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User: Wandering+Idiot

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Comments · 255

  1. Re:The Average Cat on Software Combines Thousands of Online Images Into One That Represents Them All · · Score: 1

    So, it's basically a recreation of what Google's already using for their Reverse Image Search with the parameters set a bit looser?

  2. Re:Watch them get ignored on Research Unveils Improved Method To Let Computers Know You Are Human · · Score: 1

    Apparently you don't use many free file download sites, sticking the CAPTCHAs or human-proving codes inside ads of various types has been a thing for a while now.

  3. Re:Sigh on News Aggregator Fark Adds Misogyny Ban · · Score: 1

    "You have to tolerate my bigotry and intolerance, or you're the real oppressor!!1" is such a tired and misguided argument I'm amazed at how proud idiots always seem to be when they make it.

  4. Re:Sigh on News Aggregator Fark Adds Misogyny Ban · · Score: 1

    I'm pretty sure all the things you just stated are basically empirically true, although those are overly simplistic and broad phrasings of them, almost to the point of uselessness. I'm sorry any formulation of political or social policy more complex than "burn down the existing civilization, I'm sure things will be magically all better then!" rankles you.

  5. Re:BarbaraHudson: Step inside & backup your b. on Comcast Training Materials Leaked · · Score: 1

    Oh wow, it's the frothingly-insane hosts file obsessed guy! You're still around! I haven't been by /. much the last few years, but this is like seeing an old, rambling, combative, monomaniacal friend, of sorts.

  6. Re:I am Woman! on Marvel's New Thor Will Be a Woman · · Score: 1

    Jesus, why did I have you marked as a friend? It must have been some purely tech-related issue we agreed on. You probably whined when the Archie comics started introducing black characters back in the 70's, too.

  7. Re:well on Most Tor Keys May Be Vulnerable To NSA Cracking · · Score: 1

    Yes, this is a sane and measured response. Get off this site and go back to Stormfront where you belong.

  8. Re:like Windows? on Ask Slashdot: When Is the User Experience Too Good? · · Score: 1

    Explain where he's wrong, then.

  9. Re:Sounds reasonable to me. on FiOS User Finds Limit of 'Unlimited' Data Plan: 77 TB/Month · · Score: 1

    It's not reasonable, if it's non-commercial use, and they advertised "unlimited" usage.

    They want to have it both ways, to say it's ulimited for marketing purposes, when there are in fact limits they just don't make available.

  10. Re:FTL Doesn't Mean Reverse Time on How To Communicate Faster-Than-Light · · Score: 1

    This isn't the first comment along these lines I've seen in the comments section. Dear god, has the level of science education on /. really fallen this low, or am I being pranked by belated April-foolsers?

    Sending a message back in time from your own perspective does require bouncing it back from a moving reference frame to my knowledge, but is a valid consequence of FTL communication within special relativity.

    Stop assuming you already know everything and can dismiss anything you don't understand; it just makes you look stupid. You don't appear to have even heard of special relativity beyond the word "observer", so I'm not sure why you think you can overturn the work of pretty much every physicist who's looked at the subject beyond unwarranted hubris.

  11. Re:April fools again? on How To Communicate Faster-Than-Light · · Score: 1

    Again, no it isn't, if by "comms" you mean any type of useful information transfer. You appear to have severely misunderstood the principles involved.

    Functionally, quantum entanglement is the equivalent of placing single red and blue balls in separate boxes without looking at them, sending one box to China, and then opening your box. If it's the red ball, you now know the one in China is blue, and vice-versa, despite the great distance between them.

    Now mechanically, the quantum equivalent is considerably more exotic, and involves either instantaneous transmission of quantum states or hidden variables that predetermine the result, but as far as actual utility, it's the same thing, and you can't use it to actually send any new data.

  12. Re:April fools again? on How To Communicate Faster-Than-Light · · Score: 1

    BTW Faster than light communications are already here

    No, they aren't. I would suggest that you haven't been paying as close attention to the quantum computer "malarchy" as you think....

  13. Re:For the umpteenth time... on Is Silicon Valley Morally Bankrupt and Toxic? · · Score: 1

    This is a pretty standard communism apology. No matter how many times communism has been implemented in a state, tyranny results. But apologists always say, "Well, it just wasn't done right."

    Interestingly, the proposed end-state Communist utopia is pretty much the same as a Libertarian utopia, if you strip out the buzzwords. The totalitarian stage (even if it's never been implemented exactly as Marx envisioned) is explicitly not the end goal, but envisioned as a necessary step along the way. Of course, no attempt in the real world has actually gotten past that stage, just as the efforts of economic libertarians are likely to just leave us stuck in a state of dystopian corporate feudalism if actually implemented.

  14. Re:The Answer summed up: on Book Review: Why Does the World Exist? · · Score: 1

    The vast majority of people used to think the stars were all much smaller objects than the Sun too, what's you're point?

  15. Re:The Answer summed up: on Book Review: Why Does the World Exist? · · Score: 1

    PhD in Mathematics.

    So did you not have to take any basic biology courses along the way, or did you just ignore them because they conflict with your theological preferences or something?

    All known organisms have DNA or RNA, evolution (including speciation) is an observed fact... the "proof" you're asking for is the evidence gathered from the past several hundred years of life sciences. You're in front of a PC, go Google some answers.

    Unless you're playing some silly semantic game with the meaning of "proof" and "purpose", in which case you're merely really annoying, rather than extremely ignorant.

