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User: dbIII

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  1. Re:where is the controversy? on Scientists/Actress Say They Were 'Tricked' Into Geocentric Universe Movie · · Score: 1

    The first maybe, but I've seen big enough changes between even King James and Good News that could completely change that meaning. The second is a very major stretch and we should laugh at your reading comprehension skills if you are going to take that so literally.
    It's actually quite pathetic that we are even having this discussion. Bringing religion into science or vice versa is as irrelevant as asking yourself what sort of coffee Jesus would want to drink. We're only getting this shit because some merchants in the temple see science as a threat to getting more people through the turnstiles.

  2. WTF is the point? on Scientists/Actress Say They Were 'Tricked' Into Geocentric Universe Movie · · Score: 1

    Why are these pieces of shit messing with people's heads? Are they seeking attention or are they trying to push some sort of ignorance cult down people's throats?

    Those who think I'm being anti-Christian here should note that the Church was not even an ignorance cult back when only just over half of the Cardinals decided to give Galileo a hard time for making fun of the Pope's geocentric ideas (he went down for insubordination and not for astronomy). The Church moved on long ago. It's new ignorance cults who ignore inconvenient bits of the Bible like "the good Samaritan" who are a problem.

  3. Why just use it to smash? on Navy Debuts New Railgun That Launches Shells at Mach 7 · · Score: 1

    My first thought was far too geeky - "mach 7 - I wonder if this could be used as a cheap way to test scramjet models".
    A scramjet model I saw as far back as 1987 probably wasn't much bigger than the size of these projectiles. Progress has been so slow because shock tunnels give limited time at speed and testing via rocket is expensive and time consuming.

  4. In my limited experience on Study: People That Think Social Media Helps Their Work Are Probably Wrong · · Score: 1

    In my limited experience the people who say it helps their work seem to be looking for an excuse to play games on Facebook most of the working day.

    As for HR types scouring Facebook for some reason not to hire people or some reason to lay people off - kill it with fire!!!

  5. Re:Any chemists want to weigh in?? on Navy Creates Fuel From Seawater · · Score: 2

    Whereas both hydrogen and oxygen are perfectly safe

    I met a guy that was right in the middle of a fairly big hydrogen explosion in a pyrometallurgy lab. He was fine and barely lost his eyebrows. Some distance away from the ignition source however the wave front built up enough energy to blow bricks out of the wall.

  6. Re: Both worlds, oh ironic on Navy Creates Fuel From Seawater · · Score: 1

    If only we could extract CO2 from the atmosphere

    Bloody hard (or expensive) to do without creating more CO2 than we get out of it. Most of the stuff we can make carbonates out of had a carbonate precursor and the "obvious" solution of just cooling air down requires a fair bit of energy which is going to come at least partly from fossil fuels.

  7. Re:Just like Nuclear Fusion on Navy Creates Fuel From Seawater · · Score: 1

    Fusion was shipped by Teller in 1956. Packing it into smaller boxes has been the problem since then.

  8. Re:They do. on Navy Creates Fuel From Seawater · · Score: 1

    I thought they all did so that if one reactor had to be shut down the thing wouldn't just bob about in the current.

  9. Scamming causes hatred on Australia Declares Homeopathy Nonsense, Urges Doctors to Inform Patients · · Score: 1

    Is it clearer now?

  10. Re:Vaccines are homeopathy, too on Australia Declares Homeopathy Nonsense, Urges Doctors to Inform Patients · · Score: 1

    No that's oversimplifying it to the point of ridiculousness to the benefit of the snakeoil salesmen, as you would have to be well aware because you could not possibly be so stupid.

    Funny how Americans are utterly brutal where money is to be made and will excuse every sort of shady trick that could return a buck. Claim salting? It's fine, those rubes had it coming because they didn't look hard enough.

  11. Re:just keep in mind on Australia Declares Homeopathy Nonsense, Urges Doctors to Inform Patients · · Score: 1

    Eat some brocolli then to get far more zinc than this bullshit.

  12. Twisting a geek quote on Australia Declares Homeopathy Nonsense, Urges Doctors to Inform Patients · · Score: 4, Funny

    Beer is the mind killer. Beer is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my beer. I will permit it to pass over my lips and through me. And when it has gone past I will drop my trousers and turn the inner eye to the path to show passers by I have not only faced my beer but got shitfaced on the beer.

  13. Re:Not going to work... on Australia Declares Homeopathy Nonsense, Urges Doctors to Inform Patients · · Score: 1

    Bad idea. They are the guys with the nails. Some poor bastard who happened to be in the wrong place will just get nailed up instead of the real crooks if you go that way.

  14. Re:The spokesman for the AHA said... on Australia Declares Homeopathy Nonsense, Urges Doctors to Inform Patients · · Score: 2

    Because some of those grass clippings in packets may be poisonous. There's already been a very dangerous placebo in Australia with some "travelcalm" tablets from a company called Pan producing hallucinations and other ill effects. Not being able to make a safe placebo and a variety of other problems drove Pan out of business.

