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User: xilmaril

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Comments · 199

  1. Re:What A Mess on Pakistan Court Orders Facebook Ban Over Mohammed Images · · Score: 1

    K, now draw a picture of muhammed taking a load in the face, and put it on your fridge. Now walk down the street. No bullets? Didn't think so.

    Now get either picture published in the wrong place, or show it to the wrong group of crazy nutjobs, and I'm pretty sure they'll try to shoot you. To make it easier for you to think of an example, think of "The South". It's not a fair characterization of the southern states of america, but there have certainly been examples.

    admittedly, the "wrong place" for a picture of jesus isn't any international newspaper... but that's probably more the result of the relative socioeconomic situations of the places where christianity and islam are most widespread.

  2. Re:What A Mess on Pakistan Court Orders Facebook Ban Over Mohammed Images · · Score: 1

    Plenty. Yet if I draw a Jesus taking a load in the face, I can walk down the street reasonably sure that I'm not going to get shot.

    How 'bout that?

    K, now draw a picture of muhammed taking a load in the face, and put it on your fridge. Now walk down the street. No bullets? Didn't think so.

    Now get either picture published in the wrong place, or show it to the wrong group of crazy nutjobs, and I'm pretty sure they'll try to shoot you. To make it easier for you to think of an example, think of "The South". It's not a fair characterization of the southern states of america, but there have certainly been examples.

  3. The actual article on Purple Pokeberries Yield Cheap Solar Power · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100429141430.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+(ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News)

    The summary link is to a blog, which gives a short not too useful summary and then links to this Science Daily article.

    I like how Science Daily includes APA and MLA citation information at the bottom of their articles. Also, it seems like the fiber-based solar cells this article is about are the development, and the purple pokeberries are one of many possible natural or artificial dyes which could be used.

    It's a shame that the article tells us nothing about how the fiber-based solar cells work. Here is some information on that:
    http://www.fibercellinc.com/Technology.html

    The patent is with the EPO (european parliament patent office), so if anyone could find that, it'd be rad.

  4. Re:There are problems with this on UK University Researchers Must Make Data Available · · Score: 3, Informative

    Does this mean every biology, chemistry, physics, and engineering research group (I'm talking about grad students and postdocs, here) would have to open their lab notebooks to anyone who asked?

    Researchers who ply their trade on the cutting edge of science live in perpetual fear of being "scooped" by another group who publishes their discovery first. These are sometimes literally "races." So now a group at one university could demand access to the notebooks of a group at another university? And vice versa?

    Not at all.

    It means they have access to each others results and source data when published (once the group is done researching this phase, and is ready to publish). There's no "opening notebooks", simply because that's a terrible metaphor for how data is collected these days.

  5. Re:Here We Go ... on US Justice Dept. Investigates IT Hiring Practices · · Score: 1

    Very true! I remember this one job posting asking for 10 years experience with JAVA, when it had only existed as a product for 5 years! I think part of the problem is that IT people don't hire IT people in large companies, its the HR people. And HR people game the system to make themselves look the best, not hire the best people for the job.

    hey, I heard about that too! ...in a dilbert book.

  6. Re:5th year? on Chicago Mayor Calls For "Brainiac High" · · Score: 1

    The problem is that the beancounters can't "measure" this. In this day and age, "accountability" is the keyword. Standardized tests give numbers. You can compare those to other numbers. Letting students actually do shit and create things doesn't results in numbers you can compare to other numbers.

    That's the real issue.

    Which really bugs me, because there are other numbers they should be using. % of graduating class which go into particular types of post secondary programs, % of graduating class which finish those programs, % of graduating class who make above poverty wages 5/10/20 years after graduating.

    These are the important numbers, they're just hard to get, so we use easy to measure but largely useless numbers instead, like mean and median grades on a committee-written series of tests. I have never met anyone who works in education who thinks this is a good idea...

