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User: Chris+Mattern

Chris+Mattern's activity in the archive.

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Comments · 7,102

  1. Re:Correlation != causation on Rude Drivers Reduce Traffic Jams · · Score: 0

    Simple. You maintain a safe distance...so the guy weaving through traffic cuts you off because there's room between you and the car ahead of you to fit his car. So you have to back off from the guy who cut you off to maintain a safe distance again. So the next guy weaving through traffic cuts you off because there's room to fit his car there.. So you have to back off to maintain a safe distance. So the next guy weaving through traffic...and so on, ad infinitum. Eventually you just give up and make sure that the jerks weaving through traffic don't have room to wedge their cars in ahead of you.

  2. Re:Descent! on Which Game Series Would You Reboot? · · Score: 1

    "Oh God! They're following me. Mayday! This is Lieutenant Ash on Terran patrol, Wing Gamma...Three-Niner reporting. Taken heavy damage. Requesting immediate fighter cover and rescue. Come in, anybody! Mayday! Requesting immediate assistance! Anyone, PLEASE!"

    "Barely receiving you, Gamma Three-Niner. This is Terran Outpost Riviera responding. What is your situation?"

    "Oh, thank God! My wing was ambushed. We didn't have a chance. I'm sure they're tracking me."

    "Calm down, sir. Who attacked you? Was it the Vasudans?"

    "Vasudans were killed, too. They slaughtered everyone."

    "Sir, you have to calm down. You were attacked by Vasudans. Is that true?"

    "No! No! We were in a skirmish with a Vasudan patrol and they just came out of nowhere and killed everyone."

    "Who came out of nowhere, pilot?"

    "I don't know. But they weren't Vasudan, and they weren't Terran. Oh, God. They had these death black ships. And they flew like... their weapons were too much. They wasted everyone."

    "Pilot, sit tight! We're sending recovery craft right now."

    "Send FIGHTERS! I... I know they're following me. Send everything you have NOW!"

    "Sir, I don't have anyone else on scope. You're home free. It's going to be alright."

    "NO, IT ISN'T! You don't understand! You weren't there! I can feel them following me. Oh, my God. I'm dead! We're all dead!"

    "Picking up unknown jump signatures. Scramble the fighters."

    "It's too late. Oh, God!"

    "What the hell is that?"

    "Aaaaargghhhhhh!"

  3. Remember, Folks on Palm Pre iTunes Syncing Back With WebOS 1.1 Update · · Score: 2, Funny

    "It's not done 'till Palm won't run!"

  4. Re:Human reaction bottleneck on Stock Market Manipulation By Millisecond Trading · · Score: 1

    Very true. Which is why there's no human confirmation in these systems. If that doesn't make you afraid, it should.

  5. Re:The DON'T do the same with movies. on California Continues To Push For Violent Game Legislation · · Score: 1

    No, his statement is entirely true. The movie theatre owner refuses you entry by his own decision to enforce the movie rating, mainly because his distributor will stop selling him movies to show if he doesn't. No law forcing him to deny you entry exists.

  6. Re:Internet Domains are under free market purview on Registrars Still Ignoring ICANN Rules · · Score: 2, Insightful

    More like To Big To Piss Off

  7. Re:Poor Title on F-22 Raptor Cancelled · · Score: 3, Funny

    Russia and France both have fighters in development on par with the F22.

    I guess this is a good time to be moving on to the F-35, then.

  8. So, which do you want? on Scientists Turn Used LCDs Into Medicine · · Score: 5, Funny

    The red pill, the blue pill...or the green pill?

  9. Re:And yet... on How Apple's App Review Is Sabotaging the iPhone · · Score: 1

    How many of them are good? Well, quite honestly alot more are good than if there was no review process at all.

    Wrong. The approval process doesn't create apps, it only blocks them. It can't make more good apps. It can only make fewer good apps. Its point is not that it makes more good apps, it's that it makes fewer *bad* apps.

  10. Re:scary thing on US Agency Blocked Cellphone / Driving Safety Study · · Score: 2, Funny

    There are lots of professional drivers who have to talk (pit crew, engineers, etc) while driving and they still can drive _competitively_ while doing so.

    So all we need to do is replace all the drivers out there with professional racecar drivers! Brilliant!

  11. Re:Clarification on Company Denies Its Robots Feed On the Dead · · Score: 1

    In much the same sense that a cow could, in principle, eat you.

