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User: ph0rk

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Comments · 298

  1. Credential inflation is real on For Businesses, the College Degree Is the New High School Diploma · · Score: 1

    and hardly a new phenomenon.

    You need a Masters Degree in many fields to have a snowball's chance in hell of getting anywhere. This varies somewhat in technical fields, but as we see time and time again, once your age climbs over, say, 35, it can be tough as hell to get a technical job. Outside of tech fields, you need either a top flight BA/BS or a higher degree to set you apart, and there is no reason for this trend to reverse.

  2. Re:Charging authors is not much better... on PeerJ, A New Open Access Megajournal Launches · · Score: 2

    Allows anyone to submit a paper? Who will review them?

  3. Re:The corporations are our enemy on Amazon Patents 'Maintaining Scarcity' of Goods · · Score: 4, Funny

    Terminator was far too optimistic in portraying our future as the War Against the Machines, a nice and clean them-versus-us scenario in which the machines would be non-human. The enemy would be easy to identify.

    Uh, yeah. Did you actually see Terminator?

  4. Re:Modern Luddites on Is Technology Eroding Employment? · · Score: 1

    I don't see why Luddism is the necessary conclusion.

    It could just as easily be: Sky-high unemployment, and to hell with the workers anyway. Human input isn't really necessary for a variety of tasks. When machines become cheap enough for a short-term profit, why hire humans to flip burgers, push mops, write tickets?

    Jobless recovery and all that.

  5. Re:Units on Larry Ellison Buys His Own Hawaiian Island · · Score: 1

    How about 2.06 Districts of Columbia?

  6. How is it that all the comments thus far on Too Many Biomedical Graduate Students, Not Enough Jobs · · Score: 4, Informative

    are nearly entirely made by people who don't know what they are talking about?

    This is a real problem in all of the sciences. The biomedical sciences have had the best money for a long time, and if they are beginning to have problems, it isn't good.

    For those not in the know: grad students are slave labor. postdocs are a notch better, but only barely. Remember how Gordon Freeman was treated in the intro to half-life? Consider that a documentary.

  7. Re:If you're willing to stay a season behind on Game of Thrones The Most Pirated TV Show of the Season · · Score: 2

    Yes, and I won't. Most others won't, either.

    HBO can wake up and come to terms with the fact they can't fully control distribution, or they can continue to lose sales. Piracy is a market pressure that keeps prices low. HBO can react to that pressure or stick their collective heads in the sand and look like buffoons. Currently, they're engaged in the latter.

    Besides, I fully expect HBO to pill the plug at the end like Deadwood anyway. Why? Because apparently they were afraid they wouldn't be ably to sell enough copies of Deadwood elsewhere. Your $900 a year meant fark all. Hooray!

  8. Re:False Dichotomy on Debate Over Evolution Will Soon Be History, Says Leakey · · Score: 1

    Between 40 and 50% of US Americans do not believe that Humans evolved from earlier forms. (PEW reports, Gallup polls, GSS data).

    Relying on the stated position of a denomination or sect as a proxy for individual beliefs is misleading and biased.

  9. Re:Unfair taxes ! on Facebook Co-Founder Saverin Gives Up U.S. Citizenship Before IPO · · Score: 1

    Wasting mod points to reply:

    We were a superpower after WWII not because of how badly we treated our own labor, but because we were the only industrial economy that wasn't bombed to oblivion and back.

    We still had our factories. Pretty easy to "build" a superpower when you're the only one with the buildy-thingies.

    Towards the end of the 20th century the other developed nations caught back up.

  10. Re:Dawkins/GODSPOT-0DAY on Symantec: Religious Sites "Riskier Than Porn For Viruses" · · Score: 1

    Atheism is the belief, without evidence, in the lack of existence of any deity. Theism is the belief, without evidence, in the existence of some deity or deities or their rough equivalents. Both are unproven and (probably) non-falsifiable beliefs.

    Wasting mod points to comment: The first claim is not entirely correct. As is, in certain ways, the second. In both cases, a collection of empirical facts can be stacked just so to support either statement. If one accepts the general epistemological rules for building consensus data through empirical observation (and the surrounding baggage), then the theist position is the more convoluted one. Every day things happen without miracles (or anything demonstrable as such), and every day more observations get added to the evidence pile for an atheist position.

    If one doesn't accept or follow the general epistemology of science (particularly in the modern, Kuhnian and Popperian way) then one likely sees what might be miracles all the time, and those observations get added to the theism pile.

    Disagreements about what constitutes evidence are where we are, not two incommensurate positions that are entirely untestable. Well, I suppose someone could be in that third position, but they'd be the third person out in any debate. I prefer the a priori assumption that the universe is comprehensible until, well, it's not.

  11. Anonymous Reader Indeed on Banned From Kickstarter For Being Cyberstalked · · Score: 1

    Is it really possible to cyberstalk an attention whore?

  12. Re:inb4 on Researchers Show How Cellular Complexity Can Evolve · · Score: 2, Insightful
    To re-hash the point for the millionth time:

    The athiest needs faith.

    Technically, no, he does not. There are gnostic and agnostic atheists, just as there are gnostic and agnostic theists.

