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User: b4upoo

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  1. Not This Time! on ACLU Sues Over Legality of "Targeted Killing" By Drones · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Although I usually like causes taken up by the ACLU this cause sounds really dumb. Weapons of war always take innocents along with combatants. Make no mistake there were nursing homes and kindergartens at Hiroshima and just about every other city that we have bombed in our various wars.
                The real question is whether drones will kill of unusual numbers of innocents compared to other weapons of war. I suspect that drones are part of the notion of kinder and gentler warfare.
                  As to targeting American citizens in war zones, well sure, if they are aiding the enemy then they are fair game.
                  And keep in mind that using drones keeps our own soldiers and airmen out of harms way. If we are lucky we may be able to create an entirely robotic military in the future.

  2. Stray Ships on Scottish Wave Energy Plans Move Forward · · Score: 1

    I do wonder how ships disabled in storms can be handled in such a way to assure that wind farms are not destroyed. I live in an area where hurricanes strike quite frequently and even in calmer seas we end up with tankers stranded on our beaches all too often.

  3. Make It All Public Info on Yale Law Student Wants Government To Have Everybody's DNA · · Score: 1

    There is simply no reason for genetic privacy except for fraud and deception of others. Yes. some people are born with defective genes but that does not imply that they are inferior in any way. They have no reason to be ashamed simply because their genetic conditions may lead to an early death or lack of function in life.
                      The catch is that people want to fool that insurance company, that potential employer, that future wife or husband. And why should they get away with that? If a person is doomed to fall apart at a young age then employers should not be tricked into training them to make them valuable in the future. Insurance companies should not be screwed. And potential mates should darned well know the health outlook of a mate and the implications it might have for children produced in such a union. Social justice and the right to know can not be trashed over some peoples' notions of privacy.

  4. Norway Is A Sane Nation! on Pirate Bay Legal Action Dropped In Norway · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Perhaps one day America can hope to be as sane as Norway!

  5. It's Not Just The Rabbis on In Israel, Potential Organ Donors Could Jump the Queue · · Score: 1

    There are nuts in every religion. Those Orthodox rabbis need to get control of their minds and stop with these ancient laws and notions. Being able to receive an organ but not donate one is flat out loonie tunes. After all when you get an organ the bad organ gets tossed in the trash so your corpse is not completely you when you eventually pass away. Some of these rabbis are as off the wall as the Moslem idiots who blow themselves up.

  6. Obama Is Better on Obama Backs MPAA, RIAA, and ACTA · · Score: 0, Troll

    Obama is better than that posting indicates. Clearly the key to that message is that he wants to stop foreign entities from pirating works on a commercial scale. His views about American individuals file sharing are probably a horse of anothe color.

  7. Re:floaties? on Long-Running Underwater Robot Lost At Sea · · Score: 1

    Wherever it got stuck things may change. The critter might pop up years from now. Some little current change, an earthquake, or a bump from a fish and it may well be back in action or maybe it'll get caught in a shrimp net.

  8. Re:Sure it is. on Venezuela's Chavez To Limit Internet Freedom · · Score: 1

    By the very nature of the concept of government we will always have tension as no government will ever want to allow the total free flow of information. As an example some of our military and national security budgets are totally hidden. In one case even the top branch of government is kept from knowing the source of some military funding. I can understand that. But where it gets all messed up is in the public not being able to find out if the military has enough funding and therefore picking candidates for office is compromised. One candidate may call for a reduction in funding while his opponent wants to increase funding. That makes voting and even the notion of elections sort of a joke.
                          Apparently the CIA and perhaps other secret agencies set up private businesses which covertly send in funds from their profits. But there are no living officials who know where those funds come from and the cash simply arrives from anonymous senders. There isn't even a way to turn that flow of money off.

  9. Hope on Why Are Digital Hearing Aids So Expensive? · · Score: 1

    I hope your medical insurance will help you if you are insured. If you did military service they may pay as loud noise and combat or certain positions often result in hearing issues. If you can get Medicare a supplemental plan may cover your issues. You might even try for a disability check as deafness just might be a qualifier.
                  I do not know your age but you are only seeing the tip of the ice berg. We need national health care. There is absolutely no excuse for anyone to even consider the cost of hearing aids. This is a medical issue and everyone deserves the best care available at all times. Money should never set care limits.
                  Good luck and God bless you.

