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Comment: Re:OP == twit (Score 1) 507

It's possible the older programmer considered this person's input, thought about it and rejected it. Certainly about concurrency, a wise programmer might recognize the continued difficulties and subtleties in writing such a code, no less maintaining it and remaining clear about subtle semantic assumptions. The right choice is, in many cases, "avoid". There's a difference between clever and wise.

And then the version control stuff could just be a dumb mistake. They do happen.

Comment: Re:How about train him? (Score 1) 507

If those younger managers are unable to achieve results without generating significant personnel disruption, why do they deserve employment at all?

A bit more maturity reveals that everybody, yes everybody, has varying skill and knowledge levels on all sorts of tasks. There is somebody better than you at something. Do you think it's reasonable that this other kid wants to get you fired?

Good management maximizes compatibility between person and requirements. If the older co-worker doesn't know how to program concurrency very well, and you do, then you should take on the concurrency-programming tasks instead of bitching. Yes, you should get a better bonus.

Comment: Re:but who should duplicate... (Score 1) 307

by mbkennel (#43593025) Attached to: SOPA Creator Now In Charge of NSF Grants

| Because it's "duplicate" or because it's never been done before.

These are the indefensible reviewer comments which can be applied at liberty to any grant application. Unlike publishing a scientific paper, where usually reviewers require some scientific justification for their negative comments, getting funding is arbitrary.

Here they are:

1) Application is too similar to applicant's previous research
2) Application does not show sufficient preliminary results to suggest feasibility.

Nearly always you get one or both of them from a reviewer. I've gotten them from the SAME reviewer, one following the other just like that list.

Of course Lamar Smith isn't going to do anything remotely sensible to help NSF, quite the opposite. Now in addition to the criteria #1 and #2 which the review committee can fling at any thing they don't like (or just happen to not be one of their buddies), NSF program monitors themselves will start rejecting applications because of some vague feeling that it would be damaging politically. The political constraints will never be made explicit on paper, of course, but they will be enforced with inexplicable "early retirements" and undenied rumors, which makes them more powerful.

Comment: Re:LFTR will solve these problems -- with YOUR hel (Score 2) 218

by mbkennel (#43533329) Attached to: Fukushima Nuclear Plant Cleanup May Take More Than 40 Years

| will mechanically drain its operating fluid into a vessel where it will just sit there.

Until the rain and floods come in after the accident in which case you have steam explosions and radioactive waste in a highly water-soluble liquid combing to make all sorts of fun.

A LFTR is a chemical reprocessing plant with astonishingly racdioactive liquid (since it just came out of the fission core) circulating at hundreds of degrees with caustic chemical properties. There will be leaks. There will be breaches. Every drop is a huge problem. There will be----well anything that can go wrong in a hot chemical plant---now add in the fact that humans even in suits can't go in there for decades if something is wrong.

Nuclear reprocessing plants are the nastiest ones, because of the combination of liquids and radiaoactivity. I do not trust a utility with such an installation, and only want a tiny number of them, not every power plant to be one.

Comment: Re:Newer tech yes, Smaller reactors no (Score 4, Interesting) 218

by mbkennel (#43533271) Attached to: Fukushima Nuclear Plant Cleanup May Take More Than 40 Years

A liquid flouride thorium reactor has exceptionally radioactive fission products dissolved in a caustic, very hot liquid. Every nuclear plant also has to be a chemical reprocessing plant of 700 degree radioactive liquids sufficiently dangerous that humans cannot get close to them for decades.

This system also happens to be very water-soluble, so that a breach and flood similar to Fukushima would be extraordinarily dangerous---most of the waste would have entered the environment instead of a modest fraction.

Conventional reactors have fission products encased in zirconium steel.

Comment: Re:Cost of nuclear power (Score 1) 218

by mbkennel (#43533255) Attached to: Fukushima Nuclear Plant Cleanup May Take More Than 40 Years

| A single friggen massive algae bloom could eat up all the CO2 produced in a year and turn it into O2 in a few weeks, and die dropping the carbon safely at the bottom of the sea.

Empirically, why hasn't this been happening to keep the CO2 concentration stable?

What makes one believe that such a circumstance could be engineered to happen every year for the next 300 years?

Comment: Re:A likely story (Score 1) 291

by mbkennel (#43484983) Attached to: Bitfloor Indefinitely Suspends Bitcoin Trading

There is an explicit federal statute against unregulated coinage intended as 'current money'.

Liberty "Dollars" used the word "dollars". In practice the notion was intended to be primarily profitable for the coiner, essentially selling metals for USD at a price much higher than the commodity price by calling it a "dollar" and encouraging its use as money in contrast to numismatic value.

Comment: Re:Ok..So verizon has shown they cant be trusted.. (Score 1) 168

by mbkennel (#43408039) Attached to: FBI's Smartphone Surveillance Tool Explained In Court Battle

Attaching a GPS device to person's owned car requires a warrant.

Does attaching a GPS device to a stolen car require a warrant? What if the legitimate owner of the car agrees to the tracker.
That's more the situation here. Suppose the legitimate owner activated a GPS on his own car and reported it to the authorities.

Is there a right for a person to be secure in somebody else's houses, papers and effects?

Comment: Re:slow news day? (Score 1) 631

by mbkennel (#43407661) Attached to: No Such Thing As a Tax-Free Lunch At Google?

Why is this a problem?

The converse, buying health insurance across state lines is a trojan horse for industry-friendly regulatory arbitrage. What would happen is that virtually all health plans in states would shut down and move to the one state, say North Louisiana, with the least regulation and most captured regulators.

Now, what regulator in North Louisiana is really going to get medieval on the company which got the governor elected, built the stadium and provides 10,000 jobs in the capital---all over some abuses which happen in other states to people who aren't even his governor's constituents? Naturally the plans for North Louisianans will be good and the industry nice to them.

So, after this happens will there really be a Federal Health Insurance Regulatory Agency instituted to get around this? Heck no.
Now do you understand why the right wing wants this "buy health insurance across state lines" so much?

It's already happened with credit cards (and the banks are at least beholden to the Fed's regulators and can't really tell them to stuff off because they need the money from the Fed)---and health is much more important.

Certainly the game is rigged. Don't let that stop you; if you don't bet, you can't win. -- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love"

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