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User: maxume

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Comments · 15,806

  1. Re:So "Native Americans" were invaders? on Ancestry Surprises From New Genetics Analysis Method · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Here's a good article by Jared Diamond, for anybody that wants to see what they would be getting into:

    http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/04/21/080421fa_fact_diamond?currentPage=all

    The article is about the vengeance culture that exists (and is being curtailed) in New Guinea, and the tension between personal satisfaction and state mediation.

  2. Re:Could the Book of Mormon be on to something? on Ancestry Surprises From New Genetics Analysis Method · · Score: 1

    There is very little to suggest dna from "lost Israelites" in the Native American population.

  3. Re:(cue piano music) on Would You Rent a Song For a Dime? · · Score: 1

    For some definition of soon. How much of congress are boomers or part of the greatest generation?

    Along those lines, Obama is the *first* viable presidential candidate that is not a boomer or a product of the WWII era. (McCain is approximately the last viable WWII era candidate).

  4. Re:What about the other candidates? on McCain vs. Obama on Tech Issues · · Score: 1

    In the US, it depends on the state.

  5. Re:What about the other candidates? on McCain vs. Obama on Tech Issues · · Score: 1

    Because they don't matter.

    That's about half snark and about half the truth by the way. It might be nice if they mattered more, but at the moment, supporting a third party candidate in a presidential election isn't really worth anyone's time (except maybe one of the two major candidates, if they want to split their opponent's votes).

  6. Re:The Solution on Deutsche Telekom Secretly Tracked Phone Calls · · Score: 2, Funny

    It's always the men in suits that ruin the atmosphere.

  7. Re:STREWTH on Large Web Host Urges Customers to Use Gmail · · Score: 1

    Yeah, that would piss me off.

    I don't know enough about databases to ask this question (i.e., I have no idea if 1 bad table will effect a server), but can the changes they made be characterized as something that would protect their server?

  8. Re:STREWTH on Large Web Host Urges Customers to Use Gmail · · Score: 1

    I've been with dreamhost for a couple of years. When I read the complaints about them, I get the feeling that it is because they have an awful lot of customers and a very small number of those customers have hilarious expectations for $12 a month. It's like the reviews on Amazon where someone complains that a book didn't cook them dinner, or that a hammer didn't come with any nails.

    Of course, the downtime never seems to affect me, and I didn't get smacked in the face by the great billing SNAFU of 2008 either.

  9. Re:STREWTH on Large Web Host Urges Customers to Use Gmail · · Score: 1

    I like their (nearlyfreespeech.net) pricing but haven't bothered getting an account to investigate their feature set. If you care to say what you have had success and issues with, that would be cool.

  10. Re:Webmail on Large Web Host Urges Customers to Use Gmail · · Score: 1

    Unless you only accept encrypted messages, you don't have a whole lot of information about what third parties are scanning your email. Even then, unless you are particularly diligent, you don't have any guarantees about what is going on at the other end of the encrypted channel (is the machine a zombie, are they printing out your messages and mailing them to the local newspaper, are they forwarding your messages after they decrypt them, etc).

    I would be reluctant to do business with a billion dollar multinational that didn't bother to get their own domain for email, but I don't really care if my carpenter or whatever uses gmail.

  11. Re:Constitution easy to subvert on Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement · · Score: 1

    The passage means "in the Constitution of any State or laws of any State", not the United Stated Constitution.

  12. Re:Fuck This on Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement · · Score: 1

    The libertarian party doesn't run on a platform of smaller government, they run on a platform of no government, which is crazy, and a big part of the reason they don't get any votes (notice how Ron Paul also didn't get any votes, even though he had on one of the approved labels).

  13. Re:No surprise... on UK Academics Arrested For Researching al-Qaida · · Score: 1

    What happens if you don't play by their rules?

  14. Re:No surprise... on UK Academics Arrested For Researching al-Qaida · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Sure. I wouldn't say I had any notion of having faith in the government when I was 12 though.

  15. Re:Meaningless ... on The Smartest Browser and OS · · Score: 1

    You only have a reasonable idea of what it is. It changes (both as you change, and as the average of the population changes, it probably changes depending on your mood).

  16. Re:Not exactly accurate on The Smartest Browser and OS · · Score: 1

    Mensa wants ~132 or better, not 142+, depending on the test:

    http://www.mensa.org/index0.php?page=10

    Basically, they consider themselves to be the top 2% by intelligence.

    They took the revised SAT (the 90's version that was supposed to be weak), I don't know if they take the new one, but they haven't been particularly choosy about the tests in the past.

  17. Re:No surprise... on UK Academics Arrested For Researching al-Qaida · · Score: 1

    At least you understand the situation now. Your feelings prior to 9/11 were clearly overly optimistic if they have sunk so far so fast.

  18. Re:"Curretly"? on The Smartest Browser and OS · · Score: 1

    You should say you are from awesome dot, because that is an awesome way to waste your time.

    By posting this comment, I get all the way to neato dot.

  19. Re:Great. on The Smartest Browser and OS · · Score: 1

    Yes, there is a way. It could be such a weak IQ test that everybody focuses on that instead of the resluts.

  20. Re:Smartest, eh? on The Smartest Browser and OS · · Score: 2, Funny

    Your score isn't showing up. Perhaps if you get more people to switch.

  21. Re:Electric universe on Eric Lerner's Focus Fusion Device Gets Funded · · Score: 1

    If you stored the wrong number (instead of just making a typo or braino) and have not realized it yet, you will be happy to realize that the amount is $600,000, not $600 million.

    Still a chunk of change, but much more palatable.

  22. Re:New Buzz Hardware... on What Web 2.0 Means for Hardware and the Datacenter · · Score: 1

    It's a term for how much java, shockwave, and ads you cam JAM INTO A WEBSITE!

    Yippy skippy doodle.

  23. Re:And for good reasons... on President Bush Signs Genetic Nondiscrimination Act · · Score: 1

    I don't have a problem with the idea of providing as much health care as possible as a society. There are real economic limits to what can be provided though, and I think that the cost needs to be part of the discussion.

    I do have a problem with characterizing health care as a right, and with calling universal coverage from birth 'insurance' (unless we get somebody to pony up a premium against the genetic risk prior to the testability of the fetuses genetics, in which case it would be insurance).

  24. Re:New Buzz Hardware... on What Web 2.0 Means for Hardware and the Datacenter · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Web 2.0 doesn't have anything to do with Java, unless you are serving your Javascript with it.

  25. Re:And for good reasons... on President Bush Signs Genetic Nondiscrimination Act · · Score: 1

    Sure.

    "Having car insurance doesn't spread the risk of having a car accident out among the insured, it mitigates the consequences for people who do have crashes."

    and

    "Similarly, having car insurance doesn't decrease the risk you will get in a wreck, it just spreads out the financial risk to any one person should they be the unlucky sod who gets in that wreck."

    are essentially the exact same statement, you just called the consequences financial risk.