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Comment Re:I don't get it (Score 1) 394

Why don't publishers put the ads in a section of the page that can allow the rest of the page to load and render before the ad loads and renders?

Because you could stop the loading once the content you wanted was rendered, thus skipping the ad.

So the pages are set up so the ad loads and renders first.

Comment Re:Is it going to matter much? (Score 1) 172

Storage is fast enough that changes to most files can be saved directly to disk as they're made. When working in the cloud, this sort of "every keystroke saved" thing is already the norm.

Not quite: Just open a 500MB word document and insert a single character at the top of the file. Google Docs can't even handle this kind of file - delays are seconds to minutes. Even if it could work with a word processor, it won't work with everything. When I play MineCraft, it takes 30 seconds to save my changes. You can't commit my actions to disk at 60fps. Same thing with Photoshop or SolidWorks.

However, you made me realize that in-memory structures are vastly different from structures on disk to avoid this very problem. We might still have this problem even if storage was as fast as RAM, because our disk formats are usually optimized for size, while our memory formats are optimized for performance.

Comment Re: Looking more and more likely all the time... (Score 1) 518

They seem to think it is doing "something". Exactly what, may be in question. 8-)

From what I read back when the last time this was a story, a few people were saying, "It seems to be generating thrust, but on the other hand, the amount of thrust we're measuring is basically within the margin of error, so... we need to keep testing this."

Comment Re:Is it going to matter much? (Score 1) 172

Good point. When they say this is faster and has better endurance than NAND, did they mean TLC, MLC, or SLC? You are right that SLC NAND has good endurance and speed, but maybe this is better? The ultimate memory would be memory that is fast enough to eliminate the separate concepts of "RAM" and "storage" entirely, and make it one thing. Then instead of having 8GB of RAM and 2TB of storage, you would have 2TB of "storage RAM." This might be fast enough and reliable enough for that. Or maybe it is close enough that DRAM is used merely as a cache. No more save buttons. No more need to read a file into memory before processing it. You would just use memory mapped I/O for everything.

Comment The statement about clear social instructions (Score 3, Interesting) 36

I had trouble with my social development as a child. Some of it's clearly genetic. My father isn't completely socially incapable (although he did benefit from 1950's parenting methods and two older sisters who were not socially handicapped in any way), but he shows signs of high-functioning autism. But it isn't just that. My father shows signs of having at least mild narcissistic disorder, and my mother is unmistakably borderline. (Not sure what my father's excuse is, but my mother was the victim of child abuse, and her parents were much worse than mine.) So my parents didn't do a good job of teaching me social skills. Mostly, I just got into trouble for things I just didn't understand. Even after I developed empathy in around the 8th grade, I didn't know how to use it, and there was nobody I could talk to who was insightful enough to help me figure it out.

But then when I was in my 20's, away from my parents, and perhaps having outgrown some of the innate problems, I encountered co-workers who had the patience to explain to me my social mistakes without all the "what the fuck is the matter with you" kind of reaction. Instead, they explained to me clearly and calmly (albeit with concern in their mannerisms) what I did, what it meant, and how people perceived it. I was receptive, and they were willing to help, and this lead to a rapid growth in my social ability through my 20's.

What I've learned to do is PAY ATTENTION. I know that I have a disconnect, so I have developed a conscious habit of opening my eyes and just listening to and watching what's going on and associating people's emotional reactions (which I can read) with the social circumstances that lead to them. I'm also a bit of a goofball, which I have learned to leverage. So I smile, make jokes, and get people to talk about themselves, and people now find me to be rather charming.

It's been a long road getting from there to here. :)

Comment Re:Not the best summary... (Score 1) 195

That is included in the phrase of "those who cannot get vaccinated".

So in your head, some people who got vaccinated should be included in the classification "those who cannot get vaccinated. Well that says a lot about the strength of your argument.

