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Comment Re:Unintended consequences... (Score 1) 47

I don't want to sound alarmist and I am obviously not an expert but... we know what happens when you remove a species from the food chain. 1. Their predators die off. 2. Other species rise to take their place.

1. is not a significant problem. There are only a couple of species which survive entirely on mosquitoes, they are not common, and there are many kinds of mosquito. 2. is even less of a problem, there's nothing else just waiting in the wings to upstage mosquitoes as they don't compete with anything else.

Comment Re:Unconstitutional (Score 1) 154

There were movies but they weren't very good.

From the 1700s, Magic lanterns had moving parts, and there were magic lantern shows.

The Phenakistoscope was a kind of simple movie, and was projected on a stage by the mid 1800s.

The Zoopraxiscope was used with a projector from 1880 in public lectures. It is of interest because it used actual photographs.

The Kinetoscope was a little later, by 1892.

Comment The headphone jack is the least of it (Score 1) 79

Apple's got many faults, but their hardware has a very premium feel. I presume this is where Dell's additional hundred bucks went, because Apple's used to doing that and Dell isn't. They think they are, but they aren't normally as good at it. But they're going to deliver this PC with Windows, and there might be Linux issues — there's no way to know until it's in reviewers' hands exactly what hardware is actually used around the parts we know about. And unless you specifically need Windows, it's very hard to imagine getting excited about spending more money to run that.

I have to admit that I find the lack of a headphone jack offensive, but I wouldn't even consider buying a Dell that's trying to be a Macintosh over an actual Macintosh, and I say that as someone with very little respect for Apple. I don't hate Dell, but I've never been impressed by them either. I would describe them as "less terrible than HP".

Comment Re:Airport terminal justice.... (Score 2) 154

The fact that it's a garbage off-brand speaker makes it more likely that it's possible, because people with valuable brands are the ones who are most likely to want to prevent you from changing it, and also the most likely to actually design their own product internals or have them designed to spec. The cheap brands are most likely to grab a complete PCB off the "shelf", or even more likely than that, just have their crappy brand put on someone else's complete product.

But, and it's a big one, they won't be offering the user the tools to do it with. They'd have to figure out who actually made it and/or what chip is on it in order to identify the tool, then they'd have to track it down, then they'd have to maybe short something on the PCB because it's not necessarily as easy as holding down a button, they'd have to do it on a windows PC or at least by attaching a USB hub to a windows VM so that when the device inevitably changes IDs during the reflashing procedure it remains connected, or with some kind of reflashing tool which is cheap but which they definitely don't own.

Comment Re:"Average" bomber. (Score 3, Interesting) 154

I was just reading this comment on another social site:

"Any statement that starts with "No one would be stupid enough to..." is false."

There's probably too much metal between the cargo hold and the passenger compartment for Bluetooth to work anyway. I think all actual bombs on aircraft (other than the failed shoe bomber) have been triggered by pressure switches at altitude or timers.

So it's not just that they wouldn't be stupid enough, but also that it probably wouldn't be successful even if they were.

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