    The Man-Eating Cow laughs at your principles!

  12. Re:Nobody expects . . . on Ireland Criminalizes Blasphemy · · Score: 1

    I'll come in again.

  13. Re:External and Online on Best Home Backup Strategy Now? · · Score: 1

    However if you lose just your computer you can still get your data from the time machine.

    It's a pretty selective fire or flood that gets your computer but not the time machine drive attached to it. And if it gets stolen, odds are that the thief will decide he won't mind owning a nice external drive to go with it.

  14. Re:thought that was known for a long time on Creativity Potentially Linked To Schizophrenia · · Score: 1

    It's a principle for fighters that goes back long before the jet age. Perhaps the two most famous fighter planes of World War I are the Sopwith Camel and the Fokker Dr. 1 triplane. They shared a common point: they both had rotary engines, which here doesn't mean one of those Mazda things that go "mmmmmm" but rather a radial piston engine in which the crankshaft was bolted to the airframe and the propellor was attached to the engine casing. The crankshaft stayed still while the entire engine block spun. This generated enormous amounts of torque, and both airplanes had a vicious tendency to snap to the right, and both airplanes had a reputation for killing incautious pilots who flew them. But in the hands of an expert pilot, the planes could excute extremely sharp turns to the right which were of great advantage in dogfights.

  15. Re:Truth and Lies ... acceptance and denial on Progress In Brain-Based Lie Detection · · Score: 1

    Polygraph examiners with a good deal of experience have shown that they can judge when someone is lying and are very hard to fool by non-psychopaths.

    It's a shame that their machines can't duplicate the feat.

  16. Re:YNet isn't the only one who's picked it up.. on Cure For Radiation Sickness Found? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    They mean that the substance itself does not cause any observed harm. In the approval of any medicine, the first step is always to demonstrate that the substance is not itself poisonous. Only then do trials progress to determine if it is in fact effective.

  17. Re:Can't say I'm surprised.... on Windows 7 Pre-Orders Top Vista's In Just 8 Hours · · Score: 1, Troll

    Why do you have such a high proportion of Microsoft (Windows, Xbox, Zune (really, Zune?)) to non Microsoft posts?

    Well, the sign's right there every time he looks up from his desk, so it's
    natural that he's often thinking about it.

  18. Re:Courier, Arial, Times New Roman on Typography On the Web Gets Different · · Score: 0, Redundant

    You forgot Comic Sans, Papyrus and Copperplate!

  19. Re:cleaning windows on Windows 7 Clean Install Only In Europe · · Score: 1

    Note that this method assumes that the virus scan will in fact find all the viruses. This is not a bet that always pays off.

  20. Re:Not only act of idiocy on Wells Fargo Bank Sues Itself · · Score: 1

    It makes perfect sense for the property sales unit and the mortgage unit to be pursuing different agendas.

    But it makes no sense at all that the manager at a suffciently high level to have authority over both of them isn't making sure that the different agendas don't escalate to the point where they're trying to bash each others' brains in. That's his job.

  21. Re:It doesn't matter on R.I.P. FTP · · Score: 1

    You're missing the point. If you're using FTP a hacker has no need to infect your machine. All he has to do is intercept your packets that you sent out to the public internet, and he has your password to the FTP account.

  22. Re:I wonder... on Retired Mainframe Pros Lured Back Into Workforce · · Score: 1

    Just because he's working on his own doesn't mean the brass and overhead goes away; he has to pay for it himself instead of letting IBM pay for it. Social Security (both halves now), health insurance, accounting/payroll services...

  23. Oblig. Dennis Miller quote on Can Bill Gates Prevent the Next Katrina? · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Face it - Bill Gates is a about a white Persian cat and a monocle away from being a Bond villain."

  24. Re:Speaking from under my tinfoil hat... on Standalone GPS Receivers Going the Way of the Dodo · · Score: 1

    I don't want my GPS attached to anything that transmits a signal.

    That would make getting map updates rather inconvenient, I would think.

  25. Re:I like standalone GPS on Standalone GPS Receivers Going the Way of the Dodo · · Score: 1

    Most people don't go to "the middle of nowhere" -- and those of us who do usually get around just fine (hint: there's just not that many roads).

    "Roads? Where we're going we don't need roads!"

    Seriously, there's a fair number of people who go to the middle of nowhere and don't stick to the roads. Those people tend have a particularly acute need for decent GPS.