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User: ObsessiveMathsFreak

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Comments · 4,938

  1. Re:Narcissism on MySpace #1 US Destination Last Week · · Score: 1

    Go out and listen to people talking. At work, at a bar, whatever. You're going to hear pointless rambling.

    People ramble about what's important to them. I'm sure if any of those people overheard a geek conversation on the pros and cons of copy on write in the 2.7 kernel, they'd consider that pretty pointless rambling too.

  2. Re:Obvious! on MySpace #1 US Destination Last Week · · Score: 1

    Combining lots of barely post pubescent teens with raging hormones and disposable income contributes to this large growth.

    There's little link between hormone levels and the idosyncratic behaviours of teenagers. The trend now is towards blaming the neurological changes that occur throughout puberty. My own view, for what it's worth, is that teenage behaviour is the result of conscious choices made by individuals. The choices may be untempered by expierience, but overall, teenagers use MySpace because they want to on an individual level, not simply because they are teenagers.

  3. Re:What features would you like in your browser? on Firefox 2.0 'Beta Candidate 1' Released · · Score: 4, Funny

    Anti-Karma-Whoring measures.

  4. Re:"The encyclopedia that Slashdot built." on When Wikipedia Fails · · Score: 1

    Does every table need a full set of borders?

    Yes.

    Must LaTeX equations be fucking huge?

    Dear gods yes. When you've read as much mathematics as some, you'll understand why LaTeX on the web is better off in a bigger font.

    Why can't editors use a color wheel (or common sense) to choose nicely matching colors?

    This has already been tried. The result was MySpace. Better off sticking with black, blue and white.

  5. Re:Isn't it worth it? on Adware Spreads Through Myspace · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Are we really going to let a little adware get between me and my 15,000 underage girlfriends?

    FYI, most of them are actually guys. Older guys. With all kinds of cooties.

  6. Elementary on The Energy of Empty Space != Zero · · Score: 1

    It's quite simple you see. As shown by Ramanujan;

    1 + 2 + 3 + 4 .... = -1/12

    So getting energy out of empty space should be a snap!

  7. Re:Cleanflix, not Walmart on Cutting out the Naughty Bits Ruled Illegal · · Score: 1

    The same can be said of forcing child support payments. In the end, you are forcing another person to continue to be an earning machine. You are preventing them from "opt-ing out". You are trying to have more control over their body than they do.

    You're arguing here that it is as valid to fine someone as a result of their actions, as it is to force them to bring a child to term as a result of their actions. If this is the case, then it would be appropriate to force a woman to become a surrogate mother as a form of penal sentance. This isn't a straw man, it's an example of how two penalties are not equivalent.

    But I will put you a middle case. Consider the parent of any child paying support payments. You can force them to pay, but you cannot force them to visit or have contact with their child. In fact in some cases, you can restrict this. The point here is, if you cannot force someone to be a presence in a childs life, how can you then force someone to give birth to a child?

  8. Re:Cleanflix, not Walmart on Cutting out the Naughty Bits Ruled Illegal · · Score: 1

    Ultimately it comes down to a question of religion: if you can find a religion that advocates gay marriage then you are free to get married under the auspices of that church.

    That's simply unacceptable. If you did this, you'd just force homosexuals who want to marry into specific religions. That proselytisation through law.

    People should not need to invoke the extra-legal privilages of religion to marry. People should not need religion to marry. It's an institution that exists outside of any one set of scriptures. Some religions may object, but happily their extra-legal privilages do not extend to the lives of others. Yet.

  9. Re:Cleanflix, not Walmart on Cutting out the Naughty Bits Ruled Illegal · · Score: 1

    5 minutes before a child is born, it's a human being but it's still legal to abort it. Even, if everything except the child's head has emerged from the mother, it's legal to abort it.

    That's a pretty wierd jurisdiction you live in. Would you care to quote the act under which these things are legal exactly?

    Very few woman have to abort their babies. A lot of women do it anyway.

    Well, very few people have to get a job, buy a house, take out a loan, learn to drive. A lot of people do these things anyway. You may find life more difficult if you don't do these things, but strictly speaking, you don't have to do anything. The only thing you have to do, according to some, is bring a child to term.

