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User: Stormy+Dragon

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  1. The Child is Usually Right? on Are Game Publishers a Necessary Evil, Or Just Necessary? · · Score: 1

    In many ways, it does know more than the parent, and is closer to what's innovative, but maybe hasn't figured out how to hone that energy yet

    Without commenting on the validity of the analogy, I for one found that as I get older I increasingly realize my parents were usually right.

  2. Bad Tradeoffs on Obama Makes a Push To Add Time To the School Year · · Score: 1

    It seems to me this is likely to hurt society long term. As Obama notes, low acheiving students tend to have no alternate educational oppurtunities outside school and would benefit from a longer school year. The problem is that high acheiving students often do have significant alternate educational oppurtunities outside school and that those oppurtunities often are often, due to being more specialized to the child's particular interests, vastly superior to the educational oppurtunities received in school.

    By example, I know my own success as an engineer had a lot to do with the hobby programming and tinkering I did in my spare time as a child, the science/math enrichment programs my parents sent me to in the summer, all the museums we visited on family vacations, the academic competitions I competed in after school etc.

    This plan is likely to have the effect of making the best and brightest significantly worse of in the name of making the bottom better off. Essentailly everyone will become a more average student. The problem is that making the top students into average students has a far more negative effect on the advancement of society than making the bottom students into average students has as a positive effect.

    Society grows from the top, not the middle.

  3. Re:Talk is cheap on Lawmakers Voice Support For NASA Moon Program · · Score: 1

    Not weight per se; the critical parameter is buoyancy. As long as the sub is close to neutrally buoyant, going both up and down require little effort on the sub's part.

  4. Re:Not really useful on "Overwhelming" Evidence For Magnetic Monopoles · · Score: 1

    There is a charge conservation law in particle physics that requires that anytime particles with positive charge are created or destroyed, particles with an equivalent amount of negative charge must be created or destroyed (and vice versa). No doubt there's a similar principle for magnetic monopoles. The fact that you're creating offsetting particles doesn't mean the individual particles can't be magnetic monopoles.

  5. Re:So they called tech support... on Communication Lost With Indian Moon Satellite · · Score: 1

    That's when NASA calls satellite tech support. When the Indian space program calls satellite tech support, they get a guy speaking barely comprehensible Urdu with a heavy American accent.

  6. Re:Artistic License (or Homer's Poor Choices) on Poor Design Choices In the Star Wars Universe · · Score: 1

    Poseidon, the patron God of Troy, created the horse and it was common for sailors to make a effigy of a horse and leave on the shore before a long voyage to win Poseidon's favor. So when Troy finds the Greek armada gone and this horse statue on the shore, the assumed they'd given up and left. They took the horse statue back to their main temple because that's what you do with offerings. And of course Poseidon, incensed that Odysseus would take advantage of his followers like this spent the next 20 years making life hell for him.

  7. Re:Stay Away. on Comparing the MMO Industry With the Silver Screen · · Score: 1

    I thought Everything or Nothing was a great game and plot wise I consider it among my top five Bond movies.

  8. Re:This is good news on Prehistoric Gene Reawakened To Battle HIV · · Score: 1

    The Amoeba dubia has more than 200 times the amount of DNA than humans.

    I hate it when I forget to turn off the DEBUG flag before compiling the release build.

  9. Linus Torvalds Reinvents Capitalism on Linus Calls Microsoft Hatred "a Disease" · · Score: 1

    I agree that it's driven by selfish reasons, but that's how all open source code gets written! We all "scratch our own itches." It's why I started Linux, it's why I started git, and it's why I am still involved. It's the reason for everybody to end up in open source, to some degree,' says Torvalds. 'So complaining about the fact that Microsoft picked a selfish area to work on is just silly. Of course they picked an area that helps them. That's the point of open source -- the ability to make the code better for your particular needs, whoever the "your" in question happens to be.

    Torvalds must be channeling Adam Smith; his quote reminded me of one of the more famous parts of The Wealth of Nations:

    But man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and show them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.

  10. Re:Amazing on Is Jupiter Earth's Cosmic Protector? · · Score: 1

    Maybe they couldn't see it because there was a big ass gas planet in their line of sight.

  11. Re:It'll never happen on NASA Plans To De-Orbit ISS In 2016 · · Score: 1

    Critics say it's a waste of money with no scientific value whatsoever. So why did we put it up there in the first place?