  7. Re:the more attention you give morons... on Man Sues Neighbor Claiming Wi-Fi Made Him Sick · · Score: 1

    This is just one step away from sueing your neighbour because he refuses to paint his house green claiming that 'the wavelength of light emitted by his house is caussing me severe pain'

    Oh, real nice. These nutballs have enough fucked up ideas without you tossing color specific photophobia into the mix.

    Just kidding, I'm sure no one would be stupid enough to claim that a certain frequency of light caused them physical problems, unless of course it really did...

    xeroderma pigmentosum a rare pigmentary and atrophic autosomal recessive disease in which extreme cutaneous sensitivity to ultraviolet light results from an enzyme deficiency in the repair of DNA damaged by ultraviolet light. It begins in childhood, with early development of excessive freckling, telangiectases, keratomas, papillomas, and malignancies in sun-exposed skin, severe opthalmologic abnormalities, and, in some cases, neurological disorders.

    That's... really not the same as what we were talking about. Not even a little.

  8. Re:My only question is... on Warner Brothers Hiring Undercover Anti-Pirates · · Score: 2, Insightful

    yeah you pay their cheques... and yeah, we can get cheques elsewhere

    tell me why your new employer should trust you after you betrayed your old employer.

    Because they have no idea. wikileaks and the like are anonymous, and if that's not enough protection for you, you won't post it there.

    tell me why he keeps you around after he's pumped you dry of anything useful you could tell him.

    If you got hired based on your insider knowledge of a few secrets, as opposed to insider knowledge of techniques and development practices, you're absolutely right.

    tell me how you stop the word spreading around that you are high maintaince, high risk.

    By never starting it, obviously.

  9. Re:Wow on Dell To Leave China For India · · Score: 1

    Fail and history 101 a thousand times.

    In OP 'safer environment conductive to enterprise', if quoted correctly, actually means 'cheaper environment...' with untouchables.

    Not to be depressing up our thread, but... they won't let untouchables have important jobs like chip manufacturing. The untouchables are several ranks too low in Indian society to allow that.

    Luckily, due largely to the outlawing of the caste system some time ago, the harsh treatment of untouchables seems to be waning, at least in urban centers, so this might not even be a sensical distinction between potential employees in high tech industries in India anymore.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalit#Social_status_of_Dalits

  10. Re:Wow on Dell To Leave China For India · · Score: 1

    Have you ever asked a Taiwanese person, "Do you consider yourself Chinese?"

    I have, and the answer was always yes.

    My Taiwanese roommate violently disagrees with you. YMMV.

  11. Re:Wow on Dell To Leave China For India · · Score: 1

    A lot, possibly the majority, of items marked "Made in Taiwan" are simply transshipped from the mainland.

    Not that this would surprise me, but... how can you tell? citation please?

    No really, anybody, if this is true I'd like to know.

  12. Re:Reply on Can Ubuntu Save Online Banking? · · Score: 1

    hibernate your normal OS, it will restart to your previous state

    seriously though, while this is a generally good idea, once you put all that stuff on a cd, you lose any and all ability to patch the software. Meaning that if the bank puts out a CD with firefox version X, and two months later a serious vulnerability is found, all those users will be forcedly be using an unsafe version, without means to patch (unless at every update the bank mails a fresh CD, at which point users will be confused as to which cd to use). Sure the browser goes right to the bank website, so getting the browser infected would be a small challenge.. but still.

    I would think it still is orders of magnitude better then using their normal windows/IE installs, but this way somewhere in 2020 people will be still using FF 3.5 and *buntu 9.10 for their banking..

    So set firefox to check for updates first... but really, the target audience of this live cd isn't updating their software every 2 months, or year, so I think your argument isn't quiet spot on.

  13. Re:Well, what did they expect? on Wikileaks Receiving Gestapo Treatment? · · Score: 1

    And remember if you haven't done anything wrong you have nothing to hide.

    So how many curtains do you have on your bedroom windows?

