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User: TFAFalcon

TFAFalcon's activity in the archive.

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Comments · 1,474

  1. Re:You can't just beat down the creepy guy ... on George Zimmerman Acquitted In Death of Trayvon Martin · · Score: 1

    So it's not a question of feeling in danger, but actually being in danger to your life?
    That creates a funny situation in which I don't see a way of defending yourself from an armed stalker. Until he actually attacks you or pulls a weapon on you you're not allowed to defend yourself. But if you pull a weapon on him, he can shoot you (since you're threatening his life).

  2. Re:He's no longer under indictment on George Zimmerman Acquitted In Death of Trayvon Martin · · Score: 2

    They don't even have to do that. They just have to SAY he was reaching for his gun. And then kill him so there are no witnesses to contradict them.

  3. Re:You can't just beat down the creepy guy ... on George Zimmerman Acquitted In Death of Trayvon Martin · · Score: 1

    What if you feel he's a danger to your life?

  4. Re:like anything else.. on Math and Science Popular With Students Until They Realize They're Hard · · Score: 1

    It probably would have. Since there would be no grade inflation many(most) applicants would probably have Bs and Cs. So those grades would be completely acceptable for a college.

  5. Re:Whole Trial is bullshit on Skype Overload Interrupts Zimmerman Trial · · Score: 1

    What if an armed person tells you they're going to shoot you? I'd consider that a pretty good reason to try to get their weapon away from them (attack them).

  6. Re:Not good enough. on Aaron's Law Would Revamp Computer Fraud Penalties · · Score: 1

    The problem is that people are given a choice of pleading to charges different from those they'd be charged with if they decide to go to trial.
    Prosecutors should only be allowed to offer a recommendation for a lower sentence, not a completely different charge.

  7. Re:WTF is income equality? on What Charles G. Koch Can Teach Us About Campaign Finance Data · · Score: 1

    Where did I say that?

    If Steve got his shares when they were nearly worthless, then lucky him - nearly no taxes. After that normal rules should apply to those stocks. Capital gains tax when sold etc.

  8. Re:America never had a 90% tax rate on What Charles G. Koch Can Teach Us About Campaign Finance Data · · Score: 1

    The taxes didn't limit how much you could earn. If you managed to earn more, you got more.

  9. Re:WTF is income equality? on What Charles G. Koch Can Teach Us About Campaign Finance Data · · Score: 1

    Stock does not only represent control of the company. It also represents ownership. So why shouldn't it be taxed? When a person is given stock, he/she should be taxed according to their market value (and I guess on a % of the companies book value in cases where the company is not publicly traded).

    So when Steve got his shares, he should have paid income taxes on their value.

  10. Re:Great... on California Bill Would Mandate Open Access To Publicly Funded Research · · Score: 1

    That's exactly what's happening. Only the research that is funded by the public must be made available to the public.

  11. Re:Sorry kid on Xbox One: Cloud Will Quadruple the Power, Says Microsoft · · Score: 1

    I guess you could use the CPU power to have a better AI. Or for doing things like pathfinding in games like Sim City (now if only EA had actually implemented that in Sim City).

  12. Re:Fat Hatred on Med Students Unaware of Their Bias Against Obese Patients · · Score: 1

    Aren't the years you lose the years when you're retired? So the productive period is the same, but the 'leeching' period is shortened for the obese. Or do obese people get to retire sooner?

  13. Re:Need to Be Careful on A Cold Look at Cold Fusion Claims: Why E-Cat Looks Like a Hoax · · Score: 1

    The lottery. The tickets would cost quite a bit more then the winnings.

  14. Re:Sad legitimate researchers on A Cold Look at Cold Fusion Claims: Why E-Cat Looks Like a Hoax · · Score: 1

    That cost is paid by everyone. So the owner of the power plant doesn't really care.

  15. Re:Need to Be Careful on A Cold Look at Cold Fusion Claims: Why E-Cat Looks Like a Hoax · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What's more unlikely? That the universe happened by random, or that a being capable of creating the universe happened by random?

  16. Re:Class Action on Canadian Cellphone Users May Get Justice Over Phantom Charges · · Score: 1

    But what is the alternative? If the company had been willing to give the money to their users from the beginning, then no lawsuit would have been necessary.
    They obviously weren't, so lawyers were involved. They took a disproportionate cut of the winnings, but at least the users got something out of it. Without a class action lawsuit, they could only have gotten their 10$ if they'd been willing to pay thousands in lawyer fees for it.

  17. Re:This is disgusting!! on Supreme Court Rules For Monsanto In Patent Case · · Score: 1

    So if a company patents a gene that results in bigger corn, then anyone that plants that corn on the basis of it's size is guilty?

