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User: Black+Parrot

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Comments · 13,037

  1. Where's the problem? on Spain's New S-80 Class Submarines Sink, But Won't Float · · Score: 2

    That's only a quarter of a million dollars per inch... I'm sure lots of billionaires would find that an irresistible deal!

  2. Re:Government efficiency on Spain's New S-80 Class Submarines Sink, But Won't Float · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think this is a great example of government "efficiency", underlining the fact for all those people who love to carry on about how vital "government spending" is.

    Yeah, because private enterprise never screws up.

  3. Re:patents vs. research? on WHO: Intellectual Property Claims Hindering Research On Deadly Novel Coronavirus · · Score: 1

    When I first heard about establishment of this court I thought it sounded like a good idea because in theory it was going to put an end to crap like venue shopping for patent appeals.

    When you establish a single court for an issue, they roam further than when you have a whole system of courts on it. Individual opinions become greatly magnified in there effect, as you essentially give up peer review.

  4. Re:Agile is (usually) BS on World's Biggest 'Agile' Software Project Close To Failure · · Score: 1

    ISTM that 'agile' is just a hop and a skip away from 'fragile'.

    I suspect it works best for a small highly motivated group of developers, e.g. a startup or some hobbyists making a game.

  5. Re:Agile is not a magic wand on World's Biggest 'Agile' Software Project Close To Failure · · Score: 2

    Agile can be as foolish a project management method as any other but it seems to have a religious component to it.

    Like everything else about software development, from methodology to choice of language to how you name variables and format code.

    I find it hard to imagine that people in other fields are as opinionated as we are, with so little evidence to back up their opinions.

    (But they're people too, so they probably are.)

  6. The subject says it all... smartass reply to the wrong post.

    Now I'm afraid to take that new intelligence test.

  7. Any survivors/Next of Kin should sue the commercial labs which are claiming patents.

    It's what you do to dogpooh on your porch.

  8. patents vs. research? on WHO: Intellectual Property Claims Hindering Research On Deadly Novel Coronavirus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I thought patents did not prevent research that uses the patented material.

    At any rate, allowing patents on discoveries (vs. inventions) is just stupid.

  9. Re:That's what beancounters do in every company on Judge Thinks Apple Will Lose E-Book Price-Fixing Case · · Score: 4, Funny

    Jon Stewart had a comment along these lines back when the police raided someone's residence over the loose iPhone prototype (or whatever it was):

    "What happened? Bill Gates is curing AIDS in Africa, and Steve Jobs is kicking down people's doors in Palo Alto!"

    It used to be so simple to keep track of who was the good guys and who was the bad guys...

  10. Re:All I want to know is on Judge Thinks Apple Will Lose E-Book Price-Fixing Case · · Score: 1

    What the market will bear.

    (IOW, how willing people are to be screwed.)

  11. Re:ummm the judge did not say lose...poor summary on Judge Thinks Apple Will Lose E-Book Price-Fixing Case · · Score: 1

    This is today's dumbass Slashdot summary of the day.

    It's early yet.

  12. Re:Popcorn time! on Predicting IQ With a Simple Visual Test · · Score: 2

    Yay, it's an IQ thread.

    Cue bragging about IQ followed by arguments about whether IQ measures intelligence.

    Did you expect Slashdotters to brag about penis size and whether it indicates their worth as a person?

  13. Re:What is IQ? on Predicting IQ With a Simple Visual Test · · Score: 1

    I am a member of a high IQ "society" that discrimatinates [sic] against the lowest 99.9% of the general population. Yet, I would do very poorly on this test as my visual processing is poor. I excel in abstract reasoning but do poorly in other areas.

    What is intelligence? What is IQ? What is it good for? All good questions.

    Those are indeed good questions. Since you're saying you don't have a good answer for them, I'm curious about what you believed the benefit of a high-IQ society was when you decided to join one.

    Their recruiters tell everyone that nerds always get the hot chicks.

  14. Re:bad day to be blind. on Predicting IQ With a Simple Visual Test · · Score: 0

    Is it International Naked Supermodel Day again?
    And here I am with nothing to wear for the occasion.

    If you're a supermodel, you don't need anything to wear for the occasion.

  15. Re:Ah, yes! on Cockroaches Evolving To Avoid Roach Motels · · Score: 1

    At work, I had to explain that mutations happen all the time for human. For them, if a mutation happens, it must mean that there will be a third arm or something like that to happen. And these are people who did scientific studies. :(

    Someone up-thread mentioned X-men. I suspect that most people think evolution works that way.

  16. Re:Ah, yes! on Cockroaches Evolving To Avoid Roach Motels · · Score: 1

    Why are we even talking about ID and creationism in this discussion? How has spirituality got dragged into this scientific topic?

    What? Don't you know ID hasn't got anything to do with religion?

