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User: Derling+Whirvish

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  1. Re:Ah, Slashdot. on Europe Now Has Its Own "Most Wanted Fugitives" Web Page (eumostwanted.eu) · · Score: 2

    Nor do they know that in English the Euro symbol goes in front of the numerals representing the value, not after (same for the Dollar sign by the way).

  2. Re:older generation is totally clueless about tech on NSA-Reform Bill Fails In US Senate · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Which older generation? The one that sent men to the moon and that designed and flew the SR-71? That one?

  3. Re:Not getting the whole story..... on Student Photographer Threatened With Suspension For Sports Photos · · Score: 1

    At our school, staff and volunteers are banned from taking anything home that has children's names on it like seating charts, absent logs, or even track schedules. It has something to do with the kids being minors.

    So teachers can't take homework home to grade (has students' names on it)? No one can take home a yearbook (names AND photos, oh my!)? School newspapers (has bylines)? And so forth...

  4. Re:Oh Really? on Music Industry Argues Works Entering Public Domain Are Not In Public Interest · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Quoted from here: http://www.michaelgeist.ca/201...

    Earlier this year, a Canadian company called Stargrove Entertainment began selling two Beatles records featuring performances that are in the public domain in Canada. The records were far cheaper than those sold through Universal Music and were picked up by retail giant Walmart, who continues to list the records on their website (Can’t Buy Me Love, Love Me Do). There were additional titles featuring the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, and the Beach Boys. Some of the titles are still available for sale through Walmart.

    The Stargrove Entertainment records provided Canadian consumers with low-priced alternatives while still ensures that the authors of the songs received the approriate royalties. While the sound recording is in the public domain for these works, the song itself remains subject to copyright. Therefore, the song writers – Lennon and McCartney in the case of the Beatles – were still paid for every record sold. The difference is that Universal Records was not profiting from the sale. Instead, a small Canadian company was succeeding in selling the records at a lower price to Canadian consumers.

  5. It's Praxis of course. on Hubble Spots Star Explosion Astronomers Can't Explain · · Score: 3, Funny

    It's Praxis of course. Time to make a peace treaty?

  6. Even that's been hacked on Allegation: Lottery Official Hacked RNG To Score Winning Ticket · · Score: 1

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1... The 1980 Pennsylvania Lottery scandal, colloquially known as the Triple Six Fix, was a plot to rig the Daily Number, a three-digit game the Pennsylvania Lottery offers. All of the balls except four and six were weighted, meaning that the drawing was almost sure to be a combination of only fours and sixes. The scheme was successful in that 666, an expected result, was drawn on April 24, 1980.

  7. Re:The gun fetishists and ammosexuals think on Come and Take It, Texas Gun Enthusiasts (Video) · · Score: 1

    Banned already via BATFE fiat. http://townhall.com/tipsheet/k...

  8. Re:Lots of weird crap coming out of Congress latel on White House Threatens Veto Over EPA "Secret Science" Bills · · Score: 1

    In 2011, 27 > 25. Is it still?

  9. No reference to him in the Congressional Record on How One Climate-Change Skeptic Has Profited From Corporate Interests · · Score: 2

    Elected officials who want to block the EPA and legislation on climate change frequently refer to a handful of scientists who dispute anthropogenic climate change. One of scientists they quote most often is Wei-Hock Soon, a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who claims that variations in the sun's energy can largely explain recent global warming.

    I can find no reference to him in the recent Congressional Records. I am a skeptic of the phrase "One of scientists they quote most often is Wei-Hock Soon" as this is the first I've ever heard of him. And you would think the Congressional Record of floor debates and speeches would be the place to find a mention of him if "elected officials who want to block the EPA and legislation on climate change frequently refer to [him]." Does anyone have a reference to back this statement up?

  10. Re:Plan A: Abundance & conflict resolution for on Plan C: The Cold War Plan Which Would Have Brought the US Under Martial Law · · Score: 1

    Las Casas tells how "two of these so-called Christians met two Indian boys one day, each carrying a parrot; they took the parrots and for fun beheaded the boys." ..."

