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User: Grendel+Drago

Grendel+Drago's activity in the archive.

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  1. But that's just the problem. on Wikipedia Announces Tighter Editorial Control · · Score: 1

    Either you end up having centralized control, and all the benefits of the wiki system go flying out the door, or you have a centralized validated version which ends up so far behind the original as to be useless (see Nupedia). Or you make moderators out of everyone who's logged in, and you end up asking who watches the watchmen, ad infinitum.

    Funny thing is---this is a solved problem. Or, at least, there's been considerable work done toward solving it. Read about webs of trust---it's a scalable, noncentralized way of validating content. I think it'd fit in wonderfully with the Wiki.

    --grendel drago

  2. Zero-tolerance policy? on Wikipedia Announces Tighter Editorial Control · · Score: 1

    There's a policy against personal attacks; there's a very strong policy against legal threats. What sort of harrassment were you talking about?

    --grendel drago

  3. Oh, fuck you. on Pentagon Wants Screenplays From Scientists · · Score: 1

    Yeah, like our Jewish George W. Bush. And our Jewish Dick Cheney. And our Jewish Karl Rove. And our Jewish Rupert Murdoch. And our Jewish Grover Norquist, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter and so forth.

    And their opposition, like the not-at-all Jewish George Soros or Noam Chomsky.

    Here's a tip: sobbing "you meanie anti-semites!" every time someone criticizes the administration isn't going to fucking work. Now scram. Shouldn't they be waiting for you on Little Green Footballs or Free Republic?

    --grendel drago

  4. Lazy grammarians. on Pentagon Wants Screenplays From Scientists · · Score: 1

    You, sir, are fighting an uphill battle. Take some sacks of the words "pique" and "peek" to distribute among the heedless masses, and try---try!---not to lose heart.

  5. Post-war America. on Pentagon Wants Screenplays From Scientists · · Score: 1

    The US took off economically after WWII largely because of the GI bill, which, more than anything else, created the American middle class.

    --grendel drago

  6. Ha, ha. No. on Pentagon Wants Screenplays From Scientists · · Score: 1

    Women say they like geeks. But it's more likely they'll go for the musclebound alpha-jock just itching to slip her the roofies, then come crying to you, asking why, oh why she couldn't fix him.

    Normal, non-geek women are not for us. It's not meant to be.

    --grendel drago

  7. Building leather landing strips for kinky Martians on Pentagon Wants Screenplays From Scientists · · Score: 1

    You mean they expect it to prove that the goddamn dirty perverts did it?

    --grendel drago

  8. Free? Hardly. on Is It Wrong to Love Microsoft? · · Score: 1
  9. Nonsense. on Is It Wrong to Love Microsoft? · · Score: 1

    They're branded, they have a name to defend. If your IBM laptop starts pouring forth blue smoke, you'd then feel that IBM sucked. IBM cares if you think they suck. eMachines cares less.

    That's the rationale, I'd suppose. Not terribly borne out by those IBM-branded hard drives with the nasty habit of crashing, but you're really paying for the label in any case.

    --grendel drago

  10. The Megahertz Myth. on Is It Wrong to Love Microsoft? · · Score: 2, Informative

    Well, then again, you might want to consider that a 1.7GHz Pentium M, for a lot of tasks, is faster than a 3GHz Pentium 4. Not that this has anything to do with the Steve's Reality Distortion Field, but his claims were at least plausible, if not correct.

    --grendel drago

  11. Let's get circular! on Is It Wrong to Love Microsoft? · · Score: 1

    "Frabjous".

  12. It's worse than you think. on Is It Wrong to Love Microsoft? · · Score: 1

    Half the population thinks that "Ordinary tomatoes do not contain genes, while genetically modified tomatoes do.".

    I despair when I think of the level of education of my countrymen.

    --grendel drago

  13. That's not an answer. on Is It Wrong to Love Microsoft? · · Score: 1

    Hey, what do you call it when someone ignores another's words and attacks them for who they are, not what they say? Something like... oh, right. Ad hominem. I think you fail it.

    --grendel drago

  14. Windows and lspci. on Best Linux Hardware Diagnostics? · · Score: 1

    I remember having to dig into the registry entries to get PCI IDs of devices, then looking them up on sourceforge. But those days, astonishingly, are past. Windows XP's Device Manager has a nice bit where it has a "Details" tab, with "Hardware IDs". For instance, the 3C905-TX in this computer reads as PCI\VEN_10B7&DEV_9200&SUBSYS_100010B7&REV_6C
    . And yes, it does this for unknown devices as well. So no more registry digging.

