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User: argStyopa

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  1. Consequences on Disease Outbreak Threatens the Future of Good Coffee · · Score: 1

    Wait, so millions of Americans and other Westerners won't be able to caffeinate their way to sensibility every morning, and might actually consider actually getting enough sleep?

    That's CRAZY talk.

  2. Re:It's COMPLETE nonsense on India To Develop Military Robots For Warfare · · Score: 1

    Like...?

  3. Title is misleading on Reversible Male Contraception With Gold Nanorods · · Score: 3, Insightful

    (from TFA):
    "In a lower hyperthermia treatment, the morphology of testes and seminiferous tubules is only partly injured, and fertility indices are decreased to 10% at day 7, then recovered to 50% at day 60. In a higher hyperthermia treatment, the morphology of testes and seminiferous tubules are totally destroyed, and fertility indices are decreased to 0 at day 7."

    In other words, the 'reversible' (or more accurately temporary suppression of fertility) process drops fertility down to 10%. As an actual birth control process, 10% fertility might as well be 90%.

    The elimination of fertility by this method - ie to 0% - seems to be irreversible.

    So the process is more accurately a method of male sterilization (for which it may indeed be valuable, if it's less invasive, less painful, etc. than vasectomy); the "contraceptive" role seems to be far less reliable than current methods by at least one, perhaps two orders of magnitude.

    Only by the most extreme hyperbole could this be called "reversible male contraception".

  4. Re:Too bad they chose NH.... on The Free State Project, One Decade Later · · Score: 1

    Well isn't that sort of the coral reef on which political idealism actually founders most of the time?

    Those ugly, pedestrian realities of having a job, earning money, feeding oneself/family...all are far higher on MOST peoples' lists than some dilettante political experiment.

    Face it, the reason that the Founding Fathers had the spare time to be involved and do what they did was BECAUSE they were wealthy, successful people who had the spare time to do so.

    Of course, the particularly unique feature of their actions were that they seemed to be at the intersection of the Enlightenment and Noblesse Oblige - where today the political experiments seem to be more about some sort of collective narcissism.

  5. It's COMPLETE nonsense on India To Develop Military Robots For Warfare · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...honestly, not even worth reporting.

    1) India has trouble building tanks, airplanes, ships, and subs...far more 'pedestrian' tools of warfare. Their programs are bloated and rife with corruption, delays, technical failures, overpromises, etc. such that they are only capable of producing inferior equipment at ridiculous costs.

    2) India is the second most populous country in the world. If there's anything they DON'T need it's to replace the dirt-cheap organic, self-replicating, minimally-functional dubious cannon fodder they currently have with hideously expensive, fragile, dubious cannon fodder made out of plastic and metal that they don't have and likely will never be able to build for the foreseeable future.

  6. This question is its own answer. on Seeking Fifth Amendment Defenders · · Score: 1

    The fact that you ask why it's important that citizens have the right NOT to answer questions demanded by "authority" just shows how completely fucked-up our society is, and what cheerfully-programmed little robots we're making.

    Wonderful.

  7. Re:Some basic problems with this story on Hacker Exposes Evidence of Widespread Grade Tampering In India · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The criticism seems rather pedantic. I'm the last one to defend the barely-reading, never-correcting, link-to-blog-post-instead-of-actual-article, duplicate-posting slasheditors, but the fact is:
    1) the server has a place where you put in a code and, i'd guess, a passcode. He looked at the code, determined the data was being drawn by a simple java query to an unsecured text file. Did he get the data the way it was intended? CERTAINLY not. Did he essentially 'break in' through what was relatively tissue-thin (derived from obscurity only, really) security? Yes, I'd say he did. So yes, in MOST people's definitions, he 'hacked' their shitty website.
    2) WTF are you talking about? Every school system in existence ADJUSTS grades on standardized tests? Proof? The guy discovered that something like of the passing scores (everything > 35), like 40% of the possible scores NEVER showed up. Ie, nobody *ever* got a score of 82, 84, 91, or 93, while 94-100 was regularly distributed. Mathematical anomaly? Maybe. But that seems unlikely with a massive test, and multiple added scores that this is possible.

