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User: wizardforce

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  1. Re:Why does Israel continue to be a pariah in the on New Nerve Gas Antidotes · · Score: 1

    If these lands are so valuable as religious resources, then every single occupier of that land would have had to keep the surrounding countries at bay for the entire occupation. Since that is clearly not the case, given the long periods of relative peace prior WWI, I don't see how having "key cities" is in any way apropos to the conversation unless you are also arguing that Israel is in some way preventing foreign pilgrims from accessing these monuments.
    Israel has been conquered 34 times last count because of these holy sites, the land that later became Israel was under the control of the Ottoman empire which the former state of Palestine was broken into pieces, one for Israel and a planned Islamic state. After the six-days war, Israel gained more territory which lead to the displacement of even more people. Israel also had the habit of retaliating in response to suicide bombings and other violent aggression which didn't help things either.

    Are you saying that Israel has no fault in this and that it is purely a matter of the claimants not "burying the hatchet"?
    No, don't assume that I am condoning anything that Israel did or did not do, the issue is a little more complicated than "Israel doesn't communicate effectively enough". There are a good number of people in the area that view Israli occupation of religious sites to be repulsive to say the least regardless of how open the sites really are to pilgrimages.
  2. Re:Why does Israel continue to be a pariah in the on New Nerve Gas Antidotes · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    The continued attacks upon Israel to this day are a clear signal that Israel just can't communicate effectively with its neighbors.
    or maybe it has something to do with the fact that a lot of people were displaced from land which later became Israel and rather than burying the hatchet, that hatred was passed from generation to generation. Israel has key cities which are important to all three major religions in the area especially Jerusalem. The city is divided into sections with each religion getting a piece. Old religious buildings originally built for one religion were re-purposed for another, a good example is/was the temple mount. Israel really didn't need to do much after its formation to seriously tick off countries in the region, its very existence was enough.
  3. better explanation on New Nerve Gas Antidotes · · Score: 3, Informative

    Pralidoxime has been used with Atropine for a long time it seems, Atropine lessening the effects of acetylcholine its self and Pralidoxime is sacrificed to reactivate acetylcholine esterase [which helps remove acetylcholine after it is done with its job]
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pralidoxime

  4. Re:Wait a minute... How is this useful? on Google Conducts Trial on User-Voted Search Results · · Score: 1

    who said anything about the same keyword? imagine that it actually learns about your general preferences and applies that to any other keyword searches.

  5. sounds familiar on Google Conducts Trial on User-Voted Search Results · · Score: 1

    The experiment features a simple 'thumbs up' and 'thumbs down' option for each search result; users can also suggest a URL that might be more relevant to their query. 'Other Google users will not be affected by the individual tweaking: instead it will be stored along with the users' own personal information for the next time they search for this word or phrase, so users are required to log in to avail of it.'"
    That's pretty much what StumbleVIdeo already does and has been doing for years
  6. Re:Talent shortage? on More MS, Less Talent In Open Source's Future · · Score: 1

    You could have said the same thing about Apple years ago and now look at them. In Microsoft's case, their last OS was by many accounts an engineering and planning failure, only their market position saved them on this one. It is suspected that Microsft's failure in managing their code development teams is crippling their ability to actually do anything, take a look at Vista, 6 years of development for that piece of trash. Unless they start cracking on actually producing something it's going to bite them in their collective posteriors in time.

  7. now with more annoyance on Yahoo, Adobe To Serve Ads In PDFs · · Score: 2, Insightful

    dynamic ads require a source of data to work and that means they can probably be disabled by blacklisting the source servers, either that or they will actually start embedding ads into the PDFs themselves as "static content" that nothing short of aditing the PDF manually will solve.

  8. Re:Talent shortage? on More MS, Less Talent In Open Source's Future · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    it is however a sustainable model that doesn't normally alienate your user base like Microsft's business model does. You don't get bad PR from treating your user base like criminals, they jsut get to use the software as they like, you get a sustainable cash flow that doesn't require you to spend a great deal of it attacking your user base for daring to actually use your software. it is by design, favorable for that software to get copied as many times as is possible, more eyes to help improve the code and make it better over time as well as future support.

  9. Re:Talent shortage? on More MS, Less Talent In Open Source's Future · · Score: 2, Informative

    there's nothing in gnu saying you can't indirectly make money from software, you just can't redistribute code that is derived from gnu code in a propietary way. Canonical I hear makes about 50 million a year through support and indirect revenue sources from Ubuntu

  10. Re:2031?! on First Details of Manned Mars Mission From NASA · · Score: 1

    if it had been budgeted like the Iraq war we would have already been on Mars by now, in fact, I suspect that we would actually be colonizing the place

  11. Re:Honest question on How Tech Almost Lost the War · · Score: 1

    1) 9-11 attacks happen, start using it for political benefit
    2) start a war in the middle east
    3) destroy all the infrastructure so that the locals will be pissed... pissed enough to attack you thus creating a whole new generation of actual terrorists
    4) ????
    5) PROFIT!