  10. Re:Cleanflix, not Walmart on Cutting out the Naughty Bits Ruled Illegal · · Score: 1

    Yes, because we all know that "the Christian Way(TM)" is represented solely by what went on under the conservative Irish Catholic Church in Ireland for a couple of centuries, and that corruption, brutally oppressive British rule, and scores of other factors had nothing whatsoever to do with the tyranny that happened.

    As a matter of fact, I was alluding to the period of religious opression after the country gained independance. The country only became a theocracy once the christian conservatives in the independance movement were installed inot power.

  11. Re:Seems an obvious patent on Talking iPods · · Score: 2, Funny

    Text to speech applyed to menu navigation. Nothing new here.

    Ahhh! But it's now being done on a computer!

    Oh wait.

  12. Re:Cleanflix, not Walmart on Cutting out the Naughty Bits Ruled Illegal · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'll attempt to answer, arguing from a Christian Liberterian viewpoint...

    i.e. Liberty when it suits me. Except that isn't really liberty at all. Anyone who is following the dogma of any religion is incapable of understanding what true liberties are.

    It doesn't, so shopping hours & alcohol should be unregulated.

    Tell that to all the people whos lives have been ruined by alcohol. Both drinkers and non drinkers.

    So, my answer is, of course you should be able to 'marry' any consenting adult, but you should not be able to force me to recognise your relationship as marriage.

    Yet the rest of us are forced to recognise any half-baked nonsense you choose to call a religion. Lots of consenting adults running about threatening our freedoms, and all under constitutional protection. If asked to choose between this and two adults entering a civil union, I know which side I'd come down on.

    It affects me in the same way as if your girlfirend wanted to kill her newborn.

    It doesn't affect me to anywhere near the same degree. The fact is, most people, when it comes right down to it, aren't really ready to accept underdeveloped embryos as fellow citizens. Which isn't to say that abortion isn't a tough decision. It's a tough one that a lot of women have to make. But ninty-nine times out of a hundred, it's the right decision, and everyone, the mother, the father, society, know it was the right decision. Sometimes, these decisions have to be made. And if asked to choose between people making tough decisions and people being forced to bring children to term, I know which side I'd come down on.

    Provided you're doing it in private, it doesn't affect me at all. Doing it in front of my children is another matter...

    Well, if you wern't watching them at the time, that's your problem.

    Agreed, and this should stop. Similarly, all forms of state coercion should stop.

    The state is granted certain powers of coercion. Those powers are necessary. I would rather have a state, beholden to a constitution, with powers of coercion, rather than private clubs and organisations with powers of coercion dictating my life and how I can live it.

    I'm from Ireland. We tried it the "Christian Way(TM)". This country was a long running disaster, under de facto church control. I couldn't even begin to go into the extent to which the population was oppressed by a theocractic tyranny. I don't have time for "Christian" viewpoints, or any religious doublespeak. I had a taste of that once, and I'm not eager for another lash. No one should be.

  13. Re:Revisionist history on Forbes Now Thinks Carly Saved HP · · Score: 1

    I can't go into details, so a bunch of you may pass this over, but Carly specifically decided to endanger the lives of dozens of employees using HP's aviation services for political reasons.

    So... those Executive Hangar Toilets really were to die for !

  14. Re:Forbes was always biased towards Carly on Forbes Now Thinks Carly Saved HP · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I think we can finish this by saying that; Society is responsible for where assholes work. Assholes however, are entirely responsible for themselves.

  15. Re:Kids these days... on School Admins Demand Access to Students' Cellphones · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Schools are only in loco parentis, as the legalese goes. Basically, they are obliged to take on some, but not all the responsibilities of the parent. In my opinion, this does note extend to activities that take place outside the school, such as cellular telephone calls.

  16. Re:It's got nothing to do with Slavery... on PSP Ad Draws Charges of Racism · · Score: 1

    Eugenics will come - it's just a matter of time....

    Wow. You have a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of evolution. Evolution works through natural selection of random mutations. If the mutations aren't random, you've stoped evolving, and started locally optimizing. Eugenics condemns humanity to simply be the best it can be right now, not the best it can potentially be in the future, and it doesn't even guarantee that.

  17. Re:Yep, Racist America on PSP Ad Draws Charges of Racism · · Score: 1

    If you don't give a damn about skin color, the ad is just the representation of PSP colors

    If the PSP colours in question were pink and brown, you might have a point, but they are simply black and white. "White" people are generally pink, and "Black" people are generally brown. By associating these two racial types with their respective colour label, Sony is directly associating the differently coloured PSPs with each respective melanin group.

