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User: khelms

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Comments · 251

  1. Re:SEC block? on Comcast To Buy Time Warner Cable In $44.2 Billion All-Stock Deal · · Score: 1

    Yes, but you now have the option to stream your TV programming! ... uh, through your cable modem.

  2. Re:"climate change deniers" on How Blogs Are Changing the Scientific Discourse · · Score: 1

    Sure, people have the right to express their "opinions". My observation is that most of the "experts" speaking out against AGW are funded by the oil and gas industry. What their actual opinions are is unknown - they are being paid to muddy the water and create the appearance of controversy. The industry that stands to lose if we reduce carbon emissions is actively trying to block us from doing anything through these tactics. That being the case, they are putting all of civilization at risk of long-term drastic climate effects in order to preserve their profits. People like that do deserve worse than name-calling.

  3. Is this the homeopathic theory of business? on IBM Looking To Sell Its Semiconductor Business · · Score: 3, Funny

    Sell all your product lines in order to raise profits to the maximum?

  4. Re:None on Ask Slashdot: What Online News Is Worth Paying For? · · Score: 1

    You should be willing to pay more for their unique blend of news and comedy.

  5. Re:Wacky thinking on Kansas To Nix Expansion of Google Fiber and Municipal Broadband · · Score: 1

    How about James and Juda, Jesus's younger brothers.

    I assume you meant half-brothers there. Too bad there was no DNA testing back then to prove parentage.

    Claiming the bible is true because many people mentioned in it actually existed is not valid reasoning. I could write a story about Abraham Lincoln being abducted by aliens (or fighting vampires) and that does not make it true just because he really lived. Claiming truth because family members or other followers continued to believe despite the risk of a government arresting or killing them is also bogus. History is full of people willing to be killed for their cause whether valid or not. History is also full of people blindly putting misguided faith in another person, related or not.

    I've never understood how people accept this obvious mythology. History shows that religions around the world have evolved from primitive worship of spirits that lived in animals, trees, lakes, mountains, etc, to polytheistic groups of squabbling gods, to an single omnipotent god who created everything, knows everything, yet hides his existance from us and wants us to really believe in him. All those previous religions are now false and this current one is really true (no really, this time we got it right!). This God created the world in 6 days some 6-8 thousand years ago with all life in its current form, but rigged the physical laws and fossil record to look like the world originated 4.5 billion years ago with life originating some 3+ billion years ago and slowly evolving into all current forms.

    God, having set up the universe to look like everything runs off the laws of physics without the need for any supernatural forces, then wants you to believe in him/her/it and will consign you to an awful place if you don't. This God lets multiple competing, sometimes contradictory, religions exist and yet makes no appearances to give anyone a clue which of those religions is correct (Hi, I'm God and I endorse this religion!), but you're screwed if you pick wrong. From my observation, 95%+ of people wind up in the same religion as their parents and relatively few actually compare and choose. Whatever religion people are brought up in, they're taught it is the only true one, everybody else is wrong and damned, and most of all, don't question the story! I scratch my head over the logic this God supposedly employed. He got tired of judging everyone on their individual merits, so he knocked up a married woman, created a son, and let the primitive folks of that day kill that son, which then somehow changed the rules on how sins were processed and going forward everyone just has a single checkbox for believes/doesn't believe. Huh?

    There is supposedly a book that is blessed/guaranteed/certified/whatever to contain the word of this God and that is supposedly 100% true, but it contains some tales that are obviously false. For example, these is no evidence of a great flood covering the entire earth and wiping out all animals except a handful of each species that were on a humongous boat constructed by a primitive society. If this were true, the DNA record would show little genetic diversity in every species living today, every animal today having descended from a handful of ancestors a few thousand years ago, but that is not the case. The people who wrote the tale obviously were unaware of the sheer number of species that exist. This boat would have been overrun with the minimal breeding population of the millions of species of insects alone.

    So, it sound to me like your choices are 1) believe what you were taught and don't question anything, 2) accept that, yeah probably, some kind of God exists, but the holy books are not completely accurate, 3) accept that it looks like the universe runs strictly off laws of physics and any God looks unlikely, except maybe to have started the whole thing off to run on its own, or 4) accept that there is strong evidence that everything can be explained strictly by physics a

  6. Re:It might be an unpopular opinion... on Ask Slashdot: What Does Edward Snowden Deserve? · · Score: 2

    You do realize there are more then two parties right?

    I thought the two parties had the system rigged so it is extremely difficult for anyone from a third-party to get elected.