  12. Re:We will know when... on States Claim There is No Match for Microsoft · · Score: 1

    unless it generates a good revenue stream I don't really plan to do much support
    bingo
  13. Re:Blame the Geeks? on How Tech Almost Lost the War · · Score: 1

    Efficient killing machine == Good when there are bad guys trying to kill you.
    you know.. you're right, we so should just nuke the place... You might want to consider the fact that not all those that die in a war like this are enemy combatants, some just might be children and innocents that were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
  14. Re:We will know when... on States Claim There is No Match for Microsoft · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Think about the implications of this. It says that people really have no choice. And yet there are plenty of people reading this thread who have chosen to use these products instead of Windows. I don't see why this isn't competition.
    we are not the average PC users, most of us are deities in comparison to the average PC user- we know how to make most everything work on OSX and *nix where the average person would most decidedly not. PCs are 90%+ of the time pre-installed with Windows leaving joe average to 1) refuse the EULA, 2) request removal of Windows [ship back to manufacturer I suppose] 3) install an alternative OS like Ubuntu or Mandriva which requires basic knowledge of partitioning, software installation and such. So for the average person there is no choice. Even for /.ers especially gamers, there is a significant deficiancy in software written for alternative OSes. Because it's cheaper to develop a software package for one or two OSes at most rather than support a tiny but growing number of alternative OS users. [Mac about 5-10&, windows 90+% linux .3-2% BSD... tiny]
  15. Re:Uhhhhh on How to Deal With Stolen Code? · · Score: 1

    jsut for the sake of argument, if this code were GPLed and posted without notice of this and your company incorporates it into their own proprietary software is it fair use of the code, after all you didn't know it was GPLed and it was posted in plain sight.

  16. Re:Impatient, Are We? on Asus Corrects Eee PC Source Code Issue · · Score: 1

    inflammatory stories with little merit generate a lot more page views than correct ones.

  17. Re:They're going to release the SAME code, right? on Asus Corrects Eee PC Source Code Issue · · Score: 2, Insightful

    you didn't actually read the article did you? no where does it say anything implying that the source code was "cleaned up" in this case to avoid complying with the GPL. Secondly, had they done so as you point out the binaries would not be the same, surely someone would have noticed.

  18. Re:Better yet, just don't send them on Nigerian Company Sues OLPC · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Let LANCOR explain to the Nigerian government and people how their greed and abuse of patent law is screwing up the education of Nigeria's children and putting them at a serious disadvantage to the country's neighbors.
    that assumes the Nigerian government cares in the first place, they are after all a major part of the problem in regard to education in Nigeria.
  19. Re:Native? on Gene Study Supports Single Bering Strait Migration · · Score: 1

    the only people on the planet that could very well be natives of the territory they now ihabit are in Africa. starting several thousand years ago, humanity started migrating out of Africa, up into the middle east through europe and asia and across the ice-age land bridge between russia and alaska down through the americas. so to answer your question: very few of the people on Earth are natives including native americans.

  20. Re:So enforcing the law is now bad right? on How the BSA Squeezes the Little Guys · · Score: 1

    ah but you see you can bypass this altogether by boycotting windows entirely! businesses can buy their PCS without windows pre-installed or any of the proprietary software- just install Linux on the pc and there's no problem. they avoid paying the windows tax *AND* the BSA.

  21. Re:Why do texts cost much anyway? on The Cultures of Texting In Europe and America · · Score: 1

    ok then why bother having them in two seperate channels when you can just use a very high frequency low amplitude signal and vary signal strength to represent 0's and 1's to send the texts while not producing any human audible interference? The idea is to use a signal that is too high a frequency to be audible by humans and vary the frequency like FM to avoid data loss from any interference.

  22. Re:"We're Right But They're Bigots" Continues on Creationists Violating Copyright · · Score: 1

    So, when a darwinist copies something, it's fair-use,
    let's be clear here, this kind of thing is never fair use by anyone, "darwinist", gravityist, einsteinist, flat-earther or creationist.

    but if a creationist copies something it's a copyright violation?

    no, it's theft *and* hypocrisy as well as irrelevant to the argument.

    Is this "story" going to be a forum for this-group bashing that-group? It sure looks as if it is intended to be such, as it was modded up enough in the "Firehose" to make it to Slashdot's front page. What always gets me is that one group will flame another group, then call it bigotry if that group flames them back, or disagrees with them.
    yes because it is both sad and terribly ironic at the same time. The discovery institute is supposed to be leading by example for intelligent design supporters and this is a very bad start, it angers a lot of people on both sides, on Harvard's side because it's blatant copyright infringement and on the ID side because it was a very stupid move that hurt the discovery institute's reputation in the ID community.

    See bigotry at its' finest. I wouldn't be surprised if my post gets modded down.
    pointing out the absurdity of the discovery institute's wrongdoing in regard to intellectual property isn't bigotry, it's reality. You did get modded up for it though which requires some mad skills on /.
  23. Re:On which day did God create Cells? on Creationists Violating Copyright · · Score: 2, Insightful

    We know that, we just find it amusing that the same institute preaching that Evolution causes immorality is the one that is blatently stealing another's work [er infringing that is] it would be ironic if it were not preceded by earlier nonsense on their account.

  24. Re:WTH, KDawson? on Thailand Bans Teen Info On the Net · · Score: 1
    So, when the government tries to limit adults rights, it's bloody murder, but if it's a kid, then that's fine? I fail to see how that works RTFA.

    Prohibited information includes age, sex, phone number, email address, logon name for chat lines, photos and names of their schools.
    right now the law is protecting privacy although future changes may be something to worry about but that is nothing more than speculation at this point.
  25. Re:Fortunately... on UN Says Tasers Are a Form of Torture · · Score: 1

    you're assuming that there is always a case where tackling is possible.