don't descend into barbarity and chaos? Ever noticed how the anonymity of a rioting mob compounds upon itself and leads to more and more vandalism and looting? I could go on. Freedom is an illusion. You can only be truly free of obligations if you can isolate yourself from society and be totally self-sufficient. Which is not how normal people work.

Comment Re:Need it have been water? (Score 1) 113

Terribly sorry, let me rephrase that more carefully. There is no such thing as liquid CO2 on the surface of the Earth, or on Mars, or under any conditions the average layman may experience over the course of a normal life, i.e. at the standard pressure of 1 atm, let alone at the standard pressure on Mars, where it's 1% of that.
The average layman may sometimes hear about liquid CO2 somewhere, but it's probably something produced artificially at higher pressures.
Dry ice, in summary, does not melt, it evaporates (sublimates), both here and on Mars.

I did 3 years of research work and hold a Master's degree from one of Europe's oldest universities, founded over 700 years ago, and I was quite emphatically taught not to bother people with technical details, not at conferences, not in general. If they want the dirt, they skip the showmanship and go read the actual paper.

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