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User: Cosmic+AC

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Comments · 127

  1. Re:how to get a job 101 on Practical Experience As a Beginning Programmer? · · Score: 1

    Geeks are great. The only problem comes when you take being a geek as an excuse not to wash, to dress like an asshat, and to forget your social skills. So, basically, stop being a geek?
  2. Re:I could conduct stings for the fbi on FBI Posts Fake Hyperlinks To Trap Downloaders of Illegal Porn · · Score: 1

    You must be a mathematician.

  3. Re:Lets bring these people up to speed on Pakistan Blocks YouTube · · Score: 1

    There are several different types of fgm, so I wouldn't categorically say that it is worse. And I've never heard people who were opposed to fgm defending type I female circumcision. As long as male circumcision is so prevalent, I think a comparison is quite apt. Excising genital tissue for no good reason and without consent should not be tolerated no matter what its supposed "severity" is.

  4. Re:I cannot believe it on Identical Twins Not Identical After All · · Score: 1

    Age of consent varies across the states--it is 14 in Hawaii, 16 in many others.

  5. Re:Creepy on WizKid Robot Debuts At New York Museum · · Score: 1

    I thought he was referring to this.

  6. Re:We already have Photoshop! on Google Funds Work for Photoshop on Linux · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The religon behind OSS will keep those developers (and many investors) away.

    It should. The religion behind OSS seeks to destroy their business model by making them obsolete. !? But if no one uses OSS, how will that be achieved? Refusing to accommodate proprietary software isn't going to help. How many Firefox users would there be if there wasn't a Windows version? Why the all or nothing approach?
  7. Re:The last question... on The Limits of Quantum Computing · · Score: 1

    Let there be light.

  8. Re:Are you really that f&^king lazy? on Digital Picture Frames Infected by Trojan Viruses · · Score: 1
    Okay, first two links: A specific xerox photocopier in the Soviet embassy in Washington was bugged. Hardly an example of "putting hidden viruses and back doors in our products" sold to ordinary consumers, which is what the article is talking about.

    Third link: What? Printer dots? You mean the codes used to trace printers, for fighting counterfeiting?

    Also, look up CIA, USSR, and oil pipeline Again, not analogous to the picture frame story at all. The pipeline software was stolen by Soviet spies, and was not a consumer product.
  9. Re:It is not "professional", but gov. on Digital Picture Frames Infected by Trojan Viruses · · Score: 1

    The thing is that China is doing to the world, what America did to USSR (and still doing to the world); putting hidden viruses and back doors in our products. [citation needed]
  10. Re:Update on Rush Limbaugh Begs Steve Jobs For Bug Fixes · · Score: 1

    Falafel boy has had his head up his ass for his entire career. Do you mean Bill O'Reilly?
  11. Re:is it April 1? on Engineers Have a Terrorist Mindset? · · Score: 1

    Maybe you should ask colleges why they charge out-of-state/out-of country tuition?

  12. Re:A bad idea that everyone should be against. on Examining the Ethical Implications of Robots in War · · Score: 1

    There are already safeguards against this sort of thing. In case you haven't noticed, there have been for quite some time nations who are technologically superior to others. We could bomb many poor countries right now without sustaining any casualties. But we don't do it, because of the oft-mentioned "international outcry".

  13. Re:When can I get this in my Roomba? on Military Robots to Gain Advanced Sight · · Score: 1

    "We bring good things to life"

  14. Re:Class division on Embedded Microchips In Virtually Everything · · Score: 2, Insightful

    But computing is pervasive. In the future, more and more things will be controlled by software, rather than by cars or doctors.

  15. Re:Decleraton of war on Defunct Spy Satellite Falling From Orbit · · Score: 1

    Or just what did you mean by your post anyway?

  16. Re:Decleraton of war on Defunct Spy Satellite Falling From Orbit · · Score: 1
    I'm guessing you didn't read the article:

    Such an uncontrolled re-entry could risk exposure of U.S. secrets, said John Pike, a defense and intelligence expert. Spy satellites typically are disposed of through a controlled re-entry into the ocean so that no one else can access the spacecraft, he said.
  17. Re:India had wireless long ago ! on Massive WiMax Network for India · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    It is much easier to understand you when you use punctuation particularly periods so please use them if you do that you will be more likely to be modded up because people will have understood your joke thank you

  18. Re:In archaic terms... on The iPhone Meets the Fourth Amendment · · Score: 1

    I apologize for the sarcasm. When you said, "Anything where you can hold down the trigger to hose down an area with bullets goes against the rules of safe handling I was taught.", I just thought it was a poor argument to use against ownership of assault rifles, as I do not believe full-auto fire precludes safe handling.

  19. Re:But... what's the long term impact of this? on Engineered Mosquitoes Could Wipe Out Dengue Fever · · Score: 1

    What happens to all the things that eat mosquitoes and mosquito larvae if there aren't any mosquitoes? Anything that relies solely on mosquito larvae for food would die. Then, anything that relies solely on these predators for food would die, and so on. What is the overall impact of that? Neither of us have the answer. But we do know that many species have gone extinct in the time period that humans have existed, with much less of an impact on human health than mosquitoes are currently having.

    That still doesn't mean we shouldn't be damn careful, because in the meantime there's a chance that we could do something that we'd find extremely inconvenient or unfortunate. I never said we shouldn't be careful, just that we should weigh the costs and benefits. There will always be some disruption caused by the removal an entire species from an ecosystem, but that doesn't mean we couldn't tolerate it, or that the harm it might cause to humans would be greater than that already caused by mosquitoes.
  20. Re:In archaic terms... on The iPhone Meets the Fourth Amendment · · Score: 1

    You should tell the military about these unsafe weapons.

  21. Re:Won't Work on Engineered Mosquitoes Could Wipe Out Dengue Fever · · Score: 1

    The article doesn't say whether offspring of wild and modified mosquito live long enough to breed...
    Yes it does:

    ...it can decimate mosquito populations by breeding genetically modified male mosquitoes, then releasing them to mate with wild females. Their offspring contain lethal genes that kill them young, before they can reproduce. The modified offspring not only compete for resources with normal mosquitoes, but replace the normal offspring that the wild females that mate them would have had. That's how it works.
  22. Re:But... what's the long term impact of this? on Engineered Mosquitoes Could Wipe Out Dengue Fever · · Score: 1

    I'm not too worried, especially since mosquitoes are parasites (we try to eradicate diseases and other parasites, why not mosquitoes?). Ecosystems have been "disrupted" frequently throughout the course of life on earth, due natural disasters, mass extinctions, etc. Eventually, other life adjusts, and equilibrium returns. It is easy to get paranoid about the possibility of a species goes extinct, not so easy to actually predict the impact. But the idea that all life, all the time, is desirable and should be preserved in the same state forever doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. You have to consider the costs, as well as the benefits, of mosquitoes. And what about places like Hawaii, where there were no mosquitoes until they were introduced by man? Hawaiian biota managed to do just fine before mosquitoes were introduced. Surely it wouldn't be a terrible thing to eradicate them there?

  23. Re:Evolution is a theory too on Texas Creationist Museum Facing Extinction · · Score: 1

    Romans 9:21--Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?

    That's something that's always bothered me about the whole God thing. If God is omnipotent/omniscient, and created us knowing how we were going to be, then how can we have free will? I think the people that wrote the bible were just messing with our heads.
  24. Re:Evolution is a theory too on Texas Creationist Museum Facing Extinction · · Score: 1

    I don't think that's true.

  25. Re:Baaaaahhaaah! Baaaahhh! on Microsoft Will Stream Ads To Grocery Carts · · Score: 1

    *hugs noscript*