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User: antifoidulus

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  1. Re:Really bad explanation of the evolution. on Tibetans Inherited High-Altitude Gene From Ancient Human · · Score: 1

    By your logic then this morning what I saw rummaging through my garbage was a black dinosaur. However it wasn't nearly as scary as those dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. For starters it's roar sounded more like a "caw caw", and it was afraid of a broom....

  2. Re:But the Tokyo area is so crowded on Grandmother Buys Old Building In Japan And Finds 55 Classic Arcade Cabinets · · Score: 4, Interesting

    For a lot of reasons really. First of all, the article doesn't say where in Chiba prefecture this find was made, while there is a small part of Chiba prefecture that is close to Tokyo(including the part that is home to Tokyo Disney), the prefecture itself is quite large and includes a large peninsula that is quite a long distance from Tokyo.

    Secondly, even in Tokyo proper if you travel to any point in the city that is more than a 10-15 minute walk from a station(and there are plenty of them) you will find plenty of run-down and abandoned buildings. Property in Tokyo seems to follow an inverse square law, the value is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the closest station.

  3. Re:Why did I read that as nipples in space time on Trio of Big Black Holes Spotted In Galaxy Smashup · · Score: 4, Funny

    probably because the title talks about big black holes and a "smashup".....

  4. Re:98th percentile worldwide ... on Match.com, Mensa Create Dating Site For Geniuses · · Score: 2

    Not only do they tend to be loudmouths, there are certain segments of the population in the United States that seem to laud ignorance..... I've lived on 3 different continents and enjoy hanging around in dive bars, you get to meet fascinating people, and one thing that I've discovered is that while there are idiots everywhere, (anecdote alert) only in the US do people BRAG about being ignorant.....

  5. Re:Look to Japan as a model for what not to do on Workaholism In America Is Hurting the Economy · · Score: 1

    The company I worked for didn't pay overtime, and would constantly cut bonuses, so it's not just unions that are pushing OT.

  6. Look to Japan as a model for what not to do on Workaholism In America Is Hurting the Economy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    To see how workaholism saps productivity and rarely leads to better results, look at Japan. Overtime is sacrosanct in Japan, at the company I worked at previously it was a badge of honor that the average amount of overtime was 60 hours a month. Japan has the lowest per-hour output in the G7, and it's a small wonder why. Managers will often times not buy hardware that can increase productivity because hey, you can simply make the workers work longer hours for free, whereas hardware costs money. The result is a populace that is unhappy, unhealthy, and well dying. The low birth rate is well known, what is less well known is that the Japanese have the least amount of sex in the developed world. The technology industry that everyone once thought would rule the world has come to be dominated by the west because managers have very little incentive to innovate, to increase productivity. And as the cherry on the shit sundae, the low productivity means that wages in Japan are lower, i.e. longer hours for less money. Trust me, you don't want to go down this route.

  7. Re:The hypocrisy on China Builds Artificial Islands In South China Sea · · Score: 1

    Nice astroturfing, you get paid by the CCP to post this bullshit? You really think China is transparent? HAHAHAHHAHA, what a fucking tool. Guess what, you are being fucked over by the CCP. Also, this economic progress is not "unheard of in human history", you are copying the Japanese model, right down to the bad loans. It's just on a bigger scale, and frankly you are doing it slower than Japan did it, which is saying something. Probably due to all the corruption by the CCP.

  8. Re: All wars ... on China Builds Artificial Islands In South China Sea · · Score: 1

    Actually it does because Vietnam is even more isolated, thus it will have a very hard time forming regional alliances against China, esp. if China bribes Thailand and Laos with either cheap oil or jobs on the rigs.

  9. Re:The hypocrisy on China Builds Artificial Islands In South China Sea · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Well the problem will persist basically as long as the Chinese Communist Party does.... The CCP is deeply unpopular in pretty much every arena save for how it is handling the economy, if the economy starts to go south you may see Tienamen-like events erupting all over the country. In order to combat this the CCP has to keep the economy humming along and large #s of migrants from the countryside employed. They have done a decent job thus far, but there are some major cracks in the Chinese economy on the horizon. Long story short they copied the Japanese model, right down to the bad loans.

    If China's economy does not keep on expanding you are looking at a potential financial crisis that would make the whole Lehman thing seem tame by comparison. The reason they are getting so bold is because to the CCP, exploiting these resources may literally be a life-or-death situation, as most dictators don't tend to just end up retired in a villa somewhere, they end up with their heads being separated from their necks.

  10. Re:All wars ... on China Builds Artificial Islands In South China Sea · · Score: 1

    There is a reason bullies tend to pick on weak loners, it's because they are unable to defend themselves and unable to get enough support from friends to overpower the bully.

    The thing about Vietnam is that it it's a small country that doesn't have a lot of allies(Laos and Thailand have had armed conflicts with Vietnam in the not so distant past, and of course the whole French/US thing). China may be betting on Vietnam basically being forced to deal with China, since China is the dominant economic force in the area.

  11. Re:Scala on Ask Slashdot: Best Rapid Development Language To Learn Today? · · Score: 1

    So basically you are insulting me and making shit up to compensate for the fact that you don't have a point? Why would they go through all the trouble of implementing such libraries in C if they didn't have to? If the languages are "Many scripting languages appear to be almost as fast as C"? Shits? Giggles? Get some real info and THEN you can act like a self-righteous prick. Until then, actually read and fucking try to grasp the information presented in a post before acting like a dickhead, k?

