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User: philip.paradis

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  1. Re:And You Are Some Magic Insect Sorting Entity? on UN Says: Why Not Eat More Insects? · · Score: 1

    It's rather unlikely that an individual with diagnosed shellfish allergy, which in some cases is limited in scope but in cases of severe reaction is more frequently quite broad in scope, could reasonably attribute gastric distress following grasshopper (invertebrate) ingestion to psychosomatic causes. Please reference ample documentation of anaphylaxis following ingestion of grasshoppers.

  2. Re:And You Are Some Magic Insect Sorting Entity? on UN Says: Why Not Eat More Insects? · · Score: 1

    Restaurant menus generally inform customers of the visually identifiable components of a dish. Wait staff in establishments offering seafood, at least those who have been doing their job for more than a couple of days, are generally aware of shellfish allergies and the consequences of consuming such things for customer who are allergic. Wait or kitchen staff who would proceed to simply remove shellfish from the plate served to a customer, and subsequently attempt to serve the same dish again, should be terminated.

  3. Re:And You Are Some Magic Insect Sorting Entity? on UN Says: Why Not Eat More Insects? · · Score: 1

    No, it seems the GP has a shellfish allergy, which can result in problems ranging from mild discomfort to anaphylactic shock and death. Exposure to the bodily fluids of shellfish can elicit the same response. People with such issues may also exhibit adverse reactions after consuming other invertebrates, such as insects.

  4. Re:350ppm on "Dramatic Decline" Warning For Plants and Animals · · Score: 2

    He's not getting anything you're trying to say, so you might as well give up on him now.

  5. Re:350ppm on "Dramatic Decline" Warning For Plants and Animals · · Score: 1

    The course you've set for the future of the planet is by no means set in stone. Loss of our magnetic field is one possible factor in the course, but is not a certainty and there is plenty of discord on the topic. Go ahead and cite recent sources if you're so certain of your position on this, and be sure to look for dissenting views while you're at it.

  6. Re:350ppm on "Dramatic Decline" Warning For Plants and Animals · · Score: 1

    I never said we don't have a major problem with special interests on the "pro-carbon" side of the aisle getting undeserved benefits; quite to the contrary, I agree with you on that point. That's money that should absolutely be reallocated to better causes. Saying one thing doesn't mean a person believes something entirely different, and you'd do well to take caution before assuming such things, as it tends to make reasonable discussion difficult and may result in your position being taken less seriously than it otherwise would.

    The point here is that we have hordes of immediate problems in society that no reasonable person would say he doesn't care about, but that statement of caring rings hollow when it isn't backed by money and action. Instead, we as a society seem to like to adopt elitist, knee-jerk, "favorite sports team" style positions on matters that may be fairly described as extraordinarily difficult to even get agreed quantification on. Meanwhile, kids are living under bridges in our nation's cities, and folks are dropping dead from chronic disease at relatively young ages left and right.

    Do you want to carry on with your knee-jerk reactions and stay in your comfortable little bubble, where you can safely think about things on a time scale that ranges from 50 to perhaps hundreds of years or more, or do you want to take a moment to consider that maybe your energy might be better placed somewhere else, some place that might make a different on matters that are killing millions of people right now? Should you choose the former, don't worry, you'll be the company of most of the rest of society. I suppose that's some consolation at least.

  7. Re:350ppm on "Dramatic Decline" Warning For Plants and Animals · · Score: 1

    Yes, there is a long term trend to remove nearly all CO2 from the atmosphere. However, your lack of reading comprehension ability has resulted in your failure to note the part where I said "won't be a concern for billions of years." Try again.

  8. Re:350ppm on "Dramatic Decline" Warning For Plants and Animals · · Score: 2

    At some point, a guy starts to ask himself if there might not be something else going on.

    You're absolutely right. People love to complain about Big Industry concerns related to fossil fuel production and consumption, but they don't seem so inclined to talk about the sprawling industries built around various forms of alternative energy production (with all their spectacular fiscal abuses, corruption, and failures of other sorts), climate change studies, government programs to research and produce reams of new legislation every few years, etc. Meanwhile, our society continues to be okay with current death rates from an assortment of diseases and widespread famine. People say they care about those things, but their focus and money say otherwise. Apparently, it's cooler (no pun intended) to care about CO2 levels in the atmosphere than it is to do a better job of dealing with things that are killing millions of people right now.

  9. Re:350ppm on "Dramatic Decline" Warning For Plants and Animals · · Score: 1

    CO2 levels have fluctuated a *lot* in our planet's history. The amount of time we've spent measuring these concentrations is tiny by comparison. The long term trend for our planet, human influence aside, appears likely to be a virtual elimination of atmospheric CO2 as it becomes trapped in landmasses. This of course would result in the elimination of most terrestrial life on Earth as we know it, and won't be a concern for billions of years, but it is the likely trajectory nonetheless.