Measles vaccination is a non-issue and non-risk. Using it to advance the principle that government can force people to inject stuff against their objections by exaggerating and fabricating numbers like "killing 3 million people" as if they had anything to do with measles is outrageously dishonest and deceptive.

I didn't claim that measles would kill 3 million people. I was using simple math to point out that "a small percentage of the population" might still include a whole lot of people.

Comment Re:No Compromises (Score 1) 154

To be fair, it's not clear what you consider a "compromise", or even what features are desirable.

For example, I want a very thin, lightweight, but sturdy phone, and any additional hardware you pack in there runs the risk of adding weight, and any port or removable piece is a potential weakness in the structural integrity. If you give me a SD card port, I won't use it. If you let me remove the battery, I'll pretty much never do that unless the battery actually fails within 2 years. Front speakers? For what?

Now I'm not trying to argue here that these aren't good features or that you shouldn't want them. I'm just pointing out that when they say, "no compromises", it's inherently a claim without a specific meaning, and one man's "compromise" is another man's "that's exactly what I want".

Comment Re:Not the best summary... (Score 1) 195

The only group that is really helped by other people's vaccinations is a small percentage of the population that cannot get vaccinated.

Not true. It's true that there are some people who cannot be vaccinated, and those people are helped by other people being vaccinated. Aside from those people, vaccines are not 100% effective. Some portion of the people who are vaccinated may still get sick if exposed to the virus, and those people are also protected by other people getting vaccinated.

In both of these cases, you can say, "it's a small percentage of the population." Small percentages of the population, however, can still represent a lot of people. If something kills 1% of the US population, that's still about 3 million people.

Comment Re: Looking more and more likely all the time... (Score 4, Insightful) 518

It's worth noting that there's a big difference between those theories and this engine. With this engine, they're putting forward a piece of technology and saying, "We don't know how this works, but we're claiming it does." In the case of Newton and Einstein, they put forward a mathematical model that was internally consistent, and the question was whether it applied to reality.

So in one case, they're putting forward a technology without a real explanation as to how it works, and in the other case, they're putting forward a coherent theory that seems to explain phenomena that we have witnessed. Also, both Newton and Einstein's theories had the benefit of providing a clean explanation to phenomena that we were having a lot of trouble explaining.

Comment Re:Not downsizing nuclear (Score 1) 484

Sigh... Coal is only useful for base load. The spool up time for coal is too slow for peaking.
Natural gas is ideal for peaking since you can use it in gas turbine plants for peaking since the spool up time is so fast.
I showed you references do you have any data at all to back up what you are saying?
France may or may not use natural gas for base load but many nations do since it is so cheap and clean.
I would say that the engineers in France are knowledgeable and I would also bet that they would agree with what I am saying. Too bad it is the political parties that want to cut nuclear.

Comment Re:That's copyright for you (Score 1) 292

All the embedded links are relative, actually. The browser shows them as file:// URLs because they're in a local file. They do appear to be session-specific, and don't work for me, either, now that my session has timed out. I'd probably have to download the pages all over again to get updated links.

Here is the script:

#! /bin/bash
BASE="http://web.lexisnexis.com"
URL="... first page ..."
N=1
while :; do
___FNAME="$(printf "gacode%03d.html" $N)"
___wget -T5 -t3 --no-cookies --header "`<cookie-header.txt`" -O "$FNAME" "$URL" || break;
___NEXT="$(xmllint --html --xpath 'string(//a[img/@title="Next"]/@href)' "$FNAME" 2>/dev/null)"
___[ -z "$NEXT" ] && { echo "No next URL." 1>&2; break; }
___N=$[N+1]
___URL="$BASE$NEXT"
done

(Leading spaces were replaced with underscores to preserve layout.) The file "cookie-header.txt" needs to contain the contents of the header, including the "Cookie:" prefix, as transmitted by your browser. You can get this by using Wireshark and the "Follow TCP Stream" function, among other methods.

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