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User: mellon

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  1. Brilliant. Got to prioritize... on FAA Clears Movie and TV Drones For Takeoff · · Score: 4, Insightful

    After all, TV shows are way more important than structural evaluations, aerial photography for site planning, roof inspections, and the myriad other commercial applications that are actually useful and safer than the way we currently do it. Sigh.

  2. Re:Hmmm ... on Physicist Claims Black Holes Mathematically Don't Exist · · Score: 1

    I was waiting for someone to say this...

  3. Re:Welcome to government science on When Scientists Give Up · · Score: 1

    The gold standard would have prevented the economy from growing as it did over the course of the past 40+ years. Inflation was indeed the result of failed monetary policy, but not that monetary policy.

  4. Re:Welcome to government science on When Scientists Give Up · · Score: 1

    Free market capitalism gives us Viagra. Which is a dramatic way of saying that it encourages short-term thinking, because human beings have a well-documented cognitive bias toward near-term results, and tend to heavily discount the benefit of long-term results. And so we get cattle ranchers abusing antibiotics even though in the long run many people will die as a result of the antibiotic-resistant bacteria this practice breeds. And we get pharma companies developing Viagra analogues instead of antibiotics.

    I say this not for your benefit, since you are not interested in being contradicted, but because it's possible that someone else reading your diatribe might believe you if nobody points out the problem with what you've said.

  5. Re:Welcome to government science on When Scientists Give Up · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No, actually the government was very dynamic at one time and got a lot of really impressive research done. Then people like you who think "government bad" started to complain about taxes and regulation, and over the course of the past 40 years or so, you've managed to suck a lot of life out of the government. It's the whole Gordon Gecko philosophy: greed is good. No, actually, it isn't. What's good is working together.

  6. Re:And low-emission transport trucks, too on To Really Cut Emissions, We Need Electric Buses, Not Just Electric Cars · · Score: 1

    No, you need impulse drive technology to make this work.

  7. Re:And low-emission transport trucks, too on To Really Cut Emissions, We Need Electric Buses, Not Just Electric Cars · · Score: 1

    Negative energy costs ought to stimulate the market for storage.

  8. Re:Well, we really should be at that stage by now. on To Really Cut Emissions, We Need Electric Buses, Not Just Electric Cars · · Score: 1

    Oh come on! Someone mod this funny!

  9. Re:Yeah, because that's a good idea. on Scientists Sequence Coffee Genome, Ponder Genetic Modification · · Score: 1

    Yes, all plants produce chemicals that repel or kill pests. Some of them are deadly neurotoxins. Some do not exist in any foods. Caffeine is actually a good insect killer, but you wouldn't want caffeine in your corn, would you?

    Your arguments about glyphosate sound great, but don't actually contradict what I said.

    I don't work for free, but patents are a huge detriment to my work. They are simply the wrong way to pay for research: they slow down research, increase uncertainty for people who are actually doing productive work, and most of the cash they throw off goes to lawyers rather than to people who are actually doing the work. Of course people (even lawyers!) have to eat, but farmers have to eat too. Monsanto's practices have put many farmers out of business (more in India than here in the U.S.).

  10. Re: Yeah, because that's a good idea. on Scientists Sequence Coffee Genome, Ponder Genetic Modification · · Score: 1

    Right, that's my point. I oppose Monsanto's practices with respect to GMO. I don't oppose GMO in general.

  11. Re: better able to endure drought, disease and pes on Scientists Sequence Coffee Genome, Ponder Genetic Modification · · Score: 1

    The pest people are worried about is rust, which is killing off a lot of coffee trees and driving up the price of coffee.

  12. Re:Motherfuckers on Scientists Sequence Coffee Genome, Ponder Genetic Modification · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I recommend that you try cold brew with a medium roast of good-quality arabica beans. Not *$$: go to your local co-op and get some good shade-grown beans. I've had good success doing a 12-hour cold brew: you take about a cup and a half of course ground coffee and add it to two quarts of water (I use a two-quart mason jar) and put it in the fridge overnight. After it's sat twelve hours, filter it through paper into another container. This is kind of an annoying process, and there are devices that you can get to simplify it, but I would start off just using a regular filter so that you can try it.

    The coffee this produces is much mellower than the equivalent coffee brewed hot. If you want it hot, it's okay to heat it: the reason you don't re-heat hot coffee is that the transition from hot to cold causes chemical changes that wreck the flavor, but the transition from cold to hot doesn't have this effect.

  13. Re:Yeah, because that's a good idea. on Scientists Sequence Coffee Genome, Ponder Genetic Modification · · Score: 2

    The problem with Monsanto modifying the genes of plants is that:

    • they make plants that produce chemicals to kill pests, with possibly unknown health effects (although at this point these effects have been studied pretty thoroughly)
    • they make plants that are resistant to herbicides, which promotes the use of these herbicides, which promotes the development of superweeds
    • they patent everything and engage in licensing schemes that are really harmful to small farmers.

    In my mind, the last item is the one that I care most about, although the superweeds are a close second. Also, as kruach aum says, you appear to be pretty ignorant about how this all works, so your opinion as to what's safe or unsafe or a good idea is not well-informed, and hence not something anybody needs to pay much attention to. I say this not to put you down, but rather to encourage you to become better informed: to actually try to understand the science rather than just making a simplistic mental model of it and then conjecturing on the basis of that model. That way of thinking is extremely damaging to our culture at present, and you really should stop doing it.

