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User: Cerebus

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Comments · 280

  1. Re:They have a lot to lampoon on Administration Claimed Immunity To 4th Amendment · · Score: 1

    Printing money like that causes runaway inflation. Unless you like what's happening in Zimbabwe I'm thinking that's something we *shouldn't* do.

  2. Re:An appropos quote on More Spacecraft Velocity Anomalies · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Miller's Corollary to Asimov's Law: "Great discoveries in computer security are usually preceded by 'This can't possibly work.'"

  3. Earth to Sony: on Sony Says Eee PC Signals "Race To the Bottom" · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If [Asus's Eee PC] starts to do well [...]

    What do you mean, "if"?

  4. Re:Anything like verasigns pip? on Hardware Based OpenID Service Available · · Score: 1

    Private key crypto operations are done on-card. Public key crypto operations are usually done off-card, since the cert is a public instrument and doesn't need to be protected by hardware.

  5. Re:Creationists don't understand the word Theory on Texas Creationist Museum Facing Extinction · · Score: 1

    Religious fundamentalists don't understand the difference between these definitions, and they think evolution is a "type 1" theory, more properly called a hypothesis.

    Actually, the guys leading the Creationist charge know this quite well. You can't tell me with a straight face that Michael Behe doesn't know the difference between a hypothesis and a theory. The rank-and-file Evangelical, just like Joe Sixpack, doesn't know. But these "leaders" have an agenda to push and it's expedient to exploit the ignorance of their followers.

  6. Re:No surprise here on Why Intel and OLPC Parted Ways · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Most corporations have a "public interest" clause in their corporate charters. This is required by the State so the public derives some benefit in exchange for the indemnification of owners from corporate liabilities. Technically speaking, a corporation that fails to act in the public interest *as well as* the interests of the owners (which should often be one and the same) should have its charter revoked.

    Unfortunately, State Attorneys General have forgotten this.

  7. Re:Ron Paul and the war on What Did You Change Your Mind About in 2007? · · Score: 1

    For a guy so opposed to putting people into groups, he sure likes to put people opposed to his political ideas into groups.

    Funny, that.

  8. Re:Ron Paul and the war on What Did You Change Your Mind About in 2007? · · Score: 1

    1) Because the link had it in its entirety and it saved me additional typing.

    2) Because the whole quote makes Paul look worse. What part of "Disagreeing with my political opinions makes you a criminal" seems like a good thing to you?

    In re: the rest: recall Euripides who famously wrote, "A man is known by the company he keeps."

  9. Re:Ron Paul and the war on What Did You Change Your Mind About in 2007? · · Score: 1, Troll
  10. Nokia N800 or N810. on Which eBook Reader is the Best? · · Score: 1

    Great battery life (6 hrs), plays music, movies, gecko-based web browser, email, IM, *and* it still fits in your pocket. OS2008 seriously improved the PDF viewer, and is now tops for PDF ebooks. FBreader is available and works like a charm.

    Can't support DRM ebooks though, but that's a feature not a bug. :)

  11. Re:We're all boiling frogs on Diffing Guantanamo Bay SOP Manuals · · Score: 1

    There's this website called www.google.com that offers this neat service. If you enter some words it will search a really really large database of information found online and point you toward the pages that seem to be relevant to the words you entered.

    Maybe you could use it to, you know, answer your own question. And maybe, just maybe, become a little informed as a byproduct.

    I know it's a novel idea, but somehow I think you'll understand more that way than if I did it for you.

  12. Re:We're all boiling frogs on Diffing Guantanamo Bay SOP Manuals · · Score: 1

    Also, it's not like these people are innocent, after all they were trying to kill our troups, but they should be called what they really are, prisoners.

    So being kidnapped by an Afghani warlord and sold to the coalition forces as an al-Qaeda operative for the bounty sans any evidence whatsoever now constitutes trying to kill American soldiers?

    I only ask because it's happened. Multiple times.

  13. Re:We're all boiling frogs on Diffing Guantanamo Bay SOP Manuals · · Score: 1

    The only reason Club Gitmo exists is because we are such damn great people.

    I take it you've never heard of Theresienstadt.

    Instead, at great expense, we take them to a Caribbean island and duly process them into cells where they wait years without charge or adequate access to services they have rights to.

    There, I fixed it for you.

    And when we make a tiny mistake through excess of caution, by collecting a civilian - that is our fault?

    Not so tiny to the guy who's life you destroyed. Or his kids, who're now less likely to be friendly to the next uniform he sees.

