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Comment Re:An Engineer can be sued. (Score 1) 258

That's not was certified software means.

You know hw software is issued "without warranty for any fitness or purpose, whether stated or implied" (or something like that)? Thats the key differentiator. There are OS's certified to that level. You know that line from Fight Club about when a recall is / isn't issued? that holds the same for OS develpers that provide a product warranted for fitness and purpose. These OS's do exist, for those situations that require it.

You see them in car computers, for example, and I'm confident the Falcon9 OS is certified to that level. It's not that it's bug free - it's that the developer has done a higher level of regression testing, and continues to evaluate the OS to identify problems that could (or did) arise, and with that agree to share in the risk. (Here, "risk" is defined as effects that happen to the company when the product causes a kick in the teeth... like killing a person.)

Certifying anything as 100% bug-free is a waste of time, since it's nearly impossible. TeX isn't even there, despite 40yr of offering bug bounties. Noone claims 100% bug-free, but there are OS vendors that accept a certain level of risk.

weylin

Comment Re:Courts are too slow (Score 1) 81

That's how the courts are supposed to work. The purpose of the president as a singular authority is to be able to work quickly as needed. Congress is intentionally structured as a committee (albeit a large one) to foster discussion, knowing that anything that happens in Congress will take longer.

The preferred method to fix anything is through Congress, or through Executive Action if there's a crisis requiring speedy action. The courts should only act when the other two are not correcting something, and then only after extensive analysis.

weylin

Comment Re:Economics of solar roofs (Score 1) 134

For example pricing it as a regular roof but taking all the power themselves for the first 20 years.

Why would anybody go for that? I get a solar roof but don't get any of the solar?

This is what I have. I went from a $250 bill to the power company (average per month), to a $100 bill to the solar company (average per month), for no financial investment on my part.

I give the solar company my roof to use to install their "power plant." They then charge me 10 cents per kWh generated. This is far better than the 25 cents per kWh I pay the utility company. So although I don't "own" the panels, at the same time it was free installation and maintenance and I have lower bills, and I still have street power for nights, clouds, full eclipses....

My average usage approximately equals my average generation so it's not worth cashing out my $10 credit - but I haven't paid a utility bill in 5 years.

weylin

Comment Misleading Story (Score 1) 249

This story is misleading. Is the concentration of nutrients going down? Yes. Is that a problem?

Well...

As it turns out, what's really happening is the carbon dioxide is promoting bulk growth, which is making more food (particularly, more carbohydrates) in the same amount of time. However, the nutrients are getting stocked into the food at the same rate.

So, the total carbohydrate loading is increasing, making food bulkier. But the total nutrient loading in the food is the same. Since the bulk is larger with the same nutrient loading, the concentration (nutrients per unit bulk) goes down.

Clearly by my verbiage, I'm not a botanist. And I'll say I'm not a climate change denier. But it's not clear to me why this specifically is a "problem" per se.

weylin

Comment Why Does it Need to be a Great Circle Route? (Score 1) 141

Why does it need to be a Great Circle route? A Great Circle route is a route that follows an arc of a circle whose origin is the center of the Earth. But if I plot a course to follow a line of Longitude such that I drive around Antarctica, I've followed a straight path but just not a Great Circle route. There's other non-Great Circle routes that go at an angle, the only key is where the origin is of the circle. On top of that, limiting to just Great Circle routes make the additional fallacious assumption that the Earth is a sphere, when it's actually an oblate spheroid: it bulges at the Equator, so the Great Circle that is the Equator is actually larger than a Great Circle that passes through the poles. (For clarity: it's really really close to a sphere, but they're looking for extremes so it matters.)

Not saying the solution won't be a Great Circle route - It likely will be, since that's the theoretical biggest possible straight line. But there's no reason is *has* to be.

weylin

Comment Re:Wrong answer (Score 1) 293

Concur. The question is "why is Einstein famous." The adult answer is that he was an inflection point in scientific progression, more than most other really famous scientists; the adolescent answer is that he single-handedly changed science.

Basically:
1. Aristotle invented science.
2. Newton called shenanigans on Aristotle's work, and invented both correct science and the math to support it.
3. Einstein changed the gears of the scientific community in ways we're still trying to figure out the details of. Einstein demonstrated that Newton was only correct in special cases (that happen to be our everyday experience), and that the Universe is really really weird once you get outside the special cases.

weylin

Comment Re:What a terrible headline (Score 1) 365

You remember reading that? So, you were old enough to read. I remember watching Wiley E Coyote get an anvil dropped on his head when I was... younger than Kindergarten. I definitely didn't realize that wasn't real; I vividly remember trying to figure out how Mr. Coyote's body could bend like that from the anvil, and thinking the 12-inch lump is what really happened when you get a big hunk of metal dropped on your head. I definitely had some level of "grok" regarding death, but for comedy- and cartoon-vs-reality, especially 40s-era slapstick, that conceptualization happened somewhere around 1st grade.

Maybe I'm just dumb like you suggest? Perhaps. But the point isn't about intelligence, it's about the mental capability to process a YouTube video, and the resulting impacts against happiness. If you remember "the good old days" as actually being good old days, then you're memory of them is much rosier than how it actually was.

Comment Re:Why (Score 1) 397

The Law of Differential Masses says the larger ship gets right-of-way. The Law of the Sea, or more correctly the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea as well as the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea, says the more maneuverable vessel is the give-way vessel, but only when higher levels of responsibility aren't present.

An example of a higher level of responsibility? How about International Rule 8.f(iii), as defined by the US Coast Guard Rules of the Road: "A vessel, the passage of which is not to be impeded remains fully obliged to comply with the rules of this part when the two vessels are approaching one another so as to involve risk of collision."

Or the Inland version of the same rule: "A vessel the passage of which is not to be impeded remains fully obliged to comply with the Rules of Subpart B (Rules 4-19) when the two vessels are approaching one another so as to involve risk of collision."

Or the English vernacular version: "Fuck all if you have right-of-way, you still have responsibility to avoid going bump." Which means even if the destroyer's driver was an ass-hat and was 99% in the wrong, if the merchant was making way under her own power then she cannot avoid her own responsibility.

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