  10. Hacked? on Toyota Acceleration and Embedded System Bugs · · Score: 1

    Is there much of a chance that some evil idiot created a bug, perhaps transferred from a Toyota diagnostic device that inserts a bug causing the accelerators to act as if they are wide open?
                My personal bet is that there are three or more ways that these cars run away. One might be the carpet thing. Another might be wear on that little metal part that we saw on TV and more might be in the software. The next question is whether the software glitch was sabotage or design related.
                  That stupid start button needs to be converted to a switch so that off becomes more absolute. Having to hold a button for three seconds to turn a car off is just wrong.
                    The Miami heat have a "Toyota" scoreboard. During the last game the scorekeeper messed up and they had to run the numbers real fast before they could reset it. I could not help but think of it as a run away Toyota score board.

  11. Prison Might Help on SCO Asked O'Gara To Smear Groklaw · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Nonsense legal postures taken by scum bags such as SCO might be much more rare if we had laws that would put people like this under the jail house for a few decades.

  12. On The Other Hand on "Mythical Man-Month" Supposedly Busted By MIT Startup · · Score: 1

    I once worked for a company that hired a few extras to appear as if they were hard at work on computers in order to land a large contract. We only had them set up to look like they were working for one day.

  13. I Doubt It! on 50% Efficiency Boost From New Fuel Injection System · · Score: 1

    This sounds like nonsense to me. If they claimed a 3% increase I would have some hope but a 50% breakthrough sounds like a snake oil sale to me.

  14. Thoughtful Responses on Gas Wants To Kill the Wind · · Score: 1

    The power industry is about to get a huge economic shock and eventual shut down. But instead of going down with grace they will resist and fight tooth and nail. Frankly that is the worst position they could take. The new Bloom Box fuel cell will shut down the power generating industry. It will also kill off the coal and oil industries over the next thirty years.And that furl cell is not the only power company killer by a long shot.
                      The power companies could have invested and done real research into alternative power supplies but they chose to use lies and deceptions to fool the public and the government as well. Now people outside the industry are delivering products that do a better and better job of producing cheap power. All of this new income could have been created by the power companies. But I can tell you that their so called research involved some old wood sheds with someone's idiot brother in law hired to supposedly break new ground which they used as a tax shelter at best.
                    I can foresee large ponds with solar cells above them and catfish, talapia or shrimp farmed underneath while a tall wind mill towers above. I can also see our huge city garbage dump as a source of methane and plasma derived energy making our trash our most valuable asset. Today's garbage mountain is the gold mine of the very near future.

  15. Re:Forcing authors to lose rights over work on Ask the UK Pirate Party's Andrew Robinson About the Issues · · Score: 1

    First copyright laws need to be altered to deal with different media or objects. The same laws that protect a computer program should not apply to a photo of a bridge or the appearance of a building after it is sold.
                        Next, when violations do occur any penalties should reflect the actual harm done. This is very complex as there are situations where piracy has led to greater sales due to an "advertising" effect. Often the owner of content has no real knowledge of whether piracy has helped or harmed him financially.
                        And above all the impossible nature of what to do about indirect piracy that crosses international lines needs to be solved. For example if a person downloads an item which is legal in Canada and then that person sends it to a PC in America where stealing the item would be illegal whose laws apply and since the American never stole anything but got it from a "legal" friend in Canada how can we declare guilt. Worse yet nations such as France have all kinds of laws that are absurd by our standards. Should Americans suffer the force of French law?
                        Then we have the tax payer problem. All court actions cost the tax payer money. Pornography has probably eaten billions in tax dollars in the never ending court cases about porn. We do not need tens of thousands of copyright violation cases clogging the courts and eating tax resources. Frankly the law simply can not function and cover issues like this. We can't even stop people from murdering each other. How much can we afford to spend enforcing copyright laws?

  16. Re:Mixing up advice on Lessons of a $618,616 Death · · Score: 1

    There are a lot of factors involved in deciding when all is lost. Obviously a patient with a large number of lethal issues or issues that make life wretched confounded by a condition which will ultimately kill call for physician assisted suicide or homicide. But there are other situations where a cure may be coming in a reasonable amount of time for the lethal illness and the lesser medical problems may be quite tolerable when the worst condition is eliminated. In situations like that the patient may want to toss in the towel way to early. For example heart disease may be quite painful and keep a person bed ridden and helpless. Yet a fix may be in the works. That same patient may suffer from acute depression and something like arthritis that causes a lot of pain. But a repaired heart may lift that depression along with a bit of medication and a new found ability to exercise may keep the arthritis at bay enough to make life enjoyable.
                      Therefore as much as I am against social intervention over riding a persons self determination end of life decisions should not be left to the patient or family alone. Emotion and false knowledge come in to play far too easily when death is hovering around a person.

