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Comment Re:Thought... (Score 4, Informative) 394

This means that if my employer pays me in nickels then I also must pay more in income tax to the feds as a nickel is worth more then five cents in pure metal value these days.

No, you can go to the bank and get nickles for 5 cents each. You can not go to the bank and get $20 gold pieces for $20 each.

If you were melting down the nickels and selling the bulk metal you would be in violation of more than tax laws.

Comment Re:More careful is good. (Score 1) 665

A simple check of the serial number should be able to determine whether it is stolen or not.

It has been my (limited) experience that Dell does everything through the "warranty number". Every machine that they ship has one that can be used online to for check warranty status, shipping configuration, and upgrades. I was even surprised to find that a laptop I had bought, used, a year earlier was still under warranty (although never tested to see if they would honor it). From the fine blog;

They asked for a "warranty number" that doesn't actually appear on the machine anywhere...

Why would something like that have been removed?

Comment Re:And yet... (Score 2, Interesting) 16

The company is going to lose BIG TIME on this one.

Not if Settlers Insurance can prove that the late Mr. McCraw knew that he had Hepatitis C. This isn't really about the cause of death it's about lying on the life insurance application. From TFA;

"The law in Tennessee is clear that the cause of death is not relevant," [Company President] Lowe said. "What is relevant is whether the insured truthfully informed the company of his health at time of his death. If an applicant lied, the company has a right to deny the claim."
Under state law, Lowe said, insurance companies have a two year period to contest the information in a policy holder's application. If in that time, the company "discovers the applicant did not tell the truth about his health, the company can void or rescind the policy even if the person has died."


Still the policy was only for $25k - it will cost the company more than that in bad press. They should just settle (it's in their name after all;-).

Comment Re:Lies, damned lies, and money. (Score 4, Insightful) 296

Old people are pathologically addicted to using the word "addiction" to make anything they don't like sound scary. The brain can adapt to virtually any stimulus and once removed, will not function as well without it. So if you go for long countryside walks every day and enjoy it, then you get injured and can't do it for a few months, you'll miss going for those long countryside walks. That's completely different to chemical addiction you get from heroin or nicotine, but then most people can't tell the difference.

Not sure why you felt the need to make a dig against "old people" but whatever.

An addiction is an addiction. You seem to mostly be talking about withdrawal and, yes, there are differences between chemical and psychological withdrawal.

What we are talking about here, using your analogy, is; you go for long countryside walks every day and enjoy it. You enjoy it so much that you choose to go for a walk instead of going to school or work. Then when asked, you lie about ditching school/work.

Comment Re:Straight to stem-cell cures? (Score 3, Informative) 126

...Kurzweil suggests we'll all be in robot bodies before the century's end...

I think I would rather have the robot augmentation than chance stem cells turning on me.

From the above link;
Then he was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2005. That tumor, it turns out, grew out of the stem cells, obtained from at least two aborted fetuses, used in his brain.

Besides can stem cells give you telescopic vision? Now that would be cool!

Comment Re:Truly muscle-like, or something else? (Score 1) 103

You're thinking current. These are static charges, I believe.

How do you hold a static charge across a conductor?
If it conducts then there has to be current, what with ohm's law and all.

But, yeah, there must be something missing in TFA (assuming; since I didn't read it;-) as trying to drop even something less than a volt through a nano-tube would probably vaporize it.

Medicine

Submission + - Microsaccades Keep Us from Going Blind 1

Ponca City, We love you writes: "Even when trying to fix a gaze on a stationary target, our eyes are always moving. Scientists have long dismissed the imperceptible jumps and jiggles known as "microsaccades" as the accidental result of spurious nerve signals but now scientists have determined that these unconscious flickering eye movements provide a vital function by "refreshing" images on the retina which would otherwise fade away. Although the unconscious flicks have long been considered mere "motor noise," researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies found that they are instead actively controlled by the same brain region that instructs our eyes to scan the lines in a newspaper or follow a moving object. "Because images on the retina fade from view if they are perfectly stabilized, the active generation of fixational eye movements by the central nervous system allows these movements to constantly shift the scene ever so slightly, thus refreshing the images on our retina and preventing us from going 'blind'," says Dr Ziad Hafed, of the Salk Institute. Microsaccades are also the cause of a famous optical illusion in which a still image appears to move."