    Fewer than pedestrians would like.

  14. Re:Doesn't matter what country you are in... on Wikileaks Receiving Gestapo Treatment? · · Score: 1

    As a young person I had to drop my health coverage because I can not afford it. I rarely go to the doctor;

    But look at the bright side - under ObamaCare your premiums will go up 10% (by the White House estimate), and you'll be fined $750 by the IRS when you drop that coverage you can't afford. Yay, everybody wins! And you'll get to provide proof that your health insurance meets government standards as part of you tax returns - woo hoo!

    The fine isn't applied to people under a certain income, who can't get health insurance for less than a certain percent of their income, etc. I believe it's above the poverty line and 8%, respectively, although it was 400% of poverty wages in a previous draft. Shame that got changed.

    More actual info:
    http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/03/20103224250561653.html

  15. Re:Wow on NY To Replace IT Vendors With State Workers · · Score: 1

    In what ways is France's healthcare better than the United State? Seriously?

    Cost (11.2% of GDP or US$3,926 per capita) in France vs (15.2% of GDP or US$6,347 per capita) for the United States

    And just about everything else:

    Life Expectancy
    Abortion Rate (irony!)
    Deaths from Cancer
    Heart Disease, Obesity
    # of Physicians per 1000 people
    Teenage Pregnancy

    Any questions?

  16. Re:Well, this seems subpar. on US Gov't. Ending Its Hands-Off-the-Internet Stance · · Score: 1

    It certainly doesn't cost $0 to pass a bill... especially one which Hilary Clinton tried to pass when her husband was in office, and got completely and thoroughly shut down on. And how was it treated?

    this huge bill is a massive top-down, bureaucratic command-and-control system that would meticulously govern virtually every aspect of the delivery and the financing of health care services for the American people.
    -http://www.heritage.org/research/healthcare/tp00.cfm

    People who say that business should be free of government competition are full of crap, because they pretend that the government should just regulate. Except they don't like regulation either.

  17. Re:Promotion on An Artist's View of the Modern Music Biz · · Score: 1

    Does a chef need to work at someone's restaurant? No, he could open his own. Does a doctor need to join a group? No, he can open his own practice. An electrician could run his own business instead of working for a firm. In each case, many (most) people go the route that provides them the most financial security, working for someone else.

    I was going to tell you that all of these professions are mostly self employed, since that's the impression I grew up with, but I looked it up, and it's actually around 6-9% for each field who are self employed.

    I guess you're right. Pity.

  18. Re:Ending human trafficking for the forced sex tra on Futuristic Sex Robots Now Just "Sex Robots" · · Score: 1

    if there's ever eventually a product that genuinely meets this need for a large enough number of people, it'll basically end the economic viability of forced sex labour.

    Wow... you just made me a (hopefully vocal) supporter of sexbot companies. I mean, I had nothing against them before, but it never occured to me that they could provide a massive social benefit.

    This is gonna lead to some weird conversations.

  19. Re:Are women pushing men out of nursing? on Not Enough Women In Computing, Or Too Many Men? · · Score: 5, Interesting

    No, men just not that interested in being nurses, unless they're gay.

    bullshit.

    I've got a lot of family members who work various positions in local hospitals, and my sister just went through a medical lab assistant course, and agrees with what I'm saying here.

    Saying that men aren't interested is BS, because they're high paying jobs and you spend every class surrounded by ladies. it sounds like a great scam. But when you get there, everyone thinks you're 'just precious' and you end up being the damn bouncer and guy who picks up heavy things in an emergency room, which isn't exactly a job with good promotion potential.

    There are a lot of guys who want a stable well paying job with fairly low risk and nice stat holidays. A lot more of them would be getting into the field if there wasn't such a social stigma.

  20. MOD UP: Re:Rednecks? on Environmental Chemicals Are Feminizing Boys · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Private school teachers are paid even less, but then they're not expected to deal with violent kids, and most of the children either actually want to be there, or their parents force them to want to be there.

