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User: DavidTC

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  1. Re:This was encouraged by a Daily Kos Blogger on Congresswoman and Staff Gunned Down · · Score: 1

    Hey, moron, saying someone is 'dead to me' is not saying they should be killed.

  2. Re:Assisted driving tech saves lives on In-Car Technology Becoming More Important Than Horsepower · · Score: 1

    Indeed. We can say 'People shouldn't do things while driving', but the simple fact is, um, they are.

    We can either make it easy, or not easy.

    And it's not 'new stuff', either. Sure, before cell phones, people didn't talk on the phone while driving...but they did mess with the radio, they did read directions and maps, they did mess with the AC, they did handle drinks.

    We invented speaking nav systems, we invented stereos that you control with buttons on the steering wheel and use your library and you don't ever look at them, we've invented, as you say, mirrors that move automatically so they're always right, we have temperature settings instead of operating AC manually, we have cup holders.

    We've automated or made a lot of that much easier, and yet, because we've introduced cell phones (And then made them usable) somehow everything things we're driving a lot more dangerous.

    No, we've always been driving dangerous. It's very nice that a well-published cell phone stuff has made everyone aware of this. But we're finally automating some of this stuff, and the idea that we're somehow less safe is stupid.

  3. Re:Assisted driving tech saves lives on In-Car Technology Becoming More Important Than Horsepower · · Score: 1

    Non airbag cars are just now 22 years old, and mostly gone.

    No they aren't. I drive a 93 Pontiac Sunbird and have no airbags.

    After 1989 you were required to have airbags or automatic restraints, aka, either electronic or door-mounted seatbelts.

    Mine has a stupid door seatbelt that is not actually functional as an 'automatic restraint', because it's nearly impossible to get in the car while it's buckled. Although, as I'm not an idiot, I operate it manually.

  4. Re:ABS does not decrease stopping distance on In-Car Technology Becoming More Important Than Horsepower · · Score: 1

    Stopping distances with ABS off were consistently shorter, although the car tended to stay in a straight line with ABS on and tended to yaw with the ABS off.

    That's the real benefit.

    ABS doesn't help you stop faster, unless you're on an ice-over lake and you're an idiot who has decided get to 75 and hold the brakes down and slide along.

    What it will do is stop you from braking on an ice patch and happily skidding into oncoming traffic, which is a much bigger threat than just taking a long time to stop in a straight line.

    Drivers should not expect they can magically stop in bad conditions, and most don't. If they do that and slide into someone, that's really their own fault.

    What drivers don't expect, however, is to end up in another lane or sliding off the road or whatever, and it's that crap that causes deaths, not 'not quite braked yet' rear-endings at 10 mph.

  5. Re:Assisted driving tech saves lives on In-Car Technology Becoming More Important Than Horsepower · · Score: 1

    You know, in my universe, you're the idiot.

    In my universe, I use a car from getting from place to place. Anything that makes that safer for me is a good thing, period. Anything that makes it safer for other people is also a good thing for me, because the thing about automobile crashes is that they often involve other cars.

    Anything that makes it nicer is just a bonus.

    I have to agree about the iPod thing, though, simply because I don't know when the fuck a proprietary standard owned by one company because something that should come standard in cars. And I say that as someone with an iPhone.

    Provide a headphone plug for music and a Bluetooth interface for music and control and handsfree. (And, heck a USB for charging.) Stop with the Apple bullshit...if Apple wants to have a standard, they can make a damn free standard and use that.

    A better thing all around might be simply to have MP3 players built into cars, if we're building computers into them anyway. Expensive ones could have wifi and get stuff that way, cheaper ones could be loadable via USB flash.

  6. Re:Assisted driving tech saves lives on In-Car Technology Becoming More Important Than Horsepower · · Score: 1

    Hey, idiot, there are plenty of reasons you might get blinded with correct mirrors. They might in in an adjoining lane. They might be slightly out of their lane. You might be taking a curve. They might just be wider than you.

  7. Re:frosty piss on Cedega Being Replaced By GameTree Linux · · Score: 1

    Windows XP was released in 2001. Try running modern Linux programs on distros from 2001 and tell me that it's easier than Windows XP.

    You're counting from the wrong direction.

    Windows Vista was released in 2007. That means everyone was using XP until then. The stupid installer issues existed on new computers until then.

    So at the least you mean 'Try running modern Linux programs on distros from 2006 and tell me that it's easier than Windows XP.'