  15. Elop didn't really screw anything over. It was all a huge mess already

    If selling more phones than the two main competitors combined is a mess then what they hell is the disaster Elop left? I suppose the metric that mattered above all was the stock price, which went down massively under Elop making it a bargain for his former (and now current) employer, Microsoft.

  16. Re:What do they think? on Isolated Tribes Die Shortly After We Meet Them · · Score: 3, Insightful

    A first contact situation with a pilot landing in the New Guinea highlands showed that "Gods" or not, it was not an important enough situation to miss out on lunch :)
    In that situation a lot of people turned up to look and then went home after a while. Unlike fiction they recognised the pilot as a person that just happened to have a lot of really cool stuff.
    People are people wherever they are even if fiction likes to paint some as more superstitious than a Californian crystal healing fanatic or with less reasoning ability as a meth head.

  17. Re:Future generations on Snowden: NSA Spied On Human Rights Workers · · Score: 1

    It cannot end well

    Look at what's happened on behalf of Saudi Arabia due to the money coming out of there if you want to see the future of the US political relationship with China and possibly Russia if the borrowing continues.

  18. Re:Hang Him High on Snowden: NSA Spied On Human Rights Workers · · Score: 1

    Putin appears to be very popular at the moment

    One of the journalists he didn't like was killed for him as a birthday present (I wish I was joking). With things like that the Russian press is to scared to report him as anything other than popular.

  19. Re:Well that's not very headline worthy on Snowden: NSA Spied On Human Rights Workers · · Score: 1

    He handed over all he had in one swoop, a long time ago: It's been out of his hands last summer, you ignorant motherfucker.

    The above poster probably already knows that but is trying to build up some fiction to convince people that Snowden is out there doing a new act of treason every day and must be stopped. Meanwhile the people that are betraying the people for the sake of some of their leaders but not others (see the example of lying to congress) are doing treason daily. They are supporting the tradition of King George while Snowden is acting in a way that would make George Washington proud.

  20. Re:Outrage fatigue on Snowden: NSA Spied On Human Rights Workers · · Score: 1

    They either didn't see the Arab spring thing coming or didn't pass it on as well, despite the large number of people involved and some press items.

  21. Re:Outrage fatigue on Snowden: NSA Spied On Human Rights Workers · · Score: 3, Informative

    A shining example from another agency is when a lot of Farsi speakers were fired just as more interest was being taken in Iran and automatic translation was relied on to a greater extent.
    This of course was seen as a very stupid idea even back in the 1960s - a Desmond Bagley spy novel had an example of "hydraulic ram" coming back from translation as "water sheep" as a reason for human intelligence instead of signal processing intelligence.

  22. Apple were slow with language support on China Approves Microsoft-Nokia Deal, Gets Patent Concessions In Return · · Score: 1
    Apple didn't care enough about the Chinese market to have decent language support so they lost it to Android and Nokia Symbian phones. When Apple tried a cheap phone (which was still more than the competition) it apparently only worked for fluent English readers, so it bombed.

    Cheap phones from Nokia simply mean that MS loses money.

    Massive sales of Nokia symbian phones in the Chinese market even after Elop announced the death of the platform kept Nokia afloat, and probably delayed both Microsoft's planned buyout of the crippled company and the implementation of Elop's plan to kill the platform. Tens of millions of phones at only ten bucks or so of clear profit are nothing to sneeze at so even Elop couldn't kill it without risking a lot of difficult questions from the Finnish government. If he'd done that and driven Nokia well into the red then buying Nokia for a tiny price, saving it from going offshore, and deporting the obvious corporate wrecking ball could have been a vote winner for the Finnish government.

  23. First they Elop(ed), now it's official on China Approves Microsoft-Nokia Deal, Gets Patent Concessions In Return · · Score: 1

    Yes, daddy China will let Microsoft and Nokia marry after they Elop(ed) last year.
    Meanwhile Uncle Sam gets no say since manufacturing is not happening there and due to tax evasion the companies pretend to not be based there.


    Elop must be pretty happy that Nokia was not a Russian company and that those Fins are so polite even when they get screwed over - if they were Russian he'd have their distinctive Polonium calling card in his blood.

  24. Re:Not at the cutting edge on Under Revised Quake Estimates, Dozens of Nuclear Reactors Face Problems · · Score: 1

    In fact, ft. st. vrain's reactor was a great success

    Yes a lot of cool stuff was designed in the 1960s. The GA of today would not take a risk like that even if the government paid them for it because it would challenge some of their revenue sources.

  25. Re:Not at the cutting edge on Under Revised Quake Estimates, Dozens of Nuclear Reactors Face Problems · · Score: 1

    The money available in the sector has attracted people like flies in addition to rampant nepotism at the management level. Such human flies go for the short term and would not even know where to start on the simplest of technical issues while the idiot nephews are just there to keep seats warm and watch the money roll in. Any change is a possible threat to the money flow to such people.
    That's why the hope lies in India (ironically less of a corruption problem than the US nuclear industry) or in startups coming from military technology such as mPower if they can get a lot done before they are seen to have enough money to attract flies.