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User: greenmanfalling

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  1. Sad on NSA WhistleBlower Outs Himself · · Score: 2

    Hopefully we won't be asking ourselves "Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?" anytime soon. Good luck to him.

  2. Re:Game developers are lazy on THQ Clarifies Claims of "Horrible, Slow" Wii U CPU · · Score: 1

    Yeah, I'm really hoping the laziness on pc ports is a result of the fact that we're at the end of the console cycle, and they have enough extra power in most PCs to BE lazy. Maybe they'll actually have to optimize some code when Unreal 4 is used on the next consoles and ported over. It's possible that they'll just not bother porting until the majority of PC's catch up GPU wise. I'm getting a new Sager gaming laptop next week (I know, I know, gaming laptops, pfffftttt! My GSR position is subsidizing all the non-gaming parts, so it works out economically) and I'll be interested to gauge the performance of the next gen ports. As far as I know the Unreal 4 has been using dual top-o-the-line video cards for all its demonstrations. Googling doesn't get me to an official quote on specs, but I'm not too hopeful for my new mobile gpu (7970m) In any case, there's always the indie gaming scene...

  3. Re:Field Sobriety Test on With Pot Legal, Scientists Study Detection of Impaired Drivers · · Score: 1

    Thanks for the link! I guess the whole "doubling the risk" was submitter-contributed, but it's sad to see numbers thrown around without so much as a hint of the true uncertainty. This paper had the odds ratio at 2.1 with a CI of 0.7 and 6.6, but that was for non-fatal. They do cite some other studies with ~ 2 odds ratio (with minimal alcohol use), but these are all not significant as well. Liked the article. Researchers do a good job of "bending over backwards" to cover the different angles. Hopefully the original quote of doubling the odds ratio was from something that was mildly statistically significant. I know it's not a magic threshold, but there's no way someone could in good conscience quote a doubling effect from the above paper, unless they just don't understand the uncertainty involved. But this paper and the one's I've found before all seem to indicate a very weak, or at least not significant effect. Kind of like when they throw around the word "carcinogenic" with marijuana. I've seen it there in a paper, but sure as shit not very strong. But hey, the paper's old, the studies it cites are older. Maybe there's newer, better data. Thanks again!

  4. Re:Fear Mongering (Case #674391) on Biosecurity Board Recommends Full Publication of Bird Flu Studies · · Score: 1

    Yeah, although you really do have to be practical about it. I'd trust that the review board weighed the right pros and cons. I mean, at some point you have to consider how obvious the research is, which I guess would correspond to the engineering techniques. Those techniques are probably gonna be really really in depth, since it's biotech, but it's not like the genome-comparisons of people/animal hopping viruses haven't been made before in detail... It's not my field, I left Bioengineering for Biostatistics after my Masters (I'm all bumbly in the lab), but it seems like this would just be introducing specific point mutations for cellular attachment/endocytosis? Or just switching the code for the external protein with that of a human-attacking virus? Actually I'm not sure if that's all that's needed. That's the obvious part, and I might be off. I'm really oversimplifying. Anyone doing this kind of work right now? I'm just saying, if someone came up totally out of the blue with a people-killa based on a totally fringe tech, and then decided to immediately publish it, I'd go ahead and call that irresponsible. But to publish stuff that's pretty well studied anyway and could easily happen naturally? Then again you could probably argue that even in the unforeseen tech case the collective scientific public might do a better job coming up with countermeasures than the government, and the more esoteric the tech the more difficult it is for a lone crazy to replicate it. Meh, I'll trust the board, since in this case they're probably looking to cover their butts pretty well since it's so well publicized.

  5. Re:Poor people exist on Ask Slashdot: Why Aren't Schools Connected? · · Score: 1

    Agreed. I meant "in the passive voice" in the contextual sense, but yep, you are an accurate fellow and my wording is crap. You know, I was just annoyed at the superior tone employed more than anything. Everyone is word-stupid some of the time, but to use that as evidence of character-fault? Balls, I say.

  6. Re:Poor people exist on Ask Slashdot: Why Aren't Schools Connected? · · Score: 1

    Wow, we should totally hang out.

  7. Re:Poor people exist on Ask Slashdot: Why Aren't Schools Connected? · · Score: 1

    Crap. Godwin's law doesn't give common usage a pass? Totally thought that grammar nazi had entered into common usage... But I can still use pudding-nazi and jello-nazi, right? My girl...she's always up in my pudding business, and frankly it's just fascist.

  8. Re:Poor people exist on Ask Slashdot: Why Aren't Schools Connected? · · Score: 1

    Also: "education IS dragged down," C'mon dude, that's present tense, passive voice. Otherwise the statement "education WAS dragged down," would be the past tense of a past tense, and that's just too terrifying to consider! Cat's and dogs living together, man!

  9. Re:Poor people exist on Ask Slashdot: Why Aren't Schools Connected? · · Score: 2

    Pah! Like I'm gonna listen to a bunch of socialists!

  10. Re:Poor people exist on Ask Slashdot: Why Aren't Schools Connected? · · Score: 1

    That's no past tense... It's a past-participle in the Passive-Voice!!! Though their conjugation may be equivalent in this non-irregular case... Seriously though, don't call people on stupid grammatical mistakes unless you've nazi-proofed your own (decidedly exposed) grammar-genitalia... Oh and drug is totally in the wiktionary under dialectial peculiarities. So eat it.

  11. Re:Light nuclei on Ask MIT Researchers About Fusion Power · · Score: 1

    Only fools are positive.

  12. Re:Direct sighting is only 1/2 the story on Camera Gun Would Let Hunters Get Killer Wildlife Shots · · Score: 1

    So what we need is a paintball variation so that we can go after the rarer game (read: brown-mullet-ligers). Time the shutter based on distance to target. The liger gets a welt. We get physics-dependent proof of besting the shit out of said liger... Then we make an acid paintball variant just to be dicks!!!!

  13. Re:Any minute now... on MIT's 'Artificial Leaf' Makes Fuel From Sunlight · · Score: 1

    I think "one side which is no better than the other" is what was mentioned. Referring to the fact that the visa-versa inverts the good and the evil without allowing for the possibility of a disequilibrium of good and evil. Of course people that classify others as "good" or "evil" are evil. Also "visa-versa" is correct in espanol. But seriously, be a little less condescending. I'm a banana.