  12. Origin story sounds familiar on Why the Moon's New Birthday Means the Earth Is Older Than We Thought · · Score: 5, Funny

    You're likely familiar with the theory of how the Moon formed: a stray body smashed into our young Earth, heating the planet and flinging debris into its orbit.

    Isn't that how human babies are made too?

  13. Re:Scala on Ask Slashdot: Best Rapid Development Language To Learn Today? · · Score: 1

    There is a much better rule of thumb, if the language needs to link to C to do relatively mundane tasks(XML parsing, JSON etc) then it's a sure sign it's a slow language. I couldn't believe that nobody uses a pure Ruby implementation of a friggin' JSON library. That just screams "Ruby is dog slow". From what I gather Python is similar.

  14. Re:memory deficits cause autism on General Anesthesia Exposure In Infancy Causes Long-Term Memory Deficits · · Score: 1

    jenny?
    I've got your number, it's 867-530.....shit I was put under anesthesia as a child and now I cannot remember the last digit.

  15. Re:objective list on Wikipedia Mining Algorithm Reveals the Most Influential People In History · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How is that list not weighted not only by recent events, but also Euro/Ameri-centric? Seriously, Obama AND Bush in the list of most influential people in history? In terms of overall impact, they wouldn't even make the list of top 10 us presidents. Seriously, no Harry Truman? Truman was, in terms of global impact, probably the most influential US president of all time. He was the one who decided to drop the atomic bombs, he was the one that oversaw the dismantling of the Japanese empire(one of the biggest events in the past century, but one most people know nothing about it), he was the one that really started the domino theory etc. Certainly more influential than either Bush or Obama.

  16. Re:our greatest hopes on Why NASA's Budget "Victory" Is Anything But · · Score: 1

    So we should put everything on hold because people refuse to breed responsibly? Guess what, there aren't enough resources for everyone to have 7 kids, so why should I care that someone decided to be evolutionary greedy and try to spawn more than they can support? Really, why?

  17. Simpsons did it on Is Google CEO's "Tiny Bubble Car" Yahoo CEO's "Little Bubble Car"? · · Score: 1

    They are both just copying Homer Simpson

  18. Packet loss models? on How MIT and Caltech's Coding Breakthrough Could Accelerate Mobile Network Speeds · · Score: 2

    TFA doesn't seem to state what their assumptions were on how packets get lost and how many packet losses the algorithm can deal with, and what their distribution is. There are a lot of ways you can drop k packets out of n packets sent.

    If you assume that every packet has a k/n chance of being lost, then being able to reconstruct a single missing packet could be incredibly useful. However cell phone packet losses tend to be incredibly bursty, i.e. they will have a very throughput for a while, but then all of a sudden(maybe you changed towers or went under a bridge etc) lose a whole ton of packets. Can this algorithm deal with bursty losses? I wish TFA was a bit more clear on that

  19. Re:Activity Rewires the Human Brain on Parenting Rewires the Male Brain · · Score: 1

    Um, the guy was half-asian(His mother is of Chinese descent)

  20. Re:'stay-at-home-dad' schlock on Parenting Rewires the Male Brain · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Well to be sure accumulation of assets was a big deal, but there are people who posit other, not necessarily mutually exclusive, reasons that farming societies invented the concept of chastity outside of marriage. One compelling argument is that they used it as a form of birth control.

    From what evidence we have we can see that starvation was relatively rare in hunter-gather societies, but it was really common in farming communities, especially when there were more mouths to feed than the land could support. The lords needed some way to make sure that the population couldn't rise above what the land was able to support, so they used marriage, especially church-sanctioned marriage, as a way to control the peasant population. According to Dr. Wyman only 40% of people in medieval Europe were married(Sorry for the zip, lecture #9 is the one that lists this info if you are interested, fascinating course overall). The landlords simply controlled the church who in turn controlled marriage. Civilizations have been using marriage, and the taboos of sex outside marriage, to control population for eons.

  21. Re:Municipalities are wetting their pants on Google Unveils Self-Driving Car With No Steering Wheel · · Score: 1

    Um, you seem to assume that most people speed because they made an input error when operating the vehicle(i.e. pressed the accelerator down further than desired). That probably does happen, but I would be shocked if it's more than 1% of cases. Most cases of speeding occur simply because people want to get their destination faster. Are auto-driving cars really going to stop people from leaving their house too late? If given the choice between getting somewhere on time with an automated car or taking over and speeding, what do you think people who were going to speed anyway are going to choose?

  22. Re:Give Me More on Should We Eat Invasive Species? · · Score: 1

    The other problem with eating the meat of invasive species is that many of them are very high on the food chain and thus contain tons of mercury

  23. Re:Stupid on The World's Worst Planes: Aircraft Designs That Failed · · Score: 2

    Um, the pun WAS intended, as the spelling of the word if it weren't would be "plain", not "plane".

  24. Yeah, but that doesn't mean people are eating the vegetables grown there. There are ads on the train all the time where idol groups advertise Fukushima vegetables. Many consumers in Japan still won't eat them(the prefecture/country of origin is shown when you buy fresh produce in Japan).

    This of course is just amplifying the pain that Fukushima prefecture is experiencing. The population of Fukushima dropped by about 3% from 2010 to 2005, and that was BEFORE the earthquake. The population has dropped another 3% or so just in the past 3 years, and is continuing to plummet as younger people leave the prefecture partially due to fears about radiation, but mostly due to a complete lack of economic opportunities. Things are looking pretty grim for Fukushima

  25. Re: This may be crass but... on Percentage of Elderly In Japan Continues to Grow as Number of Children Drops · · Score: 1

    Actually there is a decent sizzler textile industry in japan, but almost all of the labor is prison labor..