    This is, of course, pretending everyone upgraded. Windows upgrades still have a lot more resistance than Linux distros because of several things: 1) Linux upgrades are free, 2) Linux upgrades actually work in-place where you can keep all your data, 3) Linux upgrades usually have no hardware problems. (You can talk about whether Linux supports new hardware all you want, but the number of times distros have dropped support for any piece of hardware can probably be counted on one hand.)

    So there is functionally no one using Ubuntu 8, and probably no one using 9. There's simply no reason to stick to old stuff.

    Whereas I'm typing on XP right now because I don't trust anything later to actually work on this laptop. A laptop from 2006, I must point out. Windows XP still has about 50% of the web traffic, although no one's sure how many computers it's still installed on.

  8. Re:Mountain out of a molehill. on WikiLeaks Supporters' Twitter Accounts Subpoenaed · · Score: 1

    Ah, yes, in your universe, we PUNISH people without actually having a trial first.

    You goddamn fascist asshole.

  9. Re:Mountain out of a molehill. on WikiLeaks Supporters' Twitter Accounts Subpoenaed · · Score: 2

    It's not like we can't accuse them of violating the law in this very case.

    Mannings is being held in inhumane conditions, and has been for several months. He's forbidden from exercising in his cell, he's kept in solitary confinement, he's forbidden from having sheets and pillow.

    Basically, they took every single thing that a prison can do as punishment (Although he's been a model prisoner) and as safety (He is not even slightly suicidal or dangerous and there's no grounds for denying him bedsheets) and did it to him, and then added some things that you can't do to prisoners, like forbid them from exercising in their cell.

    About the only thing that's justifiably is maybe keeping him away from other prisoners. Everything else is clearly designed to punish someone who has not had his trial start.

  10. Re:The need for psychiatric evaluation of gov... on WikiLeaks Supporters' Twitter Accounts Subpoenaed · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's not just values, it's the entire skewed outlook on history and the role of the government.

    It's a crazy outlook, where taxes are a violation of rights, but, you know, detaining people without charging them for crime is not.

    I just want to shake the goddamn Tea Party idiots and say 'Do you actually know why we revolted from England? And if you say 'taxes' I will shoot you in head.'

  11. Re:double standard on Man Arrested For Exploiting Error In Slot Machines · · Score: 1

    That's because you're not getting them through your hotel.

    If they're in the same hotel as you, you can get a pretty good discount, and if they are not, you can usually get a somewhat reasonable discount via an agreement between your hotel and theirs.

    They don't care about residents. Residents don't gamble.

  12. Re:Conference in Vegas on Man Arrested For Exploiting Error In Slot Machines · · Score: 1

    I don't know how often it happens, but that's exceptionally stupid. Those managers who were 'enjoying themselves' were subsiding your conference out of their own pocket. No one was gambling or visiting strippers or whatever on the public dime.

    But the general public is stupid.

    Where they should ban conferences is exactly the other way around. Places like the Panama City or something, where the entertainment is 'cheap' (Because people just go to the beach) and the hotels are expensive. Vegas has the cheapest hotels of any major city (Sometimes their prices are surreal, like cheaper than some random Motel 6 to stay in a real hotel with room service and indoor gym and whatnot.), and the cheapest conference space too.

  13. Re:double standard on Man Arrested For Exploiting Error In Slot Machines · · Score: 1

    Oh, and to add....most people like to think they're start 'for fun'...and then play 'until they win', or, more likely, until they run out of money.

    People must remember their hourly costs at all time. No entertainment is worth $200 an hour. Movies cost $5, even the most expensive shows cost $60 an hour. Is it that much more fun to watch the roulette ball spin than to watch a magic act or something?

    Heck, for that amount of money, in Vegas, you could have taken a cab outside the county and hired a prostitute.

    Start with a set amount of time this will entertain you, and a set amount of money you're going to spend.

    And with normal people, the cost of entertainment at anywhere but the slots, or one or two bets at craps or roulette, is a pretty high cost to be 'entertained'.

  14. Re:double standard on Man Arrested For Exploiting Error In Slot Machines · · Score: 1

    That's not gambling. (Vegas actually calls that 'gaming' and tries to imply that all gambling is actually that, but it is not.) Gambling is when you bet money in order to win more money. That is stupid in most circumstances.(1)

    If you're just betting money for fun, whatever. That's no more stupid than any other way to spend money for fun.

