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User: mog007

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Comments · 1,306

  1. Re:How much on Gravitational Waves May Have Been Detected In 1987 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    What more could a scientist hope for? You're ostracized your entire life, and after you're dead and forgotten, your research comes back to the forefront and people realize you were onto something.

    Surely Copernicus and Galileo would be psyched to be part of the group who resurrected the concept of science. What about Darwin? Darwin's ideas were good, but not good enough. He had a mechanism for evolution, but no way of allowing the mutations to be passed on. With the synthesis of genetics, Darwin's name has become as much a synonym for biology as Einstein or Newton has become for Physics.

  2. Re:Honor on Gravitational Waves May Have Been Detected In 1987 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Gravity, as is currently understood, is a depression on the fabric of spacetime, and a gravity wave could be considered a ripple on that fabric. Fact is, according to current theory, information can't propagate faster than light in a vacuum, so if the sun instantly blinked out of existence, the earth would still feel a tug of the sun's gravity for eight minutes before we finally flew off like the string had been severed.

    Gravity isn't exactly like light though, because gravity "escapes" from black holes. You can stand near the edge of an event horizon, and still feel the influence of the gravity inside the black hole.

  3. Re:The Eyeball Singularity on Bionic Eye Gives Blind Man Sight · · Score: 1

    I'm the first one to say that technology is capable of shit that nature can't come close to, but we've had all kinds of technological advances as far as stuff like artificial joints go, and such devices are very good replacements, but they aren't better than the original equipment.

  4. Re:No swaggering... on A Short Summary Following the Pirate Bay Trial · · Score: 1

    Perhaps this trial was unusual in Swedish law, and maybe they normally have jury trials with nullification happening all the time, but I'm pretty sure that jury nullification hasn't been invoked in the United States since the Protestants outlawed alcohol. Even after the Constitution was amended to outlaw alcohol, juries were still finding the laws unjust and setting people free.

    These days judges don't tell juries they have as much responsibility for upholding the law as the judge does, if not more so.

  5. Re:Call him Monkey Boy all you want on Sony Makes It Hard To Develop For the PS3 On Purpose · · Score: 1

    It sounds similar to the old days. Games toward the end of the NES and SNES era saw huge advances, with the developers pushing the consoles for all they were worth. Of course, this wasn't a limitation intentionally imposed by Nintendo, it was just a natural progression as the developers were getting more acquainted with the hardware. Even the N64 saw the release of Conker's Bad Fur Day, which pushed the N64 hardware to its very limits.

  6. Re:This too was foreseen on Designer Babies · · Score: 1

    I agree. In fact, after the human genome was sequenced, I was fully EXPECTING this to happen with in a decade or so. I don't have any problems with it, but I am slightly concerned that the world will end up as portrayed in the film Gattaca. So long as people who are made the old fashioned, and fun, way are still allowed to do more than clean toilets, I say go for it.

  7. Re:"Wasn't So Long Ago?!" on Jurassic Web · · Score: 2, Informative

    I have issue with the summary. Back in 96 I was paying a flat rate for internet access, and I spent quite a few hours fiddling around with it. Granted, about 90% of my time online involved MUDs.

  8. Re:yeah, the quid-pro-quo makes it more reasonable on Do Video Games Cost Too Much? · · Score: 1

    EA tried their hand at digital distribution, and it sucked horribly. They took their standard approach at being as evil to their customers as possible, like only allowing you to download the package for six months after purchase, but you could pay a modest fee of about 7 bucks to extend the deadline to two years.

    Practically nobody used EA's service, and they teamed up with the Gamespy people for Direct2Drive, as well as Steam. Right now they're probably just checking their sales figures for Spore to determine which of those two services gets the exclusive deal for the Sims 3.

  9. Re:Konami sucks that way on Do Video Games Cost Too Much? · · Score: 1

    Namco is responsible for the Katamari series, not Konami.

  10. Re:awww poor casinos on Casinos Warn iPhone Card-Counting App is Illegal · · Score: 1

    Card counting in Vegas is pointless. The Vegas casinos wised up to the idea several decades ago, and they now use a rotation of several decks of cards in various permutations, at least the big ones on the strip do.

    If you want to be certain of coming out ahead in Vegas blackjack, there's only one strategy: don't bet your fucking money. The casinos do such great business precisely because the odds are stacked in their favor, and counting cards isn't going to swing the odds to your side.

  11. Re:Repair the roads or fuel our cars? on MIT Team Creates Shock That Recharges Your Car · · Score: 1

    I live in Florida, and there are quite a few dips and bumps in the road just outside my home. I doubt it's caused by a sinkhole, but MANY of the roads I drive on are bumpier than the ideal. I don't know if they'd be bumpy enough for this technology, though.

  12. Re:Sega and the decline of Sonic on Sega To Close Arcades, Cancel Games, Lay Off Employees · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Didn't Sega re-release their old Sonic games for the Genesis a few days ago for the PS3 and 360? I'm all for nostalgia, but come on guys, you already released that sort of collection during the last console generation. Maybe they're going broke because they're out of ideas and they're trying the EA approach: make the same thing year in and year out.

