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User: bkr1_2k

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  1. Re:That isn't eye contact on Software Brings Eye Contact To Video Chat, With a Little Help From Kinect · · Score: 1

    Exactly. People who use video to talk regularly (like me) simply don't care. Like I said, a gimmick.

  2. Re:Irony on Drone Hunters Lining Up and Paying Out In Colorado · · Score: 1

    See my reply to the previous comment. If fishing just for food and nothing more, it would be very very difficult for anything but a massive population to overfish... a population that wouldn't be able to survive on the amount of water available, for example. Could you over fish a small pond? Sure. Maybe even a small lake if you had thousands of people fishing it every day, but there is no evidence anywhere I'm aware that any population of people has ever devastated a fish population just by fishing for their own food. I'll be happy to accept actual research that proves me wrong...

  3. Re:Irony on Drone Hunters Lining Up and Paying Out In Colorado · · Score: 1

    Please show me any documentation that a population of people hunting/fishing for their own food and nothing more has destroyed an animal population. Theoretically it is possible for species that have a long gestation period and low offspring count but evidence that it happens just isn't available. In instances I know of there were several other factors involved, such as disease or introduction of other species (not just humans) that drove animals away or to extinction.

  4. Re:Toy? on Man Killed By His Own Radio-Controlled Helicopter In Brooklyn · · Score: 2

    It is a device whose sole purpose is entertainment. It was not a training tool for his job, it was not a mode of transportation, it was not something he did for a living. It was entertainment. AKA, a toy!

    All of the guns I own are toys because I don't use them to hunt for food or for protection. Does that make them less dangerous or less expensive? My snowboards cost me over $1500 (combined) but they're still toys. My bicycles, arguably a form of transportation, are used as toys.

    The price of the toy is irrelevant, it's still a toy.

  5. Re:OUCH on Man Killed By His Own Radio-Controlled Helicopter In Brooklyn · · Score: 1

    Holy crap! If I had mod points... you owe me a new monitor and keyboard.

  6. Re:Drones vs. Planes on Drone Hunters Lining Up and Paying Out In Colorado · · Score: 1

    I call bullshit on this AC post. If you're flying UAVs for a living and don't understand the concept of total system expense, you're speaking outside of your pay grade. You've either just started flying UAVs or you are deliberately ignoring a lot of factors that must be considered when discussing cost. Safety to the pilots and ground crew is an obvious factor that you're either overlooking or don't understand. If it's the second, you shouldn't be flying UAVs (which I suspect you're not).

    I'll give you the complexity argument but that's the only part of it that you've gotten right. Human cost, be it training, re-training (a new pilot after one dies) ground support and many other issues make manned assets significantly more expensive to operate in a war zone or hostile environments (think storm chasing or fire fighting) than UAVs.

       

  7. Re:Irony on Drone Hunters Lining Up and Paying Out In Colorado · · Score: 1

    People fishing for their OWN food would never make this happen. Overfishing/over hunting is due to sport and due to commercial enterprise. If you only kill what you eat there's no possible way for you to decimate a population as you suggest.

  8. Re:Need for company on Schneier: We Need To Relearn How To Accept Risk · · Score: 1

    So not everybody but the majority of humans within the bell curve are social creatures. What isn't clear is whether or not "needing friends" means actually needing to be in the same meat-space as they are. Lots of people have "friends" they've never met but whom they communicate with over the internet every day. I don't think this is likely to become a "problem" such that it replaces "normal" human interaction.

  9. That isn't eye contact on Software Brings Eye Contact To Video Chat, With a Little Help From Kinect · · Score: 1

    Altering the image doesn't provide eye contact. Eye contact is a palpable connection between two people, not just me staring into the eyes of an image. Unless it communicates the "connection" (for lack of a better word) created when you actually look someone in the eye, it's just a gimmick.

  10. Re:Ethical implications on Mini-Brains Grown In the Lab · · Score: 1

    I think you miss the part where it's unethical to have Slaves, no matter what race/species they are. Or maybe you didn't and you just think it doesn't matter.

  11. Re:Ethical implications on Mini-Brains Grown In the Lab · · Score: 1

    Parents do this with medical care of their children every day, all over the world. If a person "creates" a body-less brain, why wouldn't they have the same rights/responsibilities to treat it as a parent does a child? I make life and death decisions for my children in all medical circumstances. If I chose to have my (hypothetically) ill child to undergo experimental treatment, the child has no choice until they turn 18 years old (in most places). Now, obviously I can't just say "kill the child" after a certain point but I can effectively do the same thing by denying treatment or seeking treatment not proscribed or ineffective treatment.

    How and why would a petri-dish brain be any different?

  12. Re: Ethical implications on Mini-Brains Grown In the Lab · · Score: 1

    GP said "aspects", not all consciousness. We aren't born fully aware of everything. It takes a couple years before babies recognize mirror images and pictures as something different than the actual thing they represent. If a baby hears itself in a baby monitor, for example, it will stop and try to find the other child that clearly isn't there. That's consciousness, of a kind. Self awareness also isn't evident from birth in all children, though I suspect they do all have it.