  10. Re:Can't offer much on Ask Slashdot: How Do You Deal With Programmers Who Have Not Stayed Current? · · Score: 1

    That's a rather poor example. In the case you've cited, parents are responsible for what their children are exposed to, and should be the most significant force in their lives of those children when it comes to offering alternatives to things like fast food. We don't generally watch television in our household. Also, I don't know many eight year olds who are permitted to run around town by themselves. Perhaps it's different where you live. Then there's also the angle of allowing children to make their own decisions at various stages, but with open discussion of what's happening in lives of those children. I'm a parent, and I practice what I'm preaching here. Are you a parent?

  11. Re:The Ubuntu guys who don't get it on On the Heels of Wheezy, Aptosid Releases 2013-01 · · Score: 1

    You should read the GP again. He wasn't disagreeing with your position or advocating use of a rolling release.

  12. Re:Are you serious? on On the Heels of Wheezy, Aptosid Releases 2013-01 · · Score: 1

    You can run an official Google Chrome build on Debian/Ubuntu/Fedora/openSUSE. You can also run XFCE on current releases of these distros. What functionality is missing from any of the available mail clients available in their repositories? All these things are supported with current security and bug fix updates as well. It seems you're complaining about nothing.

  13. Are you serious? on On the Heels of Wheezy, Aptosid Releases 2013-01 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If you think Debian Stable is too old to be useful, give Atposid a spin!

    Debian 7 is less than 24 hours into being the stable version, and went into release freeze status less than a year ago (2012-06-30). I'm endlessly amused by what people consider "old" these days.

  14. Best practices on Following Best Coding Practices Doesn't Always Mean Better Security · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "Best practices" is such a wonderful term; its sheer flexibility permits the person invoking it to assure his audience that he meant exactly what he said, even when he didn't say much of substance.

    Now if you'll excuse me, I'm late for a game of bullshit bingo.

  15. Re:It usually works like this on Google Ordered Back To UK Parliament To "Explain Itself" Following Investigation · · Score: 1

    A whole bunch of the folks who aren't paying federal income taxes also aren't paying state income taxes. I see you've nicely dodged the point regarding people paying their fair share in general, though. Most people would consider fair to be a number greater than zero.

  16. Re:how is this not an act of war? on Chinese Hackers Infiltrate US Army Database, Compromise Safety of Dams · · Score: 1

    Do you seriously believe that events, suppositions, theories, possibilities, government-backed PR statements from $insert_nation_here, and similar fodder that winds up in mainstream media reports represents the sum total of events that relate to or are orchestrated by the intelligence community? If so, pat yourself on the back; you've surely got it all figured out. What will you do with all your free time now? I suppose you could start by making your way off the couch to retrieve another Mountain Dew and bag of Doritos. You must be running low after all that excessive thinking you just demonstrated.

  17. Re:It usually works like this on Google Ordered Back To UK Parliament To "Explain Itself" Following Investigation · · Score: 1

    By living in a democratic country you have a guaranteed slice of control on the government and therefore there is some accountability.

    This is a fallacy. With government as large as the combined federal, state, and municipal components that make up the bureaucracy of the United States, accountability to a single person or even any particular locale is diluted to the point of being nearly inconsequential. Larger government bodies tend to do what they want, with little actual oversight or consequences for their actions in such a climate. While those bodies are comprised of individuals, the personal responsibility and accountability measures of any single individual in such large bodies becomes diluted in a similar manner. Reference the TSA for practical examples of how this state of affairs comes to pass and the consequences for civil liberties.

    With private entities, the accountability is only to the shareholders, which exclude most of the masses. That's in the best of cases, with a privately owned company, you don't even have access to that.

    You fail to mention an individual's ability to leave a company should his or her beliefs and needs fail to be satisfied by that company. Apathy on the part of the population and a culture of "gimme gimme gimme, I'm owed everything I want" may reduce the tendency for people to exercise this ability, but it doesn't change its validity. You also fail to mention an individual's ability to start a business venture of his own that acts in a manner aligned with that person's beliefs; apathy and laziness tend to inhibit this as well, but that's the fault of the person, not the rest of the world. There has always existed a relatively small subset of the population that actually builds things and manages their growth, with the balance of the population largely filling what might be considered basic support roles in any given industry. Everybody isn't the same, and pretending they are accomplishes nothing.

    The only difference at this stage is market pressure which address the "unskilled" bit of your rant. That should allow you to get a better service in theory. Of course there is the drawback that you need unskilled bureaucratic control to make sure the market is fair.

