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User: waynemcdougall

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Comments · 217

  1. Easy Data retrieval on Thirty-Million-Page Backup of Humanity Headed To Moon Aboard Israeli Lander (cnet.com) · · Score: 3, Funny

    At least it will be easier to retrieve than the backups on my ZIP drive.

  2. At least Fermi is happy on CERN's New Collider Design Is Four Times Larger Than the LHC (vice.com) · · Score: 1

    At last: a solution to the Fermi paradox.

  3. Frey house? on The Graphic Art of 'Incredibles 2' (joshholtsclaw.com) · · Score: 1

    The Frey House? They told me it was destroyed. They *told me* it couldn't be repaired. Grrrrnahhhhh!

  4. Re::rubs thumb against forefinger: on YouTube is Testing Having Two Skippable Ads Back-To-Back (cnet.com) · · Score: 1

    Don't worry. That's at least 20 minutes in the future.

  5. Better pray that there's intelligent life up above on We May Be All Alone In the Known Universe, a New Oxford Study Suggests (fortune.com) · · Score: 2
  6. A complete uninstall? on ShadowBrokers Releases NSA UNITEDRAKE Manual That Targets Windows Machines (schneier.com) · · Score: 5, Funny

    Self-destruction? A complete self-uninstall - no registry entries left behind, no temporary files, DLL's lurking in system32, no empty folders?

    It's miracle software. NSA - sell your uninstaller and you can pay off the US National debt.

  7. That's so impressive on Former Astronaut Julie Payette To Be Canada's Next Governor General (www.cbc.ca) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    > Former astronaut Julie Payette will be the Queen's new representative in Canada, CBC News has confirmed.
    Wow. An astronaut

    > The 53-year-old Montrealer, who speaks six languages,

    Six? She has some smarts on top of the astronaut

    > Payette, who is also an accomplished athlete, pianist and choral singer

    What? No. Now this isn't fair. I guess, if I work a bit harder I could...ok, a LOT harder, I could,....

    > A computer engineer with a commercial pilot license,

    No. No no no no no.

    She makes me look like I didn't even try at life.

  8. Hang on a minute on Insider Trader Arrested After He Googled 'Insider Trading,' Authorities Allege · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'll read the fine article as a nice break from my assignment on file system design.

    I'll just close this tab on "Everything Hans Reiser Did Wrong and What to Avoid"

  9. Re:Better get started on that replacement... on The US Border Patrol Is Checking Detainees' Facebook Profiles (cnet.com) · · Score: 5, Informative

    Cynic in me says they are looking for someone who can be implicated as a terrorist supporter to be used to justify the ban.

    Funny thing about that...

    Trumps actual order has an exception for immigrants who are already in transit, viz section (e): "[...] when the person is already in transit and denying admission would cause undue hardship -- and it would not pose a risk to the security or welfare of the United States."

    So holding people up at US airports just some ICE pricks trying to make a false narrative to paint Trump in a bad light.

    I'd say you hadn't read the article you linked to, but since you quote it, and seem capable of English comprehension, I can only assume you are deliberately trying to mispresent the case. The "ICE pricks" are doing exactly what Trump has decreed. You conveniently left out the start of the section, which includes as the beginning...the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security may jointly determine to admit individuals to the United States as refugees on a case-by-case basis...[including] when the person is already in transit...

    So those 'ICE pricks' have no discretion. BOTH Secretaries of State AND Homeland Security must apply that "in transit exemption". AND they can't even do it by a class or group - they have to give approval for each individual. Before they can enter.

    AND this exception only applied to refugees. Not to tourists or people visiting their families.

  10. A rose by any other name... on Schiaparelli Mars Lander May Have Exploded On Impact, European Agency Says (npr.org) · · Score: 1

    If my mother was named Trace Gas orbiter, I'd try to bury my head in the sand too.

  11. Re:what? on Chemical-Releasing Bike Lock Causes Vomiting To Deter Thieves (bbc.com) · · Score: 3, Funny

    Our formula irreversibly ruins the clothes worn by the thief or any of the protection they may be wearing

    What about the bike? Doesn't this ruin the bike?

    We had to destroy the bike in order to save it.

    I love the smell of Skunklock in the morning. It's the smell of.....victory.

  12. You are so wrong. Re:Oh brother on Prosecutors Say Contractor Stole 50 Terabytes of NSA Data (zdnet.com) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    No.

    FIRST was this (and who knows what else). THEN there was Snowdon. This is important.

