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User: Torvaun

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  1. Re:10 baskets on Underfunded NSA Suffers Brownouts · · Score: 1

    I chose Germany, Italy, and Japan because they were the most recent big evil alliance, not for any actual Nuke abilities.

    Also, disabling a nuke can be done by tossing a grenade in next to the missile. Detonating one in place is a much bigger deal, and includes the use of launch codes. Nuclear weapons are actually fairly delicate, due to the necessary time precision more than anything else. Disabling could even be done without getting someone into the silo, it just takes a suicide bomber with a cement truck full of RDX.

    Mutually assured destruction only worked when destruction was mutually assured. If you bring things down to very few nukes, it no longer is, and a more heavily armed country could decide that it's worth the sacrifice to destroy us, if they're not going to be wiped out by our retaliation. How many Chinese people would survive 10 nukes? How many Americans would survive all of theirs? The plague did more damage to Europe than five nukes would do, and they did indeed bounce back.

  2. Re:No shit.... on Underfunded NSA Suffers Brownouts · · Score: 1

    Intriguing thoughts on the nukes, much akin to "Why should I carry all these baskets? My eggs will all fit in this one." Suppose China would like to nuke us, but we've got these 10 nukes pointed at their vitals. Is anything so secure that you'd bet against saboteurs or terrorists being able to infiltrate 10 known locations? And suppose that they were only able to knock out 5. Think the most populous country in the world couldn't bounce back from five nukes? Hey, what about an alliance? Something like Germany, Italy, and Japan. Now we're down to three nukes each, and if they can kill 5 of them, we're down to less than 2 each. By your idea, modern Hitler wins big.

  3. Re:bullshit on Quantum Dots Might Be Key For Teleportation · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Teleportation is absurd -now-. 150 years ago, magic picture boxes were absurd. 150 years before that, a magic box that could transmit sound near instantaneously from place to place was absurd. How about taking someone's heart out, putting a new one in, and having that person not die from it? Allowing blacks and women to vote? The very concept of a man controlling billions of dollars? The only true absurdity to be found is the certainty that things will always be as they are.

    Some of our routine surgeries would have been called vivisection. Many of our standard technologies would be called witchcraft. And when the rules said no to cruel and unusual punishment, that meant that we wouldn't be burned at the stake.

  4. Re:I hope no one died. on Eta Carinae, Soon To Be a Local Supernova · · Score: 1

    Type of life unlike any we already know. Feeds off of energy. If it kills people through total blood clotting, and later mutates to eat polymers, then Crichton will have to rename his book to the Eta Carinae Strain.

  5. Re:Neutron emissions on Eta Carinae, Soon To Be a Local Supernova · · Score: 1

    Impact in that context did not mean collision. Nice explanation, though.

  6. Re:Relative Time on Eta Carinae, Soon To Be a Local Supernova · · Score: 1

    Lightyears, not years. Years are just time, and it's quite a bit more than 7,000 of those away if you decide to jog it instead.

  7. Re:I do believe... on Citizens Given Video Cameras To Monitor Police · · Score: 1

    Who else does your dealer sell to? Apparently selling to you isn't a problem. But drug dealers have a tendency of not being overly discriminating as to who they're selling to, once they've decided it isn't a cop. I wouldn't want someone selling drugs to my kids (I'm childless, but I have a feeling that this isn't one of those things where your perspective changes after you actually have kids.)

    As far as stupid things go, I was thinking a little less locking your keys in your car, and a little more putting it in neutral instead of park, and leaving it on an incline. I don't oppose alcohol because of drunk people staggering home any more than I oppose drugs because of "a couple long hairs laughing a little too hard". I oppose alcohol because of drunk people attempting to drive home, which is still an issue with drugs. Marijuana is one of the least of those, as far as that's concerned, and is even behind alcohol on that front, but it still adversely affects your reaction time. I don't drive when I'm sleepy either, but that's a really difficult one to crack down on, especially with the jolt of adrenaline that goes with seeing the blue and red lights in your rear view mirror.