    Heck, when I was walking down the strip, I ducked into a casino to sit down...and sat down at a slot machine by the door and spent $5. Not 'gambled' $5, I certainly expected to lose it. I just wanted a place to sit and watch things and rest, and it was an actual mechanical slot which I found interesting. I played 25 cents at a time until I ran out of the money I put at the start.

    I probably would have tried roulette at some point if the table minimums hadn't been $20. Uh, no. I was planning on spending an hour there and maybe spending $20 total.

    1) Gambling on stuff like horse races and sporting events isn't quite as stupid, but there is some skill required there. Even poker isn't stupid...some people can consistently make money at poker. And you'll notice that none of those are played against the casino, precisely because smart people can win. Gambling against the casinos is what is stupid.

  15. Re:There's a special place in hell for... on Famous British Autism Study an 'Elaborate Fraud' · · Score: 1

    You are ignoring the issue of shingles occurring in latter years due to chicken pox infection.

    Uh, no I'm not. The live vaccine for varicella zoster virus can just as easily cause such a reinfection later.

    If you're ever infected with that virus, as chicken pox, as a chick pox vaccine, or as a shingle vaccine, you can get shingles later.

    The solution is to keep being exposed to the virus to keep your immunity up to date, which you can do by being near children with chicken pox or being repeatedly vaccinated.

    None of this has anything to do with the starting infection, which, considering that we don't know the effectiveness, is probably less safe as the vaccine than just getting chicken pox. If it only lasts five years and then wears off, you might get shingles from it a decade later when you're 20 or something absurd. Whereas we know the protection from the real virus lasts 30 years or so.

  16. Re:Isn't this already well-known? on Famous British Autism Study an 'Elaborate Fraud' · · Score: 1

    I think he was responding to me. Although I also knew all that too

    But we don't need a preservative even for multi-dose vaccines either. Like I said,we're not selling them in stores where people take them home and they sit on the shelf as they get distributed.

    They're distributed in medical facilities with, tada, refrigerators. If they do not have vaccine refrigerators, they should. This is absurd cost cutting.

    Even if we do use multi-dose ones, there's no reason not to put the container back into the refrigerator. (Or even just break it into smaller doses and put them in the fridge.)

    I mean, it's probably better that we're using single-dose ones now, but we didn't actually need preservatives because we had multi-dose ones. We needed preservatives because the medical community is too broke to actually purchase vaccine refrigerators.

    The damn stupid anti-vaccine people could have made this their issue, demanding that doctors buy vaccine refrigerators...but they're damn stupid, I don't know why I would expect some sort of logical thing like that.

    I'm not saying that vaccines preservatives are evil, or harmful, I'm just saying it's utterly absurd we have to use them at all. Let's not, and have one less possible interaction to worry about.

  17. Re:double standard on Man Arrested For Exploiting Error In Slot Machines · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Going to Vegas is a great vacation. Everything there is rigged to be fun and distracting, you'll never be bored, there are great shows.

    As long as you don't gamble. If you don't gamble, half the stuff you do is be subsided by idiots who are gambling.

    That $50 dollar hotel rooms? Cheaper than roadside motels in the middle of nowhere? They're expecting you to spend $50 bucks a day in the casino.

    That $50 show you want to see? Really costs $80 dollars, but on average people spend $30 dollars waiting for the show to start in the casino.

    Hell, that's why so many conferences are there...the space is cheap, because they expect to make a huge amount of money fleecing the idiotic convention-goers.

    Seriously, Vegas is a great place to go and vacation on the backs of gamblers.

  18. Re:how does the patch work? on PHP Floating Point Bug Crashes Servers · · Score: 1

    All you need is this quote:

    Premature optimization is the root of all evil -Donald Knuth

    Before you write code, think about how it should hypothetically be optimized, and sorta plan it out like you would if you were going to super-optimize it.

    And then just write it normal, and assume the damn compiler is smarter than you. The only 'optimization' you should do is making sure stuff that can be outside loops is outside loops and that if you have some huge arrays or objects you should pass them by reference if you can. (If that advice is relevant to your language. And some languages where it is, the compiler is smart enough to know it, too, so don't do it there either.)

    At that point, when you're done, if, and only if, it's slow, identify the hotspots, the time the processor spends large amounts of time on, and optimize them.