    One of the arguments in favour of Snowdon being an honourable whistleblower was this:

    If he was malicious, he would have quietly stilen the data and sold it to the highest bidder. Like this guy did. And Snowdon didn't.

    One of the (many) arguments in favour of Snowdon is that if he could *so easily* collect that information undetected, then other, malicious people could be doing so. And so it turns out. Snowdon alerted us to the weaknesses of the NSA security practices (amongst many other nobler services).

    Vindication. Again. It tastes sweet. But not as sweet as a pardon.

  13. Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus on Small Asteroid Discovered Orbiting Earth (cnn.com) · · Score: 1

    Just one of Santa's early jet-propelled sleighs to cope with population growth (you think flying reindeer were always going to keep up? get real)

    Unfortunately this one reached near escape velocity. The test elves bailed out in time.

    So nothing to see here. Pay no attention to 2016 HO HO HO

  14. Just arrived on Microsoft Finally Ships $8,999 Surface Hub (eweek.com) · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Hey Bob. The new giant iPad has arrived."

    "Hey everyone. Come see the new giant iPad."

  15. SPECTRUM? SPECTRE? THRUSH?

    Pthhhhh. Amateurs.

    We don't share bandwidth in KAOS (a Delaware Corporation).

    We don't share any-ting!

    So give me my lunch back, Starker!!

  16. Re:Waze doesn't seem to have "avoid dangerous area on Israeli Troops Who Relied On Waze Blundered Into Deadly Palestinian Firefight (washingtonpost.com) · · Score: 1

    The closest thing I found was "avoid dirt roads"

    I browsed through the source code when the client app was first released and you are indeed right. The option (at the time) to "Avoid Palestinian controlled areas" had been replaced with "Avoid dirt roads" in the worldwide code release.

  17. And what if I have a vibration allergy in the 2.4 GHz range?

  18. Time travel powered by cold fusion is the problem on Cold Fusion and the Reputation Trap (aeon.co) · · Score: 5, Funny

    Actually cold fusion works just fine, and powered the first practical time travel engine. Unfortunately, inevitably time travel leads to paradoxes until the universe (well the one with observers remaining) settles into a consistent steady state as increasingly improbably events take place until the result is no time travel.

    Last time it was the bird with a baguette sabotaging the Large Hadron Collider at a critical point in time (ha!). http://www.theguardian.com/sci...

    And poor Pons and Fleishmann are victims of the same process. No one (who will be believed) will ever be able to replicate their work. Something will always go wrong.

    Oh, and don't try and take advantage of this information to do anything about it. I barely survived the Orca landing on my garage where my experiment was running, and I was 200 miles inland.

  19. Settlement on Bitcoin Inventor Satoshi Nakamoto Nominated For Nobel Prize · · Score: 1

    Or pay the Nobel prize to *my* bitcoin address.

    I will settle with Mr Nakamoto later.

    In fact I offer this service to all Nobel prize winners.

  20. Does anyone know the current whereabouts of Sideshow Bob?

  21. Meanwhile, on the other sides of the prison, the drones with the C4, etc, all successfully arrived.

  22. It's actually good news on The New Technique That Finds All Known Human Viruses In Your Blood · · Score: 1

    It makes you indestrucible

    https://vimeo.com/96581518

  23. Re:Ha! on Company Testing Standardized Salaries Is Struggling · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Imagine that.

    Differences in pay exist for a reason: Because different people perform functions of different value to the company.

    No. This is a common mistake. It is wrong.

    Differences in pay exist because of supply and demand. If there are many people willing to do your job, then pay for that job will be low, even if your job is valuable (see nursing, teaching, etc). Yes, many jobs we "value" are highly-paid (but not all). But that is because there is greater demand (or less supply) for people to fill those jobs.

    In short, do not confuse correlation (high value jobs have high pay) with causation (we do NOT give high pay to people with high value jobs because we value the jobs).

    We pay people what we need to pay in order to find someone to do the job. That is the "value" of the job - as an economic valuation. Do not confuse that with the moral worth of the job. Or its intrinsic value to the employer.

  24. Thanks, Earthlings on Voyager's Golden Record For Aliens Now Available On SoundCloud · · Score: 2

    That's actually a lot more convenient. Do you know how much trouble it is to get a needle for Gold records? I have to keep borrowing Bowie's.

    Now if you could just get IPv6 sorted, I would feel much more welcomed.

    Yours sincerely

    Your Alien Overlord

  25. Obvious solution on Fossil Fuels Are Messing With Carbon Dating · · Score: 1

    We need to release more radioactive C14 carbon into the air.

    Thus solving the problem, once and for all.