    If anyone should be prosecuted it's the farmers that sold the seeds to the seed elevator. The farmer was just doing some selective breeding on the seeds he paid for.

  18. Re:Too big to jail on Data Leak Spurs Huge Offshore Tax Evasion Investigation · · Score: 1

    But this takes time. If your income is 'reasonable', then you can probably get more money by just working more, instead of spending this time trying to reduce your tax burden.

    It's only when your income reaches a certain point that avoiding taxes (or paying people to help you avoid taxes) becomes profitable.

  19. Re:not where from, where to? on World of Warcraft Loses 1.3 Million Players in First Quarter of 2013 · · Score: 1

    I haven't played MoP, but in Cataclysm, the situation was mostly reversed.
    It was easy to find a group to do the new raids, but nearly impossible to get into one of the older ones. After all, why bother doing twilight citadel or bwd, when the rewards from instances are absolutely better. So everyone gets to see the new content while the slightly older raids are abandoned. And how would you ever get to see the heroic mode bosses from older raids? Even if you could gather a group willing to try them, the HC raids themselves were several degrees harder then the normal raids of the new tier.
    I admit Vanilla and TBC were problematic. In vanilla there was simply too big of a gulf between the gear you could get in instances and raids. And what hurt TBC raiding wasn't so much the gear requirements as the attunement quests - you had to kill two extremely difficult bosses to get access to the new raid (which had starting bosses that were basically free loot dispensers). But at the same time TBC brought badges which could have 'saved' progression. Those were at first only given for beating HC 5 man instances - which were HARD at the time. So you could either do raids, which were semi-difficult but required larger groups, or you could run HC 5 mans and get nearly equal rewards.
    Too bad that during Wotlk Blizzard gave into the 'casual' demands that gear should be available to everyone, regardless of skill.
    Cataclysm looked like it was going to reverse this trend, since the starting heroic 5 mans were pretty difficult. But of course they once again nerfed them and added new instances that were even easier while giving gear of raid lvl quality.

  20. Re:not where from, where to? on World of Warcraft Loses 1.3 Million Players in First Quarter of 2013 · · Score: 1

    As I said, 'resetting' the progress with a new expansion is fine - everyone gets a ton of new content to explore, so the HC raiders don't feel ripped off.

    What WoW did was reset progress each time a new raid came out. Suddenly everyone had access to items that were BETTER then what HC raiders had just spent the last few months grinding for. New players (well as soon as they reached max lvl, which wasn't much of a challenge in WoW) could do a few hardmode dungeons (5 man, nerfed with each patch until you could almost run through them naked) and get items that were of the same quality as those dropped in raids. While this made hardcore raiding kind of silly, it also killed 'older' raids. Why should people do a basic cataclysm raid, if they could do a simple dungeon and get better gear. And don't even mention trying to get a group for older hardmode raids.

    Blizzard did make new content accesible to everyone - at the cost of making older content pointless with each patch.

  21. Re:not where from, where to? on World of Warcraft Loses 1.3 Million Players in First Quarter of 2013 · · Score: 1

    Raising the lvl limit every 1-2 years wasn't such a big problem. What killed the game for me was that they basically reset progression with every major patch.

    Each time they released a new raid, they 'gave' everyone access to items of superior level as those you could previously only get by doing hardcore raids.

  22. Re:Of course, it's only illegal if the house loses on Feds Drop CFAA Charges Against 'Hacker' Who Exploited Poker Machines · · Score: 5, Informative

    There have been several cases where the machine displayed a much higher jackpot then what was then paid out.

    http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/06/05/1828218/malfunction-costs-couple-11-million-slot-machine-jackpot
    http://idle.slashdot.org/story/09/11/06/1638213/casino-denies-man-166-million-jackpot

    And I don't think the 'winners' got anywhere with their lawsuits.

  23. Re:To circle the globe on USAF Hypersonic Scramjet Successfully Scrams · · Score: 1

    I think the orbital velocity is nearly 8km/s at the surface. So at that velocity you'd feel weightless, as long as you made an aircraft with 0 lift and exactly enough thrust to counter air resistance.

  24. Re:Goodness me! Was that a Whooosh? on USAF Hypersonic Scramjet Successfully Scrams · · Score: 1

    They found out that Germans were pretty good at rebuilding bombed factories. It takes much longer to replace a bombed civilian.

  25. Re:Playing the race card again on Florida Teen Expelled and Arrested For Science Experiment · · Score: 3, Funny

    Can what she did even be classified as an explosion? The reactions seem to be pretty slow and the 'explosion' happens because they are trapped in a small space. So are we also going to charge people who leave bottles of water in freezers with felonies when those bottles 'explode'? What about kids stomping on closed, air filled milk cartons? Just imagine the damage the cap from one of those cartons could do.