    I'm willing to bet that this doesn't happen with other languages. For instance, I very much doubt that the Japanese words for "Black" and "White" people are anything like the words for the colours black and white. It's a relatively recent phenomena, and one which is clearly being used here by Sony.

    In any case, this is a paticularly stupid way of naming people to begin with. I can remember being very young and asking why they called people "Black" and "White", when they looked nothing like those colours. You can't even bank on two people of the same "colour" having even somewhat similar skin tones. I never got a good explanation then, and I still haven't gotten one. Maybe it has to do with peoples representations in old newspaper drawings, but that just Some Wild Ass Guess.

  18. Re:FUD on Western Union Blocking Money Transfers to Arabs · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Bingo. They aren't blocking people because they have some generic Arab name. They are blocking people who have names that match the Federal list of suspected terrorists.

    But since that list reads like the Big Book of Baby Boy's Names (Mid East Edition), that's kind of a moot point.

  19. Re:I believe it on Western Union Blocking Money Transfers to Arabs · · Score: 1

    What does the US administration have anything to do with on this? Apparantly this is Western Union Policy right??

    Wrong. The simple fact is, once companies become large enough, they effectively become an unoffical branch of government. This goes double if you're a telco. Check it, the world over. Big companies in every country kow-tow to government policy, especially when their backs get subsequently scratched with cash cow government contracts.

    AT&T, BP, General Motors, any large bank. The fact is, Western Union knows, if it wants to curry favour with government, it has to start roughing up some innocent people. The "right kind" of innocent people, i.e. persons of middle eastern descent. It's like a gang wannabe that has to mug an old ladies handbag or rob a house before he gets any respect.

    So the bank simply puts any closet racists it has to work on this little side project. People to code it, people to run it, and people to administrate it. I can just imagine the smug glee some southern bigot working at Western Union has every time they close some joe show's account because of his name. There's a tool for every task, and a task for every tool.

  20. Re:Don't allow it... on Skype Addresses Visibility Concerns · · Score: 1

    it uses (on my system at any rate) port 443 (SSL?) and port 80 (HTTP) as its default ports. Any sysadmin that blocks those ports is going to get some very annoyed phone calls from pissed off users.

    I'm currently sitting behind a university proxy where the only open ports are 1080, 8080 and the LimeWire ports. Go Figure.

  21. Re:Another perspective on Ken Lay... on Enron's Kenneth Lay Dies · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A guy eulogizes someone who he had a good deal of respect for and you piss on his grave.

    Need anyone be reminded of the thousands of employees, shareholders and suppliers that the late Mr Lay metaphorically urinated, on as he profited from their misfortune? Who eulogizes for them?

  22. Re:Another perspective on Ken Lay... on Enron's Kenneth Lay Dies · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Well that does it! No more hanging around polite charming people for me.

    I often sense that people who are overly formal and curteous are hiding behind a facade. I don't like them very much. I prefer those who, while still being polite, show their true natures, and don't attempt to be something they're not. Of course, I practive what I preach so when people don't recieve the usual barrage of trite curteousies from me, they probably tend to assume that I'm being rude. The way I see it, putting on a facade is being rude.

  23. Re:How much do they get paid on O2 Xda Atom Exec Review · · Score: 1

    There's obviously a fuzzy line marking where a gadget story ends and an advertisement begins. Some might say that there is no real distinction between the two. However, I think virtually all tech reviews can be considered advertisements, as the company manufacturing the product has usually paid, in some fashion, for a favourable review.

  24. Re:What if the retailer doesn't play along? on Smart Mob in China for Retailer Discount · · Score: 2, Funny

    worked in New Orleans with the big screen tvs!

    Yes but you need a force five hurricane to pull it off right. Do you know how difficult it is to get a force five hurricane these days.... Oh wait.

  25. Re:At the risk of fanning a fire... on Patient Revives After 19 Years By Rewiring Brain · · Score: 1

    For example, the man surely knew how to use a telephone before his coma -- he doesn't need to understand how a cellphone works to use one. He just has to learn to hit "send" after dialing the number.

    Young man, you've clearly never instructed a relative on how to use a mobile telephone.