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Comment: Re:a rush of excitement (Score 1) 106

by White Flame (#43788375) Attached to: I am fairly prepared for a storm outage of ...

The preppers always seem to try to be preparing for society-destroying Armageddon or a zombie apocalypse.

In reality, major natural disasters cause outages for a couple of weeks, and economic upheaval (like hyperinflation) in 1st world countries max out at around 18 months. Having up to 30 days of stuff around for local disasters makes a good amount of sense, as does ensuring the capability of moving out of the country if the economics get that dire. Creating an "I'm going to live out my days in here" bunker does not.

Comment: Re:Happened in an Ice storm last month (Score 1) 106

by White Flame (#43788255) Attached to: I am fairly prepared for a storm outage of ...

Candles can put out enough heat to take the bitter edge off the cold, especially if you can get them inside a metal container to buffer the heat.

My mom had a purely decorative iron pot-belly stove that we stuffed full of candles during a severe snowstorm when the power went out. It did surprisingly well.

If you want to get dangerous, you can attempt to rig up a candle-heated pot of cooking oil or something, too.

Comment: Re:America doesn't need to worry about terrorists (Score 1) 501

This is a little disingenuous, because this response is exactly what the terrorists plan on. Their goal isn't to blow up a country and kill all the people themselves, but to turn the country in on itself.

Every single politician who goes along with this crap is perpetuating the goals of terrorism and is a traitor.

Comment: Re:What about Undergrad classes? (Score 2) 119

I would rather they not offer requisite undergraduate classes, and simply allow anybody to enroll. If you're already good enough to be post-BS in CS, you'll keep up. If you aren't prepared or can't keep up otherwise, you fail.

Enforced prerequisites are simply a cash draw; ostensibly they should only be recommendations to guide student decisions.

Comment: Re:Only 20? (Score 1) 300

by White Flame (#43699813) Attached to: Browser tabs I have open right now ...

The only problems I've had are using too much memory, not any other instability. I'm using Chromium, and it does slowly leak (either the browser itself, or javascript on whatever pages I'm on). When the size gets problematic, I go into the task manager and blow away large-footprint subprocesses which error-pages some number of tabs. F5 restores a page from that state. Since the pages which get killed in such situations vary, I'm more suspect of the browser itself being the leak source then any particular page.

The reason I do this as opposed to using bookmarks is that visiting a set of N favorite pages is easiest with Ctrl-Tab F5 rather than running through a bookmark list or remembering which URLs to visit. It's also easier to see what changed on a page from a refresh rather than viewing a page from a new blank tab.

Comment: Re:Sounds good. (Score 1) 614

The problem is that it isn't a free market. There are too few competitors, and they all work to eliminate more newcomers to the field.

I agree that if laws were changed and startups who want to pursue becoming cable providers could do so, that competition would work. I don't think that's going to happen, so the 2nd option is to regulate what these few gatekeepers are allowed to do to try to keep from screwing everybody over.

Comment: Re:Sounds good. (Score 1) 614

I tried really, really hard to 'cut the cord' (or in this case 'ditch the dish') but after careful study, I found with a family of four, including two children, this just won't work.

The reason why it won't work is that you haven't made the decision to cut your television watching, just thought about changing the means. If you decide you're going to be a no-TV family, then do that. Sure, watch your occasional movies, read your news articles online, buy a sports feed, buy or download some programs for the kids if you want, but the "flip on the tube and watch whatever's on for a while" is something that's worth looking at eliminating for its own benefit.

Comment: Re:Why wait till tomorrow (Score 1) 95

by White Flame (#43692427) Attached to: Space Station Crew Prepare For Emergency Spacewalk

One of the things that the video seemed to imply is that they're simulating the expected procedure in their underwater tanks on the ground first, to make sure everything is reachable, and to know what tools they need to do the job.

The crew are not necessarily experts on every nut and bolt of the ISS. While they've certainly studied it, and have done the underwater sims themselves, the hands-on experience with each individual unit is quite rare compared to, say, a mechanic who works on cars every day for decades.

Comment: Re:YouTube has ads?!? (Score 1) 381

by White Flame (#43692351) Attached to: Microsoft YouTube App Strips Ads; Adds Download

Okay, that's fine. But it's definitely not "standard process everyone follows". Most people seem to either watch them or block them.

However, I have heard that what YouTube does give to its paid content creators is based on views, irrespective of whether or not the ads were actually played, so both of your points could apply more to blockers than ignorers.

All life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities. -- Dawkins

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