Comment Re:Rational (Score 1) 807

Woah... this is weird! I clicked your link and the found your link... clicked that link and found your link again... I am in the process of seeing how far it goes...

Give him a break, he's probably high;-)

But legalization does have to do with money. Pot is a weed after all - it will grow just about anywhere. How do you tax something like that? While it's true beer and wine can be made at home they are nowhere as easy to make as throwing a handful of seeds out in the backyard. Sow in the spring harvest in the fall. If that doesn't work raid your neighbor's patch.

Supercomputing

Roland Piquepaille Dies 288

overheardinpdx writes "I'm sad to report that longtime HPC technology pundit Roland Piquepaille (rpiquepa) died this past Tuesday. Many of you may know of him through his blog, his submissions to Slashdot, and his many years of software visualization work at SGI and Cray Research. I worked with Roland 20 years ago at Cray, where we both wrote tech stories for the company newsletter. With his focus on how new technologies modify our way of life, Roland was really doing Slashdot-type reporting before there was a World Wide Web. Rest in peace, Roland. You will be missed." The notice of Roland's passing was posted on the Cray Research alumni group on Linked-In by Matthias Fouquet-Lapar. There will be a ceremony on Monday Jan. 12, at 10:30 am Paris time, at Père Lachaise.

Comment Re:tips (Score 1) 695

We bought an 8kW generator when we moved to Maine five years ago. My first thought was to buy a larger unit, but there's a problem with this idea. Compare fuel consumption fully loaded and at half load. IIRC, half load still consumes about 3/4 of the full load fuel. Generators become much less efficient at low loads--this means that you want to size it right, not oversize it. Running a generator isn't cheap.

I have always wondered are there generators that can run off (for those that have it) natural gas or propane? If it is plumed into the homes gas supply it could, in theory, run indefinitely and would be much cleaner (and probably cheaper) than gasoline or diesel.
What about running the exhaust into the chimney? That way you could have the generator in your basement rather than an out building.

So far this winter makes it look like a generator is something we should consider for a permanent installation.

Comment Re:FAAAAAKKKEE (Score 2, Insightful) 140

Right. Using sonar, the robot is able to determine the composition of the chair.

That's a bit cynical. While it's unlikely this thing is as autonomous as they would like us to believe there may be an explanation for the "detailed" description of the objects. Perhaps it was taught that an object of that height/width is a "wooden chair". And, much as a young child will run around and point at any small animal and say "doggy!" no matter what type of animal it is, anything about that size and shape is recognized as a "wooden chair".

Without more information it's hard to say for sure.

Movies

Majel Roddenberry Dies At 76 356

unassimilatible writes "If there was ever a sad day for nerds, it's today, as Majel Barrett-Rodenberry has passed away. The widow of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry is best remembered as the gorgeous Nurse Christine Chapel from the original series, the pesky and officious Lwaxana Troi from The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, and of course the ubiquitous voice of Star Trek computers in movies, TV, and animated films (who hasn't used her voice as a system sound on their PC?). Majel also attended Star Trek conventions yearly and was a producer of Andromeda. Fortunately, Majel just finished her voice over work for the computers in J.J. Abrams' latest Trek movie. I have to admit, this made me sad, just having caught up on the entire TNG and DS9 series on DVD."
Microsoft

Obama's "ZuneGate" 608

theodp writes "Barack Obama supporters were left shaking their heads after a report surfaced that the president-elect was using a Zune at the gym instead of an iPod. So why would Mac-user Obama be Zune-ing out? Could be one of those special-edition preloaded Zunes that Microsoft bestowed on Democratic National Convention attendees, suggests TechFlash, nixing the idea that the soon-to-be Leader of the Free World would waste time loading Parallels or Boot Camp in OS X just to use a Zune."

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