    I think what he discovered was a ridiculously insecure web service, and a list of grade scores that have suspiciously regular omissions.

    So "hacked" and "possible grade tampering" seems pretty spot on.

  8. Coincidence? Perhaps not. on Should the Power of Corporate Innovation Shift Away From Executives? · · Score: 1

    Is it coincidence that this story is on slashdot only a few inches below a story about how 'agile' development is chaotic, undirected, and often results in version-chaos?

  9. Ahahahah on Labor Dept. Wanted $1M For E-mail Addresses of Political Appointees · · Score: 1

    As the posters all said...

    "CHANGE"

  10. Re:Secret or PRIVATE? on Labor Dept. Wanted $1M For E-mail Addresses of Political Appointees · · Score: 1

    So you wouldn't have had an issue with Dick Cheney having a separate, "private" email account that he used in office, because certainly he wouldn't have discussed anything important there that he wanted 'off the books', right?

  11. Re:What a lie of a story and headline on Activist Admits To Bugging US Senate Minority Leader · · Score: 1

    KY is a single-party recording state.
    At least one of the parties to a recording must be aware the recording is taking place.

    It's about as cut and dried illegal as can be.

    Even if your target's an asshole. (shrug)

    But then zealots always have reasons that the rules don't apply to them, right?

  12. Another "crisis" that isn't. on Switzerland Tops IPv6 Adoption Charts; US Lags At 4th · · Score: 0

    Sure, eventually we'll need to move to IPv6.

    But if you look at the IP utilization there are GIANT blocks of IP addresses that are locked behind allocations determined by technology's 'big players' in what, 1981? 1990?

    The facts are that:
    1) IP addresses are not actually 'running out' anytime soon
    2) it's going to be far easier to simply re-allocate blocks that are currently unused than to force everyone to buy new hardware.
    3) in most cases today, people aren't consuming new IP's, in fact, I suspect that most organizations are fronting with fewer IPs, and translating that internally. So the demand curve is slowing anyway.

  13. BS on Google Maps Used To Find Tax Cheats · · Score: 1

    I simply don't believe it.

    In there, you have a GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL claiming that he's happy that they could do MORE with LESS?

    Seriously, this is the internet but there is just some shit that I cannot believe.

  14. Re:too many cams, kids cant be kids on Criminal Complaint Filed Against Facebook After Girl's Death · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What you're describing isn't a 'systemic' problem...it's a HUMAN problem.
    Essentially: People are dicks.

    Kids are especially dicks, before they (hopefully) start to internalize the social-conduct rules that allow us to live in societies.

    No matter how many wellness-meetings we hold, empowerment seminars we attend, etc. it won't matter. The fact is that humans are animals and there's ontological developmental stage where 'little animal humans' (hopefully) learn not to bite, hit, or poop on the floor. Shortly thereafter, there's an intellectual/social phase where we (hopefully, again) learn treat each other with a minimum of empathy and respect, usually through being treated like shit ourselves.

    It's rough, and frankly, not all survive. Until we physiologically evolve to being sensitive humans coming out of the womb, it's not going to change. And as far as I've noticed, seclusion (ie home schooling during those formative years) simply stunts that development-track in one way or another.

  15. It's almost like life is resilient, hey? on Researchers Regenerate 400-Year-Old Frozen Plants · · Score: 1

    But I have it on good authority that +3 degrees C is pretty much going to kill us all?

  16. I fear this. on Iranian Hackers Probe US Infrastructure Targets · · Score: 2

    When you extrapolate
    1) the increasingly-vaguely-worded and -legally-authorized reach of national governments to act in what might be defined broadly as "military" ways wherever they see fit

    2) plus the ever-increasing capabilities of non-state actors (some call them terrorists, when it's convenient) and the state-sponsors that back them, not to mention the actual inability of states to closely control these assets

    3) the (current) ability to execute such actions through proxies/remotely/etc such that they are nearly perfectly anonymous

    4) and the increasingly brittle infrastructure of a modern, interconnected, INTEGRATED data- and electronically-driven (mostly Western) society.

