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Comment Re:A French subpoena! That will teach them! (Score 0) 90

Nobody stops GAFA, before you know it your downstairs neighbour Democrat president will start ripping up all your trade agreements.

We already had that happen right after the last election in 2016. Groogle, Froogle, Smoogle, Facebook, Faceplant who gives a shit if we somehow manage to screw them out of some of their cash with a thinly disguised tax? It is all the same crap.

Americans don't by and large know that the original CCR was not a southern blues rock band, it was a way to put more dollars into the hands of Burton Cummings and the Guess Who and even small players like Neil Young and Susan and Terry Jacks, hell even Edward Bear made a few bucks because of the taxes we slapped on American garbage content. So if Facebook and Google want to use our news as a revenue source they should pay the pipers, should they not?

As an official Old and Flatulent but still proud Canadian, keeping the border closed until some sanity can return after the final demise of the current asshole in power south of the 49th is the best option. That is unless some how suddenly the ghost of the rat fuckers come to life and make magic words come out of Joe Biden in a letter that slurs the Canucks.

Given that the Canucks just bowed out to the team of mostly Canadians from Las Vegas the entertainment tonight value of just sitting back, drinking a beer, farting pissing and moaning is all most of us Canucks can do about the current seemingly intractable problems plaguing our once great neighbours to the south.

Our industries like those of the US have all been taken over offshore and we too are about to go down the toilet because of our economic greed and sloth in allowing a few people to control far too much of our economies. This does not mean that we support the "Lefties" or are all "Libtards" or some other ridiculous new trendy Facebook style epithet, it simply means that here in Canada we fully understand the divide and conquer bullshit tactics of Donald Trump and don't fall for that kind of bullshit quite as quickly as the disaffected population that accidentally elected a moron for president. HOLY CRAP BATMANSlashdot is turning me into a hairy old troll! Unleash the MAGA POSTS PLEASE this is a good discussion time to make it into a shit show with Anti antifa rhetoric bullshit... where the hell is OrangeMANBAD and he should be in this thread like a dirty shirt. PASS the POPCORN I think I am about to fart again!

Comment Re:You'd also have to drop the highway speed limit (Score 1) 290

If you are driving mountain roads with abrupt turns at highway speed at night then you just deserve to die.

Not really but maybe he just likes making road pizza out of bear, elk, moose, deer, rabbits and on special occasions pedestrians. Driver ed sure has gone for shit these days if it is becoming too hard to get across the simple concept of defensive driving, which is and has always been:

Adjust your speed for the conditions, if you cannot see where you are going, don't go.

Comment Re:Rose colored glasses of greed driving us all. (Score 1) 93

The rules don't REQUIRE using more petroleum. Consumers will remain free to purchase fuel efficient and alternative fuel vehicles. What you're protesting is that people will be able to make that choice rather than having the government dictate that choice to them. You're protesting consumer choice because you are afraid people will make choices you don't like. You're literally advocating using the police power of the state to force people to make choices you agree with.

Either we see governance as that which is choice or we dismiss democracy and fall for the tyranny which anarchy brings. Our economic system which is the use of the ecology is currently a firmly entrenched anarchic primitive one. We can change our use of the ecology but it must be for a reason and that reason can only come from an agreement. Therefore change can only come from an agreement that is a political one. To instead dismiss responsible governance as being something that we are not in control of as a peoples is the sure road to tyranny. It has nothing to do with a "police state" and the idiotic concept of all government being the boogey man. Destroy faith in government and you will meet the boogey man that is a certainty. The villainization of those in governance is exactly how Hitler did what he did to the entire German peoples. But then again historically humans have always tended to blame others when their behaviour is destructive.

When it comes to the destruction of the environment we all need to look no further than into a mirror to see who what is causing the problems. Blaming others for the destruction of the planet is a cheap escape from reality. If you do not trust governments and those sworn to protect and serve then become a public servant yourself, but stop the bullshit anti democratic rhetoric first, it is complete nonsense.

Comment Re:Rose colored glasses of greed driving us all. (Score 5, Informative) 93

The rules don't REQUIRE using more petroleum. Consumers will remain free to purchase fuel efficient and alternative fuel vehicles. What you're protesting is that people will be able to make that choice rather than having the government dictate that choice to them. You're protesting consumer choice because you are afraid people will make choices you don't like. You're literally advocating using the police power of the state to force people to make choices you agree with.

It is precisely people choosing to create an economy based upon the over exploitation of the resources of this planet that is the problem. We will eventually need to reign in unrestrained consumerism somehow if we are to advance as a species past the destruction of the ecology of this planet. Plain and simple. Whether we reach a point that this is done by agreement within a governance system is moot.

The planet and the ecology it provides does not care if we chose to kill off our future as a species on this world. We either agree politically to stop the destruction by over consumption in the name of consumerism or we will leave nothing for future generations. The choice is a political one at present, in the future there will be no choice to make if we do not make the ugly decisions necessary to become stewards of the ecology on this entire planet and soon. It is not a chicken little situation the problems with greed caused destruction of the ecology are as plane as the nose on your face.

