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User: mark-t

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Comments · 15,598

  1. Re:They're not gamers. on Among Gamers, Adult Women Vastly Outnumber Teenage Boys · · Score: 1

    I would draw the line at anyone who plays games frequently enough that they can personally identify with a subculture in society that plays the same games they do,.

    So that would include Candy Crush.

    It can also include people who play Monopoly, Football, or Mahjong.

  2. Re:Amazing on Among Gamers, Adult Women Vastly Outnumber Teenage Boys · · Score: 1

    Who is saying they only play it 5 minutes a day?

  3. The problem with telling kids they are smart... on It's Dumb To Tell Kids They're Smart · · Score: 1

    ..... is that when they don't succeed at something, believing that they should have been smart enough to succeed, they can easily come to the conclusion that others are to blame for their failure, and can discourage them from trying again, believing the deck has been stacked against them all along.

  4. Something's not right here... on BBC and FACT Shut Down Doctor Who Fansite · · Score: 1

    "With threats of executing an official search warrant and taking the matter to court...an agreement was quickly reached to close down the site"

    Really, if he really wasn't doing anything illegal in the first place, I can't see any reason he should have caved in on this... and this is in the UK, where it's my understanding that if you try to bring someone to court and lose, then you have to pay their costs, which I imagine exists to discourage overly subjective, baseless, or slapp-like lawsuits.

    The fact that he yielded on this suggests to me that he was aware that a search warrant would find something on his computer(s) that shouldn't have been there in the first place. It's unfortunate the site is gone, but we're not actually seeing the whole story here. Sadly, because of how things have already went, we probably never will.

  5. Re:The real crime here on 33 Months In Prison For Recording a Movie In a Theater · · Score: 1

    If one is opposed to confinement in a cage for nonviolent crimes, then why should one go to jail for contempt? That's a non-violent crime too.

  6. Re:The real crime here on 33 Months In Prison For Recording a Movie In a Theater · · Score: 1

    But on slashdot, perfection is encouraged... and nothing less is tolerated. You have a 6-digit sid.... don't you know that by now?

  7. Re:The real crime here on 33 Months In Prison For Recording a Movie In a Theater · · Score: 1

    One can approve of caning as punishment for particular crimes without themselves being guilty of the crime for which they would approve of the caning, nor even particularly "like" caning overall, but believe in the premise that it might stand as one of the most effective means of preventing a repeat offense without simply executing the person. The most effective means of preventing a repeat offense that does not involve execution is when the violator genuinely repents of the crime, but this is something only the person themselves can control... it is not possible to directly induce it or bring it about, although it can sometimes be achieved indirectly by whatever discomfort the criminal might be made to experience from the punishment for their crime, which is probably the single strongest argument that may exist for supporting punishments like caning for particular crimes.

  8. Re:The real crime here on 33 Months In Prison For Recording a Movie In a Theater · · Score: 1

    So I take it that you believe that people who commit tax fraud should not go to jail either?

  9. Re:Thoughtcrime on UK Police Warn Sharing James Foley Killing Video Is a Crime · · Score: 1

    Citation needed. The offence is "possession," not "viewing."

    Actually, the offense is any of taking, making, distributing, showing, or possessing. Merely viewing such pornography, when it is done with intent (ie, you clicked play on a video where you could have reasonably known its contents before you watched it), would constitute a form of "taking".

  10. Re: So what they need, then... on New Research Suggests Cancer May Be an Intrinsic Property of Cells · · Score: 1

    Not all types of teleportation necessarily involve creating a copy.... quantum teleportation, most notably.

  11. Re:So what they need, then... on New Research Suggests Cancer May Be an Intrinsic Property of Cells · · Score: 1

    Since society wouldn't allow it to happen to humans...

    Today's society... with today's moral values. Who knows what things might be like in a hundred years?

  12. Re:That an assembler was way easier than hex opcod on Ask Slashdot: What Do You Wish You'd Known Starting Out As a Programmer? · · Score: 1

    I'm not sure what your point is.