  7. Re:It might be an unpopular opinion... on Ask Slashdot: What Does Edward Snowden Deserve? · · Score: 5, Informative

    I believe torture is against international laws that we have agreed to follow, but I haven't seen anyone charged with crimes for black prisons, extraordinary renditions, and torture.

  8. Re:Better idea on Open Data Tells NYC Residents Where the Rats Are · · Score: 2

    What if they learn to put wet towels around their heads?

  9. Re:It's not about which technology on Ask Slashdot: It's 2014 -- Which New Technologies Should I Learn? · · Score: 1

    Hey, all the COBOL and FORTRAN programmers are dying or retiring, so any younger people who know those languages can basically write their own ticket!

  10. Join the Club on Canadian Music Industry Calls For Internet Regulation, Website Blocking · · Score: 1

    "...wrote a blog post late last year lamenting musicians' earnings, a situation he blames on the Internet allowing a few to "amass staggering, unprecedented wealth" while musicians toil for tiny incomes."

    Isn't that what's been happening to the rest of us who aren't in the top 1% of incomes?

  11. Re:An ode to wankery on Global-Warming Skepticism Hits 6-Year High · · Score: 1

    Climate change measures the trend of long-term averages of temperatures around the globe.. The fact that an arctic cold front came south and caused record low temperatures for a few days in North America is called "weather". Those lows will be averaged in with all the other temperatures around the globe. If the trend is upward, then the overall climate is getting hotter. Just because it sometimes rains in the Mojave doesn't mean that it's not a desert.

  12. And the Lord did grin... on Ancient Pompeii Diet Consisted of Giraffe and Other "Exotic'" Delicacies · · Score: 1

    and the people did feast upon the lambs and sloths and carp and anchovies and orangutans and breakfast cereals and fruit bats and...

  13. Did I miss something? I haven't read anything that said he is making money off of this.

  14. Someone broke into my house on Privacy Advocate Jacob Appelbaum Reports Break-In Of Berlin Apartment · · Score: 2

    and replaced all my furniture with exact duplicates.

  15. Re:Booze Bus on Texas Drivers Stopped At Roadblock, Asked For Saliva, Blood · · Score: 1

    But that's not important right now.

  16. Re:Invertibrate Whales? on 40-Million-Year-Old 'Walking Whale' Fossil Found In Peru · · Score: 1

    Who modded this as "flamebait"? It was a perfectly on-topic South Park quote!

  17. Spherical Chicken? on Ask Slashdot: Attracting Developers To Abandonware? · · Score: 1

    Isn't that a Fedora release? That's DEFINITELY Linux!

  18. Re: There is an Ig Nobel Peace prize? on The Ig Nobels Are Tonight · · Score: 1

    Please stop, I'm bored!

  19. Oh, "GAMERS"... on How Gamers Could Save the (Real) World · · Score: 1

    I looked at this and read Gamera and was wondering how a rocket powered turtle was going to save the real world.

  20. Forget it. He's on a roll.

  21. I have to bring my phone with me??? on Retail Stores Plan Elaborate Ways To Track You · · Score: 2

    It's kind of heavy and won't work anyway when it's not plugged into the wall.

  22. Re:Decode performance on Next-Gen Video Encoding: x265 Tackles HEVC/H.265 · · Score: 1

    Why did the parent get voted down? This seems like a reasonable question to me. I sometimes have trouble getting smooth playback of H264 on my Linux systems due to the GPU driver not being as advanced as the Windows version. It sounds like H265 will require even more powerful graphics processing. Will I need a newer, more powerful video card? Will I be able to play this format on Linux at all, or will I have to wait a couple of years till the driver support for hardware acceleration catches up?

  23. Can't read the article on Fifteen Years After Autism Panic, a Plague of Measles Erupts · · Score: 1

    Please refrain from posting stories that link to articles that require a paid subscription to read.

  24. Bad Name on 802.11ac: Better Coverage, But Won't Hit Advertised Speeds · · Score: 1

    We've already got an 802.11A standard, so how are they going to specify a router that uses all the standards? 802.11BAGNAC (ordered by speed)? 802.11AACBGN (alphabetical)? There were plenty of 1-character suffixes left, so why use a 2-character suffix that can be confused with an existing suffix?

  25. Re:one solution to over population on NASA Asteroid Capture Mission To Be Proposed In 2014 Budget · · Score: 1

    And if, oops, it just happens to land on the Iranian's buried nuclear facilities, well darn.