    And the Iraqi Republican Guards pulled babies out of incubators in Kuwaiti hospitals and threw then on the floor to die, right?

    Sometimes historical "facts" are made up to discredit the other side.

  11. Cognitive Dissonance on Police Organization Wants Cop-Spotting Dropped From Waze App · · Score: 1

    Is it about avoiding policemen altogether or tracking them down? If you use both essentially opposite arguments in one paragraph, you are more or less throwing sh... um, stuff to see what sticks. Purely scare-mongering.

  12. Re:It's VERY easy to fix the problem with radar. on Police Nation-Wide Use Wall-Penetrating Radars To Peer Into Homes · · Score: 1

    Then your cell phone won't work. You won't have over-the-air TV reception. WiFi will only work in the room that the wireless router is in. And so forth. Not a good solution.

  13. Re:barrels were cool too... on The Magic of Pallets · · Score: 1

    Just for the record barrels were probably equally revolutionary in their time. And the ability for a person to roll them before machinery was quite an advantage.

    And before that -- amphorae.

  14. Marijuana is still illegal everwhere in the US on Colorado Sued By Neighboring States Over Legal Pot · · Score: 2

    ... this is similar in nature to same sex marriage, and women's reproductive rights.

    It's legal some places and banned in others.

    No, it's not. Marijuana is still illegal throughout the United States due to federal law. In no state (including Colorado) is it legal. It's simply that Colorado has removed any state law criminalizing it. The federal prohibition remains. That is not the case with same sex marriage and women's reproductive rights. The next president could easily tell the DEA to go in and shut down every marijuana dealer and grower in Colorado if he/she orders it.

  15. Re:What Native American is supposed to mean on Google Suggests Separating Students With 'Some CS Knowledge' From Novices · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Then what's a better term for "people descended from people who were natives of North and South America in AD 1491, who had their land forcibly taken from them in European invasions from 1600 through 1900?"

    Humans.

  16. Re:MAD on US Revamping Its Nuclear Arsenal · · Score: 1

    > he was going to suicide

    "Suicide" is not a verb.

    Yes, it is.

    Definition 4: http://dictionary.reference.co...

    verb (used without object), suicided, suiciding.
    4. to commit suicide.

    Webster says it's a verb: http://www.merriam-webster.com...
    As does Oxford: http://www.oxforddictionaries....

  17. Re:MAD on US Revamping Its Nuclear Arsenal · · Score: 2

    <quote>

    <quote><p>MAD prevented WWIII. I don't care whether the people who build them or the people who authorize their construction are corrupt, or worship a giant statue of a sexually aroused Beelzebub, the fact is that we are kept largely secure from would be Napoleons, Hitlers and Stalins by the mere fact that these weapons exist.</p></quote>

    <p>Hitler would have pushed the button just before he pulled the trigger.</p><p>MAD only works when all the owners of knukes are reasonably sane.</p></quote>

    Not entirely plausible. Hitler had vast stores of chemical weapons that he refused to use because of the mass destruction that he knew they would cause and even he didn't want that because he remembered the horror they caused after being attacked by chemical weapons when he was a soldier in the trenches in WWI. He could have utterly destroyed hundreds of thousands of invading Russian troops daily for a few day or weeks, until the Russian counter-attacked with the same weapons. But he didn't. If both sides had nuclear weapons, I'm sure the same rationalization would have taken place even if he was going to suicide the next day.

  18. Re:Faster than the global average? on Rising Sea Levels Uncover Japanese War Dead In Marshall Islands · · Score: 1

    This manifests most discernably in the relatively huge sea level differences between the pacific side the Panama canal and the Atlantic side.

    There isn't a "huge" difference. It's a matter of a few inches (eight I think on average). It's mostly as a result of wind and current pushing the water up on the Pacific side as the prevailing winds there blow onshore on the Pacific side and offshore on the Atlantic side.

  19. Re:Faster than the global average? on Rising Sea Levels Uncover Japanese War Dead In Marshall Islands · · Score: 4, Funny

    I just want to point out that many people learn at an early age that the Panama canal uses locks to raise and lower ships passing through, and that these are absolutely necessary because the sea levels on the two ends are different.

