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User: Stormy+Dragon

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Comments · 1,252

  1. Re:better than rushing steaming piles of shit. on George R. R. Martin's "The Winds of Winter" Wiill Not Be Published In 2015 · · Score: 2

    Yeah, but each of those 6 books was the length of half a dozen Pratchett novels, so it's not exactly an apples to apples comparison, is it?

  2. Re:Is anyone surprised? on George R. R. Martin's "The Winds of Winter" Wiill Not Be Published In 2015 · · Score: 1

    I think some forget, or never knew, that his first book was published 1996. This guy is not a fast writer.

    If you look at pages of output per year, he's actually one of the fastest writers ever. It's just the book are so big that it's still a long wait from one ot the next.

  3. Re:Novikov Self-Consistency Principle on The Quantum Experiment That Simulates a Time Machine · · Score: 1

    Best part of the Novikov self-consitency princple is that if it's true, it means that Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure is the most scientifically accurate time travel movie ever.

  4. Not Really... on Inside the Largest Virtual Psychology Lab In the World · · Score: 2

    The largest virutal psychology lab. The scientists have just been conditioned to think it is.

  5. Damned if They Do... on "Mammoth Snow Storm" Underwhelms · · Score: 1

    Don't forget January 2014 when Atlanta's mayor took a wait and see approach to a storm and when it turned out worse than expected, he was excoriated for not taking it seriously enough.

  6. Re: Good news on Disney Turned Down George Lucas's Star Wars Scripts · · Score: 1

    She left the business 30 years ago.

  7. Re:Good news on Disney Turned Down George Lucas's Star Wars Scripts · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It was the result of his divorce. Lucas's ex-wife was the editor on all his earlier movies, and his work went to crap as soon as they divorced.

    I'm convinced that Lucas was always terrible and she was just able to edit around his terrible directing.

  8. Re:Action vs. inaction on Blackberry CEO: Net Neutrality Means Mandating Cross-Platform Apps · · Score: 1

    Yes, yes, no true scotsman...

  9. Re:Action vs. inaction on Blackberry CEO: Net Neutrality Means Mandating Cross-Platform Apps · · Score: 1

    "Well, app developer has no obligation to Blackberry. But it does have an obligation to its purchasers to provide access to the app. If its customers can't access app because of a deficiency in the app developer architecture and its connections to the mobile OSs, it should be app developer's responsibility to remedy. This is the net neutrality argument, and has generally been the status quo."

  10. Re:Action vs. inaction on Blackberry CEO: Net Neutrality Means Mandating Cross-Platform Apps · · Score: 2

    Comcast gets Netflix and other traffic from Cogent, and there would be no legal obligation to build out their capacity.

    The problem is that whenever saturation issues come up (e.g. http://yro-beta.slashdot.org/s... ), you get tons of people saying net neutrality does include that sort of obligation.

  11. Re:Action vs. inaction on Blackberry CEO: Net Neutrality Means Mandating Cross-Platform Apps · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Net Neutrality isn't just inaction anymore. The term has now been expanded to include things like, if the Netflix-Comcast interchange is getting saturated, Comcast has a positive duty build out more capacity to handle the full flow.

    The Blackberry guy is now expanding it again. People who work in development and realize what this would mean for small developers are rightly horrified, but the thing is, that's how government regulation works. If net neutrality becomes law, it will end up getting used to cover things that aren't strictly related because it's going to be interpreted by lawyers, legislators, and judges that don't understand technology.

  12. Bah... on Facebook Will Let You Flag Content As 'False' · · Score: 1

    This is just another False flag story!

  13. Re:The Only Way Insurance Company Loses on Google Thinks the Insurance Industry May Be Ripe For Disruption · · Score: 1

    It seems like they can only lose if there is a big spike in claims, such as a natural disaster or possibly war/terrorism.

    Nope, that's what reinsurance is for:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...

