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User: cusco

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  1. Re:No Quechua on Microsoft Translator Now Supports Yucatec Maya and Querétaro Otomi Language · · Score: 1

    Think about delivering that line to 1400 audience members, half of whom are drunk, stoned, or both, and tell me which will be understood by more. And in this case the average and the median are so close it doesn't matter anyway.

  2. Still doesn't do Quechua, which is spoken by over 14 million people.

  3. Re:Learned to drive where... on How Walking With Smartphones May Have Changed Pedestrian Etiquette · · Score: 1

    I grew up in a tourist town and learned early that more people are killed crossing with the light than are killed jay walking, probably because the jay walker is actually paying attention to traffic rather than just assuming that the signal is correct.

  4. Re:List of folks with permanent rights of way on How Walking With Smartphones May Have Changed Pedestrian Etiquette · · Score: 1

    I generally wear boots, and will give them a good kick in the quarter panel if they've cut me off. Scares the crap out of them, they think they've hit someone and their insurance will go up.

    The issue I run into more often in Bellevue is people coming out of a parking lot driveway waiting for traffic to clear and only looking one direction to see if cars are coming, oblivious to the fact that pedestrians even exist. (The T-Mobile headquarters is especially bad for this.) If I'm in front of them and they start to move I'll slap my hand down hard on their hood to let them know I'm there. The better ones are appalled that they almost ran someone down, the executive-looking BMW types are just annoyed that I've touched their precious baby.

  5. Re: Take your space on How Walking With Smartphones May Have Changed Pedestrian Etiquette · · Score: 1

    Generally if they're too stupid to use GPS they'll probably be too stupid to know how to read a map as well. So now they're stuck at home, I'd say that's a win for everyone! (except them of course)

  6. Re:Take your space on How Walking With Smartphones May Have Changed Pedestrian Etiquette · · Score: 1

    Some stupid woman in my wife's store ran into a post in the middle of the aisle Saturday night because she was too busy texting. She then proceeded to the front of the store, demanded to see the manager on duty, and told her that there should be a beeper on the post so that people would know it was there.

  7. Re: Take your space on How Walking With Smartphones May Have Changed Pedestrian Etiquette · · Score: 1

    You really don't understand evolution at all. The development of morality stems from evolution among social animals such as buffalo, horses or chickens. Observe a herd of horses, a pack of canines, or a flock of crows. They each have a moral structure to their societies, which has evolved to further their species' survival (an individual's survival is unimportant to evolution, only the group's survival).

    Rather amusing that a religious fanatic quotes an atheist politician's words celebrating a battle fought to overthrow a practice supported by both the Old and New Testament.

  8. Re:Take your space on How Walking With Smartphones May Have Changed Pedestrian Etiquette · · Score: 1

    I've noticed this on the bus, generally if some jackass is taking up a second seat with his bag on a crowded bus they're under 30. There's one jerk who sits in the back row and deliberately sits spanning two seats, even when there are dozens of people standing. I make it a point to make him move over so that I can sit down, and if there is anyone nearby who I think needs the seat more I'll almost immediately get up and offer it to them.

  9. Re:Arguments against on How One Climate-Change Skeptic Has Profited From Corporate Interests · · Score: 0

    Dyson is a nuclear physicist, not a climatologist or specialist in modeling of complex systems. Not sure why you think we should take his word over, for example, Russ Finegold (also very intelligent, but not a climatologist or system modeler.)

  10. Re:disclosure on How One Climate-Change Skeptic Has Profited From Corporate Interests · · Score: 1

    To be truthful I rather doubt the quality of science, there aren't many aeronautical engineers competent to do astrophysical research.

  11. Government??? The government doesn't own the hospital, care to clarify your point? The judge is protecting the interests of the healthcare conglomerates from the threat of 400,000 injured customers.

  12. Re:Reductio ad absurdum. Colbert would have agreed on Federal Court: Theft of Medical Records Not an 'Imminent Danger' To Victim · · Score: 2

    The hospital **will** be facing fines for the breach, HIPAA violations are expensive. Hospitals have been cutting IT staff in recent years as a penny-smart/pound-foolish cost-saving measure, wonder if this will show Franciscan Healthcare how stupid that is.

  13. Re:Oh Texas... on Federal Court: Theft of Medical Records Not an 'Imminent Danger' To Victim · · Score: 1

    I don't see which "St. Joseph's Hospital" is being referenced, there are a ton of them out there, but most of them are owned by the Franciscan order of Catholic monks. The Franciscans, the Dominicans and the Sisters Of Providence nuns are three of the largest hospital chain owners in North America currently. The judge is not likely directly in the pocket of the Church, but several other for-profit "healthcare" corporations are headquartered in Texas so he is probably looking out for the financial well being of the entire industry by setting this precedent.5722719

  14. Re:Nobody gets to use the surprise face on US May Sell Armed Drones · · Score: 1

    When the second amendment was written they specifically said "Arms", not pistols, long guns, swords, etc. for a reason. At the time most merchantmen carried cannons, port cities had their own batteries of cannon, frontier communities would buy multi-barrel muskets as protection against Indians and brigands, and the "town hall cannon" was not just an ornament. The amendment is an artifact of the time in which it was written, and definitely needs updating, but most people (on both sides of the issue) are unaware of the context in which it was written.

