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User: Swave+An+deBwoner

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Comments · 1,240

  1. Re:Easy Solution on How the Red Cross Raised Half a Billion Dollars For Haiti and Built 6 Homes · · Score: 1

    You can't cure poverty by throwing money at the problem.

    Oh, wait ..

  2. Re:Not donating to private charities is easy on How the Red Cross Raised Half a Billion Dollars For Haiti and Built 6 Homes · · Score: 1

    And then there is the USA, that, almost uniquely in the world, taxes citizens after they leave.

    I think that's true only if they intend to come back. Otherwise, don't let the screen door hit you on the ass when you go.

  3. Re:Not donating to private charities is easy on How the Red Cross Raised Half a Billion Dollars For Haiti and Built 6 Homes · · Score: 1

    Yep. I missed that. Thank you. Her political popularity provides a beacon of hope for every idiot in the country.

  4. Re:Not donating to private charities is easy on How the Red Cross Raised Half a Billion Dollars For Haiti and Built 6 Homes · · Score: 1

    I listened to your clip and, much as I cringe at anything Palin, she says "South Korean allies" at 0:45/0:46. Did I miss something there?

  5. Coming soon: the ad revenue stream .. on Florida Hospital Shows Normal Internet Lag Time Won't Affect Remote Robotic Surgeries · · Score: 1

    Your surgical procedure will continue in 60 seconds. Meanwhile please enjoy this brief in-stream advertisement.

    Wha?! Where's the "Skip This Ad" button? Wha?!

  6. The hospitals won't want to schedule just one surgery at a time, they have lots of operating theatres. So the link goes dead with a whole bunch of patients open on the tables. "One general doctor .. on call for one or more operating theatres"? Ha ha. That doctor is going to be called "Marathon Man" if he survives that scene, let alone the patients.

  7. Sure they do. A fresh out of school resident who has been awake and running scut work for 48 hours. No point paying a surgeon big bucks to stand around when the money can go to the hospital's CEOs.

  8. Re:How is this tech related? on EU Drops Plans For Safer Pesticides After Pressure From US · · Score: 1

    From The Fine Article's Summary (FTFAS): "Just weeks before the regulations were dropped there had been a barrage of lobbying from big European firms such as Dupont, Bayer and BASF over EDCs. The chemical industry association Cefic warned that the endocrines issue 'could become an issue that impairs the forthcoming EU-US trade negotiations.'"

    So it was the European chemical corporations that lit the fuse to blow up the new regulations.

    They said it was about EU-US trade relations but they may have had their own reasons for this too you know. After all, who do you think produces the crap that was about to get banned?

  9. Re:Rich Family Dies, World At Peril!!! on DNA On Pizza Crust Leads To Quadruple Murder Suspect · · Score: 1

    One other (probably the major) problem with your suggestions:

    Scenario #1: The pimp won't show up to threaten the cop (playing a deadbeat john). What will happen is that the pimp will beat up or kill the prostitute for not bringing home the money.

    Scenario #2: The same as in #1. The sucker who sells the cop the drugs and doesn't get paid will be tortured and/or murdered as payback for "stealing" the money.

  10. Re:Rich Family Dies, World At Peril!!! on DNA On Pizza Crust Leads To Quadruple Murder Suspect · · Score: 1

    While this sounds like a terrific idea, I don't think it will work.

    Your first scenario is not permissible (the "Do it" part is proscribed); a cop can't have sex to make an arrest, nor could the department legally require officers to have sex as part of their job.

    The second scenario is plausible except that you assume that the LEOs have as much or more "firepower" than the gangs. In fact some kinds of crime pay so well that law enforcement is way over their heads trying to fight back. Maybe not so bad as what's going on in Mexico but bad enough. For example, http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9770.html suggests that the combined spending on the four drugs {marijuana, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine} is about $100 billion USD per year; more than half that figure remains even if you remove marijuana from the list. Compare that to the total federal law enforcement budget of about $28 billion https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2012/assets/justice.pdf which covers the whole gamut of criminality, not just drug sales. OK, stop the "war on drugs" and the cost will drop to zero. Organized crime (gangs) will just move on to a different lucrative area, whatever brings in the cash.