    The intersection of these lines seems inevitable: a non-state actor (perhaps sponsored by a state, whether or not this specific action IS sponsored/authorized) is going to accomplish something really heinous, like a Chernobyl-level meltdown, or perhaps the destruction of the electrical grid across the East Coast of the US (something that costs $billions and/or thousands+ of lives).

    What happens then? If the US is catapulted into a paroxysm of 10 years of war over the relatively puny-but-showy 3000 deaths of the WTC attack, what would we do if that casualty number was 20,000? 100,000?

    "Someone will need to pay dearly" would seem to be the logical response of this otherwise-torpid democracy. But what if we don't know who that is, or (almost worse) are only "pretty sure" we know who it is?

  17. Re:XboxOne.com was up 11 years ago on Microsoft Files Dispute Against Current Owner of XboxOne.com · · Score: 1

    (shrug) And XboxOne really isn't that creative of a name.

    I bet if you could search all the other domains registered to that person, you'd find XboxPro, XboxSuper, XboxUltimate, etc.

  18. I have a name for this one! on Tests Show That Deadly New Flu Could Spread Among People · · Score: 1

    Let's call it "The Boy Who Cried Wolf Flu", or "FUD" for short.

    Yes, the abbreviation makes perfect sense.

  19. Look at the site on Microsoft Files Dispute Against Current Owner of XboxOne.com · · Score: 1

    ...it's not even in use. It's just the godaddy placeholder.

    Normally, I tend to side with the 'little guy' like MikeRoweSoft - he was actually USING the domain.

    In this case, the guy's just squatting. Give him some token fund for "good guess what we'd call it" like $1000 and give MS the domain.

  20. Re:It's not a bias if it's true on Med Students Unaware of Their Bias Against Obese Patients · · Score: 1

    What does it say when an alleged MD can't be bothered to actually RTFA about his/her own unconscious bias?

    Is that irony, or coincidence?

  21. Whine all you want on White House: Use Metric If You Want, We Don't Care · · Score: 1

    ...as much as the intelligentsia want to whine about it, the bulk of the US uses imperial systems in their daily lives.

    There is NO compelling need to mandate a switch. None. The bulk of the people in the US who need metric, or need to convert units, or deal with the rest of the world can use either one without an issue (and already do).

    For you true utilitarians out there, then, who firmly believe that we should switch to metric because it would simplify massive world systems immeasurably if everyone was simply on the same standard...I'll switch to officially metric the moment you all switch officially to English. Because the benefits of monolingualism are PRECISELY the same (or greater) as the stridently-cried reasons for Metrification.

  22. Soo.... on Predicting IQ With a Simple Visual Test · · Score: 1

    ...blind people are stupid?

    That's going to be a hard sell.

  23. Dialect deficiency on Australian Police Move To Make 3D Printed Guns Illegal · · Score: 1

    Apparently there's no word for "Zip gun" in Australian.

  24. OWS must be enraged, right? on Web of Tax Shelters Saved Apple Billions, Inquiry Finds · · Score: 1

    So, are we going to see protests by "the 99%" on the front steps of Apple?

    Maybe "Occupy Cupertino"?

    One thing, at least they'd be able to protest AND be near Apple "geniuses" in case they have problems with their ipad-blogging-of-their-protest-experience, or the playing of "we shall overcome" using downloaded music from the iStore.

  25. "most people" on Of 1000 Americans Polled, Most Would Ban Home Printing of Guns · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Most Americans wouldn't have joined WW2 (at least until Pearl Harbor).

    Most people don't know which came first, the Revolutionary War or the Civil War.

    Most states have passed anti-gay, one-man/one-woman marriage laws.

    Most people generally fear change of any sort.

    There's a reason we're not a democracy, we're a democratic republic. "Most people" are rather dumb.