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User: argStyopa

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  1. Pretty amazing on NASA's Dawn Spacecraft Becomes First To Orbit a Dwarf Planet · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Ceres gravity is 0.27 m/s2 (Earth's is 9.8, Luna is a hefty 1.6)

    So 'going into orbit' of something so vanishingly weak is really an amazing accomplishment, discussed in their blog at http://www.planetary.org/blogs....

    (Amusing point of reference, with 3 ion engines, Dawn's 0-60 speed is 11 days. Take that, Jeremy Clarkson!)

    Congrats all.

  2. Re:Well done, smart guy on How Activists Tried To Destroy GPS With Axes · · Score: 1

    I absolutely didn't shout "Democrats did it first!".

    Hell no, I was complaining about the former guy (nbauman's) assertion that it was ONLY Republicans to blame.

    They are both absolutely the same basement of the outhouse. The Huffpost article mentioned only talks about 2014 donations being led by Dems. 2012 was Republicans.

  3. Re:Well done, smart guy on How Activists Tried To Destroy GPS With Axes · · Score: 1

    And you know how I know you're full of shit?
    The idea that the plutocracy is solely a republican thing.
    Oh no doubt, they bear half the blame, but the country is and has always been majority democrat: and hell, congress was a democratic lock for what, 50 years?
    I've always been astounded at the cognitive dissonance necessary for tendentious people like yourself to assert that "it's all those dirty republicans".

    For every Koch (which you invoke with the trembling nervousness of some medieval priest talking about Satan), there's a Soros, or a Bloomberg, or a few of them, actually: http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry... "Democratic super PACs continue to attract more money than their Republican counterparts, due in part to a huge amount of support from deep-pocketed mega-donors."

    How naive are you?

  4. Re:you care more for your own kind, its science! on Racial Discrimination Affects Virtual Reality Characters Too · · Score: 1

    I'd argue it's still a useful sense, no matter how desperately we try to rationalize it away.

    While certainly the danger from someone you know isn't zero, strangers are many, many times more dangerous in many contexts.

    Just because we've industrialized the proximity of strangers with our cities, doesn't change the simple fact that strangers are more risky than people you know. And while skin-color doesn't equate to "someone I know", even a 5% benefit is likely evolutionarily impactful.

    What's curious is that these studies also tend to show that in the US adult black-skinned individuals LIKEWISE act preferentially to white-skinned individuals*, suggesting that it's not just identificatory friend-or-foe at work, but likely learned behavior from experience.
    *I'd be interested in seeing comparisons of the results from adults vs pre-socialized children, but I've never seen them presented in a controlled enough fashion to say they're comparable.

  5. It's always been true, it's just easier on Technology's Legacy: the 'Loser Edit' Awaits Us All · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Bad historians have done this forever, carefully culling information to fit the predetermined narrative that they're trying to present. Don't get me wrong, sometimes this can be done in a way that makes history more entertaining & easier to understand as long as it's highlighted as what it is, but the tenor of modern (particularly American, particularly ) teaching of history is very much a linear, determinate thing: this happened, so then THIS happened, which logically led to that.

    HIstory - even recent history - *must* be understood in-context. Frankly, that's what makes GOOD study of history a really hard thing. Monday-morning quarterbacking happens whether the event was last night or 1000 years ago. The people of, for example, Dark Ages Europe are practically aliens from another planet, in terms of how they saw the world; to interpret their choices (or worse, to render moral judgement on their actions) solely through the postmodern view of 2015 would be ludicrous, yet it happens constantly.

    "History is written by the winners" has always been true; the internet has simply made it a sport everyone can enjoy. It's no longer academic historians fighting closeted battles over esoteric issues within their field, it's the subject of daily conversation.

    Further, with the astonishingly short memory/attention span of the modern American electorate, tendentious people are able to get away with the constant revisionist presentation of events within recent memory.

    Hell, half the political conversations I have, the first effort is simply to establish SOME common basis of accepted facts upon which we can even constructively argue.

