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User: the+eric+conspiracy

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Comments · 9,198

  1. Re:Long live the HP48SX and HP48GX ! on Ask Slashdot: What Tech Products Were Built To Last? · · Score: 1

    Not even close. I have a still working HP-35.

    Bought in 1973.

    41 year old gizmo.

    They still pop up on Ebay from time to time.

  2. Re:send them my own contract? on Click Like? You May Have Given Up the Right To Sue · · Score: 1

    Nah. By downloading their web page to my computer they are accepting my EULA agreement.

  3. Re:We live like kings and queens already on SSD-HDD Price Gap Won't Go Away Anytime Soon · · Score: 1

    Yes but for my laptop I don't need a 1TB SSD. 0.5 TB os available for about $250, and that's low enough a price for me to be able to afford it.

    Desktops are another story. That's where I want multi TB of capacity.

  4. Re:Congratulations are in order. on Guardian and WaPo Receive Pulitzers For Snowden Coverage · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What have you done to make it more painful? Do you even vote? How about writing some letters? Or giving money to a candidate?

    In the end it's simple. Apathy is the ultimate enemy of freedom.

  5. Re:Over 18 on IRS Can Now Seize Your Tax Refund To Pay a Relative's Debt · · Score: 5, Interesting

    1. Ex post facto limitations apply to criminal cases, not civil cases.

    2. Bills of attainder applies to a specific person or group of persons. I.e. a law saying Joe at 123 Maple Street has to pay 50% of his money to Small Town DPW. In England they were used to execute people, i.e. the govt would pass a law saying Bill will be executed such and such a day.

    3. The problem here is due process IF they can't show you the records to justify the seizure. That's really really bad news.

  6. Re:Ex Post Facto Law on IRS Can Now Seize Your Tax Refund To Pay a Relative's Debt · · Score: 2

    Ex post facto has always been held to apply in criminal cases only.

    This isn't anything like what ex post facto limitations apply to.

  7. Re:It kind of makes sense...but it doesn't on IRS Can Now Seize Your Tax Refund To Pay a Relative's Debt · · Score: 1

    It could be argued that this money never belonged to you in the first place since it was an over payment.

    Due process not needed.

  8. Re:No time limit != liability for debt on IRS Can Now Seize Your Tax Refund To Pay a Relative's Debt · · Score: 1

    These debts are mostly from SSI aid to dependent children. The money is sent to the parents, but strictly speaking the children are the beneficiaries.

  9. Re:Good on IRS Can Now Seize Your Tax Refund To Pay a Relative's Debt · · Score: 1

    Pretty much. Even forbids it in it's definition of treason.

    This isn't a crime though. It's mistakes that were made in calculation of benefits for dependent children, The IRS is trying to collect it from the people whom the benefits were intended.

    The problem is lack of due process. Their procedures are very shoddy.

  10. Re:And they've already stopped on IRS Can Now Seize Your Tax Refund To Pay a Relative's Debt · · Score: 4, Informative

    This has been going on for a while. And while it's stopped right now, it's only under review.

    This sort of collection should be limited to the actual recipients, and have some sort of statute of limitations.

    Commercial debt dies with the probate process. It's not passed on.

  11. Re:Fuck this shit! on UN: Renewables, Nuclear Must Triple To Save Climate · · Score: 4, Insightful

    1970's? Global cooling? Are you serious? The prevailing opinion at the time was 'we don't know', that is the science available at the time was not capable of modelling the effect of man's activities on climate.

    In this essay written by Carl Sagan in 1980 he expresses exactly this and makes a plea for support for such work.

    The idea that there was a 'global cooling' consensus in the 1970's is the sheerest poppycock. Complete wishful thinking by people with a political agenda back by no rigorous assessment of the situation.

    If you really are interested in just facts, you have failed to accumulate many.

  12. Re:phonics vs whole word on Is Germany Raising a Generation of Illiterates? · · Score: 1

    > Finland teaches whole word and is considered the best public education in the world.

    O RLY?

    More likely best non-Asian public education.

    If you compare it to a similar sized US State like Massachusetts, not even that.

    http://www.bostonglobe.com/met...

    Many larger countries than Finland have much more diverse populations. Take similar sized samples and you will rapidly find that Finland is not that outstanding.

  13. Re:It's not a bug on NSA Allegedly Exploited Heartbleed · · Score: 1

    Since the dawn of man the size of political units has always been increasing.

    Family
    Band
    Tribe
    City
    State
    Nation
    World Government(?) (If we don't have nuclear war first)

  14. Re:most useful on Ask Slashdot: Are You Apocalypse-Useful? · · Score: 1

    Modern farming is pretty technology intensive. Not sure current skills would be easy to translate to a post apocalypse world.

  15. Re:It's not a bug on NSA Allegedly Exploited Heartbleed · · Score: 1

    When the NSA ceases to exist, it will be because they are adsorbed by something bigger and more powerful.

    Look at the KGB. They were adsorbed by the Russian Oligarchy.

  16. Re:I don't understand on NSA Allegedly Exploited Heartbleed · · Score: 1

    To start with, because of sovereign immunity.

  17. One thing I do think there is a possibility of is that further advances will be more difficult. We'll need to build bigger telescopes, higher powered accelerators, etc. at increasing costs.

    Hopefully though increasing economic productivity will be able to pay for this.

  18. Re:What the French call la dolce vita? on New French Law Prohibits After-Hours Work Emails · · Score: 1

    Simply not true?

    What about the Toubon Law?

  19. Re:What the French call la dolce vita? on New French Law Prohibits After-Hours Work Emails · · Score: 2

    The French do tend towards language chauvinism.

  20. Re:oblig xkcd on Sand in the Brain: A Fundamental Theory To Model the Mind · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This comes from the fact physicists are used to working with differential equations that they can't prove existence or uniqueness of a solution for.

    So they simplify, i.e. 'assume a spherical cow' as a way of living.

    Of course that almost never works for a real system so they go off and try to understand the universe one particle at a time.

  21. Re:Must question the "revised" estimates on Under Revised Quake Estimates, Dozens of Nuclear Reactors Face Problems · · Score: 2

    > But fire does not make areas permanently uninhabitable

    Fire kills far more people every year than nuclear power.

  22. Re:$99 = €150? lol take that you euro-weenies on Intel Releases $99 'MinnowBoard Max,' an Open-Source Single-Board Computer · · Score: 1

    Before VAT.

  23. Re:Must question the "revised" estimates on Under Revised Quake Estimates, Dozens of Nuclear Reactors Face Problems · · Score: 1, Insightful

    > Given the risk we should be designing for safety in the most extreme event possible.

    Applying this logic to the innovation of fire would have resulted in its rejection as too dangerous, and we would still be living in unheated caves eating raw food in the dark.

  24. Re:anti-science pols always Republican on The Problem With Congress's Scientific Illiterates · · Score: 1

    The premise put forth is that it's ALWAYS Republicans. Given that all I have to do is come up with ONE counter example to disprove the point.

    Fact: there are plenty of anti science loons who are Democrats. They pop up in areas like:

    Vaccines
    GMOs
    Animal use in medical research

  25. Re:anti-science pols always Republican on The Problem With Congress's Scientific Illiterates · · Score: 1

    I'm sorry but this is just wrong. GMO has been in mass use for decades now and none of these bogeyman scenarios have come to pass.

    Even more telling is that another posting I made on this thread linking to an opinion by the European Scientific Advisory Council stating that the EU restrictions on GMOs are harmful has been moderated to -1 by the anti GMO crowd on Slashdot.

    How could anything be more anti-science than trying to silence an opposing opinion that is in fact the scientific consensus?