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Comment Re:Unbelievable! (Score 1) 191

Renewables have the problem of portability. Some like wind and hydro electric needs to be located in the proper areas where they can get a reliable energy from. Others like solar do not offer 24/7 support. Batteries do not have the energy density that we get out of fossil fuel, and takes much longer to recharge.

That's why the real future of portable fuel is synthetic fuel (preferably from carbon sequestration or renewable sources, not coal).

Comment Re:Move to a gated community (Score 4, Informative) 611

Yes and no.

It's more related to the time period in which those neighborhoods were built, and how they were built. Grid street patterns were normal before WWII, along with smaller houses (Victorians, Craftsman bungalows, etc.). "Subdivisions" didn't become common until the postwar era, when sprawling ranch houses with two-car garages and big yards were popular.

Not coincidentally, those postwar subdivisions were also getting built at the same time as the civil rights movement: at the time, black people were "blockbusting" in those grid-street neighborhoods, while the white people were moving out to the curved/cul-de-sac subdivisons to get away from them. In fact, the restricted number of subdivision entrances/exits, along with the higher housing prices (enforced in the zoning code by minimum lot sizes, which forced lower-density development) were, in part, tools to keep out those perceived to be undesirable.

Comment Re:Hollywood... it's just not going to work guys!! (Score 1) 176

I know a "50 something" retired guy whose hobby is archiving pirated music. He claims to have "more than 250,000 albums" on HDD's. Sounds impossible but maybe he means "songs".

Assuming 3 MB per song (in MP3 format) and 10 songs per album, on average, 250,000 albums would take up only about 7.5 TB. That's not too far-fetched: the whole thing could even fit on one disk!

Comment Re:hardware is the challenge (Score 1) 36

And you really want a wireless solution, either RF (Zigbee, for example) or carrier current (X10). Carrier current, these days, is probably no cheaper than RF, and RF doesn't have anywhere near the interference and propagation issues that carrier current does.

No, what you really want is a low-voltage wiring standard (which encompasses both power and control, so that you can directly drive LED lighting without having a bunch of 120VAC transformers everywhere). That way you could wire the house once and not have to worry about incompatible proprietary bullshit.

Comment Re:Good to Be A Software "Engineer" (Score 4, Insightful) 161

Built any bridges recently for which the budget was cut halfway, you were forced to use chocolate fudge instead of cement, the location was switched every two weeks and the timescales halved, and delivered a working bridge nonetheless?

You know why REAL engineers don't have to deal with that shit? It's because the project can't get built until we put our stamp on the plans! Management's demands get a whole lot more reasonable when they can't replace you with some dumbfuck yes-man.

Comment Re:Remember the stripper visa (Score 5, Insightful) 122

I've found that foreign western Europeans are welcomed with enthusiasm but foreign Asians with much much resentment.

Western Europeans are coming from an economy just as good as our own, so they aren't willing to work for peanuts and thus don't drive down wages like people from third-world countries do.

Asians from developed countries (e.g. Japan) would be welcomed just as warmly, for the same reason.

Comment Re:Well DUH, You can't stop piracy. (Score 1) 116

Let's say I have a bitstream that is *almost* bit for bit identical to an MP3, an MKV, etc. How bits have to change before it is no longer infringing? Don't start with things like, "Well, it depends how it was created and for what purpose..." Bits are bits.

This is where your post stops making any since whatsoever. The law doesn't give a shit that "bits are bits," and will not accept any technological argument in order to decide a legal issue. It's a non-sequitur, and if you try it you will fail every time.

What actually matters is if you had mens rea for copyright infringement.

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