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User: mark-t

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Comments · 15,598

  1. Re:RUDEST PASSENGER EVER on Man Booted From Southwest Flight and Threatened With Arrest After Critical Tweet · · Score: 1

    No, they would still be obligated to refund his ticket purchase, since the decision would have been theirs to refuse service.

  2. Re:RUDEST PASSENGER EVER on Man Booted From Southwest Flight and Threatened With Arrest After Critical Tweet · · Score: 1

    The other issue is whether the passenger did anything wrong by tweeting.

    No, he did not. The flight agent was being a dick by asking him to leave... if the passenger really doubted that the agent had the authority to do ask that question, then he should have immediately asked to speak to that agent's manager or supervisor instead of complying with the request.

  3. Re:RUDEST PASSENGER EVER on Man Booted From Southwest Flight and Threatened With Arrest After Critical Tweet · · Score: 1

    It very easily could have been a huge PR problem if they had called the police... but in all likelihood, he still wouldn't be allowed on the plane before they arrived, and by then the plane could have already left. Oh, and his luggage would be flying off without him.

    Sounds like a good recipe for a migraine from bowels of hell.

  4. Re:RUDEST PASSENGER EVER on Man Booted From Southwest Flight and Threatened With Arrest After Critical Tweet · · Score: 1

    ...once he's allowed past the gate, he's allowed.

    And once he's been asked to leave, he is trespassing if he does not peacefully comply. Companies can refuse service to anyone for practically any reason they want... presumably,. however, if the reason is not actually a good one, the bad publicity that could easily follow will tend to keep companies from being entirely *too* arbitrary about such reasons.

  5. Re:Customer service? on Man Booted From Southwest Flight and Threatened With Arrest After Critical Tweet · · Score: 1

    And while one is busy trying to exercise their so-called "rights", wronged or not, their plane will take off without them... If one has to be somewhere, I guess it just depends on how much your time is worth..

  6. Re:Or, maybe there's no paradox at all. on Black Holes Not Black After All, Theorize Physicists · · Score: 1

    How do you get at the notion that no singularities necessarily means that there are no black holes?

    Can't a volume of space be sufficiently bent by gravity so as to not allow light to escape from it, without there being a singularity at the center?

  7. Re:Two grand is not inexpensive on Laser Eye Surgery, Revisited 10 Years Later · · Score: 1

    This. Even the best extended medical plans that I have ever had at any job I've ever held would barely cover a fifth of the cost of such surgery.

  8. Re:Or, maybe there's no paradox at all. on Black Holes Not Black After All, Theorize Physicists · · Score: 1

    Can you explain to me, therefore, why information should collapse to a single state inside of a black hole? Because I can't think of one unless you assume that a singularity is at the center of every black hole.

  9. Or, maybe there's no paradox at all. on Black Holes Not Black After All, Theorize Physicists · · Score: 2

    The paradox arises when this system falls into a black hole causing the information to devolve into a single state.

    Or... maybe it doesn't devolve into a single state at all. We can't actually see what goes on inside of black hole... but if our assumptions about what actually happens appear to create a paradox, then maybe it's our assumptions aren't valid, rather than the original basic concept of what a black hole supposedly is. I believe that the concept that black holes are necessarily singularities may be flawed. Space is so distorted by gravity in their vicinity that straight lines which intersect their event horizon never exit it, but I do not think that means that all of a black hole's mass is necessarily at its center, or even necessarily collapsing inexorably towards its center. Its center is just its center of mass.

    And yeah, I know that astrophysicists with a vastly more qualifications than I have came up with these ideas, but in the end, an argument from authority does not make one actually right.

  10. Re:Earthquakes? on China Plans Particle Colliders That Would Dwarf CERN's LHC · · Score: 2

    The point the poster made, which I think is legitimate, is that even a very small earthquake could probably be catastrophic for a collider's integrity and alignment.

  11. I don't think it's the industry in general. on The Daily Harassment of Women In the Game Industry · · Score: 1

    I was working in the video game development industry for a number of years and in that time, I never once saw women being treated an differently than men.. although I have heard stories of it happening at other places. i think it depends, therefore, on the types of people that a particular game studio might tend to employ.

  12. Re:I dunno on Google Offers a Million Bucks For a Better Inverter · · Score: 1

    It might have been funny if they hadn't used the specific terminology, thereby playing on the ambiguity of the term.

  13. Re:I dunno on Google Offers a Million Bucks For a Better Inverter · · Score: 1

    That'd be a logic inverter, while they specifially say power inverter.

  14. Re:How's that supposed to work anyway? on No RIF'd Employees Need Apply For Microsoft External Staff Jobs For 6 Months · · Score: 1

    But the terminology that they used was not "fired", it was "laid off". There is a difference.

  15. How's that supposed to work anyway? on No RIF'd Employees Need Apply For Microsoft External Staff Jobs For 6 Months · · Score: 1

    I mean, if they were laid off, then that tends to mean that they *can't* be hired back on... at least not immediately. My understanding is that "laid off" means that the person is being let go because there isn't enough work to justify paying them, so how could they even *think* of hiring back anyone?

