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Comment Re:study confirms expectations (Score 1) 199

That's actually a good question. Inks have changed somewhat over the past 5,000 years, and there's no particular reason to think that tattoo inks have been equally mobile across this timeframe.

But now we come to a deeper point. Basically, tattoos (as I've always understand it) are surgically-engineered scars, with the scar tissue supposedly locking the ink in place. It's quite probable that my understanding is wrong - this isn't exactly an area I've really looked into in any depth, so the probability of me being right is rather slim. Nonetheless, if I had been correct, then you might well expect the stuff to stay there. Skin is highly permeable, but scar tissue less so. As long as the molecules exceed the size that can migrate, then you'd think it would be fine.

That it isn't fine shows that one or more of these ideas must be wrong.

Comment Re:Wrong question. (Score 1) 197

Investment is a tricky one.

I'd say that learning how to learn is probably the single-most valuable part of any degree, and anything that has any business calling itself a degree will make this a key aspect. And that, alone, makes a degree a good investment, as most people simply don't know how. They don't know where to look, how to look, how to tell what's useful, how to connect disparate research into something that could be used in a specific application, etc.

The actual specifics tend to be less important, as degree courses are well-behind the cutting edge and are necessarily grossly simplified because it's still really only crude foundational knowledge at this point. Students at undergraduate level simply don't know enough to know the truly interesting stuff.

And this is where it gets tricky. Because an undergraduate 4-year degree is aimed at producing thinkers. Those who want to do just the truly depressingly stupid stuff can get away with the 2 year courses. You do 4 years if you are actually serious about understanding. And, in all honesty, very few companies want entry-level who are competent at the craft, they want people who are fast and mindless. Nobody puts in four years of network theory or (Valhalla forbid) statistics for the purpose of being mindless. Not unless the stats destroyed their brain - which, to be honest, does happen.

Humanities does not make things easier. There would be a LOT of benefit in technical documentation to be written by folk who had some sort of command of the language they were using. Half the time, I'd accept stuff written by people who are merely passing acquaintances of the language. Vague awareness of there being a language would sometimes be an improvement. But that requires that people take a 2x4 to the usual cultural bias that you cannot be good at STEM and arts at the same time. (It's a particularly odd cultural bias, too, given how much Leonardo is held in high esteem and how neoclassical universities are either top or near-top in every country.)

So, yes, I'll agree a lot of degrees are useless for gaining employment and a lot of degrees for actually doing the work, but the overlap between these two is vague at times.

Comment Re:Directly monitored switches? (Score 1) 54

There is a possibility of a short-circuit causing an engine shutdown. Apparently, there is a known fault whereby a short can result in the FADEC "fail-safing" to engine shutdown, and this is one of the competing theories as the wiring apparently runs near a number of points in the aircraft with water (which is a really odd design choice).

Now, I'm not going to sit here and tell you that (a) the wiring actually runs there (the wiring block diagrams are easy to find, but block diagrams don't show actual wiring paths), (b) that there is anything to indicate that water could reach such wiring in a way that could cause a short, or (c) that it actually did so. I don't have that kind of information.

All I can tell you, at this point, is that aviation experts are saying that a short at such a location would cause an engine shutdown and that Boeing was aware of this risk.

I will leave it to the experts to debate why they're using electrical signalling (it's slower than fibre, heavier than fibre, can corrode, and can short) and whether the FADEC fail-safes are all that safe or just plain stupid. For a start, they get paid to shout at each other, and they actually know what specifics to shout at each other about.

But, if the claims are remotely accurate, then there were a number of well-known flaws in the design and I'm sure Boeing will just love to answer questions on why these weren't addressed. The problem being, of course, is that none of us know which of said claims are indeed remotely accurate, and that makes it easy for air crash investigators to go easy on manufacturers.

User Journal

Journal Journal: Audio processing and implications 1

Just as a thought experiment, I wondered just how sophisticated a sound engineering system someone like Delia Derbyshire could have had in 1964, and so set out to design one using nothing but the materials, components, and knowledge available at the time. In terms of sound quality, you could have matched anything produced in the early-to-mid 1980s. In terms of processing sophistication, you could have matched anything produced in the early 2000s. (What I came up with would take a large comple

Comment Re:Don't blame the pilot prematurely (Score 4, Insightful) 54

It's far from indisputable. Indeed, it's hotly disputed within the aviation industry. That does NOT mean that it was a short-circuit (although that is a theory that is under investigation), it merely means that "indisputable" is not the correct term to use here. You can argue probabilities or reasonableness, but you CANNOT argue "indisputable" when specialists in the field in question say that it is, in fact, disputed.

If you were to argue that the most probable cause was manual, then I think I could accept that. If you were to argue that Occam's Razor required that this be considered H0 and therefore a theory that must be falsified before others are considered, I'd not be quite so comfortable but would accept that you've got to have some sort of rigorous methodology and that's probably the sensible one.

But "indisputable"? No, we are not at that stage yet. We might reach that stage, but we're not there yet.

Comment Re: What's the problem? (Score 1) 265

1.) I just want to see a reference for this. You do understand that it's possible for a Left leaning person to have African ancestry, right?