    There's basically a second set of truly massive companies out there that exist to insure the insurance companies you think of from excessive claims.

  14. Re:Insurance is Legalized Gambling on Google Thinks the Insurance Industry May Be Ripe For Disruption · · Score: 1

    Who is your insurer? I've never had a problem using my auto insurance without a lawyer.

  15. Re:Pope is right! on Pope Francis: There Are Limits To Freedom of Expression · · Score: 2

    Like most pre-1969 first ammendment rulings, Chaplinksy v. New Hampshire was likely overturned by Brandenburg v. Ohio. Subsequent cases like R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul and Snyder v. Phelps would suggest that the "fighting words" doctrine is pretty much dead letter now.

  16. Yo Momma... on Pope Francis: There Are Limits To Freedom of Expression · · Score: 1

    Yo momma so Catholic, you're gonna punch me over this joke.

  17. Double Speak on Pope Francis: There Are Limits To Freedom of Expression · · Score: 1

    While Francis insisted that it was an "aberration" to kill in the name of God and said religion can never be used to justify violence, he said there was a limit to free speech when it concerned offending someone's religious beliefs.

    If he supports limits on free speech, then he does think religion can be used to justify violence, as the threat of violence if the only way any such limits can be enforced. Just because the person engaged in the violence has a shiny police badge and permission from the government doesn't make them fundamentally different from the Charlie Hebido attackers.

  18. What? on The Mystery of Glenn Seaborg's Missing Plutonium: Solved · · Score: 1

    We went to check on Seaborg's plutonium, only to discover it had been replaced with a piece of uranium-235!!

  19. Re:Less chance of dangerous quake now on Seismological Society of America Claims Fracking Reactivated Ohio Fault · · Score: 0

    mini quakes along active fault lines release pent-up energy that protects against "the big one"

    This is something you hear people say a lot, but as I point out below, the science suggests it isn't true in most cases.

  20. Re:Less chance of dangerous quake now on Seismological Society of America Claims Fracking Reactivated Ohio Fault · · Score: 1

    Except around extremely large interplate faults, earthquakes are time independent; the chance of there being an earthquake tomorrow depends very little on whether the last earthquake was yesterday or 100 years ago.

    As an example, Time-independent and Time-dependent Seismic Hazard Assessment for the State of California: Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast Model 1.0

    In this paper we have presented both time-independent and time-dependent probabilities for several faults and statewide ground motion hazard maps for California that show the value of peak ground acceleration with a 10% probability of exceedance for a time period of 30 years starting in 2006. The timedependent maps differ by about 10% to 15% from the timeindependent maps near A-fault sources (figure 4). However, for most of California, located well away from the time-dependent sources, the ground motions are similar.

    If fracking is causing seismic activity on interior faults, you're just getting more earthquakes, not reducing the chances of large future ones.

  21. A hammer isn't a value system either. That doesn't make carpenters inherently untrustworthy.

  22. Re:Generally speaking on Dish Pulls Fox News, Fox Business Network As Talks Break Down · · Score: 4, Informative

    While I'm definitely not a fan of their ouvre, Fox News is the fourth most popular cable channel, behind only Disney, Nickelodeon, and Adult Swim. As much as you may not like that, they certainly do have a "large enough following".

  23. Re:Fox Entertainment on Dish Pulls Fox News, Fox Business Network As Talks Break Down · · Score: 1

    Then there's no such thing as a news service. Some may be more informative than others, but they're all ultimately entertainment.

  24. What's Up with DISH? on Dish Pulls Fox News, Fox Business Network As Talks Break Down · · Score: 1

    First they lose all the Time Warner channels, then they lost CBS, now they lost all the Fox Channels...

    Pretty soon there's going to be no actual channels left on DISH.

  25. We should send an independent UN inspector on North Korea Denies Responsibility for Sony Attack, Warns Against Retaliation · · Score: 1

    Like Hans Blix!