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User: cusco

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  1. Re: The UK doesn't have freedom of speech on Cameron Says People Radicalized By Free Speech; UK ISPs Agree To Censor Button · · Score: 1

    It's one thing for a test to destroy a few tickytacky houses thrown up in the middle of the desert and burn some mannikins. Actually seeing the devastation is an order of magnitude different. I know from testing that the full-choke barrel on my 16 ga will create a shot pattern a foot wide at a certain distance. Actually seeing the mess it makes of a rabbit that far away is something else entirely.

  2. Re:The UK doesn't have freedom of speech on Cameron Says People Radicalized By Free Speech; UK ISPs Agree To Censor Button · · Score: 1

    Mostly because "We're being oppressed by the government!" resonates much better with their base than "We're sleazy douchebags who want to conceal our funding sources but the rules won't let us!"

  3. Re: This already exists on Cameron Says People Radicalized By Free Speech; UK ISPs Agree To Censor Button · · Score: 1

    I suspect that was a bad attempt at sarcasm. He says "Quoting a bad Stallone movie" as though there were some other type of Stallone movie, for example.

  4. Re:Gvmt didn't try to suppres OWS? Where've you be on Cameron Says People Radicalized By Free Speech; UK ISPs Agree To Censor Button · · Score: 1

    Earlier this year? That's been public knowledge since at least 2003. People were posting on Blogspot as early as 2004 about how they had been paid to disrupt online forums, we had several on the Alternet and Utne forums. For that matter there were FBI trolls disrupting BBS and IRC discussions back in the '90s.

  5. Re:The UK doesn't have freedom of speech on Cameron Says People Radicalized By Free Speech; UK ISPs Agree To Censor Button · · Score: 1

    Summary: You are actually free to shout "Fire" in a crowded theatre, just be prepared to go to jail for the resulting damage/injury /death.

    Simple enough?

  6. Re: The UK doesn't have freedom of speech on Cameron Says People Radicalized By Free Speech; UK ISPs Agree To Censor Button · · Score: 3, Insightful

    In actuality the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki did save lives in the long run. The two cities were chosen for their geographic and demographic profiles, to test the effects of terrain and building types on bomb effectiveness with a future clash with the Soviet Union in mind. What they found was that the effects of nuclear weapons were so horrible that even the lunatics in the Pentagon and Kremlin hesitate to use them. If the nukes had just been used at some remote location to demonstrate to the Japanese what we could do it's very likely that they would have been launched at some point during the 1950s and the highest life form left on the surface of the planet would be rodents.

  7. Re:The UK doesn't have freedom of speech on Cameron Says People Radicalized By Free Speech; UK ISPs Agree To Censor Button · · Score: 1

    They were harassed for violating the terms of the tax-exempt status that they had applied for. That's what the IRS is for, enforcing the tax law. If the teabaggers hadn't been so interested in hiding that their movement is entirely financed by billionaires and mega-corporations they could have applied for a different tax-exempt classification and not had any problems, just like all the other political action groups.

  8. Re:The UK doesn't have freedom of speech on Cameron Says People Radicalized By Free Speech; UK ISPs Agree To Censor Button · · Score: 1

    The IRS went after groups that were very blatantly and openly violating the rules that they are supposed to enforce. The teabaggers could have chosen any of the tax exempt classifications, they chose the one that would let them hide their donors. That classification prohibits political activity, but they were already involved in political campaigning before filling out the application. Should the IRS have just pretended to not see?

  9. Re:Just cheating themselves on The Students Who Feel They Have the Right To Cheat · · Score: 1

    Can you say "MCSE"? I worked my ass off and destroyed my server lab half a dozen times and can honestly say that I earned my title. Then came the boot camps and the braindump sites and "paper" MCSEs became far more common than the real thing. Truly pissed me off.

  10. Re:Well, the trick is: on The Students Who Feel They Have the Right To Cheat · · Score: 1

    My wife's friend was told by the corporate big wigs to outsource support for the (really major) feature that his group supported. He refused at first, loudly proclaiming to all and sundry that only people experienced in the development and testing of this feature could support it. He was told then that his support budget had been cut by several million dollars, effectively making outsourcing the only option possible. He had no choice, so relented and outsourced with InfoSys (as directed by the same big wigs). A year later they had to spend $30 million to bring the support back in-house and do all the in-depth training that he had said would be necessary from the beginning.

    Then he got fired for being so far over budget on his support costs, while the big wig got a bonus for having saved money on support the year before.

  11. Re:Ok... just turned two score, but... on The Students Who Feel They Have the Right To Cheat · · Score: 1

    The modern police/paranoia state is depressing to contemplate all by itself, and hideous when you think of it as applied to today's teenagers. I can think of two things that I was **caught** doing in high school that today would have meant jail time rather than detention, and I did a frack of a lot more that I wasn't caught at. Some of it I was lucky to survive, and those were some of the most valuable learning experiences.

    I feel sorry for kids that will never have the opportunity to just take off and be on their own for hours/days without adult supervision because their parents grew up with "Stranger Danger" being drummed into their heads.