  13. Re:That is, as the Brits say, bollocks on Darwinism Must Die So Evolution Can Live · · Score: 1

    If they were still alive today, with the advent of Darwin's theory of evolution, the Big Bang theory, and nuclear fusion, I'd be willing to bet that many of the Deist founding fathers like Washington, Adams, and Jefferson (You know, the first three presidents) would probably be atheists today.

    Simply because Deism was just their reasoning for how human beings got here, it was the religion of the intellectuals back then. God was the guy who started the engine, but he put it on cruise control, and doesn't fiddle with it anymore.

  14. Re:That is, as the Brits say, bollocks on Darwinism Must Die So Evolution Can Live · · Score: 1

    Why did the Catholic church give Galileo such a hard time when he spouted his crazy ass notion of the Earth going around the Sun?

    How about the serious mockery the Catholic church gave Charles Darwin when he published his book?

  15. Re:neodarwinism on Darwinism Must Die So Evolution Can Live · · Score: 1

    Richard Dawkins has used the term "Darwinism" repeatedly, in an attempt to equate Darwin's idea of natural selection by the thing that is most fit to more than just organisms. He applies it to genes, and memes, and other things.

    Granted, that's in his books and lectures, I seriously doubt he would use the term in a paper he submits for peer review.

  16. How about some Rudy Rucker? on Mathematics Reading List For High School Students? · · Score: 1

    Master of Space and Time by Rudy Rucker. It has some math in it, and it's funny to boot.

  17. Re:There's no way they'll abuse this on Washington State Wants DNA From All Arrestees · · Score: 1

    Why waste money getting the DNA, then DESTROYING the DNA, when it would be a lot cheaper, and much less scary if they would just gather DNA from people after they're convicted?

  18. Re:Pisses me on Legal Trouble For MMOs In Australia · · Score: 1

    Maybe I'm thinking of the Irish or British classification system then. Or, maybe I totally misread it, and Ireland, Australia, and the United Kingdom are ALL having content censored by their respective governments.

    At least the former British colonies over in the New World are fairing a bit better as far as censorship goes... well censorship as far as movies and music and video games.

  19. Re:Pisses me on Legal Trouble For MMOs In Australia · · Score: 1

    I agree completely. That's the advantage of using private industry for this sort of thing, too. Because we're not having government control, there's nothing to prevent a second classification agency with a totally different set of rules and ratings.

  20. Re:electronic computers on Efficiently Producing Quantum Dots · · Score: 1

    Yet you LAUGHED at my ENIAC! Well, who's laughing NOW?!

  21. Re:Pisses me on Legal Trouble For MMOs In Australia · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If history shows us anything, it's that once something is made illegal to sell, it doesn't take much effort to make it illegal to own.

    I'm sensationalizing it for a reason, and that reason is simply because censorship in ANY form is fucking wrong. And it's VERY wrong when it's being done by the government. This is censorship, plain and simple. The government is saying "no, the citizens aren't adult enough to make the decision to watch that, we're going to make the decision for them."

  22. Re:Pisses me on Legal Trouble For MMOs In Australia · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Now, a ratings system might have a "Not Rated" or "Illegal" rating that means no-one is allowed to sell anything that is rated as such, however, that is simply a problem with the individual ratings system, not with the entire concept.

    The distinction between something being at the highest or "worst" rating and being unclassified is akin to censorship. Watch the movie "This film is not yet rated." It shows how the MPAA is censoring films that it doesn't agree with, and that's in the United States with a non-public controlled rating system. At least when a film gets hit with NC-17 here, they can sell the film on the internet, or change it a little bit, call it unrated, and have no problems getting it to be sold at a store.

    Stores are afraid to stock NC-17 titles, because they're usually associated with porn. The problem with Australia's method is that the board that makes the rating decision could, someday soon, decide that a game is sending the message that the Aussie government is evil, and refuse it classification.

    Now, you won't get arrested for having the game yet, but you can't even buy the unrated version like you can here in the US. It IS censorship by another name, and if you believe otherwise, the spin doctoring that the Australian government is doing seems to be working its magic.

  23. Re:Personally... on Comcast Apologizes For Super Bowl Porn Glitch · · Score: 1

    Have you SEEN the sense of humor that the assholes running the USA have? I'd take Fox's newest reality shows over that any day.

  24. Re:Dear Iranian nation on Iran Has Put a Satellite Into Orbit · · Score: 1

    Let's not forget that Israel is a nuclear power. If anything, Iran getting nukes would probably turn things into a MADish scenario, much like Pakistan and India.

  25. Re:Rocket scientists on Iran Has Put a Satellite Into Orbit · · Score: 1

    HELL, our entire stealth program is based on an article from a
    Russian academic paper from the 60s.

    I thought it was the UFO at Roswell!