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Comment Re:How fucking tasteless (Score 1) 341

| Guess all the stories about the British, Canadian and German scientists contributing must be false, the USA did it single handedly?

a) British & Canadian scientists contributed significantly to the fission bomb project. They did not contribute significantly to the successful fusion bomb projects in the USA and USSR.

b) German scientists did not contribute significantly to the US nuclear weapons projects unless you count former Germans expelled or driven out because of Nazi ideology.

Comment Re:Google (Score 3, Interesting) 90


> could google have gotton so far without nsa's help? one wonders. and one will never actually know, either.

It's the other way around. NSA was interested in techniques and technology from google, especially high-performance large scale data processing. NSA was/is behind, and they knew it, and they knew the best didn't want to work with them any more when they could get a pre-IPO position at Google when Google had stunningly capable & ambitious people (2000-2005) on average.

Comment Re:Flat Look may be ugly, but it is useful (Score 1) 516

| Seriously Jobs liked flat UI's

no

| and one button mice.

Yes

| While Jobs was off developing Next, Apple adopted 3d shading.

NeXT did it far earlier of course. NeXT used 4-intensity grayscale on its first machine (very tastefully) when most Mac was 1 bit black and white. The grayscale displays obviously didn't have any RGB phosphors, and were extremely clear for the time.

Take a look here and compare contemporaneous Apple/Amiga/Microsoft vs NeXT.

http://www.theoligarch.com/microsoft_vs_apple_history.htm

NeXT was 15 years ahead of competitors, both in UI and software architecture. Windows 95 was a low-end rip-off of NeXTSTEP UI, but at least they had the taste to rip off the best. Note the W95 close button. Note how Windows screwed up by putting minimize & maximize very close to the destructive close 'X' button. NeXT of course but the close button alone and the other menu on the other side.

| One he came back it's forced his developers to put a flat UI on the first iPhone.

iPhone wasn't flat until Steve was nearly dead. I have a very old iPod Touch that runs iOS 4.x. The UI is really good and nice looking, predictable, and fast and efficient. Better than my much faster iPad on 8.

Comment Re:Townes was Told that the Maser Was Impossible (Score 5, Interesting) 73

Indeed. Bohr argued, even earlier, with Einstein on this issue, saying that stimulated emission was impossible. Einstein derived the rate equations for the laser.

People erroneously imagine that Einstein was wrong about quantum mechanics. He wasn't. And in two central areas, the Copenhagen interpretation (it is a useful approximation but makes no sense as physics, decoherence does), and the laser, Bohr was wrong and Einstein was right.

Comment Reason is pretty simple (Score 1) 101

People will buy "Airtime By Google" more then "Airtime By Sprint" because Google doesn't (yet) have a legacy of toxic customer disservice.

Any Virtual Mobile Network Operator (there are quite a number, I'm on Republic Wireless) has to pay the marketing to acquire customers and take financial risks on payment terms.

The difference is that Google could help Sprint & TM with technical capabilities, backend networking, and organizing

Also Google will gain direct understanding about the performance and capabilities of wireless networks to inform them about how to design Android. And Google will learn how to run a wireless network, which they will eventually do from their satellites.

Google wants to run a comm system which will seamlessly transfer from wifi to terrestrial wireless to satellite wireless, and sell ads by the exabyte.

Comment Re:Useful changes (Score 2, Insightful) 55

| How about a cryptocurrency that targets an inflation rate that is known to be economically stable, say 2%, by standardizing on a openly evaluated standard basket of goods. You know, how actual currencies work but without the middlemen of the reserve banks

Because you can't do that without reserve banks. And you can't have banks without a way of pricing money through time, and you can't price money through time without a debt market.

Hey cryptocurrency boosters, are you up to loaning bitcoin or something less popular for 10 years?

Comment What else? (Score 1) 316


What would be in done in any normal situation.

Find the person responsible for engaging in the illegal activities. Charge the person with those activities. Find the owners of the property. If that property is part of evidence of a crime, then store it unmolested as evidence.

If an owner is convicted and given a fine, sell the property to pay the fine, and give any remainder to the owner. Sentence the owner according to a law. If the owner is not convicted, give the property back to the owner with an apology.

Comment Re:I do not understand the self-flagellation (Score 4, Insightful) 479


Where's the bitching about under-representation of people over 40?

There are oodles of people who want these jobs, and are very motivated to get them, and have specific industry experience, and don't need any hand-holding, coddling or emotional kisses.

Oh yeah, fuck them.

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