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User: Chris+Mattern

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Comments · 7,102

  1. Re:One by one... on Leonard Nimoy Dies At 83 · · Score: 2

    Captain, I see no reason to stand here and be insulted.

    Then by all means, sit down.

  2. One by one... on Leonard Nimoy Dies At 83 · · Score: 1

    Kelley, Doohan, now Nimoy...the inevitable march of time.

  3. Re:But I want faster... on Intel To Rebrand Atom Chips Along Lines of Core Processors · · Score: 1

    They tried one, but the networking code proved to be such a performance drag that they abandoned it for a Wayland chip.

  4. Re:He actually could be right. No joke. on Use Astrology To Save Britain's Health System, Says MP · · Score: 1

    Definition #3 from Dictionary.com: the medical history of a patient.

    Ah, that makes a lot more sense. I should have looked in dictionary instead of just googling it. And if his story is correct, he has an excellent point. If homeopaths are spending a good deal of time with their patients getting their history than doctors do and getting more accurate diagoses as a result, then they're performing a valuable service, even if their actual cures are bunk.

  5. Re:There is some truth to it on Use Astrology To Save Britain's Health System, Says MP · · Score: 1

    but it is a fact that planets and celestial objects have an effect on human behaviour and the environment.

    No, it's not. The sun and the moon have effects. So does anything that actually runs into the Earth. Everything else is too damn far away.

    Ask any police officer or health care provider how people act during the full moon. They will almost always tell you that they are busier and people are crazier around that time of the month - consistently - although they can't quite explain why.

    And, guess what? They're wrong. They remember the weird stuff that happens during the full moon because they expect weird stuff to happen during the full moon. Numerous studies have been made looking for the so called "Lunar effect". No actual correlation between human behavior (including police calls, emergency room visits and such) and the full moon has been found,

    To think that there is absolutely no basis in truth regarding astrology is simply wrong.

    Is simply right. There is no known mechanism by which the planets or other stars could affect human life on Earth in this fashion. It's bunkum, pure and simple.

    The practice of astrology would not have survived for thousands of years if there were no truth to it.

    The evidence shows fairly conclusively that selective remembering of evidence and wishful thinking is perfectly capable of sustaining a practice with no basis in reality for several thousand years. It's happened a lot of time. People sincerely worshipped Zeus for thousands of years. Do you believe in Zeus?

  6. Re:Mentally incompetent? on Use Astrology To Save Britain's Health System, Says MP · · Score: 1

    Appears largely be so, yes. This muppet has held the seat continuously since 1987. Last election he won the seat by nine points (runner up was Lib Dem, not Labour, incidentally).

  7. Re:He actually could be right. No joke. on Use Astrology To Save Britain's Health System, Says MP · · Score: 2, Informative

    Anamnesis is a philosophy that we subconsciously know information from our past lives. "Anameticist" isn't a word. I have no idea what word you actually meant to use.

  8. That seems awfully narrow advice. on Attention, Rockstar Developers: Get a Talent Agent · · Score: 5, Funny

    What if you're not working on the next Grand Theft Auto?

  9. The four most dangerous words in investing. on No Tech Bubble Here, Says CNN: "This Time It's Different." · · Score: 2

    "This time it's different."

  10. Re:Root Cause on Lenovo To Wipe Superfish Off PCs · · Score: 1

    Of course they believe that. If the online stores make more money, that's "enhanced", isn't it?

  11. Re:Magic on Gadgets That Spy On Us: Way More Than TVs · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Magic is how the average person and media assume anything technical works. Computers, cars, elevators, lighting. Hell, even plumbing.

  12. Are you pondering... on Human DNA Enlarges Mouse Brains · · Score: 1

    ...what I'm pondering?

  13. Re:Unfortunately... on Five Years After the Sun Merger, Oracle Says It's Fully Committed To SPARC · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Why would you use virtualization in such an environment?

    I can sum it up in one phrase: No. Hardware. Downtime. Ever.

    VMWare's solution enables you to move production servers at will without ever halting execution. Any hardware upgrade/replacement will have zero downtime. Even a hardware failure can be automatically migrated away from before it takes down the server and fixed without any down time.

  14. Re:why? on Empirical Study On How C Devs Use Goto In Practice Says "Not Harmful" · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If operator overloading is only useful for mathematical constructions, why not simply bake those things into the language and be done with it

    Because there are an infinite number of possible mathematical constructions. You can't bake them all into the language; you need to provide facilities for the programmer to write his own.

  15. Re:I recently bought a new lcd tv on Samsung SmartTV Customers Warned Personal Conversations May Be Recorded · · Score: 1

    There are no 40" computer monitors, not to mention 50".

    I beg to disagree.

  16. Re:Imagine sending it over the Whitehouse. on Hobbyists Selling Tesla Coil Kits To Fund Drone Flight Over North Korea · · Score: 1
  17. Re:I don't think this [release] matters at all... on Xfce Getting a New Version Soon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I see XFCE every time I boot up my computer. They seem to be the only Linux desktop willing to maintain a working relationship with sanity.

  18. Re:Have I lost my mind? on Woman Suffers Significant Weight Gain After Fecal Transplant · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Where do babies get them from? Surely there is no interintestinal transfer from mom to womb.

    The child's intestine gets colonized during childbirth. That's been discovered to be one of the problems with Caesarian section, in fact. The baby's large intestine doesn't get the proper bacterial colonization.

  19. Re:Makes USA kind of look like ancient Rome on Mississippi - the Nation's Leader In Vaccination Rates · · Score: 1

    In ancient Rome the children where legally the property of the father until they where old enough.

    Actually, according strict traditional Roman law, sons were the legally the property of the father until he died. Daughters were his property until they married, at which point they became the property of their husbands' fathers. It became usual for a father to emancipate his sons when they came of age, but if he didn't, they remained his property.

  20. Re: thank god for mississippi on Mississippi - the Nation's Leader In Vaccination Rates · · Score: 1

    They still have Section 265 in their Constitution so I can't deny God and hold office in the state.

    So utterly in contravention of the US Consitution as to be laughable. If it hasn't been struck down, it'll be only because no federal court has heard a challenge to it yet; the first one made will succeed.

  21. Re:Also take aim at... on WA Bill Takes Aim at Boys' Dominance In Computer Classes · · Score: 1

    primary level (er... elementary in the US I think, under age 8).

    Elementary school in the US lasts until age 12. Primary education in the UK is about the same.

  22. Re:Not the school name that I expected ... on Texas Boy Suspended For "Threatening" Classmate With the One Ring · · Score: 3, Interesting

    TFA says that the school is called ''Kermit Elementary School''

    So I guess it's appropriate that the principal is a muppet.

  23. Re:This is Texas! on Texas Boy Suspended For "Threatening" Classmate With the One Ring · · Score: 1

    You've obviously not interacted with public school management much. Generally speaking, they're deathly afraid of anything anyone from any side of the political spectrum might take offense at.

  24. Re:This is Texas! on Texas Boy Suspended For "Threatening" Classmate With the One Ring · · Score: 3, Funny

    This has been going on for some time now:

    "In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then He made School Boards." -- Mark Twain in 1897

  25. Re:Two things on Obama Proposes One-Time Tax On $2 Trillion US Companies Hold Overseas · · Score: 2

    1.The Republican Congress will never approve this idea. Never.

    Of course not. Obama has no expectation that this will ever pass. It's a rhetorical club to beat the Republicans with.