    Idiocracy is truly approaching.

  6. Thanks to them, we have today's mmos on Games Workshop At 40: How They Brought D&D To Britain · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I firmly attribute the success of world of warcraft also to games workshop.

    Because they were too stupid and greedy.

    Gw has always been rapacious in terms of pricing, but when they were presented with these developers who (really out of line for the ip) had created this "real time strategy" computer game using orcs (sorry, orks - for a company so tyrannical about their ip, they've been astonishingly casual about others'...) they reacted badly, insisting on a tyrannical level of creative control and ruinous charges for the ip. Their demands were so ridiculous, in fact, that these developers (who really already had the core of the game done) had to reluctantly walk away from the rapacious Brits and set out on their own...and thus was born warcraft.

    In exactly the same sense that I think Lego controlling minecraft would have strangled that baby in its cradle, GW controlling warcraft would have certainly prevented warcraft (and ultimately wow - and the mmo renaissance it spurred).

    Their greed compelled blizzard to strike out themselves.

  7. Re:I may regret sharing this.... on Statistical Mechanics Finds Best Places To Hide During Zombie Apocalypse · · Score: 1

    We have those, bu many of the new communities have started making them like this:
    https://d38ls2kcjnhfdj.cloudfr...

    You could still use yours, but then you'd have to for sure do some welding inside/atop to make it livable.

  8. Re:Damnit... on That U2 Apple Stunt Wasn't the Disaster You Might Think It Was · · Score: 1

    ^this times a million.
    Really, as if we needed more proof that the majority of humanity (never including us, of course) are just vapid, moronic sheep, driven by impulse and entirely unable to understand long-term cause effect or act for their own good.

    Maybe the Democrats/Republicans are right, and we should just let them in Washington think for the rest of us. I mean, could it be worse than us doing it ourselves?

  9. I may regret sharing this.... on Statistical Mechanics Finds Best Places To Hide During Zombie Apocalypse · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...but my refuge for the zombie apocalypse?
    The town water tower. Specifically, INSIDE/atop.

    First benefit is that (until now) nobody else would be going there, and you avoid the panic-rush when everyone gets stuck on the freeways.
    Many/most(?) stations have emergency generators already built in and by law well-equipped for sustained operation.
    Ample fresh water, obviously, and a great situation for catching clean rainfall.

    Most of our local towers are largely flat, and basically immune to severe weather and heavily insulated, meaning you'd have a secure, highly defensible place with great sightlines (to signal/communicate other survivors, if that's something you want to do), so high that even if they were attracted to your location, they'd have to pile up so high they'd pretty much liquefy at the bottom before getting to you.

    Bring your acetylene kit as you evacuate*, and you could really build a nice home in there, including ziplines to nearby roofs/buildings for foraging (granted, getting back up there if there were zombies around your entry might stink).
    *lots of small communities actually have a fair amount of tools stored right inside in the base for maintenance, saving you a lot of work.

  10. Re:Climate change phobia on We Stopped At Two Nuclear Bombs; We Can Stop At Two Degrees. · · Score: 0

    Except that - even if you agree that climate is changing, which seems to be indisputably true - it's still rather humanocentric to assume that we "could have changed something".*

    * First, you have to assume that global warming is driven largely by humans; considering that about every 120k years there's a sudden spike in temps and CO2 and the last one was...120k years ago, I think the burden of proof (that this one is caused by SUVs and Republicans, when none of the previous dozen were) is still on the AGW folks, depite the politically-driven IPCC reports.
    Second, you have to assume that the warming isn't simply intrinsic to how we live in the 21st century, like the concomitant carcinogens that are consumed with cooked meat. Sure, if we killed off half of humanity it might reduce warming significantly, is that worth it? We could all live like hunter gatherers, but is it worth it?

  11. Re:What part of "Consent" Don't You Understand? on Reddit Imposes Ban On Sexual Content Posted Without Permission · · Score: 1

    If it was unsolicited, actually, it does.
    It's a widely recognized pricinple that unsolicited merchandise may be considered a gift.

