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Comment: Re:I just flip the bottle upside down (Score 2) 287

by BKX (#40099937) Attached to: MIT Creates Superhydrophobic Condiment Bottles

Oddly, those red bottles prevent that. (I manage a restaurant) Now we just wait for them to empty and then get a new one. Since we don't have to worry about the crappy look of an empty ketchup bottle, we no longer even consider combining bottles. Besides, the health inspector would shit a brick if he ever caught you doing it. At most restaurants that have ketchup on the table, the stuff moves so fast, there's no worrying about spoiled ketchup anyway. I have 30 tables, and I use 60 bottles of ketchup per week, and we specialize in breakfast, not burgers and fries, just to give some perspective.

Comment: Re:Free software wouldn't have helped (Score 2) 807

by BKX (#38567328) Attached to: Why Richard Stallman Was Right All Along

I believe that's argument from incredulity. It's usual form is something like, "This guy's ideas are wrong because he can't properly format a hyperlink and is therefore retarded and because of his idiocy his ideas are also wrong." While it's true the GGP can't properly format hyperlinks, that doesn't make his conclusions wrong; it just makes him either stupid, ignorant or lazy.

Comment: Re:Dude, that's lame (Score 1) 123

by BKX (#38405660) Attached to: Technical Details Behind the LAN-Party Optimized House

Generally that problem can be solved with 36 inch flexible drill bits (they exist and are awesome and not too expensive), maybe some flexible drill bit extenders (you may need the equivalent of a 100 inch drill bit), and some fishtape. Usually, you just drill down until you hit the unfinished part of your basement, or you drill over until you hit an air duct and run plenum rated through that with the fishtape.

Bug

Linux Kernel Power Bug Is Fixed 145

Posted by Soulskill
from the another-one-bites-the-dust dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Linux kernel power bug that caused high power usage for many Intel Linux systems has finally been addressed. Matthew Garrett of Red Hat has devised a solution for the ASPM Linux power problem by mimicking Microsoft Windows' power behavior in the Linux kernel. A patch is on LKML for this solution to finally restore the battery life under Linux."

Comment: Re:It Isn't Just Gaming (Score 1) 287

by BKX (#37356762) Attached to: Are Games Worth Complaining About?

I think the formula is more like Satisfaction = 2 * Reality / ( Expectations + Hopes). Even if a product performs exactly as you expected, you won't be 100% satisfied if you hoped for better, thus Satisfaction is Reality divided by the average of your expectations and hopes.

Of course since some people like geometry more than arithmetic, maybe for them it's really Satisfaction = Reality / sqrt(Expectations*Hopes).

Comment: Re:Bitcoin (Score 2) 601

by BKX (#37348234) Attached to: Krugman On Bitcoin and the Gold Standard

Nope, not quite right (except the part about higher voltages needing less thick wires.). How thick a wire must be to handle a given load depends mainly on amperage. Since this is a heat dissipation issue, where you put the wire also matters: in a wall means less heat dissipation than outdoor use which means a thicker gauge. Voltage means nothing. The only thing that voltage matters for is insulation. The higher the voltage, the better able electricity is at jumping gaps in the circuit, and so you need thicker insulation to prevent this. To give you an example, in my brother's car, one of his amplifiers uses 6AWG wiring, and runs at 60A at 12V. An overhead transmission line that uses 6AWG aluminum wire will typically carry 69kV with a maximum capacity of something like 300A. The reason it can use higher amps is because of the cooling effect of having the wire exposed to air and not near anything, and that we have increased safety tolerances for wires in areas where humans are likely to be present (buildings, cars, etc.). The insulation difference is massive. The car wiring's insulation is like 1mm plastic, whereas the transmission line uses literally meters of air between the wires and ceramic insulating suspenders that are several feet tall.

To give another example, let's take house wiring. If I have a 20A 120V circuit, I'll need to use 12AWG wire. If I have a 20A 208V circuit, I'll need to use 12AWG wire. If I have a 20A 240V circuit, again, I'll need to use 12AWG. Now you might be tempted to say, "But, there are three wire in the 208V and 240V circuits." But then I'll remind you that all the electricity, no matter the configuration*, flows back through the neutral.

* Yes, I know that's simplistic and 3-phase is even weirder and 208V is the potential between the hots and we don't touch the neutral with 208V, but it doesn't really affect my point, so fuck it.

Comment: Re:supposedly obsolete tech (Score 1) 685

by BKX (#37060754) Attached to: PC Designer Says PC "Going the Way of the Vacuum Tube"

If you were truly cheap you would have already replaced your incandescent bulbs with CFLs. The payback for the switch is amazingly fast. At five hours of use per day, $1 per bulb and $.09/kWh, it takes one month for the savings in electricity to pay for the new CFL, five weeks if add in the cost of the old incandescent.

Comment: Re:It'll never make it through FDA trials (Score 5, Insightful) 521

by BKX (#37057490) Attached to: Cancer Cured By HIV

This argument is bullshit. Pure bullshit. If any "Big Pharma" company invented a cure for cancer tomorrow, you can bet your ass that they'd be all over it in a heartbeat. Why? Because, then that company would forever be known as the company that cured cancer. Every new product they make would be a pot of gold. Every ad they put out would be "Muhdikard, a new treatment for erectile dysfunction, from Drugco. We cured cancer.". Every drug company on the face of the planet would kill for that kind of marketing, not to mention the money from selling the cancer cure.

Now, of course, "cure for cancer" is a worthless phrase as well, since cancer is a type of disease, and not a single disease, and therefore, it's extremely unlikely that one cure will work for more than one cancer let alone all of them.

Robotics

Team Sonia Takes Prize at RoboSub 2011 22

Posted by timothy
from the dive-dive-dive-fatal-exception dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The RoboSub 2011 competition final was held on July 17. Each year, teams from around the world gather to see who has the best autonomous underwater vehicle. The goal of the competition is to complete an obstacle course with no human intervention. This year a team from Montreal, Canada — team SONIA AUV from ETS — won first place." Read on for a list of the top-placing teams.

Comment: Re:Meters and miles? (Score 1) 336

by BKX (#36828596) Attached to: Sheikh Carves His Name In Desert So It's Visible From Space

No, standard is not Imperial. In the US, standard is the common name for the US Customary System, which is different from the Imperial system of measures. While I believe the units for distance are the same between the two systems, the units for volume and large masses are quite different. Particularly, fluid ounces and gallons.

Sum quod eris.

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