2.) I've never heard someone with African ancestry living in America ask the public to refer to them with the term mention in the GP. Maybe the reference to #1 will clear this up?

3.) Even the SPLC puts the number of KKK between 3000 and 4000 individuals, in a nation of 330 million plus people. During the 1930's, one in ten Americans was a member of the KKK; today it's less than 1 in 100,000. Put another way, the concentration of white supremacists in the United States has gone from 100,000 ppm to just 10 ppm in less than a hundred years.

The reason Left leaning people never celebrate the gains made by minorities is because the underlying principle of Leftist politics is to condemn the innocent majority for factors and circumstances beyond their control. It doesn't matter how little racism actually exists, as long as there exists a shocking incident in the past, the Leftist can find reason to condemn people today, who had no actual connection to the incident or policy in question. Witness, for example, how Barak Obama characterized as racist the nation that just elected its first minority President. As a nation, the pendulum has swung so far back in the other direction that Leftists now justify DEI policies, as if more racism would somehow bring about a fairer, more just society for all. It didn't work in the past, doesn't work now, and it won't work in the future, and if the Left is realizing anything, their recent loss to an absolute imbecile must certainly have shown them that America would much rather have an asshole as President than a Left-leaning racist. You may have been able to say that you were on the right side of history 60 years ago, but you can't say that today. America has realized that racism doesn't work for us, we don't want any part of it, we've moved on, and the sooner you recognize that, the better.

After all, even the Democrats are now ashamed of their past association with the KKK, and you should be too.

Comment Re: What's the problem? (Score 0, Troll) 265

First off, African American is an offensive term coined by Left leaning folks to imply that people who were born here, but have more melanin than most, aren't truly American, or perhaps belong somewhere else. I know a person who was born a Negro, raised as a colored person, worked as a Black person, and retired as an African American, all without anyone ever asking who he was. He was never asked if he wanted a racial identity, but was assigned one by the Blacker-than-thou folks who insisted on seeing everyone in the world through the lens of race.

But if we can move on from that, I hear in your telling of America that you believe America is a cesspool of the worst kind of people imaginable. While I agree that there are bad people in the world, I disagree with the proportions. Americans, for the most part, try to be good people, and find that getting their government to actually serve the people is quite a challenge, especially when the political ruling class wants it otherwise. To characterize all Americans according to the worst examples is to commit the logical fallacy of mistaking the part for the whole.

This does not mean that we don't have cultural problems, but that those problems have been exacerbated by the DEI folks ignoring the problems of integrating different cultures into the whole. Simply put, DEI inevitably creates unnecessary conflict. If everyone can get past the idea of seeing everyone through a racial lens, (and therefore assigning them a racial identity), we can, together, solve the greater problems facing America. Otherwise, the political ruling class exploits the division DEI creates, to the detriment of everyone else.

So if you really want us to become one America, one culture, all getting along, you need to drop the DEI. The average person has the interpersonal skills to resolve personal conflicts and treat others fairly, even without respect to race. Just because you struggle with discrimination doesn't mean everyone else does, and it's time for the DEI folks to realize their worldview is making everything worse for everyone else. We don't need racial identities, and seeing everyone through the lens of race has never served us well. Wherever you find people seeing others through the lens of race, ulterior motives are always present. It is time to instead see people not as black or white, but as children of God. Otherwise, the offenses against human dignity will continue, regardless of the degree to which DEI is embraced.

Comment Re:They actually did (Score 1) 237

Yes, conservapedia exist(ed). It might still - but at least they were honest in how they were biased.

The reason these sites should exist is because, generally speaking, the opponents of a political ideology tend to be the worst sources concerning what the ideology actually believes, versus what its detractors say it believes. If the enemies of the state are not allowed to speak, how will the public at large differentiate tyranny from the rule of law?

Comment Ah, America... (Score 3, Insightful) 92

The land where the well-connected get pardoned for money laundering, but those who cross the border illegally or don't have documentation of the fact that they're American can be deported to countries they've never seen, where they don't even speak the native language.

Please, someone explain how this makes sense.

Comment Re:Like debugging Java or C# is any easier (Score 1) 99

Let's not forget the Cowbell++. It's like Rust and Java, except that it won't corrode your car, or spill your beans. It's a safe, secure language, backward and forward compatible with Rock, Hard Rock, 70's Rock, and even Rock'n'Roll.

When writing in Cowbell++, there's no possible problem that can't be solved by adding more. It's really the ideal of the fictional programming languages.

Comment The really important thing here (Score 3, Insightful) 21

I'm willing to bet that some executive, somewhere, was able to meet and exceed his KPIs for IT cost, resulting in a bonus. The most important thing is that the executives get paid for continuing the status quo.

Whether said executive still works at the company or has moved on to another company misses the point: the circumstances which enabled the hack were created by the manner in which the company rewarded cost control, rather than security . Security is not quantifiable; no one was ever rewarded for the hacks that didn't happen. The only question remaining is if the board has enough sanity to hire a CEO who won't incentivize financial performance at the expense of security.

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