    In point of fact, sending email or sexts should be prosecuted every time because in practical terms they are quite clearly "unsolicited advertising material for the lease, sale, rental, gift offer or other disposition of any realty, goods, or services" without being designated as such.

    Copyright belongs to the person who pressed the button to take the picture, which then poses even trickier questions if that person is not the subject. If it is the subject, then consent is clear, and sending the picture does in fact give them the picture for personal use but clearly not for commercial use. Implied consent is at play as well - if a person you're being intimate with takes your smiling picture, it's pretty clear you implied consent for the picture to be taken (which says nothing about any further usage).

    Whether the subject is publicly recognizable matters as well (ie if it's just a close up of your cooter, you're going to have a hard time arguing that is 'publicly recognizable' except for the attention you yourself called to it).

    Further, you're simply mistaken dragging moral 'rights' into the question at all. I agree with you that taking a nudie pic, and then later using it for revenge porn is shitty and immoral. But we're not arguing how the world SHOULD BE, we're discussing it as it IS.

    And you misread me completely. Of course do whatever you want in private.
    I just think that anyone RECORDING what they do in private - particularly with someone that they don't know extremely well - is a moron if they're surprised to find it on Reddit tomorrow.

  12. Re:Pull the disk on Ask Slashdot: Old PC File Transfer Problem · · Score: 1

    My desktop system is about 5-6 years old and it's got a built-in IDE controller, I just never used it. My suggestion would be to look on his current system (or find someone with a previous-gen desktop ), I bet there's an IDE controller there. Just turn off, plug in the IDE cabling, and fire it back up, copy over.
    Or am I the only one with a drawerful of IDE cables?

    And the whole "IDE has tricky settings" is a canard: if you have a single IDE (like, I suspect, this one) leave the pins on 'master'.

  13. Really? on Lawmakers Seek Information On Funding For Climate Change Critics · · Score: 1

    Anyone else see the irony of a CONGRESSMAN complaining about 'undisclosed financial contributions'?

    Seriously, I don't care which party he's from; they're all idiot scum.

  14. Re:Cost of America on Drones Cost $28,000 Per Arrest, On Average · · Score: 1

    "A supermajority of voters favor deficit spending, so that's the policy we currently have."
    So why cry about "outrageous" spending in the first place?

    "Amortize the deficit across everyone, and you'll find that all households cost "the taxpayer" many thousands of dollars per year."
    You apparently missed the 'net' part of my comment. If you'd RTFA, you'd see that Heritage was talking net results, meaning total contribution vs cost; And yes, that means that a giant pile of American citizens are leeches, you're saying it's ok we add more?
    Personally, I'd love it if such a calculus determined your vote: if you are a net 'taker' = no vote. (Including corporate welfare for corporate officers, of course.)

  15. Re:What part of "Consent" Don't You Understand? on Reddit Imposes Ban On Sexual Content Posted Without Permission · · Score: 1, Insightful

    If the picture was taken without consent - ie an upskirt or whatever - then I agree with you.
    If the picture was taken WITH consent, then fuck you.

    Free speech cannot survive if people can retract what they said, and later decide "I didn't mean to say that - you can't tell anyone I said that."

    Same with pictures. If you take a picture of your junk and then send it to someone, you're GIVING them the picture, to do with as they wish. By my view, it's exactly the same as if a company sends you something unsolicited in the mail: it's yours.

    Don't want pictures of your junk floating around the internet? There's a really good way to prevent that: don't take them.

  16. Re:#1 slashdot article submitters on 5 White Collar Jobs Robots Already Have Taken · · Score: 1

    Hardly; even a cheap-ass robot would do a better job catching dupes than these rubes.

    In any case, if the editors are robots, with whom is Bennet Haselton sleeping to get his personal maunderings hyped as news?