    Attempting to control a large, quickly moving piece of metal is a dangerous proposition when you're not all there, and it's not only dangerous to you. If you want to smoke in your basement, and you're not going anywhere until your senses are back where they're supposed to be, fine. I'd prefer it if you would grow your own and stop supporting drug dealers. If you want to drink in your basement, and you're not going anywhere until your senses are back where they're supposed to be, fine. I'd prefer it if people would drink at home instead of in bars, I can't remember the last time a weekend went by without a drunk driving crash in this town. If you want to shoot yourself, fine, just make sure the bullet isn't going to blow all the way through and hit some kid. What someone does to themselves is really none of my business, and not my problem. Drugs and alcohol have a nasty tendency to take problems elsewhere, and so I oppose them.

  8. Re:I do believe... on Citizens Given Video Cameras To Monitor Police · · Score: 1

    Of course you contribute more to society stoned and employed than you do sober and in a cell. Do you contribute more to society sober and employed, or stoned and employed? Whoever provides you with your cannabis seems to contribute nothing but haze, and should go to jail, by my set of beliefs. I find myself managing my life just fine without the use of substances that serve little purpose than to block everything else.

    Here's part two. I have no issue with medical use for marijuana, just like I have no issue with medical use of morphine. If House didn't lie to me, LSD has some value in that it stops migraines. I'm sure cocaine has at least one good property, and we should find it and analyze it so that we can get use out of it without all the troubles it causes. Praise be to the stoners, because if we did to someone what they do to themselves, it'd be called dangerous experimentation. It is unlikely that the medical community would have tried licking toads, for whatever reason. Let them continue their addlebrained research, and when they find something, we take it away, and have medicine refine the good qualities.

    I believe that those who get caught using drugs are the very same ones as those I don't want anywhere near me or my family, because to get caught using drugs, you needed to do it in public. The police don't go around knocking on doors to see who greets it with glazed eyes. They bust people at parties who were going to drive home well before they were sober. They bust kids who bring it to school. And they bust dealers. I have no issue with examples being made of anyone who gets busted there.

    I oppose your use because it helps your dealer, and even were I inclined to shed tears at anything, none would fall if you were arrested, because you would have done something stupid. And either way, you could name the dealer, and you'd get off with a very light sentence, if any.

  9. Re:I do believe... on Citizens Given Video Cameras To Monitor Police · · Score: 1

    Caffeine, man. I don't partake of any of it, and I go out of my way to avoid those who partake of any of the others, but I think saying "Bring back Prohibition! And while you're at it, ban Pepsi!" is a little far on the nutcase side of things, besides being worse than useless.

  10. Re:OH NOES! MAH INFINITE REGRESS!!!1one!! on Citizens Given Video Cameras To Monitor Police · · Score: 1

    Solution: Put cameras everywhere, and give everyone access to the feed. No camera that isn't itself on camera, to avoid someone tampering with it surreptitiously. It's less a matter of "if you have nothing to hide, what are you afraid of?" and more a matter of "nothing is being hidden, but no one cares." Who here has access to confidential personal information as part of their job? Every doctor, lawyer, HR guy, or IT guy. Who here actually cares, beyond the scope of their job? Just because there's no privacy doesn't mean that everyone knows everything about you.

  11. Re:I do believe... on Citizens Given Video Cameras To Monitor Police · · Score: 1

    Hey, the parent and the grandparent are both superimposing their personal experiences on the rest of the country. Because they are wildly diverging experiences, the parent feels the grandparent is stupid and out of touch, and says so bluntly.

    I'd suggest that the parent is probably a violent drug-user who received his boot to the head after being verbally abusive to an officer of the law during an arrest over drug possession. I'd suggest that the grandparent is a naive optimist who actually believes in a Utopian vision of flawless police departments that swiftly root out the corrupt among them. Both of you are equally blind.