  15. Re:a few huts in the jungle != civilization on Drones and Satellites Spot Lost Civilizations In Unlikely Places · · Score: 1

    Wow, so much stupid in such a short post. One of the oldest villages yet uncovered existed in the Atacama Desert on the Peruvian coast. The invention of adobe in both the New and Old worlds appears to have happened about the same time. When the European barbarians arrived the Inca and Aztec capitals were two or three times the size of any city in Europe or anywhere else outside China, cleaner, better organized, and more advanced in almost everything but weaponry. The first Spaniards who floated down the Amazon reported thriving cities and extensive fields all along the river. Goods were exchanged between the high Andes and the lower Amazon. By the time the Portuguese had arrived to explore the Amazon disease had killed 90+ percent of the population and the jungle was reclaiming land down to the river's banks.

    The two principal advantages the Europeans had were 1) unrivaled ignorant religious fanaticism unequaled until the modern Wahabist movement, and 2) their habit of living in a level of filth unknown at any other point in human history which ensured the survivors were immune to, and carriers of, almost every disease known to mankind.

  16. Time to start over on Airport Using Google Glass For Security and Passenger Information · · Score: 1

    even though it's been forced to have a rethink about its go-to-market strategy

    And here is the example that every other frelling company out there needs to learn; if people don't want to use your product the way you expect them to you need to change your expectations. The classic demonstration of this is the Ford Edsel, but there is no lack of newer examples, such as why did MS go forward with Win 8 even after the test users uniformly hated the new interface? Ballmer had decided that users were going to conform to his product, with end the result that huge enterprise customers (and many of MS's internal users) refused to upgrade. Google is doing the smart thing, they've got a product that is useful in many scenarios, just not popular in the scenario they originally envisioned. They're going to work on the markets where it makes sense now, such as security, medical systems, and architectural design.

  17. Re:Why Evolve? on Deep-Sea Microorganism Hasn't Evolved For Over 2 Billion Years · · Score: 1

    Eyes have evolved multiple times in multiple ways. IIRC the most efficient and advanced eye belongs to the squid. Unlike mammals the squid's eyes have the light-sensing cells in front of the blood supply instead of behind it, and they do not have a blind spot.

  18. Re:Social solution to e technical problem? on British MPs Approve 3-Parent Babies · · Score: 1

    Homschooled: taught how to use a wok.

    To get back to the question, because you appear to know absolutely fuck all about biology.

    Huh. So everyone who knows anything about biology is aware of how common mRNA diseases are? The first five pages of a Google search don't seem to bear that out (although I did find an interesting article about nonsense-mediated mRNA decay in the process).

    Playing with human reproduction tends to be extremely controversial. How long was Louise Brown, the first IVF baby, a source of headlines? I can't imagine the British parliament passing something so possibly controversial so quickly without either royalty or super-rich prompting them? Since bloodline only seems to matter to royals that seems the mostly likely source of pressure.

  19. Re:Social solution to e technical problem? on British MPs Approve 3-Parent Babies · · Score: 1

    No, nor was I home schooled. I'm rather wondering what prompted that post.

  20. Re:Slippery Slope on British MPs Approve 3-Parent Babies · · Score: 1

    MONTHS

    A colonist needs to live there for years, that's what I meant by "go to space". And of course we don't know what the side effects are going to be. We won't until someone actually tries them, just the same as new pharmaceuticals and pesticides. And before you object that people will die, yes, I agree, some people will. People died colonizing every scrap of land on Earth, colonizing space will not be different.

  21. Re:...and, easy to rob from !!! on Alibaba Tests Drone Delivery Service In China · · Score: 1

    A quadcopter with a detachable tail won't have the disadvantage of a spent round going through someone's window and will probably bring it down in good enough condition that it could be resold once you disentangled the tail from the rotors. A lot more fun too.

  22. Re:Times Change on Massive Layoff Underway At IBM · · Score: 1

    No, no, you have that backwards! The bosses provide that essential ingredient LEADERSHIP! Without executives that pull in gazillion-dollar salaries the lower echelons would be uninspired and directionless!

    Was waiting for access to the executive suites at a customer site one time to do some work, and as I sat around in the reception area I was browsing the magazines laying around. Did you know that there is actually a magazine called "Today's Executive", and another simply called "CEO"? Since I had to wait around for over an hour until a meeting broke up I had plenty of time to skim some of the articles, mostly interviews with C-level execs of huge companies, and they really seem to believe that sort of crap. One mag had a survey of several hundred C-suite people, and when asked what value they provide the company the top two responses were 'Leadership' and 'Inspiration'.

  23. Re:Tsk. And they wonder where employee loyalty wen on Massive Layoff Underway At IBM · · Score: 1

    Most likely it will be the highest paid non-executives that get cut, at least that's what I've seen.

  24. Re:Tsk. And they wonder where employee loyalty wen on Massive Layoff Underway At IBM · · Score: 1

    Many of the competent people bailed out of IBM already because of abuse from the Upper Echelons, and most of the rest have been promoted into management (sometimes against their wishes) by the Pointy Haired Bosses. What they have left in the trenches are the Wallys and Dilberts, the folks who are so incompetent or dispirited that they can't get jobs anywhere else. It's too bad, IBM used to be a great (if expensive) company to work with.

  25. Re:You are the 1% on Massive Layoff Underway At IBM · · Score: 1

    Pretty much every fund with any fee at all will end up making more money off your investment over the life of your 401k than you will. It's a hell of a racket.