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Comment Re:study confirms expectations (Score 1) 173

That's actually a good question. Inks have changed somewhat over the past 5,000 years, and there's no particular reason to think that tattoo inks have been equally mobile across this timeframe.

But now we come to a deeper point. Basically, tattoos (as I've always understand it) are surgically-engineered scars, with the scar tissue supposedly locking the ink in place. It's quite probable that my understanding is wrong - this isn't exactly an area I've really looked into in any depth, so the probability of me being right is rather slim. Nonetheless, if I had been correct, then you might well expect the stuff to stay there. Skin is highly permeable, but scar tissue less so. As long as the molecules exceed the size that can migrate, then you'd think it would be fine.

That it isn't fine shows that one or more of these ideas must be wrong.

Comment Re:Why not Coca Cola? (Score 1) 127

Sugar is not harmful in sensible quantities, i would rather drink a small quantity of full sugar coca-cola than any quantity of coke zero.

I'm an insulin dependent (LADA) diabetic, thanks to Agent Orange. Unless I need to recover from hypoglycemia before I pass out, that is not an option for me. I'm sure that I'm not the only person reading this thread who has to avoid regular sugar except in very small amounts (Sugar in my morning coffee is part of my morning carbohydrates.) or in emergencies.

Comment Re:And this helps how? (Score 1) 127

Prepared foods should in theory cost more because you're paying for not only the ingredients but also the preparation, the only reason they're cheaper is because they can hide all kinds of unpleasant or inferior ingredients in there.

You can believe that if it fits in with your particular set of conspiracy theories, but it's not true. The USDA is very big on inspecting commercial food plants and comes down like a metric ton of bricks on companies that try that sort of thing. No, what keeps the prices on factory food down is something called "economies of scale." I'll let you look that up for yourself because that way there's a slight chance that you'll learn something.

Comment Re:Change one word (Score 1) 109

If there is a three party Presidential race, the US House of Representatives makes the decision as to who wins.

No they don't unless none of the candidates manage to get a majority in the Electoral College, and that's not a sure thing by any means. Remember, Ross Perot tried that in both '92 and '96 and didn't carry a single state in either election.

Comment Re:Wrong question. (Score 1) 194

Investment is a tricky one.

I'd say that learning how to learn is probably the single-most valuable part of any degree, and anything that has any business calling itself a degree will make this a key aspect. And that, alone, makes a degree a good investment, as most people simply don't know how. They don't know where to look, how to look, how to tell what's useful, how to connect disparate research into something that could be used in a specific application, etc.

The actual specifics tend to be less important, as degree courses are well-behind the cutting edge and are necessarily grossly simplified because it's still really only crude foundational knowledge at this point. Students at undergraduate level simply don't know enough to know the truly interesting stuff.

And this is where it gets tricky. Because an undergraduate 4-year degree is aimed at producing thinkers. Those who want to do just the truly depressingly stupid stuff can get away with the 2 year courses. You do 4 years if you are actually serious about understanding. And, in all honesty, very few companies want entry-level who are competent at the craft, they want people who are fast and mindless. Nobody puts in four years of network theory or (Valhalla forbid) statistics for the purpose of being mindless. Not unless the stats destroyed their brain - which, to be honest, does happen.

Humanities does not make things easier. There would be a LOT of benefit in technical documentation to be written by folk who had some sort of command of the language they were using. Half the time, I'd accept stuff written by people who are merely passing acquaintances of the language. Vague awareness of there being a language would sometimes be an improvement. But that requires that people take a 2x4 to the usual cultural bias that you cannot be good at STEM and arts at the same time. (It's a particularly odd cultural bias, too, given how much Leonardo is held in high esteem and how neoclassical universities are either top or near-top in every country.)

So, yes, I'll agree a lot of degrees are useless for gaining employment and a lot of degrees for actually doing the work, but the overlap between these two is vague at times.

Comment Re:Directly monitored switches? (Score 1) 54

There is a possibility of a short-circuit causing an engine shutdown. Apparently, there is a known fault whereby a short can result in the FADEC "fail-safing" to engine shutdown, and this is one of the competing theories as the wiring apparently runs near a number of points in the aircraft with water (which is a really odd design choice).

Now, I'm not going to sit here and tell you that (a) the wiring actually runs there (the wiring block diagrams are easy to find, but block diagrams don't show actual wiring paths), (b) that there is anything to indicate that water could reach such wiring in a way that could cause a short, or (c) that it actually did so. I don't have that kind of information.

All I can tell you, at this point, is that aviation experts are saying that a short at such a location would cause an engine shutdown and that Boeing was aware of this risk.

I will leave it to the experts to debate why they're using electrical signalling (it's slower than fibre, heavier than fibre, can corrode, and can short) and whether the FADEC fail-safes are all that safe or just plain stupid. For a start, they get paid to shout at each other, and they actually know what specifics to shout at each other about.

But, if the claims are remotely accurate, then there were a number of well-known flaws in the design and I'm sure Boeing will just love to answer questions on why these weren't addressed. The problem being, of course, is that none of us know which of said claims are indeed remotely accurate, and that makes it easy for air crash investigators to go easy on manufacturers.

User Journal

Journal Journal: Audio processing and implications 1

Just as a thought experiment, I wondered just how sophisticated a sound engineering system someone like Delia Derbyshire could have had in 1964, and so set out to design one using nothing but the materials, components, and knowledge available at the time. In terms of sound quality, you could have matched anything produced in the early-to-mid 1980s. In terms of processing sophistication, you could have matched anything produced in the early 2000s. (What I came up with would take a large comple

Comment Re:Don't blame the pilot prematurely (Score 4, Insightful) 54

It's far from indisputable. Indeed, it's hotly disputed within the aviation industry. That does NOT mean that it was a short-circuit (although that is a theory that is under investigation), it merely means that "indisputable" is not the correct term to use here. You can argue probabilities or reasonableness, but you CANNOT argue "indisputable" when specialists in the field in question say that it is, in fact, disputed.

If you were to argue that the most probable cause was manual, then I think I could accept that. If you were to argue that Occam's Razor required that this be considered H0 and therefore a theory that must be falsified before others are considered, I'd not be quite so comfortable but would accept that you've got to have some sort of rigorous methodology and that's probably the sensible one.

But "indisputable"? No, we are not at that stage yet. We might reach that stage, but we're not there yet.

Comment Re:Google? wtf (Score 1) 91

It doesn't matter if they know about other tools or not because most of the time their work machines are locked down to keep malware off of them so that they're not able to install Libre Office even if they want to. Excel is all they have so they do what they can to make it work, for some minuscule value of "work."

Comment Re:Brain-altering? (Score 1) 35

Jewish people do something similar with their youth with bar and bat mitzvahs.

You might want to consider learning something about the subject you're going to rant about before going off half-cocked to avoid shoving both of your feet down your throat. Those two ceremonies are simply symbolic coming of age rituals without any secret sections, and you can find out everything you need about them by asking your Jewish friends, presuming, of course, that you have any.

Comment Re: Marketing (Score 1) 116

This in turn strongly suggests they knew how to position themselves in a marketing perspective in a way that shows all the other more venerable distros out there really dropped the ball.

I don't think so. I think it's more a case of Zorin being the only Linux distro that made an effort to have a look and feel that's as close to Windows as possible so as to make it easy for Windows refugees to make the transition.

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