    Just so we've got my bias on record, I'm a very anti-drug guy. That includes heroin, morphine, cocaine, ecstasy, meth, marijuana, LSD, nicotine, and alcohol. That's right, I oppose the legal mind-altering substances too. I'm currently going through a very painful caffeine withdrawal, something like 3-4 cans of Mt. Dew per day dropped to zilch since Monday, but I am willing to accept its use by others.

    I am pro-laws, though not necessarily all of the ones on the books right now, and not necessarily all of the law enforcement officials. I am pro-guns, pro-choice, pro-death penalty, pro-rights for homosexuals. Some have described me as being pro-population control based on the former set of opinions. I do not fit any right-wing or left-wing mold. I'm an atheist, but I agree with many of the moral obligations implied by the various religions. And I'm willing to thank who or whatever deserves credit for it that both the guy I replied to and the guy he replied to are rare enough that neither of them is representative of Americans as a whole.

  12. Re:I do believe... on Citizens Given Video Cameras To Monitor Police · · Score: 1

    I don't want to live next door to a brothel, dope house, bar, or nightclub. The first two of those are illegal here, and I just know I'd eventually have to go through a bunch of bureaucracy with giving statements and all that crap. The second two I feel pose an immediate hazard to those around them. I've been lucky enough not to lose a family member to a drunk driver, but not all of my friends have been so lucky. Of course, I'm way out there. I don't do alcohol, drugs, whores, or socialization with random people.

  13. Re:The list on Top Irritating Words Spawned by Internet · · Score: 1

    If something is inflammable, it is able to be inflamed. Flammable is the relatively young word.

    Asynchronous means that there is not a separate waveform helping to control input. In a synchronous chip, inputs are sampled on the rising edge and/or the falling edge of a clock input. In an asynchronous chip, inputs are continuously sampled. It doesn't mean that two things can't happen at the same time, just that they don't have to. Also, early chips were asynchronous, the change to synchronous was made for instruction integrity, because some very brief lapses in voltage control could, and would, disrupt instructions both current and future.

    An analogy: Charlie's Angels. That was synchronous communication. The angels could not get information to Charlie, except by waiting for him to call them and sample their input. Your boss, if there's a problem, you can let him know between the regular progress reports. That's asynchronous.

  14. Re:confusing on Microsoft Was Distributing Ubuntu Linux · · Score: 1

    What if Bob in Customer Service was pretending to be Steve in the Boardroom? What you say seems to imply that Joe Social Engineer can potentially cause companies to enter into binding contracts against their will.

  15. Re:Man, little brothers really have it bad... on Firstborn Get the Brains · · Score: 1

    My family only had 2 kids. I'm the eldest, and I did get the brains. Then my brother got sneakiness and good looks. Could be worse though, my dad had three younger brothers. He got the brains, Jim got the sneakiness, Corey got the cuteness, and Jake got screwed.

  16. Re:Therapeutic? on Scientists Move Closer to Human Therapeutic Cloning · · Score: 1

    Close. But you're not cloning yourself.

    Mad Scientist: "Damn that jock who always picked on me in high school. If only he were here to see me now..."
    Mad Scientist: "That's it! I'll grow a clone from the DNA on this spitwad!"
    Mad Scientist: "It's ALIVE!!!"
    Mad Scientist: *Beats the clone to death with a tire iron.*
    Mad Scientist: "Whew, I feel so much better now."

  17. Re:Which is worse on Scientists Move Closer to Human Therapeutic Cloning · · Score: 1

    What the hell is sperm doing in your nose? Bad aim with the oral?

  18. Re:Yeah well... on Judge Deals Blow to RIAA · · Score: 1

    Thank $DEITY someone said it! The first thing I thought on reading the headline was "And who's providing the hookers?"

  19. Re:Yeah well... on Judge Deals Blow to RIAA · · Score: 1

    I think you mean... irredundantless!

