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User: itzly

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Comments · 2,972

  1. Re:Global warming on Greenland's Glaciers Develop Stretch Marks As They Accelerate · · Score: 1

    Market-based solutions, by definition, do not require government intervention.

    They do, if there's no fair market price for pollution.

    The reason carbon emissions in the US have gone down is because of fracking,

    A lucky coincidence. Similar kinds of innovation are responsible for digging up tar sands, which increase carbon emissions per unit of energy.

  2. Re:Dear Aunt on New Device Could Greatly Improve Speech and Image Recognition · · Score: 1

    That was speech wreckognition.

  3. Re:Need a rover on Dawn Spacecraft Gets a Better Look At Ceres' Bizarre 'White Spots' · · Score: 1

    Why would it be a better place ? It's further away, colder, and there's less gravity.

  4. Re:Earthlings? on Dawn Spacecraft Gets a Better Look At Ceres' Bizarre 'White Spots' · · Score: 1

    Five million years is a pretty long time: everything on the surface would be eroded away, the seafloor would get covered in quite a bit of muck, any underground bunker would collapse. Overall I don't think there's be any reason for them to suspect that we were once here.

    We have fossils from hundreds of millions years old, and they were made from fragile, organic, materials. If we leave enough stuff around, some of it will survive at least equally long.

  5. Re: News for nerds on Religious Affiliation Shrinking In the US · · Score: 1

    There are other people who believe the idea that the universe came into being *without* a deity would be an extraordinary concept.

    Of course, they are just fooling themselves into thinking that "a deity did it" actually provides any useful explanation. Even if a deity did it, we still don't know how or why, and we have no information about this deity, or where he came from. So instead of providing answers, we've only added more questions.

  6. Re:Earthlings? on Dawn Spacecraft Gets a Better Look At Ceres' Bizarre 'White Spots' · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Bonobos are pretty smart, and a rough estimate might put them about 5 million years behind us on the evolutionary scale.

    They are not behind, they are right next to us on another path, and we have no way of telling where they'll go.

  7. Re: News for nerds on Religious Affiliation Shrinking In the US · · Score: 3, Informative

    But we shouldn't make the mistake of thinking that it is the only tool we have for gathering knowledge. It can't answer every question, and that's okay.

    Yes, it is the only tool. Other tools can provide answers, but not knowledge. Knowledge can be used to make predictions, and predictions are testable, and therefore fall in the realm of science. If your answers can't be used to make predictions, they are not useful, and they might as well not exist.

  8. Re: News for nerds on Religious Affiliation Shrinking In the US · · Score: 2

    What's the point of sentience? It is irrelevant to life

    Sentience is what you get if you make a realistic model of the world around you, and yourself in it, with the capability to run complicated what-if scenarios on it, like "if I throw a rock at that bear, it'll probably charge me, but I will be able to escape through that narrow cave entrance if I run fast enough". It helps survival, so it is crucial to life.

  9. I'm not an expert, but if it were ice, wouldn't you expect to see it in a crater on the pole where it is permanently in the shadow, rather than on the equator ?

  10. Re: 23 down, 77 to go on Religious Affiliation Shrinking In the US · · Score: 1

    You've never heard of suicide bombers being promised an internal life in paradise ? If you believe that crap, it makes it a lot easier to die for a cause.

  11. Re: 23 down, 77 to go on Religious Affiliation Shrinking In the US · · Score: 1

    Correct, but that doesn't negate my point. Religion is used as a tool to control people, so that they'll fight.

  12. Re: 23 down, 77 to go on Religious Affiliation Shrinking In the US · · Score: 1

    What causes wars is the struggle for power and resources. Religion is just a tool to help convince stupid people to fight by declaring them 'righteous' and the enemy 'sinners'.

  13. Re:The Onion? on Bill Gates Still Trying To Buy Some Common Core Testing Love · · Score: 1

    Students of wealthier families tend to do better

    Also, and perhaps more important, families who do better in school tend to end up wealthier.

  14. Re:The inevitability of gradualism on Religious Affiliation Shrinking In the US · · Score: 1

    No, because in battles between the religious and non-religious, the first has an advantage of being more dedicated, easier to control, and less afraid of dying.

  15. Re: 23 down, 77 to go on Religious Affiliation Shrinking In the US · · Score: 1

    Religion is outdated nonsense that causes wars and suffering.

    Religion doesn't cause wars, but it makes it easier to fight them. After all, soldiers who don't mind dying are very valuable in battle.

  16. Re:why wait for that? on Beware the Ticking Internet of Things Security Time Bomb · · Score: 1

    Most devices will sit behind a router with NAT and/or firewall. They can phone out, but you can't reach them from the outside.

  17. Re:We need governmental regulation of IoT security on Beware the Ticking Internet of Things Security Time Bomb · · Score: 1

    So, all foreign made products should have their source code handed to the NSA so they can check for weak security ?

  18. Re:On the bright side... on Firefox 38 Arrives With DRM Required To Watch Netflix · · Score: 2

    So where are you doing your decryption ?

  19. Re:Bad news to all these recycled water protesters on California Gets Past the Yuck Factor With "Toilet To Tap" Water Recycling · · Score: 1

    The length of the path makes a difference. The longer the waste products stay in a lake, river, or in the ground, the bigger the chance that some organism will interact with it, and break it down.

  20. Re:Great. Let's sit here and wait for the next wav on Ice Loss In West Antarctica Is Speeding Up · · Score: 1

    too much input from "Zealots" (those who agree blindly and emphatically).

    Easily confused with the well-informed agreer, who also appears empathic, but is not blind.

  21. Re:Fucking Sellouts on Firefox 38 Arrives With DRM Required To Watch Netflix · · Score: 1

    And this is the mindset that will eternally keep Linux from ever having any major inroads on the desktop.

    Fine with me. That makes it an uninteresting target for malware.

  22. Re:How does it work ? on Firefox 38 Arrives With DRM Required To Watch Netflix · · Score: 1

    I think that's the point of having the DRM module closed source and undocumented.

    That's not much of a deterrent, if the interface is documented, and you can feed an encrypted stream in, and clear stream comes out.

  23. How does it work ? on Firefox 38 Arrives With DRM Required To Watch Netflix · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Is there an explanation of how this works ? At the end of the rendering pipeline shouldn't there be an unencrypted frame for display, and couldn't somebody it just grab it from there ?

  24. Re:Great. Let's sit here and wait for the next wav on Ice Loss In West Antarctica Is Speeding Up · · Score: 1

    What exactly is a "climate change denier"?

    It's another way of saying AGW denier. Not literally correct, but commonly used.

  25. Re:Almonds, rice, and alfalfa drink 80% of rainfal on California Gets Past the Yuck Factor With "Toilet To Tap" Water Recycling · · Score: 1

    So you want to spray sewage over the almond trees instead ?