    If we started a voucher system and private schools had to accept public-school-quality students, they'd suck just as bad.

    I've got a family member and a substantial number of friends just entering the teaching profession, and they all agree with this strongly. Why is this modded troll? In fact, I thought this was common knowledge, that private schools refuse to deal with the troublesome, disabled, and malnourished, and so don't face most of the problems which plague public schools.

  21. Re:Lets just... on DoJ Recommends NY Court Reject Google Book Deal · · Score: 1

    Yeah, JK is rollin in the dough. she's also the most popular author on the planet, for about 8 years straight, and basically introduced half this generation to reading as a pleasure activity. She might not deserve as much as she got (about $200 million last year), but she still deserves a big stinking load of money.

    There's plenty of fat which ought to be cut, the copyright system is broken horribly, I agree with the rest of slashdot on that. But JK Rowling is the shit, don't pretend otherwise.

  22. Re:radial distance? on Strange New Objects Seen In Saturn's Rings · · Score: 1

    Obviously I haven't read that paper, nor any related papers on the subject ...

    But wouldn't you expect to see pieces of the rings coalesces into larger objects (I'm guessing under the same forces that make planets) and then be destroyed by gravity continually?

    No, while I haven't read the papers either, I can confirm that gravity will not be the force pulling objects apart, at least not directly, as it is an attractive force. Also, the forces that make planets are generally agreed to be massively more powerful than anything going on in the rings of saturn, although if they are also just gravity is beyond me.

    By simple logic, the rings will settle into something resembling an equilibrium, as they haven't all turned to dust or clumped into one piece over the many eons they've had to float around. Maybe asteroids are a significant force in breaking up the debris?

  23. Re:One Wallet on Pirate Party Coming To Canada · · Score: 1

    That argument only applies for countries which don't produce any copyrighted works of their own, or do so in trivial quantities relative to external markets. That isn't true for any of the countries where the pirate party is popping up.

    actually, canadians mostly consume american pop culture over their own. Since non-local canadian music is a fringe market, that is unelss I'm listening to a band play in a bar in town, they're probably not from this country), copyright protection laws really don't do much for canadian artists. It's not like the average small-gig playing band I've heard of minds if you pirate them, since they desperately need all the publicity they can get to drum up ticket sales.

  24. Re:Really? on Where Does a Geek Find a Social Life? · · Score: 1

    I think the field is much wider than you're imagining. I study at a university which is mostly filled with ladies. The engineering department is mostly filled with lads. This isn't a disparity I like, but it seems to promote a lot of males clustering together in the faculty. As a result, I know a fair number of lads interested in lads in the technical fields, and the way to meet them is the exact same. Go to events which interest you, whether that be renn faires or technical conferences, and try to stumble into a few gay dudes there, then network from them. There's really no better way to do it I'm aware of, certainly not dating sites or clubs, as neither of those are too conducive to technical discussions. Maybe start up a conversation about analog filter design on a dating site and ignore anyone who can't hold there own, but that'd be a bit more exclusive than you probably want. I'm aware that homophobia is also widespread in the technical fields, but hey, did your mom ever tell you life would be easy?

  25. Re:Urban Transit on US Plans To Bulldoze 50 Shrinking Cities · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You know, It may be true statistically speaking but I don't fear driving a car as I do standing on the street minding my own business while two idiots shoot at each other while trying to run away at the same time and emptying 8 or 9 or more rounds of ammo each.

    I've seen it happen live on multiple occasions, one of which I was less then 5 foot from one of the gang bangers who got shot. I'm not scared of guns, I own my own, I wouldn't have any reservations shooting someone to protect myself or someone else

    I've got a hot tip for you: if you've seen this multiple times, move somewhere that isn't a hellhole.

    Abandon your worldly possessions to do so if needs be. A place where this happens is not human-friendly.