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Comment: Re:it's really really hard (Score 1) 229

by BasilBrush (#43816467) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: How To Determine If a Video Has Been Faked?

And by emitted, we're talking about from the earth.

Of course we are you idiot. Which is not the same as "that hit's it" in the post you replied to. You look really stupid trying to patronise people when you don't understand the posts you are replying to. Is English not your first language?

Comment: Re:That's way too ambiguous. (Score 1) 324

by BasilBrush (#43814657) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: When Is the User Experience Too Good?

Agreed. However, going with the example, I'd just require a flying car test and license for any user that gets one.

I wouldn't allow flying cars until the technology was up to self-driving. People often have accidents whilst driving ordinary cars. With flying cars the possibilities for having them are greater, because of the extra dimension to keep track of. And the consequences of having them are far more serious, for them, the other flying car, and for the people below them on the ground.

Whilst I'm not saying that I have complete trust in a theoretical future self-driving system, I have far more trust than I do in the ability of ordinary people to manage it.

Note for those thinking ordinary people already fly planes: That's true, but only because the volume is low. Anything within 3 nautical miles, at the same altitude is classed as a near miss for current planes. Flying cars would be a whole different kettle of fish.

But all this is irrelevant to the TFS question, which is unanswerable without a better analogy.

Comment: Re:FB (Score 1) 324

by BasilBrush (#43814039) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: When Is the User Experience Too Good?

I've unliked plenty of things. It never occurred to me that it was anything other than obvious.

For post or a comment, the "Like" text turns to "Unlike". A simple toggle for something that doesn't matter.

For a page like, The "Like" button turns to "Liked" with a checkmark. Hover or click that and "Unlike" is on the drop down-menu. Unliking a page is a rarer and bigger significance of event than a comment like, so it's good design to make it so that it can't be done with a single click.

There's lots of things to complain about in the Facebook UI, but I don't see this as one of them.

Comment: Re:One of the things I like about Google (Score 1) 39

by BasilBrush (#43813105) Attached to: Google Takes Street View To the Galapagos Islands

I don't like Google. I can't remember the last time they made a move I liked. But this one is good.

I suspect they do have a profit motive though. We just don't know what it is yet.

I suspect the stuff they make has a certain longevity about it.

Tell that to Google Reader users. And Google Code downloaders. And users of all the other projects they scrapped in the last few months.

Comment: Re:it's really really hard (Score 1) 229

by BasilBrush (#43812183) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: How To Determine If a Video Has Been Faked?

" A retroreflector reflects light right back at where it came from no matter what angle it hits it at."

Wrong. Out of 10^17 photons emitted, only one will make it back to the original source.

How is that wrong? He said "that hits it", you are talking about "emitted". For sure when you aim a laser at the moon, one a proportion of the photons will hit it. Because unlike popular opinion lasers do produce light that diverges. And of course some will be deflected or stopped by matter in the earths atmosphere.

Likewise, not all the photons that are reflected will get back to the telescope, for the same reasons.

None of which contradicts the statement that retroreflectors reflect light right back at where it came from. They do.

Comment: Re:it's really really hard (Score 1) 229

by BasilBrush (#43812073) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: How To Determine If a Video Has Been Faked?

The second retroreflector installed had to be hand-aimed.

The whole point of a retroreflector is that it bounces light back to it's source from whatever angle it comes. OK, not from behind, but over near to 180 degrees.

But leaving that aside, what would be the point of "hand-aiming" one, given that the moon and the earth are constantly in motion with respect to each other? It would only be aimed at something for the moment it was aimed.

If you're saying it was aimed at somewhere on the moon itself, then it still provides no evidence that man was ever on the moon, as we can't test it from here.

Looking forward to your more detailed explanation of what you are referring to.

Comment: Re:How about... (Score 1) 297

by BasilBrush (#43811783) Attached to: Terrorist Murder In London Could Revive Snooper's Charter

Do we know for sure yet whether the "terrorists" fired a shot? I saw one person claiming to be a witness that said the terrorists fired first, but most reports have no mention of that, and the event by event accounts that I've seen don't say that they shot.

In fact there were plenty of crowds around, who don't seem to have seen the need to duck for cover, so the gun, real or not, doesn't seem to even have been waved around till the police showed up.

In which case did they have a functioning gun at all? Or was it a replica. Or did they not have access to ammo. We may have to wait for the trial before this information is released. And why only one gun, when there were two of them? They seemed to have plenty of bladed weapons.

These are people that have been known to be involved with Islamic fundamentalism for a decade, and yet it seems likely they couldn't get easy access to firearms.

You think the public should have easy access to firearms. In this case armed bystanders couldn't have stopped the initial attack which was to run into the soldier with a car. We don't know the cause of death yet, so we don't know if that was fatal in itself, but it could have been.

For sure an armed bystander could have put an end to this sooner, but at what stage? Even after the meat cleaver attack most bystanders thought there had been a car "accident". The chances of some member of the public getting out their gun and committing themselves to shooting a man, before the first swipe with a meat cleaver are limited. For someone who'd not a police trained firearms officer assessing the situation and committing to shoot and possibly kill someone takes more that a second or two.

But still, the outcome of this MIGHT have been better had a member of the public been armed and willing to shoot someone.

But the flip side is that the "terrorists", both these ones and others, would then have easier access to firearms. They would certainly have been properly armed, and may well have have killed more people.

UK gun policy is working. Gun crime here has been falling for years. It would be foolish to reverse the policy when the existing trend is a good one.

APL is a natural extension of assembler language programming; ...and is best for educational purposes. -- A. Perlis

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