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User: ChrisMaple

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  1. Re:Poor people are poor because they're lazy on The Cognitive Cost of Poverty · · Score: 1

    By world standards, about half the people in the USA are rich. Want to try telling me that all their parents were in the USA's upper middle class?

  2. Re:FTFY on The Cognitive Cost of Poverty · · Score: 1

    When you make GENERALISATIONS about a group of people you are no better than the nazis or any other racist pigs.

    • Tall people can reach the top shelf more easily
    • Dark skinned people reflect less light
    • Small people can buy smaller clothing
    • People with broken legs have a hard time winning foot races
    • Nasty people make posts like yours
  3. Re:FTFY on The Cognitive Cost of Poverty · · Score: 1

    I have yet to see a place where free reading material was not available. I'm not too conceited to pull it out of a trash can if I don't want to go to a library. Last week's newspaper's crossword puzzle is educational, fun, and free. A deck of brand new playing cards is $3 but good for a lot of entertainment. A new radio is less than $10, a used one might be available free.

    If you can't have fun with nothing more than a pencil and paper (or even less expensively, with nothing more than friends), then you're dedicated to the misery you're earning.

  4. Re:Ahem... on The Cognitive Cost of Poverty · · Score: 2

    What loony world do you live in, that children should be regularly given soda and candy? I suspect it's the same world where they'll get the diseases that a poor diet causes.

  5. Re:FTFY on The Cognitive Cost of Poverty · · Score: 2

    One of the most effective ways to save money is to live with other people. 4 people sharing a small apartment means a great deal of money not spent, and sharing household duties means more free time.

  6. Re:5 years and compound interest = college on The Cognitive Cost of Poverty · · Score: 1

    Exploding college costs are a bubble inflated by government money. It won't last. For one thing, free and low cost college education for many fields is expanding, which undercuts and limits what colleges are going to be able to charge.

  7. Re:FTFY on The Cognitive Cost of Poverty · · Score: 1

    It used to be standard to hear of parents who deprived themselves of nearly every pleasure to provide their children with sufficient funds to attend college. This rarely happens now, and it's a sign of the growing fundamental lack of morality in the cohort of parents starting in the 1960s.

    The choice not to consume sodas and/or beer at the end of each day, to forgo that temporary pleasure in exchange for knowing that one is doing the right thing, is a moral decision that helps generate the reward called pride.

    It does not take substantial intelligence or training to realize that money not wasted is saved. It just takes character.

  8. Re:Teach a man to fish... on The Cognitive Cost of Poverty · · Score: 1

    You need to have money before you can learn to manage that money, but you won't know how to manage your money until you've got enough to hire someone who can teach you.

    Baloney. The less money I have, the more careful I am with what little remains. I don't need to be taught, when the wolf is at the door, to shut the door.

  9. Re:I suspect he's right. on Neil deGrasse Tyson Says Private Business Will Not Open the Space Frontier · · Score: 1

    The alternatives being presented are government funding Mars colonization or industry funding Mars colonization for profit. This does not exhaust the possibilities.

    An extremely rich individual or group of individuals could fund it. A charity or religion could fund it.

    The profit motive is not the only reason nongovernmental entities do things.

  10. Re:But how will it interact with other traffic? on Curiosity Goes Autonomous For the First Time · · Score: 1

    The past tense of pay is paid.

  11. Re:How accurate is the sea level rise figure? on Huge Canyon Discovered Under Greenland Ice · · Score: 2

    The rock and magma displaced when Greenland sank might (more or less) return from wherever it went. If that area were below the seabed immediately surrounding Greenland, the ocean in that area would get slightly deeper, partially counteracting the increased ocean level (probably about 1/3 in the long term.) However, islands near Greenland might sink along with the ocean floor.

    On the other hand, if the ocean floor near Greenland is relatively still, the closest islands might rise along with Greenland.

    I can imagine other mechanisms and affects, so it's by no means clear what will happen.

  12. Re:All can be fixed.... on Huge Canyon Discovered Under Greenland Ice · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    It's astonishing how quickly opponents of capitalism and freedom contradict themselves. If goods are cheap to manufacture, The manufacturer maximizes profits by changing the selling price in a series of decrements, in each decrement making new profits by selling to people unwilling to buy at the old price. Inevitably the price falls to a small multiple of the cost of manufacture, where most people who are interested can buy. For the rich owner of the means of production to fail to do so would mean that he is too stupid to maximize his profits.

