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User: TheFlyingBuddha

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  1. Re:Double no on Pain-Free Animals Could Take Suffering Out of Farming · · Score: 1

    As with many posts here, you're missing a lot of details. The removal of pain is intended for factory farms. Places where the animals don't generally move much or interact, or have to be kept in pastures by electric fences.

  2. Re:Exactly! on Pain-Free Animals Could Take Suffering Out of Farming · · Score: 1

    http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sentience The state or quality of being sentient; possession of consciousness or sensory awareness. Cows are sentient.

  3. Re:"Everyone can edit", but "no one can contribute on Wikipedia To Require Editing Approval · · Score: 1

    There was an exciting and all too brief a period in the history of the Wikipedia when it wasn't spammed with ugly tags disputing the relevance, citation, neutrality, copyright, and importance.

    Yes, but then people started actually reading it.

  4. Re:first post! on Is a $72.5m Opening Weekend Enough For Star Trek? · · Score: 1

    You go into a prequel wanting to see fictional history in action and instead you get something completely different that pays no regard to fiction that you loved.

    You didn't go into a prequel though, you went into a reboot. Now I'm not saying this invalidates even the majority of your criticisms, but it does invalidate the comparison to the Phantom Menace and complaints that it will alter shows that come after. It's a reboot because they will probably make at LEAST one more film with this cast and don't want to be constrained by the previous history. That in and of itself is not a terrible thing.

  5. Re:Fallout 3 on Giant Spiders Invade Australian Outback Town · · Score: 1

    No. Because he shot Three Dog. And he felt... liberated.

  6. Re:The US is quickly devolving into a socialistic. on Bill Would Declare Your Blog a Weapon · · Score: 1

    If you are a troll, good job, you've managed to raise my blood pressure. If you are sincerely bringing up socialism as anything other than a straw man, can you explain it's relevancy to the concept of the police state? And can someone with mod points for the love of god make this something other than "Informative?" Funny, maybe. Hell I'd even take insightful. But INFORMATIVE, it is not.

  7. Re:How were they transported? on Google Mows With Goats · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Except odds are some outside landscaping company normally gets hired to mow the lawn every X amount of time, and brings their equipment with them.

  8. Re:Complaining about wrong thing here? on Air Force One Flyby Causes Brief Panic In NYC · · Score: 1

    Yes, I'm sure the President *personally* bothered to make sure that this was poorly handled. Not, say perhaps, some other relatively obscure Federal employee actually in charge of these kinds of exercises. I'm sure he cranks out these kinds of plans for fun in between all that boring stuff.

  9. Support on Bethesda Talks DLC Size and Limitations · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Too bad Bethesda can't seem to patch their games. VATS (the over-hyped, poor attempt at appeasing turn-based combat fans and only marketable aspect of the game's combat) has been broken for months now. I'd take "see you in a year" if it meant they actually fixed more bugs than they made. http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=973957

  10. Re:Does it matter... on Study Suggests Crabs Can Feel Pain · · Score: 1

    At the risk of sounding asinine, dairy cattle are kept in a state which causes them to continue to produce far more milk for longer than they normally would if a calf was present and eating regularly. So saying milking them makes them feel better is like saying I give you a great big thing of soda, which let's assume you will enjoy and drink, and then turn around and prevent you from urinating when you normally would(for the sake of the metaphor assume I can do this reliably). Am I doing a "good" thing when I finally permit you to relieve yourself?

  11. Re:Raises the bar for law enforcement. on Suspect Freed After Exposing Cop's Facebook Status · · Score: 1

    While I will agree that playing a game blurs the line in these examples, my point is still that the important part is *taking away* the language and using it to craft a self image outside of the original context. More importantly, I would dispute that anyone can truly compartmentalize everything so completely. Our minds tend to be leaky.

  12. Re:Raises the bar for law enforcement. on Suspect Freed After Exposing Cop's Facebook Status · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Hardly. While you could make the connection eventually, my point is not that *watching and enjoying a film* caused his behavior. When he *chooses* to take an image from media and emulate it with his language about himself, he has begun to internalize that image. It is still a *choice.* If I play and enjoy Grand Theft Auto games, I do not become a criminal. If I then create an image of myself which emulates the characters in these games and begin to use it in other spaces, then I've created a problematic situation. You're right, tons of people manage to compartmentalize these images. Using language to describe yourself as an emulator however, is the first sign that you aren't doing that at all.

  13. Re:Raises the bar for law enforcement. on Suspect Freed After Exposing Cop's Facebook Status · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Obviously it is not a private area. Strictly speaking, his information is on display and is fair game. I believe however that ideally speaking there would be some degree of respect for what is essentially a personalized space. Of course we hardly live in an ideal world.