    Even in a program that needs to run super-fast...does the whole thing really need to? Do the startup, does where it's loading in a file? Or is there just some tiny calculating loop in the middle that needs to run at max speed and should be optimized, and the rest of the program can waste a grand total of half a second being slower and less confusing?

    Do not optimize in advance, do not attempt to optimize afterward unless it's an actual slow and much-used spot.

    But you know all that now, I'm sure. It's amazing how many people learn about optimization and immediately try to 'fix' everything.

  19. Re:Why does this code even exist? on PHP Floating Point Bug Crashes Servers · · Score: 1

    I don't think you understood the question. The question is why PHP build its own implementation of a rather low-level library function that's actually part of the C99 standard. (And I'm pretty sure PHP requires C99 to compile.)

    No one's saying people who program in PHP should do anything different. They're saying that PHP itself should do things using standard libraries.

    One of the reason standard libraries exist is to get bugs like this being centralized to one location, so they're only fixed once ever.

  20. Re:Why Is It Wrong to Call This ESP? on Journal Article On Precognition Sparks Outrage · · Score: 1

    You realize that you've failed to provide this hypothetical definition of 'sense', right?

  21. Re:Jenny McCarthy's page already has it's rebuttal on Famous British Autism Study an 'Elaborate Fraud' · · Score: 1

    It's funny how you try to claim that both sides are manipulating facts, but in actuality all the environmental facts you list are true. No one has changed their minds about CFCs, or Freon, or car emissions, or ships, or garbage dumps.

    All of those are harmful, all of those need(ed) to be worried about. (Some of those have been fixed so, um, we don't worry anymore.)

    replacing your old 20 mpg car with a 31 mpg car is probably actually worse for the environment due to what goes into making it

    The 'replacing car' argument is stupid. All cars that were ever made are going to be operated until they die, at which point they will be dismantled and put into other cars, etc.

    No one's taking their car and throwing it away. There are a finite amount of cars on the road, and any car you own will be part of that until it stops working. This has nothing to do with whether you own it or not. You car continues to exist, and will be used for transportation.

    Someone purchasing a new car vs. someone else purchasing one, simple changes what cars exist on the road. For every environmental friendly one purchased new, that's a non-environmentally friendly one that doesn't get made.

    If there are 100 cars and car owners on the road, and one of them breaks, there will very soon be 100 cars back on the road. Either an idiot with an SUV sold him the SUV and then bought a Hummer, or someone environmentally conscious sold him the 20 mpg car and bought a 31 mpg car. In one universe, the average pollution went up, in the other, it went down.

    If only new car purchasers, and no else, cared about good mileage, car mileage would much higher than it is now. Likewise, if only used car buyers, and not new ones, cared about mileage, it would be much lower. New car purchases entirely decide what cars exist on the road, and, as such, entirely decided how environmental everyone else is.

  22. Re:Jenny McCarthy's page already has it's rebuttal on Famous British Autism Study an 'Elaborate Fraud' · · Score: 1

    That said, the argument against hybrids due to pollution from their batteries is reasonable, and I don't know any answer, except to keep working on supercapacitors.

    No, it's not really a 'reasonable' argument.

    Even if they produce as much 'bad stuff', it would appear to be much better to have some random pollution that only possibly screws up a small area of the earth, vs., oh, blowing up the climate.

    Not all problems are equal, and certain forms of pollution are worse than others, especially as we're near the tipping point of CO2.

  23. Re:There's a special place in hell for... on Famous British Autism Study an 'Elaborate Fraud' · · Score: 1

    Uh, no. That can't possibly be the point of the flu vaccine, because that can't possibly work with such a low vaccination rate.

    If that's the point, it's pretty pointless.

  24. Re:There's a special place in hell for... on Famous British Autism Study an 'Elaborate Fraud' · · Score: 1

    I am not aware of any animal reserve for chicken pox, but that's not really important anyway. Like I said, I don't really care about that one. Just give all five years old chicken pox.

    But there are plenty of viruses with no animal reserves. Like the one I said, HPV would be a good starting point.

  25. Re:There's a special place in hell for... on Famous British Autism Study an 'Elaborate Fraud' · · Score: 1

    That's pretty much how I feel. The vaccine wears off, so is much less useful than just getting the virus to start with. (Yes, yes, the virus can also wear off, but whatever, nothing's perfect.)

    If, after they've gotten the chicken pox, someone wants to propose vaccine boosters over the years, I have no objection to that.