  13. Re: If you are afraid to be known for your comment on Huffington: Trolls Uglier Than Ever, So We're Cutting Off Anonymous Commenting · · Score: 1

    If you're not with us, you're against us!

  14. Re: It was a myth on Joining Lavabit Et Al, Groklaw Shuts Down Because of NSA Dragnet · · Score: 1

    You keep believing that.

  15. Just to be clear, US bombs still kill US civilians too. From the US Civil War, no less. I'm pretty sure there's no one that was alive before that war ended. The problem with your premise is that there are no maps of where they are placed. There are still huge fields of fenced in area in Cambodia that are labeled "mine field".

    Let's also be clear that not all of those mines were placed by US troops. We have a lot we can be blamed for, but not everything.

  16. You watch too many movies. The US military isn't full of mindless idiots who live to kill things. The people who "practically run on testosterone" are few and far between. Sure there are certainly some of those out there but they typically don't last very long because people don't trust them or want to be around them. Or they do something stupid and get dead.

    I agree with your assertion that doing this is stupid because it is a need, but let's cut out the hyperbole; it does no good and is a horrible way to try and support an argument.

  17. Re:jarhead Puritan pride on Soldiers Looking For Hookups On Craigslist Are Being Warned of a Military Sting · · Score: 1

    Adultery implies there is no agreement between partners/spouses that outside sex is okay. I know lots of deployed people who have such agreements, both military and civilian.

    The military typically uses the UCMJ adultery thing when someone is a total d-bag in other ways, there is fraternization involved, or the person is just not a good troop and there's not really a good way to get rid of them.

    If the commanders are using this as a primary charge for no other reason than the sex, then it should be stopped. It costs too much money to run these kinds of sting operations and does nothing but hinder morale of the troops who are already being pushed beyond reasonably with extended multiple deployments etc etc.

  18. You need to learn that there are exceptions to every rule. It's also very telling that you assume anyone asexual is female.

    Also, women have the same urges and needs men do with regard to sex. They are better at not openly displaying it, perhaps, but that's more of the societal "lady in the streets, whore in the bedroom" kind of thing than a biological one.

  19. Re:Why does anyone like this show? on Should the Next 'Doctor Who' Be a Woman? · · Score: 1

    As someone who thought the older shows were complete crap but has enjoyed the newer Doctors, I can't answer. I can say the effects are better than they used to be, though still somewhat campy, and they seem to have moved away from always fighting the Daleks, which I think is a massive improvement.

    The writing is still bad but it has also gotten better-- enough that I'll actually watch the show. I have found that it's more about the characters other than the Doctor, which I never noticed in the half a dozen episodes I watched growing up, and that's what makes me like it now.

  20. Re:Ever notice on Should the Next 'Doctor Who' Be a Woman? · · Score: 1

    Spoken like a true male.

    As a male, I'd have to say, however, that the last few Doctors have been very good at showing women as capable. (I only started watching with 9) Half the time the scripts, while showing the companions all fawning over the Doctor, also show him fawning over them. They have very clearly shown that several of the female leads were more than trivial as part of the Doctor's life and as part of the universe. I thought they got around the whole female Doctor with Melody Song, but I guess not. They certainly made her more than a capable woman as well.

    I don't know about the early Doctors but the newer ones have certainly been making efforts to not show women as just side characters. They still have some room for improvement but I'd say they've done a good job of it recently.

  21. Re:Really? Political correctness? on Should the Next 'Doctor Who' Be a Woman? · · Score: 1

    FTW. Although Jack seems to have been skewed a little more to the homosexual side with Torchwood, rather than just the "whatever is appealing" angle they tried to write it as.

  22. Re:What a clusterf**k. on Obamacare Exchanges Months Behind In Testing IT Data Security · · Score: 1

    Late reply.

    This will happen whether or not the insurance is available. That has to do with "un-bundling" that allows hospitals to operate as for profit facilities, rather than covering uninsured people. There is actually a good series of articles being written about it in, I believe, the NY Times, but I can't remember. NPR just did an interview with the author, though, who was a doctor prior to being a journalist. Very enlightening.

  23. Re:I hope it explodes and kills him on Version 2.0 of 3D-Printed Rifle Successfully Fires 14 Rounds · · Score: 1

    See, now I was just trying to overlook the fact that the plural of deer is deer. I wasn't even getting into the misspelling part of it, but there you have it.

  24. Re:social security number = ID and citizenship che on Obamacare Exchanges Months Behind In Testing IT Data Security · · Score: 1

    Non-citizens can have SSNs. All they need is to be legally able to work or even just go to school here.

  25. Re:Social security numbers? on Obamacare Exchanges Months Behind In Testing IT Data Security · · Score: 1

    Most every hospital I've been in recently, for emergency treatment or any other reason, asks for it. I have always declined and it ends up costing me more time in paperwork because they simply don't know how to input my information, for some reason. I agree with you entirely, though.