  14. Re:Raises the bar for law enforcement. on Suspect Freed After Exposing Cop's Facebook Status · · Score: 1

    Important follow up, it is also still a shame that this posturing was evidenced by snooping into what are, essentially, private areas of his life. My point is more about language and self-image than whether or not putting a man's private comments on display is a valid legal defense. If such talk occurs among officers in the locker room or anywhere else, it is equally disquieting for the reasons I mentioned above, and perhaps a more suitable target for the same defense. If you posture among coworkers, your image is already affecting how you do your job.

  15. Raises the bar for law enforcement. on Suspect Freed After Exposing Cop's Facebook Status · · Score: 2, Insightful

    People are always keen to say "such and such" is just talk but the fact is the language we use about ourselves has a profound impact on our behavior. If a cop enjoys all that bad-ass posturing in art, and then builds that persona for their self, there is little doubt in my mind that at some point, no matter how much they might deny it, that kind of stuff will appear in their actual behavior on the job. I am NOT saying in this case it follows that the officers actually planted a weapon. But I don't really see a problem with someone being given pause over this kind of posturing. They do an important job and maintaining certain professional standards in their behavior keeps us safer all-around.

  16. "Benefit to society." on Canadian ISPs Speak Out Against Net Neutrality · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I would prefer they elaborate on this generic "benefit for society" that comes from protecting the copyright interests of corporate entities. I don't really see how this particular item helps all of us lead better lives.

  17. Re:HUMANS: - on Extinct Pyrenean Ibex Cloned · · Score: 0

    This would only be commercially viable for a handful of animals, and even then, there's a reason certain animals are domesticated, that is to say, they survive and breed well in captivity. For many animals this simply isn't the case. In many cases people who seek to preserve animals aren't operating on wishful thinking, but they also don't have enough pull to completely preserve habitats and the like.

  18. It won't decrease piracy... on Ubisoft Testing PC Prince of Persia Without DRM · · Score: 0

    ... but it will probably help sales. This is of course generally the more appropriate argument put forward by those of us who are anti-DRM. It's not about stopping pirates, the people who never plan on buying anything, it's about alienating the people who otherwise would buy the product. That of course is something they will choose to ignore, possibly, by just pointing at piracy traffic. And because they won't be able to directly gauge how many sales were directly from the lack of DRM, it is more likely they will look at the pirate traffic side of the equation, and claim they saw no difference. I honestly hope they can look at it from the positive perspective (sales gained) as opposed to negative (piracy traffic failing to drop). Or at least that the publicity generates enough good-will (and by that I mean good press) to be seen as a positive result in itself. All in all though, I'm happy to see a relatively bigger company willing to try this and keep the debate stirred up.

  19. Re:Herd Immunity on Apple Quietly Recommends Antivirus Software For Macs · · Score: 0

    Actually it applies perfectly. Herd immunity does not imply isolation. It implies the weakness of certain members of the herd being covered by being surrounded by the majority which has different weaknesses and therefore propagates different illnesses. Imagine you are susceptible to a disease that almost every other person you will interact with is immune to. Your chances of getting this disease are nil. Now imagine you are very successful reproductively. Several generations from now, when your descendants make up a larger portion of the community, the likelihood that this disease will arise in the community will increase because there are more targets. I'm not saying this is an inherent design flaw or something, but simply that you cannot ignore that a decent amount of the perceived security arises for this reason.

  20. Re:Legalities on Black Mesa Nearing Completion, Trailer Released · · Score: 1

    I think part of it is probably an interest in seeing just how well this mod does. I've been pining away for years for a section of the game market that does nothing but update classics like HL. I don't really know how this could be handled, but perhaps if the mod gets enough buzz Valve might look to acquire the rights to it or something and try and turn it into a commercial success. They might just be waiting to see how potentially profitable a remake like this could be, without actually committing the resources to it.

  21. Herd Immunity on Apple Quietly Recommends Antivirus Software For Macs · · Score: 0

    The only reason macs have been able to get away with claiming such great security records (statistically) is herd immunity. They are insulated by being a minority which has different 'resistances' amongst the herd of PC users. As they gain market share, they become a bigger target. I've been telling people this forever but looks like Apple is ready to deal with it at least.

  22. Re:If Bush wants it... on Bush Demands Amnesty for Spying Telecoms · · Score: 1

    I don't know how that kind of stuff works, but I'm not sure you can pardon the target of a *civil* suit. It's hard enough getting civil cases against telcos over this, we'll never see anybody face criminal charges over this.

  23. Re:no privacy here, no privacy there on Passport Required To Buy Mobile Phones In the UK · · Score: 1

    Great, I just lost the game.

  24. Re:Classes, Races & Professions on Ask Blizzard Employees About Things That Matter · · Score: 1

    There are talent builders available that will show you the Wrath talents, and when the next patch goes live you will get all your talent points back to rebuild. Not sure if that's what you meant by a free edit, but if you try out new builds on a talent calculator before spending your points after the patch, you should be off to a decent start.