    Personally, I love your argument. "Anything short of killing these people outright is OK because, well, we were such nice people for not killing them outright."

    The Great Jeebus ghost in the sky must love you lots.

  14. Re:We're all boiling frogs on Diffing Guantanamo Bay SOP Manuals · · Score: 1

    Suspect != guilty. HTH, HAND.

  15. Re:how, exactly on Texas Science Director Forced To Resign Over ID Statements · · Score: 1

    Assume we take evolution as fact - then after discarding the whole Adam&Eve bit, the religious can easily drop back to "but God -designed- evolution". There's your ID right there.

    Actually, this is basically the position of the Catholic Church. Evolution is an undeniable fact, but evolution--though it may look like a random process--follows a plan insofar as producing humans is concerned. However, the Church holds that evolution cannot speak to the origin of the human soul.

    And that's OK. There's nothing about this position that is scientific or conflicts with science in the least. If you want to take a sequence of numbers that passes statistical tests for randomness and say, "I believe that these numbers were chosen *on purpose*," who cares? It doesn't change the fact that the sequence can still be treated as random when you do the math.

    I guess the Church actually learned something after that Galileo fiasco.

  16. Re:When Han Shot Second. on When Did Star Wars Jump the Shark? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    [...] you have Anakin Skywalker gradually seduced [...]

    Anakin went from "He should stand trial!" to murdering babies in all of what, 10 minutes? Less? WTF was "gradual" about that?

  17. Re:The Democratic System Certainly Has Its Flaws, on Wikileaks Releases Sensitive Guantanamo Manual · · Score: 1

    How about secret troop movements.

    Professionals know there is no such thing as a "secret troop movement." That's because professionals study logistics rather than tactics, and the logistics train will *always* tell you where they're going.

    Do you really need someone to explain this shit to you? Look past your naive ideals to reality. What, are you 14 years old?

    Are you an asshole on purpose, or does it just come naturally to you?

  18. Re:I, for one... on US Official Urges Americans To Reconsider Privacy · · Score: 1

    When you're poor, you don't have a chance to move away anyway. Did you have some kind of point?

  19. Re:I, for one... on US Official Urges Americans To Reconsider Privacy · · Score: 1

    Abortions would still be legal with out a doubt in pretty much every blue state, and most likely a fair number of red states. Why is the federal government, which exists for disputes between states involved?

    Because access to fundamental services should not be a lottery decided by place of birth. I should have thought that much was obvious.

  20. Re:I, for one... on US Official Urges Americans To Reconsider Privacy · · Score: 1
    But he can't move U.S. currency back to the gold standard.



    But he's tried. See the list here:

    http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2007/11/ron-pauls-record-in-congress.html

  21. Re:I, for one... on US Official Urges Americans To Reconsider Privacy · · Score: 4, Informative

    Here's a great run-down of Ron Paul's Congressional whack-nuttery:

    http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2007/11/ron-pauls-record-in-congress.html

  22. Re:A monopoly? on Google As The Next Microsoft? · · Score: 1

    Microsoft is a monopoly because Judge Thomas Jackson determined them to be so in the US v. Microsoft Findings of Fact. No more definition is needed.

  23. Re:Pay you for what? on Ballmer Suggests Linux Distros Will Soon Have to Pay Up · · Score: 1

    The best FOSS projects work more along the lines of "Let's share this code because that way we can each reap the full benefit of developing this software but only each pay a fraction of the cost."

    It's not so much altruism so much as recognizing that you share certain common causes with your competitors, and therefore is in your best interest to cooperate.

  24. Re:A better change today than before on Newton II - Does The Rumor Have Legs This Time? · · Score: 1

    The Newton GUI *was* advanced. It was optimized for pens, a considerable advancement over the mouse for a tablet. Those who have never used a UI designed for a pen (Windows XP Tablet Edition doesn't count) don't understand the difference, but it's substantial.

  25. Re:The Newton flopped because... on Newton II - Does The Rumor Have Legs This Time? · · Score: 1

    "4) Too large (Palm got it right)"

    I disagree. While the Newton *case* was bulky (a necessity given the electronics and batteries available at the time) the *screen* was the perfect size. Any smaller and it would be impossible to write on with any utility. There's full-screen graffiti available on the Palm--try it some time. Then write on a Newton. There's no comparison.

    I *still* use my Newton, especially for notetaking. Newton's only real problem today is connectivity and sync; they can be done, but it's a real pain and very kludgy. I'd love to see a modernized Newton--so long as the screen size remains (or gets bigger).