    A gnostic atheist "knows" there is no god(s), an agnostic atheist does not believe in the existence of a god(s), but will claim they cannot know for certain.

    Admitting the lack of certain knowledge -and- the lack of a belief in what are essentially unsubstantiated rumors don't require much faith in anything other than one's own powers of observation.

  13. Re:expensive cupcakes on Baker Has to Make 102,000 Cupcakes For Grouponers · · Score: 2

    If by $3.95 you mean $1.50 then perhaps. $2 on the outside, and that's overpriced.

    The $3+ drinks are usually made with milk and/or flavor and espresso. Drip coffee is still cheap. Yes, even at big chain coffee shops. If you don't want to pay that much, don't buy expensive fancy drinks.

    If I could still find $.50 drip coffee, I imagine it would taste like crap.

    (Unless, of course, you live in a large metro where prices are higher, but that's all your fault).

  14. Re:What? on Oxford Professor Taken To Task For Linking Internet Use To Autism · · Score: 1

    Are you being deliberately obtuse, or did you just misread the summary and skip the article?

    The "suggestion" is that Greenfield put her ideas out into the peer review process, something she is probably afraid of doing.

  15. Re:Haught isn't in favor of creationism on Censored Religious Debate Video Released After Public Outrage · · Score: 1

    As Einstein put it, "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." Claims to the contrary demand extraordinary proof.

    On the contrary - the empirical project can get along just fine without the supernatural.

    To be a good empiricist, one must relegate the supernatural to that realm that is entirely untouchable by observation. Or, in other words, let God live in places so small that it doesn't matter. If that counts as still "believing", then fine. Fully one third of the US population holds an inerrant view of the Christian bible - the difference in beliefs between that group and "an empiricist who lets God live in small places" is staggering.

  16. Re:I hope the plot is better than the series on A Game of Thrones RTS Game Released, RPG On the Way · · Score: 1

    Waaah! Everyone likes it and I don't! Listen to me!

    Damn Martin for making believable characters that I can't like because they're all assholes. How dare he insert that much realism into his characterization?!

  17. Re:really true to the books...? on A Game of Thrones RTS Game Released, RPG On the Way · · Score: 1

    Nah, Reek let them go. Unless you mean the stable boys...

  18. Amusing on Robot Workforce Threatens Education-Intensive Jobs · · Score: 1

    I have been arguing that this would happen for at least a decade. In an economy like ours it is a real problem as the number of jobs decreases while productivity increases (or, at least jobs fail to track with productivity). You end up with a lot of broke potential consumers. Ruh-Roh.

    Either we start figuring out how to get by with everyone working 20ish hours a week or Marx's economic collapse will finally happen.

    I'd much rather work 20 hours per week.

  19. Re:Still not a sport, try as you may.. on Sports Bars Changing Channels For Video Gamers · · Score: 1

    John M. Roberts defined games in three categories, paraphrased here:

    "The categories proposed by Roberts at al. are staged; games of chance do not require any skill or strategy (dice games, coin tosses), games of strategy may or may not involve chance but do not involve physical skill (chess, go, poker), and games of physical skill require skill, and may or may not involve chance or strategy. Amusingly, this would place [video] games in the same category as footraces, boxing, and soccer – that of physical skill (1959:597-598)."

    cite: Roberts, John M., Malcolm J. Arth, and Robert R. Bush. 1959. “Games in Culture”. American Anthropologist, 61(4):597-605.

    Roberts was talking about games with a competitive element, where there must be a clear winner and loser.

    Who are you to say that actions per second are any less determined by physical prowess than running and throwing a ball or swinging a stick? Obviously the strategic element in a game like starcraft greater than that of baseball.

  20. Why end it on World of Warcraft Finally Loses Subscribers · · Score: 1

    when they can wring money out of it all the way down?

  21. Re:Some problems can't be fixed. on Can Analytics Help Fix Your Love Life? · · Score: 1

    You need to have a love life for it to be fixable. Sorry.

  22. Re:Duke TIP on Fond Memories of Nerd Camp · · Score: 1

    Wow, when I did it all that happened were drugs, booze, and sex. I was just there for the math.

    I'd expect most of the people capable of gaining admission to such programs will do quite well with or without them.

  23. Where was the love when they dropped their prices? on Netflix Deflects Rage Over Price Increase · · Score: 1

    They dropped prices a few years ago. Raising them to wean people off the discs-in-the-mail is more or less inevitable. Unlimited streaming is still only $9.99, half what Netflix cost five years ago.

    I pay $7.99 and never use a disc. After the change I'll pay $9.99 for streaming only and get more or less the same service. Still less than it was five years ago.

    What's the big deal?

  24. Re:Article error in headline! on Turn Your iPad Into a Star Trek PADD · · Score: 2

    Let's get it right... we are NOT "Trekkies", we are TREKKERS!

    Trekkies are the kids with the Spock ears and Geordi visors.

    TREKKERS are more "normal"! We love Star Trek, yes, but we ALSO have a life. ;)

    If the nomenclature bothers you that much, I am not sure I can grant the bolded claim.

  25. Re:Keep polishing that turd Adobe on Adobe To Patch Flash 0-Day Friday · · Score: 1

    The important thing about the gilded cage is, in some cases, the gilt. Not the bars.