    Would you consult an automotive mechanic for medical questions? Would you feel comfortable hiring a doctor with no background in information technology to act as the chief technology officer for a company you founded? What you're proposing is in fact worse than either of these options, and to say it's an inefficient proposition is generous at best.

    TLDR: You make a very weak attempt at justifying the personal insult against GP in your second paragraph and trick slashdot moderators to mod you up.

    People spend entirely too much focusing on whether somebody else might have his feelings hurt in the process of examining how things work. This isn't about personal insults; it's about reality, which has little to do with whether people get upset over seeing their personal vision of how they want life to work confronted with the unfortunate reality of a harsher set of terms. You appear to suffer from a common tendency to think that the way things work now, for better or for worse, is somehow new and different from how human society has operated for ten thousand years. You're mistaken in that, and I suspect you'll continue to believe what you want because it's more comfortable than facing reality. That is your problem, not mine.

  18. Re:It usually works like this on Google Ordered Back To UK Parliament To "Explain Itself" Following Investigation · · Score: 0, Troll

    The universally sad thing about Libertarians is that they don't undertand that power always fills a vacuum: the less powerful you make democratic government, the more powerful you make privately owned businesses.

    That's the point. Nothing is misunderstood, aside from your misunderstanding of economics. You probably also suffer from an unfortunate tendency to view markets with blinders and therefore see large players dominating various fields at any given snapshot in time as a bad thing, but without the ability to see that such domination is still better than the alternative of unskilled bureaucratic control that is necessarily comprised of similarly flawed human beings with no real accountability to speak of in the same examined period, with those two options being an exclusive OR proposition, and without understanding that disruptive forces periodically come along in said markets to upset the entire deal in a constructive manner.

    In other words, you probably aren't somebody who effects large scale change in the first place, and happily you're not somebody who will wind up having any real influence on things in any event. You probably think you speak for the masses in some respect, but the truth of the matter is the masses don't even know what they truly believe beyond their own personal lives. This has always been true, and will always be true as long as economic scarcity exists. You might as well stop wasting your time concerning yourself with such things and just live your life.

    TLDR: This is how the human species operates. Get used to it and relax.

  19. Re:Sustainable? on Genetically Modified Plants To Produce Natural Lighting · · Score: 1

    Monsanto is quite relevant here. It appears you're trying to be funny and failing, or you're entirely unfamiliar with Monsanto's history of claiming ownership over genetic sequences of living organisms and couldn't be bothered to review the material provided at the link above, or you have financial interest of some fashion in Monsanto and are attempting to halt conversation on the topic. Which is it?

  20. Re:Sustainable? on Genetically Modified Plants To Produce Natural Lighting · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The difference is that you pay to grow one plant, then it replicates on its own until you have millions of them. So you pay for the first plant, then the rest are essentially free.

    Tell that to Monsanto.

  21. "The ACCC will further seek injunctions, penalties, costs, and a five-year disqualification for Brown and Samuel from operating a company."

    I'm sure they'll just have some other entities operate various things for them if that comes to pass. If various guys can manage regional organized crime and gang business from prison, surely they fellows can arrange to have strings pulled on their behalf as free men.

  22. Re:Shares up? on Microsoft CFO Quits · · Score: 1

    I suspect any movements in share price have little to nothing to do with Klein's departure.

  23. Re:Ah, now the delays make sense on TSA Accepting Public Comments On Whole Body Airport Screening · · Score: -1, Troll

    Yes. Panama was under United States control at the time of his birth, and he is a born United States citizen. Both his father and grandfather were admirals in the United States Navy, and he rose to the rank of Captain in a military career that included over five years as a prisoner of war. He was tortured repeatedly by the NVA during that time. Where exactly the fuck are you from, and what the fuck have you done with your life?

  24. Re:Ah, now the delays make sense on TSA Accepting Public Comments On Whole Body Airport Screening · · Score: 1

    I have a beautiful wife and two beautiful daughters. My wife and I understood one another when we married, meaning she understood the fact that I am willing to give my life for for both my family and my principles. There's a certain relationship between those factors when you have children, and if you already have one or more but still don't understand what I'm talking about, I probably can't help you. I also served in the US Navy. Have you served in either a military or civil capacity? I may work as a systems engineer now, but my principles have not changed. Are you a coward?

  25. Re: Truth is the best defence on British Woman's Twitter Comments Spark Expensive Libel Claims · · Score: 1

    It appears the defendant isn't completely without hope; there may be potential for defense via the fair comment provision of relevant UK law. However, I am not a lawyer, this is certainly not legal advice, and I have no special insight into the particulars of this case.