  13. Re:Isn't the correct answer: on Future Hack: New Cybersecurity Tool Predicts Breaches Before They Happen · · Score: 1

    Not necessarily true.... somes sites on the internet are not of general interest to enough people to ever draw the attention of somebody who might even want to hack it.

  14. Re:So what they need, then... on New Research Suggests Cancer May Be an Intrinsic Property of Cells · · Score: 1

    Obviously... but the parent that I responded to was talking about cloning as it's portrayed in the movie "6th Day"

  15. Re:So what they need, then... on New Research Suggests Cancer May Be an Intrinsic Property of Cells · · Score: 1

    That would probably be the subject of said science fiction story. If I were writing it, I would say it is gone... completely overwritten by the mind that overwrote it. There could be all kinds of ethical issues we might have with this sort of thing today... but those kinds of issues often make some of the best stories, allowing us to safely examine through the lens of a work of fiction at just what kinds of atrocities the darker side of human nature might be capable of, and possibly giving us a greater respect for life, today, than we otherwise might have had.

  16. Re:So what they need, then... on New Research Suggests Cancer May Be an Intrinsic Property of Cells · · Score: 1

    Who knows? I did say it was probably the stuff of science FICTION....

  17. Re:So what they need, then... on New Research Suggests Cancer May Be an Intrinsic Property of Cells · · Score: 1

    Other than the fact that your clone is the same age as you are.... and would have all of the same physical health problems, sure.

  18. So what they need, then... on New Research Suggests Cancer May Be an Intrinsic Property of Cells · · Score: 1, Insightful

    .... is the ability to transfer one person's mind into another body... then all you need to do is keep transferring your mind into a younger body as the one you currently have breaks down.

    Although that sounds vaguely like the premise of some sort of science fiction story that looks at inequalities between classes.

  19. Re:150 kelvin = -189.67 F on Metamaterial Superconductor Hints At New Era of High Temperature Superconductors · · Score: 2, Informative

    It's especially ironic because in Britain, they actually use the metric system.

  20. Re:I'm not terribly impressed. on Metamaterial Superconductor Hints At New Era of High Temperature Superconductors · · Score: 2

    I mentioned dry ice as an example not because you'd use dry ice to cool a superconductor directly, but because the temperatures necessary to make dry ice can be very easily achieved with inexpensive refrigeration techniques.

  21. Well, wait,,,, on Microsoft Lobby Denies the State of Chile Access To Free Software · · Score: 4, Insightful

    By my understanding, tax breaks being offered on something only mean that you effectively only get some percentage of the money back that you spent on that thing.

    But if you aren't spending any of your money on that thing in the first place, even if it would give you a tax break, aren't you still further ahead than if you did spend the money when you can only get part of it back?

  22. Re:I'll believe it.... on How Argonne National Lab Will Make Electric Cars Cheaper · · Score: 1

    I guess I'm stupid by your assessment then... Not that I particularly care what you think about how I manage my money.

  23. I'm not terribly impressed. on Metamaterial Superconductor Hints At New Era of High Temperature Superconductors · · Score: 2, Insightful

    So they raised the critical temperature of a substance 3/20ths of a degree K above what it is otherwise, and the substance wasn't even among the category of what are considered high temperature supercondutors currently. Color me incredibly excited about this when they can raise the critical temperature of a superconductor to something like the freezing point of water... or even dry ice for that matter.

  24. That an assembler was way easier than hex opcodes on Ask Slashdot: What Do You Wish You'd Known Starting Out As a Programmer? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    When I first started programming the 6502, back in 1981, I was still in school, and I was manually entering hex opcodes for every machine language program I wanted to create... I was doing this for about 6 months before somebody pointed out that I could use an assembler. I honestly didn't understand what they were talking about until I used one to type in a program that I saw in Nibble magazine. I never looked back. An assembler would have saved me *loads* of time if I had known about it at the beginning.

  25. Re:I'll believe it.... on How Argonne National Lab Will Make Electric Cars Cheaper · · Score: 1

    Tesla has already announced plans for one.

    A smaller car, with less range.