Comment Re:The 737 is one of the greatest airplanes ever (Score 1) 229

But is long overdue for replacement. That short landing gear is just really hurting it from the engine standpoint and lead directly to the 737 Max issues.

Real slick skid plates on the bottom of the engine cowlings for landing in heavy weather with cross winds? Increase the fuel consumption by using tail flap down during takeoff and climb to compensate for nose up under power? Removal of all computer controlled flight features because the software should never override a pilots decision. Bingo you have a safe 737 max. The only way that I see the 737 max becoming a safe design is to develop some form of speed sensing technology that does not require pitot tubes and sensors even if they are redundant. Fly only with radar or gps to fixed point return speed sensing technology might be the only answer. If the pilot cannot trust the stall warning from the plane's software then the pilot must be able to manually ascertain the correct pitch and speed is being achieved at all times during acceleration related to altitude and speed.

I have always wondered whether or not the 737 Max would be safe landing in adverse conditions because of the short landing gear and engine size and placement. Seems that the mass of the engine nacelles being further forward might cause the nose to slam down hard regardless of how good the pilot is in adverse wind conditions when landing. All that being said the platform might very well make a cheap good military drone and Boeing could convert it into one hell of a high altitude hunter killer drone to launch targeted weapons from.

So all is not lost the planes could even be turned into cheap flying bombs with a huge range given that they will not be used to transport humans and all their luggage.

Hell the military could turn them all into really cheap Kamikaze drones for use in the upcoming war with Iran with the way politics and international relations are heading stateside these days. My karma is far too good, I just thought I would burn some of it off for a laugh with this last statement in my post.

Comment Insurance companies are delighted though. (Score 2) 70

They can much more easily easily do cheaper risk analysis with the help of firms like Cambridge Analytica. If the statistical data is mined and aggregated and made available for scientific research. Health records are used for legitimate scientific analysis of disease trends so there is a need for easy access to this kind of data. If it is first stripped of private data like names and other ways to identify individuals in the data base. Other than that hacking all this info and selling it is a fools enterprise. Or an enterprise that a criminal might decide is a bit too much of a royal pain in the ass to accomplish, because selling the data is not exactly easy.

At which point does the exposure of data make it of less value as a commodity simply because every crook with hacking skills is offering the same data, or does this data deserve the same protection from the public having access to it as say Donald Trumps financial records do?

When it comes to privacy and the need for easier access to data for medical professionals making everything super secure at all times is not as easy as some here on Slashdot seem to think.

Comment Re:Wow, just what I never wanted! (Score 1) 44

There is this thing called streaming. Verizon selling TV doesn't seem all that relevant.

Rolling out MoCA is not exactly a cheap undertaking. Verizon is similar to Shaw here in Canada the costs of getting the bandwidth distributed equally over the existing infrastructure is not chump change. So we see pay tv and we pay for cable access to watch what was TV stations. Then we have the problem with the way people associate tv channels with "stations" which in reality do not by and large exist in great numbers any more. Digital broadcast tv that you don't pay for is dying and what is replacing it is essentially just the internet nothing more nothing less. So you pay for advertising on fake "tv stations" and pay through the nose for content that does not suffer from advertising.

EXCEPT public broadcasting which I am sure some people in the cable industry would dearly love to sink into the same black hole that real TV stations broadcasting digital OTA tv is becoming.

Comment Re:Sequel generator? (Score 1) 39

Thought they had a fully functioning one of those.

No mod points yet but spot on! Just wonder when they will do a sequel to Dr Strangelove it seems to be a good time for someone to take a crack at that little gem. Or perhaps in a greener state of grace a sequel to "A River Runs Through it" only entitled "Our River in Requiem"

I know that the statement I just made is a downer, but AI determining the choices made for film material might just surprise the hell out of the studio execs. But to be more realistic we will start seeing even more "First Blood" like remakes and continue to vilify and judge each other unwisely. I highly doubt that an American style remake of "A Private Function" will ever happen though cause the humour in it goes zoom big time over the head of most Americans.

Comment Re:Notifications? (Score 0) 50

Turned off as soon as they were added. Like most crap on the web (such as JavaShit), it is best turned off.

Don't tell that to a header injection specialist like Amit Klein. The ever increasing abuse of the cookie monster buy most governments is the real issue here. Unfortunately the web was designed to track people in the first place, the only real answer is to love it or leave it when it comes to personal privacy. I could easily post this as an ac but what the hell I am an old fart and I just don't care about my privacy anymore.

Comment Ambivalent on this one. (Score 1) 50

I am ambivalent on this one because some decent news sites are moving away from rss and I still want some notifications on some topics from respectable forums and the like. Still have reply push turned off here on /. though since it turned into more of an engadget and twitter like site after the departure of taco.

Comment Re:I am Curious how it tastes (Score 1) 97

Thank you for your thoughtful comment. I live in the NW and try to buy wild salmon when eating (once a month or less). Should I be buying farm-raised salmon instead? I don't want to contribute to the over-fishing of our native species.