    Historically, the concept of retirement for most people is a new thing, which has developed as the wealth made possible by capitalism has accumulated. Before that, people worked until they died.

  13. Re:Amended quote on Snowden Spoofed Top Officials' Identity To Mine NSA Secrets · · Score: 1

    It should not be possible to get access to classified material from outside a secured network, and it should not be possible to plug a portable drive into machine which holds classified data. Computers should be welded shut except for a single opening with 2 locks that need to be activated at the same time, with no single person having access to both keys. And so forth and so on.

    It's one thing for a person to go bad and be able to sneak out or memorize a few pages of sensitive data. It's quite another to have a security system so flawed that bulk compromises are possible. Critical people are being careless about security, and should be punished: by this I mean Snowden's bosses and those responsible for security at Booz-Allen.

  14. Re:Can somebody come up with a sensible name? on Un-Un-Pentium On Your Periodic Table of the Elements? · · Score: 1

    I prefer delirium.

  15. Re:so... on Un-Un-Pentium On Your Periodic Table of the Elements? · · Score: 1

    Your ignorance of American history, particularly the portion of the federal budget which is military, is astounding. Where do you think the money was going in 1944 or 1862?

  16. Re:so... on Un-Un-Pentium On Your Periodic Table of the Elements? · · Score: 1

    "Suddenly" is in this case a relative term, and could extend to a few months. Having several nuclear weapons at hand would be handy when a much larger and more powerful neighboring country is taken over by a loony dictator who starts amassing troops on your border.

  17. Re:so... on Un-Un-Pentium On Your Periodic Table of the Elements? · · Score: 1

    Grow up.

  18. Re:Asimov on The World Fair of 2014 According To Asimov (From 1964) · · Score: 1

    No surprise about his inability to make a credible female character. Asimov was a womanizer, and as such had no respect for women.

  19. Re:Why even classify? on The World Fair of 2014 According To Asimov (From 1964) · · Score: 1

    OK, throw away everything under one microgram.

  20. Re:One thing is for certain... on The World Fair of 2014 According To Asimov (From 1964) · · Score: 1

    Dishwashing machines were around in the 1950s.

    "TV dinners" were in existence in the 1950s. To claim that Asimov's prediction means that they'd still exist in 2013 is mistaking his meaning.

    Radioisotope batteries is a prediction of a specific mechanism entirely different from chemical batteries.

    Single purpose machines like the Roomba are not the general purpose devices implied by Asimov's prediction.

  21. Re:One thing is for certain... on The World Fair of 2014 According To Asimov (From 1964) · · Score: 1

    The refutation of solipsism is argumentum ad baculum.

    My understanding is that there's a psycho-chemical basis behind a person's feeling that he needs to find "something greater than himself", just as there is a psycho-chemical basis to much mental depression. This yearning for a greater thing makes a person vulnerable to accepting religious beliefs. This is a serious and occasionally deadly flaw, and ending it would constitute a cure.

  22. Re:One thing is for certain... on The World Fair of 2014 According To Asimov (From 1964) · · Score: 2

    - NovartoGlaxoSmithKline announcing the first pharmceutical cure for religion causes widespread riots in Pakistan and Alabama.

    Fun! - But I doubt that religion can be cured pharmaceutically. It isn't a medical condition...

    You missed the news. A while back - 6 months to 2 years - there was a news article finding a link between religious belief and the (chemical or genetic, I forget which) makeup of the body. That implies religious belief is subject to encouragement or discouragement by biochemical means.
    My opinion is that religious belief is a defect, and that ending it is indeed a cure. Regardless, a physical mechanism that promotes religious belief is something requiring careful thought.

  23. Remember when Avanti was created by stealing Cadence's source code, complete with bugs?

  24. Re:Tracking $$$$ on Cookieless Web Tracking Using HTTP's ETag · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    Your repeated claim that Obama is conservative is both dishonest and boring. Obama is a thieving leftist limited only by his incompetence and what he can get away with.

  25. Re:Firefox makes cache clearing difficult on Cookieless Web Tracking Using HTTP's ETag · · Score: 1

    rm -r /<your_home_directory>/.mozilla/firefox/<some_peculiar_directory_name>/Cache/* in Linux.