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User: i+kan+reed

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  1. Re:Funny how it's the business donations. on Silicon Valley Swings To Republicans · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This ignores the reality that advertising works.

    Without changing anything about products themselves, statistically significant numbers of people will select the more advertised one more often.

    Marketing is social poison.

  2. Re:Funny how it's the business donations. on Silicon Valley Swings To Republicans · · Score: 2

    Hilarious, really.

    Not ha-ha funny.

    Nor ho-ho funny.

    More like "democracy is fundamentally undermined" funny.

  3. Re:Good on Chinese Hackers Mess With Texas By Attacking Fracking Firms · · Score: 1

    We're talking about states and corporations here. You should, as a matter of course, assume realpolitik dominates decision-making.

  4. Re:Good job. on Japan's Annual Nuclear Drill Highlights Problems · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Yeah, and it definitely means they need a follow-up drill to see if they fixed the problems in the near future. Recurring problems should be spotted and taken into overall understanding of nuclear risk.

    Identified and fixable problems, on the other hand, are going to be misused by anti-nuclear advocates.

  5. Re:Good on Chinese Hackers Mess With Texas By Attacking Fracking Firms · · Score: 1

    Fair point. But sabotage of the competition also helps you get ahead if you're willing to break the law.

  6. Re:Good on Chinese Hackers Mess With Texas By Attacking Fracking Firms · · Score: 1

    And if one of the most destructive attacks they can manage is forcing safety mechanism to fail and causing a massive spill, is that still the attitude you'll have?

    I don't like fracking. It overextends fossil fuel dependency when we need stronger economic incentives to get off them for our long term needs. But if it does happen, I don't want this kind of risk from it.

  7. Back in the day, AOL free trial disks made excellent replacements for TPing a school or house.

  8. Re:They tried to raise prices 20% unnanounced on Cutting the Cord? Time Warner Loses 184,000 TV Subscribers In One Quarter · · Score: 1

    Well, they could be the remaining populace of invertebrates who like the reality shows that permeate 97% of cable television.

    300 channels, and they're all variations on "look at these stupid people act dumb and laugh as if you're better than them."

  9. Re:Internet alone is more expensive than Internet+ on Cutting the Cord? Time Warner Loses 184,000 TV Subscribers In One Quarter · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Which just makes me so glad that I don't sit on my ass watching other people exercise for entertainment.

  10. Re:Works better for flu on Ebola Forecast: Scientists Release Updated Projections and Tracking Maps · · Score: 1

    I blame human nature.

    Ebola, as an African phenomenon, was too normal xenophobes an exotic and encroaching problem from the outside. The notion that it could follow an infection pattern similar to other deadly diseases, and not spread wildly in places with good medical care, public health, and sanitation, might consciously occur to them, but since it's an "outsider" phenomenon, it bypasses any rationality present.

  11. They tried to raise prices 20% unnanounced on Cutting the Cord? Time Warner Loses 184,000 TV Subscribers In One Quarter · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And I asked myself quite reasonably, "Why the fuck do I have cable TV?"

  12. Works better for flu on Ebola Forecast: Scientists Release Updated Projections and Tracking Maps · · Score: 2

    Because panicky idiots with nothing to fear don't talk about the flu just because someone halfway across the country has it without symptoms yet.

  13. Re:Just like "free" housing solved poverty! on Power and Free Broadband To the People · · Score: 1

    Sorry you don't recognize controlled natural experiments, but that's your problem, not mine.

  14. Re:Just like "free" housing solved poverty! on Power and Free Broadband To the People · · Score: 1

    Sorry, but the overruns and abuses of some programs wasn't the argument I was taking apart. Just the wrong things the OP said.

    No more. No less.

  15. Re:Just like "free" housing solved poverty! on Power and Free Broadband To the People · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And here comes science to take your stupid politicized assumptions about what good public housing does and flush them down the shitter. Public housing shows serious reductions in intergenerational poverty against control populations facing similar problems.

    Now the best results come from people who temporarily reside in public housing and move into low/middle income housing after a few years, and the worst results come from people who face dual problems of mental illness or addiction in addition to homelessness, but that's not the boogeyman you're trying to take down.

  16. Re:We can be certain of one thing on Stan Lee Media and Disney Battle For Ownership of Marvel Characters · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Crucial distinction:

    They lost rights to everything they came up with in perpetuity as a standard contract of their employment. I view such heavy handed contracts quite dimly as a result of unbalanced employment negotiation.

  17. We can be certain of one thing on Stan Lee Media and Disney Battle For Ownership of Marvel Characters · · Score: 4, Informative

    The actual people who came up with the characters definitely don't own them.

    Thanks, pro-corporate copyright laws and contracts!

  18. Re:pay money for youtube? on YouTube Considering an Ad-Free, Subscription-Based Version · · Score: 1, Insightful

    People who haven't heard of adblock?

    Some of us reaaaaaaaaaaaaaallly hate ads.

  19. Re:Time for Solidarity? on Skilled Foreign Workers Treated as Indentured Servants · · Score: 1

    I'm making some guesses about your motivation for making an inane statement.

  20. Re:Every patient? on Why Every Cardiac Patient Needs a Virtual Heart · · Score: 1

    By and large, better treatment options cost less, not more, than the status quo.

    Every once in a while, changes are things like "get an MRI scan as part of your lab work", which adds more than it takes(but saves lives). But things like this that prevent readmission is as good for the patient financially as it is medically.

  21. Re:Summary doesn't support headline on We Are All Confident Idiots · · Score: 1

    Agency is arbitrary in meaning anyways. I don't have any trouble swallowing that pill.

  22. Re:Time for Solidarity? on Skilled Foreign Workers Treated as Indentured Servants · · Score: 1

    In that you have decided you have a political opposition to those groups, thus they can't be similar?

    I'm sorry, that's still what unions are, and your various beefs with them and the legitimacy of those beefs have no bearing on the fact that they are.

  23. Re:The unclassified network? on Hackers Breach White House Network · · Score: 1

    Well, naturally, but when industry standards have cheap ways to put your "posters" in "locked bulletproof glass cases", it's still kind of troubling.

  24. Re:LOL ... Scores of Hectares? on Drones Could 3D-Map Scores of Hectares of Land In Just a Few Hours · · Score: 2

    Hey that's not fair. Hectares are a totally valid unit, for any time you want to describe a largish quantity of land without having to worry about most poeple knowing how much exactly you're talking about, and maybe realizing you're overbilling them.

  25. Re:Time for Solidarity? on Skilled Foreign Workers Treated as Indentured Servants · · Score: 1

    I was trying to avoid editorializing too much positively or negatively about unions, because my main thesis was one of simple fact, and opinions tend to distract from that.

    Yes, mandatory membership has a history tied quite deeply with the de facto abuses that management participated in in negotiations.