Sorry I didn't do a twitter and reply immediately. The choice is yours of course IMHO. I still buy sole fillets from Costco and love them dearly, they are mostly so called "ethically sourced" fish. But like all ocean species eventually our greed will deplete the resource to the point by drag netting the bottom of the oceans for sole will: like West Coast halibut fishing recently has done, cause ocean caught sole to become far too expensive to eat unless you are very well off.

In Japan and elsewhere the consumption of so called "Salmon Caviar" yearly causes many millions of of Chum salmon which when stripped of eggs are either wasted at sea or left where they to rot around the a substantial portion of the Pacific ring of fire, where they spawn in coastal rivers. The Chum carcasses after being stripped of eggs are worth less per tonne than the cost of taking them to processing plants to be turned into pet food in most cases. The unrestricted gill netting kills both the females and the males so the piles of rotting fish that never make it back to the forest to enhance the river ecology are then dumped willy nilly anywhere people won't have to deal with the smell of the rotting fish.

The Chum roe fishery and the herring roe fishery is an environmental obscenity and is a symptom of the smash and grab methodology of our shared government backed commercial fishing policies. Sorry about the rant but the more people who get to learn the truth about how our shared ocean fisheries are being ruined the better.

Comment Re:I am Curious how it tastes (Score 5, Interesting) 97

Id love to try it, i do like salmon but considering i live in the EU i guess i will not be able to anytime soon. If it tastes the same and is cheaper i dont see why i wouldnt prefer it, if i could. If it tastes worse or cost more i would not buy it. About what was changed in the fish, wikipedia says it has a growth hormone and promoter from a different fish. To me that doesnt sound like it could be a problem, food saftey wise. And its triploid instead of diploid so its harder for it to reproduce if it escapes. Personally, i have to say that all the GMO hate makes me really want to try and eat some GMOs (as long as there is nothing else wrong like antibiotics or pesticides which i do not want to eat ...)

If you read the article linked to in the original post very carefully you will see that their triploids come from brood stock. The brood stock is genetically modified and if it does somehow get loose from the hatchery on Prince Edward Island it could very easily establish itself in the Atlantic. Out here on the West Coast we regularly have escapes from net pens and they do go up the rivers. So far numbers of failed neutered and viable male and female fish have not established any permanent residency in West coast rivers or streams. Even though the brood stock is in a lake where they could theoretically escape into the straights above Port Hardy on Vancouver Island.

Back in the day when fish were just taken and planted willy nilly out here in our rivers and lakes there were some anadromous browns that existed for a period of time in rivers like the Cowichan. So far the Norwegian run net farming of Atlantics on the West Coast has only created mild disease problems and lice troubles unlike in Chile where the practice almost wiped out the native fish.

What is much more concerning out here on the West Coast is that the native runs of Chinook, Coho, Sockeye, Steelhead, Cutthroat are rapidly heading for localized extinction events on rivers like the entire Fraser system and most of the once abundant rivers on Vancouver Island. The Skeena system is in deep trouble as well but not quite as bad as the situation on the Fraser. The ghost of the once enormous fishery on the Columbia is heavily hatchery based because of the dams and the Alaska fisheries are starting to collapse despite the lying claims that their wild fish are responsibly and sustainability caught,

To top all this off the Pacific Blob is effecting the timing of the fish runs and climate change is destroying rearing habitat just about everywhere. Check the link in my first post on this thread. The blog is done by a very knowledgeable person and is an alarm call. We are seeing habitat that once reared great numbers of fry destroyed by environmental abuse and climate change the complete collapse of the fisheries on the West Coast is at hand and is as sad as the loss of the fisheries of the Grand Banks. Fish farming in fresh water is necessary if we are to take some of the pressure off natural fisheries and this includes the possibility of fish farming in fresh water on the West Coast: but not with an Atlantic Salmon based monoculture methodology thank you! There are incredible ways in which we could very easily adapt the diadromous variant of Sockeye (the Kokanee Salmon) and farm it in fresh water instead. There are a great many lakes where it could be brood stocked and reared with water cleaning technologies. It already grows extremely fast if farm fed as does the diadromous version of Steehead O. mykiss aka "rainbow trout". But unless we wake up to the possibilities at hand and act now we will lose the native fisheries of the West Coast and soon.

Comment Frankenfish for real. (Score 5, Interesting) 97

With what is happening to the the majority of subspecies of the genus Oncorhynchus of family of Salmonidae on the West Coast fresh water raised frankenfish might soon become the only affordable option if you are in a piscivorous frame of mind.

Climate change, habitat destruction, the herring roe fishery, the salmon caviar trade and our fishery management practices in general on the West Coast are deplorable and will soon make the consumption of wild caught fish a thing of the past. Our children will curse us for what we have allowed to happen to the environment which in truth sustains us all!

Comment Now that the political attack failed, (Score 1) 199

How quickly we forget the screw Google efforts and the fact that because the Republicans no longer control the house or the White House they are trying desperate tactics. The cost in bribes and "taking fat cats to dinner" alone to get into bed with the Democrats must have put Microsoft off the lobbyist angle. So why not try the courts?

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