    The problem with their "recovery mode" being seriously weaker than the equivalent linux console boot... well, that's a whole 'nother issue.

    --grendel drago

  15. Again, more slowly. on Equal Time For Creationism · · Score: 1

    Let me say this again. If you were any random person in an industrialized nation---including during times of war!---in the last century, you had a better chance of not dying a violent death than your pre-modern forbears. Yes, including terrorism, and dictators, and World Wars. You don't know how bad it used to be.

    I'm not saying that life has been ideal in the twentieth century. I'm saying that you don't know, or refuse to imagine, how bad it was before we got modern, got industrialized.

    Read Guns, Germs and Steel if you don't believe me. I'm at work, so I don't have the book with me. But I can dig up a cite if you're interested.

    --grendel drago

  16. They envy the Jews. on Equal Time For Creationism · · Score: 1

    Really, they're just jealous of the Jews, 'cause the Jews (a) were set on fire and whatnot a lot more recently, and (b) have a tradition of huge, badass beards. Take that, Christianity!

    --grendel drago

  17. What? Huh? on Equal Time For Creationism · · Score: 1

    Did you just avoid answering his question? I think you did, you weasel! He asked why creationism is being presented as an alternative to evolution, and you said that the only place where they differ is as to the origin of the first life. This is clearly not the case: creationists point to "irreducibly complex" structures not present in earlier organisms; the idea is that we could not have come from simpler creatures without a superhero from outer space tweaking the verniers of biology.

    --grendel drago

  18. Mu. on Equal Time For Creationism · · Score: 1

    Your question "What (or who) started it all?" isn't a meaningful one. "A superhero from outer space started it all!" isn't even a meaningful statement, because (as I suspect you'd want to do), you can't get from there to "die homos die".

    In any case, we're so far from a God sitting over your shoulder and making your crops grow, smiting your enemies and telling you which foot to set first in the john that it's nothing short of laughable. It's funny how God keeps getting pushed back to the edges of our knowledge. First it's "God is in the sky, because we can't go there". Now it's "God is before the big bang, because we can't see that far back".

    Your belief system is incompatible with science. It's ugly when you try to foist them together.

    --grendel drago

  19. Yes, it *is* sad. on Equal Time For Creationism · · Score: 1

    I nearly cried.

  20. Anthropic principles. on Equal Time For Creationism · · Score: 1

    Careful---there's a difference between "if we are here by an unlikely process, there must have been some force at work to place us here!" and "if we weren't here by this unlikely process, we'd hardly be able to mope about it, now would we?".

    --grendel drago

  21. Issues with Trek. on Equal Time For Creationism · · Score: 2, Informative

    Eh, I have some issues with Star Trek's new-ageism and incoherent dualism. Bless you and your rant, Justin B Rye...

    Still, that Patrick Stewart sure can deliver a line, can't he.

    --grendel drago

  22. Pi and the bible. on Equal Time For Creationism · · Score: 1

    1 Kings 7:23.

    Of course, you can wrangle a way to make it make sense if you look hard enough. Or even come up with a plausible way for it to be a rounding error. Or, y'know, a guess. There's plenty else to mock in the Bible.

    --grendel drago

  23. Hilarious! on Equal Time For Creationism · · Score: 1

    Oh man, that's frickin' great.

    --grendel drago

  24. Oh, please. on Equal Time For Creationism · · Score: 1

    Find a recent U.S. high school graduate who took an all-important civics class. Ask them, under our system of governance (a) where do our rights come from? (Answer: no, the government doesn't give them to us; we have them because we're people.) (b) what is the purpose of government? (Answer: to preserve and defend the rights of its citizens which, as mentioned above, they already have.)

    You'll be lucky if they don't start talking about the "administrative branch". What do you think they'd get out of a philosophy class in high school? High school classes can barely teach kids to memorize things; how on earth would you propose to teach them this vague but alluring "critical thinking"?

    And how does philosophy, if they manage to learn it, teach critical thinking?

    --grendel drago

  25. Optimal line width. on Equal Time For Creationism · · Score: 1

    Actually, it's easier to read that way, because the eye's natural width for skipping back to the beginning of the next line is sixty or sixty-five characters; that's why newspapers use columns of approximately that width. Yes, there's more scrolling down, but I do find it quicker to scan.

    Ha. And people said it was futile to read the TeXbook...

    --grendel drago