  16. Re:String theory is not science on Can the Multiverse Be Tested Scientifically? · · Score: 1

    Zero wasn't thought of until a few centuries BCE... that doesn't mean it isn't less fundamental than multiplication, which was thought of long before it.

  17. Re:Glass half-empty on NASA: Lunar Pits and Caves Could House Astronauts · · Score: 1
    You said

    To suggest that we, ill adapted to space as we are, ought to go physically into space instead of sending a machine is absurd

    ... which suggests that we should not be sending human beings into space merely because we are ill-adapted to do so.

    Of course, the same argument could be made for, as a previous poster had said... flight. Obviously human beings can't fly no matter how hard they flap their arms, but that's no reason to not get into an aircraft. And nobody disputes that it's equally obvious that space is an extraordinarily harsh environment that no human being could hope to survive in for any more than a brief instant... but if the argument that we shouldn't let the fact that we must use machines to achieve something keep us from doing it, then why the heck should human beings be kept from going into space merely because we can't survive there without sophisticated life support?

  18. Re:Glass half-empty on NASA: Lunar Pits and Caves Could House Astronauts · · Score: 1

    It's not embarrassing to apply machines as all.... as you say,

    I would like to fly to New York...

    Or....

    I would like to travel into space.

    The fact that we are ill adapted to survive in space should be no more of a justification that we shouldn't go there than the fact that we are unable to fly without machines should be a justification to never get into an aircraft.

    Really.... did I have to explain this twice?

  19. Re:I don't see the problem. on Russian Government Edits Wikipedia On Flight MH17 · · Score: 2

    Why did the plane deviated over 500km from its usual path? Obviously the ATC forced them to so otherwise they wouldn't be that fucking stupid and fly over a known war zone.

    MH17 was also requested by Kiev to drop from 35000 ft to 33000 ft right before it got hit.

    If, as you say, Kiev had confiscated the ATC record, then how on earth could you, or whoever you heard it from, have known any of that?

    But of course... conspiracy theories are so much more interesting than reality, I can't fault people for wanting to believe them.

  20. Re:I don't see the problem. on Russian Government Edits Wikipedia On Flight MH17 · · Score: 1

    It's my understanding that all statements about the trajectory are deductive based on post-attack evidence. If they had actually identified the trajectory of the missile from a satellite, they would also easily know which side of the Russia/Ukraine border it originated on... which they do not.

  21. Re:Do you have any hands-on experience ? on Russian Government Edits Wikipedia On Flight MH17 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Why would soldiers waste expensive missiles for some irrelevant passenger plane?

    Why, indeed... and part of the reason why I don't think that this was done as any official act by either nation.

    Why would be there a plane over a warzone in the first place?

    Apparently, before takeoff, the aircraft was explicitly told that the route was safe to fly over.

    When you perform a terrorist act you tell that YOU did it in order to intimidate. You don't deny you did it.

    I think that would depend on whether or not the uncertainty and the slinging of accusations from all sides better serves their interest than the fear it might generate if they knew who did it. I strongly suspect that the actual perpetrators are sitting back and watching the fireworks right now... hoping it will eventually escalate to the point that they'll be too busy fighting eachother to notice what the group is *really* up to.

  22. Re:I don't see the problem. on Russian Government Edits Wikipedia On Flight MH17 · · Score: 1

    And what makes you think that organizations acting independently of the government wouldn't have that kind of money?

    The biggest argument against the notion that it was government sanctioned is that Russia wouldn't have anything to gain from shooting down a civilian plane in Ukraine airspace and the Ukraine government doesn't have that kind of hardware in the first place.

  23. Re:Glass half-empty on NASA: Lunar Pits and Caves Could House Astronauts · · Score: 1

    That, I think, was the poster's point.... that it is just as absurd as suggesting that we should not go into space merely because of how ill-adapted we are to it.

  24. Re:I don't see the problem. on Russian Government Edits Wikipedia On Flight MH17 · · Score: 1

    Actually, I suspect that neither side knows the truth. Or at least neither government does. This strikes me as an act of somebody or some organization that was acting entirely independently of government authority or sanction (and most likely used illegally purchased munitions to achieve it).

  25. Re:It's a fake! on Apollo 11 Moon Landing Turns 45 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Sort of.

    Go there. See for yourself.

    It won't necessarily prove exactly when it happened, if you're going to be really skeptical about it, but it should prove that it happened... at least to the extent that you can trust what your own senses tell you, and what you will find there will be completely consistent with what should be there. At an absolute worst case, it would prove that somebody spent a whole lot of money to fabricate a replica set of the"fake moon landing" on the real moon just to convince future people who land there that it actually happened... of course,even that still means that somebody has already been on the moon.

    Oh, and of course, any stories you might tell upon your return would be categorized by skeptics as either you being paid off to say what you saw. And the really die hard skeptics who go up themselves would probably just believe that they were being brainwashed if they saw it for themselves.

    There is a difference, you see, between proving that something happened and having somebody believe that it happened.