  20. Re:Great advertising.. on Manhunt 2 Banned In Britain · · Score: 1

    Ah. So it's basically a video game version of the Saw movies, except replacing the civilians with horrible people. You're right, that is less abhorrent. I feel a little embarrassed to have made my decision based on known-biased data.

  21. Re:Great advertising.. on Manhunt 2 Banned In Britain · · Score: 1

    I think he meant 'friendly.' But he seems to be missing (or trolling) the fact that there are different levels of killing people. In Hitman, you can kill people by shooting, stabbing, poisoning, crushing, exploding, strangling, burning, and causing them to fall to their doom. This is all done in a very matter of fact way. However, there's no torture. You never hurt someone to cause them pain, you hurt someone with the intent that they are going to die from it. There is no malice beyond simply killing them, and the reward system penalizes you for spreading the death around any more than it needs to be. The closest things in that game to torture are dosing a grill with a hell of a lot of lighter fluid, causing them to catch on fire and burn to death when they light it, and being a really bad shot and hitting them 4 or 5 times in non-vital areas before they die. None of that has any additional gratification.

    I have not played Manhunt or its sequel, but the descriptions I've heard suggest that there is much more emphasis on the causing of pain than on the killing itself. This is bad, in my book. I hunt. Occasionally, I do inflict death on living animals. But I do not intentionally wound an animal so it can bleed out, and if I come upon an animal that has been so wounded, I will put it down. I carry a .22 handgun when hunting for that express purpose. Yes, sometimes there are poor shots due to wind or other factors that result in a nonfatal shot to a deer. On these occasions, I make every reasonable attempt to find the deer, and finish it.

    Now, having stated that I find Manhunt abhorrent, that means that I am not going to buy it, rent it, or play it. If you want to, that's fine with me.

  22. Re:610 physicists on "Cascade B" Particle Discovered At Fermilab · · Score: 5, Funny

    We have here an article about physics that uses the word cascade. They better have Gordon Freeman on this team, I'm betting none of the other scientists can swing a crowbar worth a damn.

  23. Re:Sad truth... on How Motherboards Are Made · · Score: 1

    My aunt lives in Bangladesh. She's a missionary/nurse. Believe me when I tell you that famine is a very real thing for the people there. In America, we had enough space for our population boom, and much of it was arable. There, no such luck. Toss in the most corrupt government in the world (Guinness Book of Records, 2007) and a monsoon season, and you've got a miserable little hellhole that's not going to get better. If anything, they need -more- technology, especially things to improve farm yield. Right now 66% of the Bengali working population is working on a farm, and the country is barely surviving.

  24. Re:What the letter REALLY said on Say Nothing About the Failing Satellite · · Score: 1

    As your sibling post mentioned, satellites generally don't break, they just run out of fuel. This is not an "oh no, we'll have no way of knowing when there's a hurricane out there," problem for years. This is a "oh no, we're out of fuel, we'll have to look closer to the edge of the pictures they're taking," problem. Florida's not in the middle of the pictures, Georgia is. Or whatever. I stand by my statement of doom-saying and FUD, despite my GP mysteriously stripping away my tag from the end.

  25. Re:What the letter REALLY said on Say Nothing About the Failing Satellite · · Score: 1

    Was that law in place when the satellite went up? It's possible that this eye in the sky has been grandfathered in. Otherwise, there's the fact that a satellite without the ability to maneuver is still valid, as long as it can take pictures, and send them to us. Geosynchronous satellites need very little maneuvering once they get into place. There are probably spy satellites up there that are used on a "If it turns out something interesting is happening in an area that they're looking at, check it out," basis. And if we've been doing better than expected on fuel, it may well be that the engines were more efficient than the level assumed when the life expectancy was written up. In that case, it would take less fuel than originally allotted to de-orbiting, and they are being efficient with what they have. It's a waste to dump a perfectly good satellite before you have to.