  17. Re:Ain't it great? on AT&T Quietly Adds Charges To All Contract Cell Plans · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Why do big businesses lose their ethics? Does MBA stand for "Must Be an A**hole"?

    "Money Beats Anything". Why have ethics when you can have money?

    Money is the root of all evil. They're trying to make the world a better place by limiting its distribution.

  18. Re:Ah, yes! on Cockroaches Evolving To Avoid Roach Motels · · Score: 3, Interesting

    A quick search appears to show they haven't folded their cards as yet.

    Creationists never fold their cards, no matter how many times their claims are refuted.

    I remember reading about a debate where the scientist pointed out that the creationist's argument was based on a long-since refuted claim, the creationist replied that they don't rely on that claim anymore, and the scientist then asked "So why is it in the literature you're selling in the lobby?"

    I would think that evolutionary theory would predict, and even practically demand, the presence of ID theorists and Creationists of various flavors as part of the scientific community. Every scientific community, and they are segmented, is its own little ecosystem. It has sources of energy (grants), and consumers (scientists) and various forms of reproduction (ideas and new scientists, etc.). Some members of the ecosystem will consume resources, but give little back, or produce poor quality offspring. The herd only improves if the strongest survive. Think of the role of predators taking the weak in any animal stock. In this case it is weak theories and science. By the two communities engaging in adversarial struggle, the weak science is exposed and made stronger. What is passed over in silence by on community is exposed by the other and account demanded. Intellectual rigor increases. Their ways are strange to you, perhaps even irritating. But directly and indirectly they help real science grow stronger, and more innovative. They probably also bring additional funding into the scientific community that it otherwise wouldn't have. And without them, your droll post would have no meaning.

    I suspect it's something like the reason physicists don't feel a need to have Time Cube proponentists and historians don't need holocaust deniers.

    As the saying goes, you're entitled to your own opinions, but not to your own facts. If you don't deal in facts, science doesn't need you.

  19. Re:Is it evolution, or survival of the fittest? on Cockroaches Evolving To Avoid Roach Motels · · Score: 2

    How does the theory of evolution explain the reverse entropy when everything else we can observe is moving to a more disordered state?

    You should learn what the laws of thermodynamics actually say before you invoke them in an argument.

    Do you consider a solar system more ordered or less ordered than the cloud it collapsed from?

    And when that solar system's sun forms concentric layers of elements sorted by mass, is that more ordered or less ordered?

    Does thermodynamics prevent a fertilized egg from growing into an intelligent, sentient being?

    Do you ever check up on what you read in creationists tracts?

    This is the part where I have never seen a real answer.

    What would you consider a "real" answer to factually false claim about what physics says, supported by irrelevant arguments?

  20. Re: Is it evolution, or survival of the fittest? on Cockroaches Evolving To Avoid Roach Motels · · Score: 2

    That's NOT evolution. Evolution is descent with _modification_, specifically through random mutation. Otherwise it's just population selection of existing genes. Which has never been demonstrated.

    How ignorant can you be? Once you admit selection by fitness you've given away the farm, because mutations are a well established fact. IIRC the rate is so high that you probably have several variations that neither of your parents had.

  21. Re:Is it evolution, or survival of the fittest? on Cockroaches Evolving To Avoid Roach Motels · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Seriously, did the roaches actually evolve and pass it to their young, or did the specific roaches which HAD the sugar aversion trait simply avoid being poisoned and passed along said aversion to their offspring?

    I'm kinda thinking it's the latter.

    I'm kinda thinking that's evolution.

  22. Re:Ah, yes! on Cockroaches Evolving To Avoid Roach Motels · · Score: 5, Informative

    That Intelligent Designer is a crafty one! You'll never best his cockroaches!

    IDers accept microevolution.

    Do they? Back before they got pwned all their marquee arguments[*] took the form of "this-or-that-structure-or-system could not have evolved".

    If you want to defend them, maybe you should clarify what definition of microevolution they accept, and what other flavors of evolution they reject.

    [*] Except for Dembski's "no free lunch" argument that evolution doesn't work any better than blind chance, which of course would apply to microevolution as well as to any other flavor.

  23. Ah, yes! on Cockroaches Evolving To Avoid Roach Motels · · Score: 4, Funny

    That Intelligent Designer is a crafty one! You'll never best his cockroaches!

  24. Re:Site owners not so innocent looking. on WIPO Panel Says Ron Paul Guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking · · Score: 1

    I think he was just saying that RP isn't really a Libertarian.

    We'll see how fast Libertarians kick him to the curb for this. A few posters already have, but others are invoking pretzel logic to prove that he was acting on the principles he (usually) espouses.

  25. Re:It's official on WIPO Panel Says Ron Paul Guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking · · Score: 1

    I agree that it's broken[*], but you won't fix it by handing the domains over to the most influential people who demand them.

    [*] What if someone else named Ron Paul wanted the domain? Wouldn't he have as much claim to it as the famous Ron Paul does?