  16. Re:Positive thing on 3D Printing On a Microscopic Scale · · Score: 1

    Land would still be pretty important, if you want to have any place to store all your snazzy printed items. And y'know, sleep.

  17. Re:The real losers on Stratfor Breach Leads To Over $700k In Fraud · · Score: 1

    How would they "pass the cost on" in any competitive market, since only some companies would be affected? Wouldn't the merchants' prices already be near the maximum/optimum? It would cut into their profit margins, not raise the prices.

  18. Re:Blogger only - it seems on Google Begins Country-Specific Blog Censorship · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm as concerned with the US slipping towards totalitarianism as the next guy, but for the love of god please shut the fuck up with the stupid FEMA meme.

  19. Re:Gee, I wonder what Slashdot will think on Pirate Bay Founders Lose Final Appeal · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Your car analogies are *idiotic*. The actual analogy would be a device that you can point at any car, which creates an exact copy(minus any personal items) back in your garage. It doesn't affect the original owner of the car, aside from resale value, which was never guaranteed. The device would obviously be a miraculous boon in many ways, and the car manufacturers would find themselves in the exact same position as the **AAs and be falling over themselves to push for ever-stronger penalties and more heavy-handed preventative measures against people copying their designs, and would call the scanning "stealing" (and it would still be a misnomer). And yes, their old business model would be rendered rather obsolete. Independant groups would undoubtably arise to design their own cars which could be freely copied, although without the money and expertise of the large manufacturers behind them, most people would probably still perfer copies of the big names, at least initially. Things like custom-designed cars for each person and susbcription services where you can go into a showroom to scan a new car each month, or have the car dealers' scanners deliver new cars automatically, would undoubtably become a larger part of the business of the car companies that survived the transition.

    (I should note I'm ignoring negative exernalities [increased pollution, etc.] for the purposes of this analogy, as digital data transfers are a bit different from physical objects in that sense. You could actually make a decent connection between increased traffic congestion due to free cars and increased bandwidth usage due to piracy, though. Still a net positive on that front in my opinion, especially as things like legal streaming services are making more bandwidth necessary anyway)

  20. Re:Bullshit on Edison Would Have Loved New Light Bulb Law, Says His Great-Grandson · · Score: 1

    Yes, that's perfectly practical. Are you high?

  21. Re:Steve Jobs on In New Zealand, a System To Watch for Disabled Parking Violators · · Score: 1

    Passing laws that force people to treat others a certain way and punish them if they don't is going to have the opposite effect you're looking for

    So, if we have punishments for murder, you're going to go on a killing spree just to teach us and our oppresive "rules" a lesson?

    I smell a disconnected-from-reality libertarian. Sure is nice in that hypothetical utopia you've constructed in your head, along with the Marxists, and the Reactionary Monarchists, and everyone else who thinks all problems are nails and their one overly simplistic idea is a hammer. Too bad reality generally doesn't work that way, but why let that stop an excellent source of smugness?

  22. Re:Oh Mayans. on Hobbit Film Trailer Posted Online · · Score: 1

    Because it's ancient, and foreign, and therefore must contain mystic wisdom. That's pretty much it. No, I don't really get it either.

  23. Re:This sorta makes me ill. on Undersea Neutrino Observatory To Be Second-Largest Human Structure · · Score: 1

    Yeah, man, understanding basic physical processes couldn't possible lead to better technologies/solutions down the road. We know everything we need to now, let's just stop all scientific inquiry, or maybe we should have done that in the 50's, or at the beginning of the industrial revolution, or hell, once we found out how to make fire, did we really need anything else?

    If countries were spending like 50% of their GDP on projects like this, you might have a point, but you and I both know the expenditures are relatively miniscule on the level of nation/international budgets, and if you didn't know that and were actually serious about the "trillions of dollars" nonsense, you're woefully uninformed to be commenting on the issue (You wouldn't be alone, mind you- I remember seeing a US poll indicating a significant portion of the populace thinks NASA's share of the national budget is something like 20%, when it's closer to 0.5%*). The basic research into subatomic physics is what made possible the development of nuclear reactors, which are likely going to be increasingly important to our energy future once the cheap oil runs out. Similar for better solar panels, more efficient engines, etc. Basically, if you want to solve technological problems, you should be arguing for *more* fundamental, not-immediately-profitable/usable scientific research, not less. The amount of physics and math graduates being sucked into jobs in the financial industry because they pay so well in comparison to actual useful work is a far bigger drain on our ability to deal with the future than fundamental scientific research, in my opinion.

    * Similarly, the National Science Foundation is about 0.2%, and the amount of the Dept. of Energy's budget devoted to research, while less trivial to work out, likely comes to a similar percentage of overall expenditures.

  24. Re:What if it turned out the other way? on Greenpeace Breaks Into French Nuclear Plant · · Score: 1

    however I understand that you need a certain level of government for things like health, education, territorial protection (against harm, thief and invaders), roads, money and contract enforcement to raise above the middleageous swamp

    I'm not sure how that makes you a libertarian, capitalization or no. Everyone wants to "maximize personal freedom", or at least says they do. By current American conservative standards, your views practically make you a commie socialist.

  25. Re:What if it turned out the other way? on Greenpeace Breaks Into French Nuclear Plant · · Score: 0

    So, you're arguing in favor of compete sociopathy towards anyone not in your immediate family.

    Why do I get the feeling you're a Libertarian?