  17. The Boy Ain't Right on Why Broadband In North America Is Not That Slow · · Score: 1

    How much traffic the net carries is irrelevant. All that matters to the end user is the speed that he gets all the time. The US has slow speed net service and that is obvious to all. I'm on fiber optic cable and even that is a bit slow in my area at this time. It has never been fast by world standards and is worse than usual in my area right now. How about 100 megabyte per second service like they get in some places in Europe?

  18. Ayn Rand Reflux on Why Paying For Code Doesn't Mean You Own It · · Score: 1

    We've seen this line before in Rand's novels expounding her silly beliefs. The notion that an architect can blow up a building because he does not agree with what the owner has done with the design leaps to mind. These days we consider people who blow up buildings to be terrorists unlike Rand who considered them a hero of capitalism.

  19. Not So Fast on Improving Education Through Better Teachers · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Teachers can not be fairly judged by the success of their students. We know as an absolute fact that the wealth of the student's home is by far the major factor in the students success. Sadly that happens to equate with race in many areas of our nation. In the end it boils down to schools with poor testing results being filled with students drenched in deep poverty and lack of opportunities in their early years. The schools can do very little to repair these children. Kids who do not see their parents reading books in their very early years will never tend to read themselves. By first grade the permanent damage is done.
                  The second way to test a teacher is also not good. If you test an English teacher on his English knowledge he may test poorly but he just might be intensely skilled in the narrow knowledge needed to teach his eight grade English class and he might be the type of teacher that gets through to the students.
                  Compounding this problem are situations in which a school draws a small number of very poor students but has a large majority of students from affluent homes. I know a teacher right now who gives a female fifth grade student lots of attention and good grades because she knows the girl can become really violent. The girl is in the fifth grade! Before you think that is nonsense consider that these young kids are known to shoot teachers. Gifted students will not receive the attention that the troubled child gets. Yet 90% of that school comes from affluent families.

  20. Re:hmm... on A Public Funded "Microsoft Shop?" · · Score: 1

    You can bet that various doctors' offices and clinics and labs have unworldly sums invested in Microsoft compliant programs and that changing the hospital away from Microsoft OS would leave all of these providers in the lurch. Also communicating with other hospitals might also be a huge issue. Microsoft is like cancer. It tends to spread into areas that we really don't want it to go.

  21. Re:Ninjas? Plural? on IO Data Licenses Microsoft's "Linux Patents" · · Score: 1

    This issue will be settled by lawyers. Is there a Ninja lawyers guild?

  22. The Norm on How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Music · · Score: 1

    It has always been the goal of technology to eliminate the need for human labor. Music and films are an example of an area that should soon be devoid of direct human involvement.
                      The problem is that this is also happening across the entire economy and it is hidden from public view. Less and less people are needed in almost every form of business. This is part of the unemployment crisis that is currently troubling the US. In turn that creates a general economic mess as it erodes the tax base. It will also start to bring down business as we know it. A great example is the Post Office. The Post Office now suffers economic ruin due to email replacing snail mail. In one way that is wonderful but in another it spells big problems for items that must be manually delivered. One way or another the public will pay.
                    The displacement of human job functions is a great threat only because our people and our government are not mentally up to changing the construct of the world model that is fixated in their minds. There are ways to fix this growing menace. And do not think for a second that it is not a threat to all of us. For example electricity will soon be unaffordable as more and more people start to make their own power leaving large gaps in the service locations and causing higher maintenance for power lines needed to serve less and less customers. In essence technology is performing a strange form of deflation that none have predicted and few are prepared to even conceive much less act upon.
                  One answer is to have the government simply send out pay checks to people who do not work.

  23. Not A Tax on Microsoft VP Suggests 'Net Tax To Clean Computers · · Score: 1

    That is a fine. It does not meet the definition of a tax.

  24. Re:Comparing that to a Zombie flick... on SCO Zombie McBride's New Plan For World Litigation · · Score: 1

    He will lose more money. The guy is a slow learner.

  25. Full of Ego on The Role of Human Culture In Natural Selection · · Score: 1

    Fullness of ego can make scientists full of beans. The experts making this claim seem to suffer from the belief that humans are evolving. In fact a strong argument can be made that humans are in devolution. Like some bacteria humans tend to destroy their sustenance as they supposedly evolve. Yet when we are done destroying all that is around us we will pass just as that colony of bacteria does. When we stop having too many offspring,too much pollution, and endless wars, perhaps then we can consider humans as an advancing species. As it is we are essentially waging war in a larger and larger garbage and sewage dump.