  17. "Outrageous" on Drones Cost $28,000 Per Arrest, On Average · · Score: 0

    Usually I've found in my 47 years on this planet that people complaining about the expense of something are perfectly willing to spend that money on some other absurdity when it suits their particular bias.

    In this context, for example, people are shocked that it costs $28,000 per arrest to use drones to catch illegals. Likely, the people crying about the outrageous cost are perfectly willing to spend $28000 in legal services, assistance, aid, return transport, etc for those same illegals. Heritage.org (http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/05/the-fiscal-cost-of-unlawful-immigrants-and-amnesty-to-the-us-taxpayer) claims that the net cost per immigrant household to the US taxpayer is about $14k/year alone.

    Personally, I think immigrants are the soul of this country and always have been. It would be nice if we could simplify our immigration system to allow as many people to come here without the absurd multi-year waiting list that they have today, but it seems unfair to allow the lawbreakers - the ones coming illegally - to get a free pass.

  18. Re:Electronic music on Pandora Pays Artists $0.001 Per Stream, Thinks This Is "Very Fair" · · Score: 1

    Kanye = the best artist in the world

    How did you not get rated +5 funny for that?
    Kanye's a great example; if that no-talent douche can make millions, then really, that proves the bar's not really set very high.

  19. Personally on Police Use DNA To Generate a Suspect's Face · · Score: 1

    ...I'd just be happy if our local news stations would share with us such basic facts as the skin color of the bloody suspect.

    They seem to avoid it unless the criminals are white or asian, for reasons that likely depend on your political bias; they are failing to describe brown-skinned criminals ....
    a) because they're conservative, and assume that you assume 'criminals are brown anyway', or
    b) because they're liberal, and they don't want to confirm the stereotype that criminals are mostly brown

  20. Re:Personally... on Ask Slashdot: How Can Technology Improve the Judicial System? · · Score: 1

    I'm not saying to strip ALL information away, but certainly in the above cases, none of them would be improved, from an objective point of view, by the jury knowing the ethnicity of either party, for example?
    Or by being able to tell, by a person's language, accent, or clothing what economic demographic they come from?

    Obviously, some information critical to the exposition of the case would be necessary. I'm saying to use technology to strip away the inessentials as much as possible, to remove the widely recognized racial, social, and economic biases everyone brings into the jury box.

  21. Electronic music on Pandora Pays Artists $0.001 Per Stream, Thinks This Is "Very Fair" · · Score: 1

    Is this story sort of like the ones that told us how 'pirate downloaders' and 'the internet' were going to bankrupt the music industry and drive musicians into the poorhouse?

    Let me call Kanye and Rihanna, see if maybe I could send them a donation and help them out a little bit? Those poor kids, just struggling to get by. Like the whole music industry....clearly, they're doomed.

  22. Bring it. on Al-Shabaab Video Threat Means Heightened Security at Mall of America · · Score: 1

    I'm going to the Mall today.
    I'll be there from about 4pm until about 8.

    See you there, bitches.

  23. Re:And... the evidence? on How One Climate-Change Skeptic Has Profited From Corporate Interests · · Score: 1

    Curiously, you still managed to avoid discussing (or more specifically, disputing) his facts, which was precisely the previous poster's point?

  24. Personally... on Ask Slashdot: How Can Technology Improve the Judicial System? · · Score: 1

    ...I'd like to see technology deliver a true veil of ignorance between juries and prosecutor/defendant/court.
    It would be the job of prosecutor, defendant (under the eye of the judge) to present a basic outline of events with neuter models in a visualized space. Witnesses could be questioned and cross examined in real time, but with the judge having a time delay circuit allowing the to excise any non relevant information to the case...defendant would not be a white man or black woman, just "defendant", etc.

  25. no big deal on The Science of a Bottomless Pit · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I actually live near a REAL one.

    http://www.sciencebuzz.org/blo...

    No, seriously, it's a hole in the ground, into which half of a decent-sized river dumps.
    They have put everything from dye, to pingpong balls, to (amusingly) a car - and none of it has ever come up anywhere.