    WTF? You make this statement in a post where you're trying to make someone else seem uneducated and unknowledgeable? The sea levels on the two ends are not different. They are the same. The locks are there because the water in the canal comes from rivers that feed into it and the canal is not at sea level the whole way across-- it rises to cross the terrain. Incoming river water fills the locks to raise the ships and it is released when the locks are drained to lower the ships.

  20. Re:All publicly funded research needs public relea on VA Supreme Court: Michael Mann Needn't Turn Over All His Email · · Score: 1

    Secondly, it does not cover any communication where the sender or receiver has an expectation of privacy. If he is emailing someone who is not being paid to work on that particular project, such as a graduate student or another person in his field or department, that information is not going to be covered by the FOIA as it violates the expectation of privacy of the person outside the project sending or receiving the email, unless the person is specifically informed that their email may be subject to public disclosure.

    His lawyers did not make a privacy argument. The made a "proprietary information" argument.

  21. Re:All publicly funded research needs public relea on VA Supreme Court: Michael Mann Needn't Turn Over All His Email · · Score: 1

    IIUC, his lawyers requested that certain materials not be produced, and in doing so quoted a section of the state law which exhempted a particular category of material from being required to be produced. If you don't like the phrasing, talk to the people who wrote the law. His lawyers were just doing their job, and making it easy for the judge.

    His lawyers cannot quote the part of the law dealing with a particular category of material that is allowed to be suppressed and use it to suppress a different category altogether that is not exempted from disclosure. The phrasing has nothing to do with it if they are ignoring the statutory language of the law to begin with.

  22. Re:All publicly funded research needs public relea on VA Supreme Court: Michael Mann Needn't Turn Over All His Email · · Score: 1

    So if he texts, "I'm sorry I am not going to be in for work today I am receiving medical treatment from my mental health provider," that should be public records?

    If he emails, "I am sorry Mrs. Channing, but there is no work you can do in Physics 102 to avoid a failing grade," that should be public record?

    Releasing the first email would be a violation of federal law (respecting medical confidentiality) and the second one would likely violate State law or university code on student confidentiality.

    The Supreme Court has ruled that American citizens have a reasonable expectation that the contents of their email will be kept private, just like their phone conversations.

    But he didn't make that argument -- the argument that some of the emails should be withheld because they have private information. He made the argument that emails discussing the data relating to climate models should be withheld because they contain proprietary information that could cause the university to be less competitive with other universities in obtaining funding. That's completely different. And if he made the argument you made I might agree with him, but he made a different argument that I disagree with.

  23. Re:I see no violation here... on Mozilla CEO Firestorm Likely Violated California Law · · Score: 1

    Dalton Trumbo never recanted either. I guess it was OK to blacklist him then.

  24. Re:Why stop there? on Will Cameras Replace Sideview Mirrors On Cars In 2018? · · Score: 1

    When the power drops, and I need to get across X lanes of traffic to the breakdown lane, I'll be glad to have a mirror.

    A driver certainly would want to be encased inside a protective shell if the windshield were replaced with a monitor blocking the view and bringing a whole new meaning to BSOD.

    Of course once self-driving cars hit the successive generations/versions, all bets are off.

    The Apollo space capsule didn't have a glass windshield up front and the astronauts managed to get all the way to the moon and back without a BSOD killing them. I think I can handle a trip to my local Piggly Wiggly without one.

  25. Re:Why stop there? on Will Cameras Replace Sideview Mirrors On Cars In 2018? · · Score: 1

    What about ditching the windshield and replacing it with a 4k HD screen? Then you can embed the driver lower-down and deep inside a protective hardened shell. A no-glass car all around.

    Then how about ditching the wheels, and just simulate movement on the 4K screen. You could drive as fast you want in perfect safety.

    That's more or less what I already do with Amazon. I have ditched the car altogether for most shopping trips and replaced it with a virtual shopping center that has almost everything I need right there on my 24" computer monitor.