  14. Re:Le sigh.... on Scientists Sequence Coffee Genome, Ponder Genetic Modification · · Score: 2

    And yet, ironically, does not taste like chicken!

  15. Re:Not what Skype is for me. on Tox, a Skype Replacement Built On 'Privacy First' · · Score: 1

    I use SIP for my PoTS gateway. It's pretty seamless. Something like Tox, if it works, would be an incremental improvement.

  16. Re: Her work on Anita Sarkeesian, Creator of "Tropes vs. Women," Driven From Home By Trolls · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Again you are completely missing the point she was making and the point of this slashdot article. The point she was making is that women in the games she's reviewing are uniformly depicted in these sexualized death poses and sexualized death scenes, and men are not depicted that way. That is gender stereotyping. And the point of TFA is that whether you agree with her about this or not, it's not a reason to threaten her and her parents with torture and death.

  17. Re:Her Videos Are Shit on Anita Sarkeesian, Creator of "Tropes vs. Women," Driven From Home By Trolls · · Score: 1

    Finding police blotters online is difficult. I went looking for any police blotter during the period that the original Kickstarter kerfuffle happened, and the only one I found was four months previous to that event. So the absence of such evidence online is not evidence that there was no police investigation.

    Also, the idea that someone would publish their home address and their parents' home address online in the context of graphic death threats in order to get attention is not plausible. If she were obviously insane, perhaps, but she gives every appearance of being a sane, stable and intelligent person. Even if everything you've said about her is true, I don't find the conclusion you are drawing at all credible.

  18. Re:Her work on Anita Sarkeesian, Creator of "Tropes vs. Women," Driven From Home By Trolls · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yes, and this is gender stereotyping, and if you read more feminist writing, you will discover that feminists are just as opposed to the stereotyping of men in these commercials as they are the stereotyping of women.

    There's a huge leap from "men are not the weakest and stupidest characters in a video game" and "brutal depictions of violence against women," and "the use of scantily-clad female corpses as decoration." If men were being depicted as weaker and stupider than women in the game that would also be gender stereotyping.

  19. Re: Her work on Anita Sarkeesian, Creator of "Tropes vs. Women," Driven From Home By Trolls · · Score: 2

    If you find depictions of hookers being abused and murdered, or the dead bodies of women posed seductively, as life-defining, you are not typical. And while I do feel for you, the right thing to do is start redefining your life now, not just accept that where you are at the moment is where you must always be. We all experience some fucked up shit when we are growing up. It doesn't have to define us.

  20. Re: Her work on Anita Sarkeesian, Creator of "Tropes vs. Women," Driven From Home By Trolls · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If any member of the gender is not insulted, the entire gender was not insulted. And honestly, the idea that an appreciable subset of members of the gender would feel insulted by her videos is insulting to the gender, because it is an actual gender stereotype, directed at all members of the gender. Whereas her videos did not engage in gender stereotyping at all, but rather criticized specific game tropes in a way that was entirely compassionate and respectful of that same gender. IOW, she did not say "these tropes work on men, so men suck." She said "these tropes work on men, and promote an attitude toward women that is unnatural and not normal for men." So I would say she's being a lot more generous toward the gender than you are.

  21. Oh FFS. RFTA. The threats are credible enough to take seriously. They contain information no sensible person would willingly post about themselves in such a context.

  22. Re: Her work on Anita Sarkeesian, Creator of "Tropes vs. Women," Driven From Home By Trolls · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Huh. I'm male, and I didn't feel insulted. I am also concerned about the issues she raised, and support her exploration of them, although I do not always agree with her conclusions. Why is it "insulting the entire gender" to say "gosh, you might want to consider whether using dead female bodies posed in necrophilic-erotic positions is really a healthy or appropriate thing to do." Personally I find it insulting to my gender that the creators of the game thing I would willingly tolerate such imagery. Essentially what the game producers are saying is "men are brutes with no compassion, let's pander to that." It's disgusting and insulting.

  23. Re:Her Videos Are Shit on Anita Sarkeesian, Creator of "Tropes vs. Women," Driven From Home By Trolls · · Score: 2

    Okay. Suppose that's true. This justifies graphic torture/death threats?

    I've watched her videos too. I think her main problem is that she's a bit of a perfectionist—e.g., her criticisms of The Hunger Games (the book) are valid, but unnecessary: the book is more than good enough, even if there are things that could have been done better differently. But this particular video seems pretty accurate based on my experiences of video games. It's hard to find games I'm willing to play, because I am not willing to play through scenes like the ones depicted in her recent video.

    Now, having said that, do you feel that I too should suffer death threats and threats of torture, or is the correct response simply to explain why you disagree with me, or why your experience differs from mine?

  24. Re:Her work on Anita Sarkeesian, Creator of "Tropes vs. Women," Driven From Home By Trolls · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The topic, which you might get if you read the summary, is that she's received credible death threats. Do you think it's okay for people to receive death threats when they say something you don't agree with? E.g., was it okay when they put a price on Salman Rushdie's head?

  25. Re:central storage or n^x security guard costs / s on New NRC Rule Supports Indefinite Storage of Nuclear Waste · · Score: 1

    Actually, the worst nuclear waste sites are all military. Well, not counting Chernobyl and Fukushima, of course.