  12. Re:Effects on Martian atmosphere on Orbiters Study Effect of Giant Comet-Caused Meteor Shower On Mars · · Score: 1

    It's all a matter of priorities, and most of these fools feel as though theirs are the only priorities that matter. India's mission to Mars cost less than the wedding of the daughter of one of its industrialists a couple of years ago. The wealth of the Walton heirs alone could come close to funding a sustainable Lunar colony,

  13. Re:And you get to live in Florida!!! on Florida-Based Magic Leap Builds Its Team With Bay Area Hires · · Score: 1

    Don't forget to mention six inch long cockroaches that fly.

  14. Re:Aren't we supposed to be dead already? on CERN Looking For Help Filling In the Gaps In Photo Archive · · Score: 1

    There were books by "futurists" to that effect and some science fiction stories, but reputable scientists? Hardly. If you think back, which "scientist" was it that claimed we were about to enter a new Ice Age? None, it was a reporter at Time Magazine who had (probably accidentally) learned about Milancovitch Cycles, actual climatologists (there were a few then) already knew we were getting warmer and together with astronomers put together the first climate models to explain the gross temperature ranges of Venus, Earth and Mars. Economists were the only people surprised by economic growth in India and China, and there aren't many of those who could be called "scientists" much less reputable. And even politicians as ignorant as Ronnie Raygun were under no illusion that the Cold War was a permanent state.

    Are you sure that you actually remember **anything** from the 1970s?

  15. Re:umm.. what? on Researchers At Brown University Shattered a Quantum Wave Function · · Score: 1

    But I wanted a car analogy . . .

    Thank you, that's a very nice explanation.

  16. Re:This was no AP. on LAX To London Flight Delayed Over "Al-Quida" Wi-Fi Name · · Score: 1

    More like they were trained by the CIA. How many failed attempts did they make to kill Castro?

  17. Re:It makes you uneasy? on Creationism Conference at Michigan State University Stirs Unease · · Score: 1

    Oh, horsepuckey. Every time the Taliban blows up an ancient statue of Buddha or a Hindu family burns a widow or an Indian tribe kills a whale it's the Left that complains. The only time the Right in the US complains is if the victim is a Christian or if it aids the sales of weapons.

  18. Re:needs rebranding on Lava Flow In Hawaii Gains Speed, Triggers Methane Explosions · · Score: 1

    Fixing it? How the frack do you "fix" a highway that had the last five miles buried by multiple meters of molten rock? Walk for half an hour from the current end of the road and you'll see a "No Parking" sign sticking up a couple inches above the solid rock. When we were there a couple of years ago there was an active lava tube a few feet below the surface just a couple hundred meters further along.

  19. Re:6,000 Year Old Temple Unearthed In Ukraine on 6,000 Year Old Temple Unearthed In Ukraine · · Score: 5, Interesting

    No, he's thinking of the US military's insistence on bulldozing an airfield well into the protected archeological zone of Babylon, destroying (IIRC) an unexcavated mound and a minor temple in the process. (Then to add insult to injury, they abandoned the project because it wasn't needed, something they were told well before starting work.).

  20. Re:Don't be ridiculous on No More Lee-Enfield: Canada's Rangers To Get a Tech Upgrade · · Score: 1

    There are access control systems in a couple of local hospitals here that are over 20 years old, one hasn't been rebooted in at least 8 years. There are controllers for a local power dam that have been in place and working since the 1970s. There is a lot to be said about the reliability of old-school hardware that more modern equipment can't hope to match.

  21. Re:Ouch on NASA Cancels "Sunjammer" Solar Sail Demonstration Mission · · Score: 2

    Uh, no. On one trip by one administrator to the Middle East in one interview he mentioned that was one of several goals of that one trip. I realize that's not quite the spin that Fox News put on it for you, but that's the truth. Sorry.

  22. Re:Things once thought impossible... on The Physics of Why Cold Fusion Isn't Real · · Score: 1

    Most of the matter and energy that makes up the universe is still undetectable to us except on the gross galactic scale, somewhere between 60-95 percent depending on who's estimating. I think that leaves a little wiggle room. BTW, cold fusion wouldn't exist at "human scale", it's an atomic scale phenomenon.

  23. Re:Why Cold Fusion (or something like it) Is Real on The Physics of Why Cold Fusion Isn't Real · · Score: 1

    they are physically impossible.

    The US Navy Research Laboratory disagrees, and claims to have made it work reliably with a couple different types of metals.

  24. Re:Why Cold Fusion (or something like it) Is Real on The Physics of Why Cold Fusion Isn't Real · · Score: 1

    I followed the Pons and Fleishman story fairly closely when it first came out. There were a lot of attempts to duplicate the experiment, some got heat but no neutrons, some got neutrons but no heat, some got tritium but no heat.or neutrons. A few years ago there was word from the US Navy Research Lab that they had managed to reproduce the effect fairly reliably with a couple different combinations of metals in the electrodes. I believe that they found that the purity of the electrodes was extremely important, which could be why most of the other attempts had problems.

  25. Re:credibility of article is doubtful on Lockheed Claims Breakthrough On Fusion Energy Project · · Score: 1

    The US and Soviet military had howitzer-launched nukes, which if you peel the shell casing off you get the legendary "backpack nuke". The Pentagon lost track of how many they had produced by the end of the 1950s, since the number was in the thousands.