    So that at election time, congress critters could go back to their districts and brag about all the new local jobs they've created in the federally subsidized white elephant industry.

  12. Re:Being an asshole makes people angry, film at 11 on Researcher Trolls MMO, Surprised When Players Hate Him · · Score: 1

    So you have one group of people who annoy others on a video game and another group that is trying to figure out where people live so they can start harassing them in real life and you consider the first group more of a threat? No matter how much of an asshole the professor is, he's not the one who believes a refusal to do what he wants justifies physical violence.

  13. Re:Being an asshole makes people angry, film at 11 on Researcher Trolls MMO, Surprised When Players Hate Him · · Score: 1

    Less "I will do anything I want, however I want, whenever I want, no matter how it affects you" and "someday I'll be the unpopular minority, and what happens when the angry mob comes for me?"

  14. Re:Being an asshole makes people angry, film at 11 on Researcher Trolls MMO, Surprised When Players Hate Him · · Score: 1

    You're missing my point. Whether or not this particular guy was right in this particular case, I'm disturbed by the blanket rule many commenters are suggesting that is the majority in some society comes up with a particular custom, that everyone has a moral obligation to obey it, just because it's a custom.

  15. Effects of Environment on Social Customs on Researcher Trolls MMO, Surprised When Players Hate Him · · Score: 1

    Reading this article, it seemed utterly bizarre to me that players on one faction would expect players to pull their punches when fighting players from the opposing faction. Then occured to me: that's because I'm a World of Warcraft Player: there's more emnity between our factions because players on each side have no way of communicating with each other! Makes me wonder to what extent the unspoken customs are an unexpected result of game design choices.

  16. Re:Being an asshole makes people angry, film at 11 on Researcher Trolls MMO, Surprised When Players Hate Him · · Score: 1

    So anything the majority of the community agrees on as a 'custom' is okay regardless of the content? Suppose the community agrees on a custom of treating people of certain skin colors as property? Is that okay since it's their custom? Suppose the community agrees it's okay to gang up on homosexuals and beat the crap out of them. Is that okay because it's a custom? And so on... And while this situation is certainly nowhere near as horrifying, I don't think that expecting that after paying to play a game that you'll be allowed to actually play said game is a ridiculous expectation.

  17. Re:Finally on GPS-Based System For Driving Tax Being Field Tested · · Score: 1

    Oh, I'm sure they'll make a low power unit powered by the wheel spinning for them.

  18. Re:given he conned the transplant system, YES. on Hospital Confirms Steve Jobs's Liver Transplant · · Score: 1

    Such an idea is right at home in a country like China

    So is the idea that organs belong to the State. It should be up to the donor to decide how they want it distributed, since it's their organ.

  19. Re:City jobs are a bad thing? on Montana City Requires Workers' Internet Accounts · · Score: 1

    Most roads ARE privately designed and constructed. They're just not privately paid for.

  20. Re:No better than the rest on A.P. To Distribute Nonprofits' Investigative Journalism · · Score: 1

    The first group in particular should set off warning bells. Whenever something refers to itself as "Something for Public Something", it's nearly always a public interest-style advocacy group.

  21. Uh... on EU Wants Multiple Browser Bundling On New PCs · · Score: 1

    How exactly is the user going to be able to select and download a browser if there's not a default browser already installed on the computer?

  22. Re:It is demonstrably MORE common when... on How Common Is Scientific Misconduct? · · Score: 1

    The assumption that politicians aren't entities with an agenda other than pure research seems hopelessly naive.

  23. Re:Okay but where does this end? on Church of Scientology On Trial In France · · Score: 1

    Yes, but on the other hand, ammending legal statements of rights with a "unless the government decides you haven't given REAL informed consent" exception is a loophole so easily abused that you've essentially eliminated the legal protection those rights at that point. Some people may end up having their lives destroyed by cults, but that's the price of a free society. I prefer it to empowering the state to start declaring which beliefs are sincere and which aren't sufficiently informed for its tastes.

  24. Russian Engineering on Russia To Save Its ISS Modules · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    Is Russia the last country where engineers are not (yet) forced by corporations to intentionally produce designs that fail two days after warranty expires?

    No, it's just the last country willing to have it's astronauts die in rickety death traps held together by duct tape if it can save money in the process.

  25. Re:Can we on Original Cast On Board For Ghostbusters 3 · · Score: 1

    Because the ending is also so well known, it didn't occur to me they didn't know it already.