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User: ColonelPanic

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Comments · 147

  1. Crazy is crazy. on The Demographic Future of America's Political Parties · · Score: 1

    I don't care how well-behaved a crazy person has been so far. Don't give nuclear launch codes to crazy people. This includes people who believe the world is about 6019 years old because a bronze-age slavery manual tells them so. Crazy is crazy.

  2. Two kinds of Republicans on The Demographic Future of America's Political Parties · · Score: 4, Insightful

    1) Hate-crazed science-denying racists and homophobes.

    2) People who are willing to be associated with hate-crazed science-denying racists and homophobes.

  3. von Neumann probes on The Dominant Life Form In the Cosmos Is Probably Superintelligent Robots · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A real head-scratching conundrum about the universe is explaining why it's not already overrun with self-replicating robots. Because if it's possible to send self-replicating interstellar probes, all it takes is one launch, plus a few million years, to get the galaxy overrun with them. So are they not possible? nobody's launched one yet? here, but not detected? The implications boggle the mind.

  4. grr, "tenants" on Interviews: Rachel Sussman Answers Your Questions · · Score: 1

    I've been hearing and reading this one more and more. It's "tenets", people.

    And yes, it matters.

  5. Learn to code in an hour? I'm in! on Mark Zuckerberg And John Doerr Donate $1M To Expand The Hour Of Code Campaign · · Score: 1

    Sixty minutes from now, I'm going to be an expert in Haskell comonads. This is awesome.

  6. Re:Someone will complain about the political ones on 2014 Nobel Peace Prize Awarded To Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzay · · Score: 1

    To answer your question, it's "who", not "whom" here, since the pronoun is a subject.

  7. First amendment? on Complain About Comcast, Get Fired From Your Job · · Score: 1

    "Be careful next time when you exercise your first amendment rights."

    Are we sure that the First Amendment guarantees a right to complain about a cable company without reprisal?

  8. Job vs interview on Unpopular Programming Languages That Are Still Lucrative · · Score: 1

    You may not get to use much Haskell on the job at Google, but I guarantee you that really knowing Haskell is one of the best ways to *get* the job.

  9. Goddamn AT&T assembler syntax with its reversed operands. Quick, you want to compare two registers, and jump if %rdi %rax. Which order do you place the operands to the comparison, and what's the predicate to use on the jump? Drives me nuts.

  10. Don't worship the spackle on Texas School Board Searching For Alternatives To Evolutionary Theory · · Score: 0

    Religious superstition fills in the gaps of our knowledge, like plaster filling holes in a wall. But when knowledge expands, the spackle isn't needed any more.

  11. Re:Theories of "gravity" and electricity under rev on Texas School Board Searching For Alternatives To Evolutionary Theory · · Score: 1

    If evolution had done as little for me as it has for Texans, I'd hate it too.

  12. Algorithms, data structures, systems on What Knowledge Gaps Do Self-Taught Programmers Generally Have? · · Score: 2, Informative

    If you know your algorithms and data structures, and have a firm grasp of the architecture of modern computer systems, you'll be way ahead of a depressingly large proportion of people with degrees in CS that come past me in interviews.

    The most informative and entertaining book I can recommend on algorithms is Bentley's "Programming Pearls".

  13. Re:5 million? on Mediterranean Might Have Filled In Months · · Score: 1

    A wonderful deleted scene in "The Life of Brian" has shepherds in the fields around Bethlehem wondering "is it AD yet?"

  14. Re:Tell me again why... on Vatican Debates Possibility of Alien Life · · Score: 1, Troll

    I love being lectured in logic by a person who ritually cannibalizes a god's zombified offspring because a talking snake tricked a mud-man's rib-wife with magic fruit.

  15. Tell me again why... on Vatican Debates Possibility of Alien Life · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    ... we're supposed to treat these clowns with respect and allow their weird Sunday-morning social clubs to have tax-exempt status in the US?

    And the Catholics are supposed to be the *smart* ones, too!

  16. Re:Stop trolling with numbers on Up To 90 Percent of US Money Has Traces of Cocaine · · Score: 1

    Did you really just spell "ceased" like that?

  17. Re:Think you understand these things? Try this... on Visualizing False Positives In Broad Screening · · Score: 1

    I explicitly said that they have at least one child named Mary. They could have two; it still works out.

    Yes, I assume that not every girl is named Mary.

  18. Re:Think you understand these things? Try this... on Visualizing False Positives In Broad Screening · · Score: 1

    Okay, if you don't get the problem (and yes it is correctly stated), there are three things you can do to improve your understanding.

    1) Write a simple computer program in your language of choice to generate a billion random two-children families and count the ones that meet the conditions.
    2) Draw a Venn diagram.
    3) Read up on Bayes' theorem.

  19. Think you understand these things? Try this... on Visualizing False Positives In Broad Screening · · Score: 1

    A family with two children is chosen at random from a large population.

    If I tell you only that they have at least one daughter, what is the probability that both children are girls?

    Most people can get that one (it's 1/3), but fail miserably on this question:

    If I tell you only that they have at least one child named Mary, what is the probability that both children are girls?

    Assume the obvious: the boy/girl ratio is 50-50 and only girls are named Mary.

    Most people insist that this is the same question with the same answer, but no, it's not, and the answer is actually 50%.

    If you don't get this puzzle, you don't understand conditional probability.

  20. Re:Emacs on What Free IDE Do You Use? · · Score: 1

    What else would I need? A decent text editor that interacts well with the Unix environment around it. I use aoeui.

  21. Creationists have responded on Ancient Fossil Offers Clues To Primate Evolution · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Christians know that "it was a small, tailed, probably tree-climbing, and now extinct primateâ"from a kind created on Day 6 of Creation Week."

    You know, I'd hate evolution too, if it had done to me what it has done to the godtards.

  22. Re:Thiemo on Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 "Lenny" Released · · Score: 3, Informative

    The word "tragic" has an actual meaning, you know. If the accident were the ineluctable consequence of a character flaw -- and I do not suggest that this be the case -- then the usage would be correct and informative.

  23. Should give the retards equal time and expose them on Texas Board of Education Supports Evolution · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Students, now that we have covered the neo-Darwinian synthesis of natural selection and modern genetics, we should give some time to a competing explanation put forward by many prominent opponents to science.

    In this alternative theory, the earth and all its life forms were created at 9:00 am on October 23rd, exactly 6,012 years ago, just shortly before a talking snake tricked a mud-man's rib-wife with a magic fruit. This crime required the Creator to impregnate a teenager several thousand years later, and now if you don't ritually cannibalize his zombie son, you'll roast in a giant lava pit forever after you die. All of the fossils you may see were caused by a giant flood or were deliberately planted by an evil spirit to deceive you.

    You will understand America much better when you accept the fact that many more of your fellow citizens prefer this second explanation to the first one.

  24. Re:Steve Ballmer's memo to employees on Layoffs at Microsoft, Intel, and IBM · · Score: 1

    The most telling item in that memo: no merit increases in pay this year, either. How boneheaded is that?

  25. Consider it ammo on Layoffs at Microsoft, Intel, and IBM · · Score: 5, Funny

    There's 5,000 new empty chairs to fling around in Redmond!