    New York City's police budget, according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Police_Department is $4.8 billion and it covers everything from jaywalking to terrorist bombers. Police Commissioner Bratton can't even get the mayor to hire an additional 1,000 cops because the money just isn't in the budget.

    Furthermore, LEO has to "play by the rules" when going after criminals; the gangs don't have to play fair, so they don't have to waste their resources doing things that don't benefit their illegal activities.

    It would make a cool movie though :-)

  11. Re:It's RAID 0 on Linux 4.0 Has a File-System Corruption Problem, RAID Users Warned · · Score: 1

    The standard mantra you are chanting is correct. But given the human propensity for failing to do something that they planned to do (regular fine-grained backups), a redundant array (pretty much anything except RAID 0) can mean the difference between losing some valuable data or development work and not losing it if a disk fails.

  12. Re:North Pole on The Brainteaser Elon Musk Asks New SpaceX Engineers · · Score: 2

    An African or European swallow?

  13. Re:The problem with older developers... on Why Companies Should Hire Older Developers · · Score: 1

    On what grounds? Not including every accomplishment on his resume? The problem you refer to generally occurs when someone claims credentials that they don't really own, not when they fail to list everything they do.

  14. Re:Wrong point. on The World's Most Wasteful Megacity · · Score: 1

    "Little 1000 sqft apartments", boy are you a hick from the sticks:

    Home Shrunken Home
    New York’s First Micro-Apartments, Prefabricated in Brooklyn

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/realestate/micro-apartments-tiny-homes-prefabricated-in-brooklyn.html

    the city’s first micro-apartment complex, at 335 East 27th Street, with 55 units ranging from 260 to 360 square feet. The building will begin leasing studios this summer for around $2,000 to $3,000 a month.

  15. Re:Become a Dolphin on Using Adderall In the Office To Get Ahead · · Score: 1

    So you're recommending that we use a buffer fish overflow to get elevated?

  16. Re: And it's not even an election year on Ten US Senators Seek Investigation Into the Replacement of US Tech Workers · · Score: 5, Informative

    Your choice of how the United States saved Jews from the Nazi holocaust by allowing them to immigrate is a poor example:

    http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007652

    Beginning in 1940, the United States further restricted immigration by ordering US consuls to delay visa approvals on national security grounds. After the United States entered the World War II in December 1941, the trickle of immigration virtually dried up, just as the Nazi regime began systematically to murder the Jews of Europe. Despite many obstacles, however, more than 200,000 Jews found refuge in the United States from 1933 to 1945, most of them before the end of 1941.

    But, yes, we have a massive statue. The words on it may have to be updated though: "Give us your tired, your poor, your low-wage workers."

  17. I take it that Appy was not 'appy with your request?

  18. Re:Limited power to change working situation... on Regular Exercise Not Enough To Make Up For Sitting All Day · · Score: 1

    Thank you, that's a very interesting article. The letter of reply is also informative. Lest readers believe that the fact that nicotine is present in some vegetables may somehow compare to the serious dangers of smoking, he indicates that the calculations presented regarding an "environment with minimal smoke" described by the author of the article actually amounts to "the equivalent of 1 percent of the smoke from one puff of a cigarette", hardly what most of us would consider "low amounts of smoke in a room":

    Finally, it has been well confirmed that the exposure to tobacco smoke indicated by a plasma concentration of 5 to 10 ng of cotinine per milliliter is of clear toxicologic importance,3 whereas there is no evidence that daily exposure to the equivalent of 1 percent of the smoke from one puff of a cigarette would be of toxicologic importance or could possibly confound assessment of environmental exposure.

    http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199308053290619#t=letters

  19. Re:So how quick is it? on Inside Cryptowall 2.0 Ransomware · · Score: 1

    Malware gets changed over time but here's a video from Sophos named "Watch CryptoLocker in action":

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gz2kmmsMpMI

    Looks like it just encrypts whatever it can right away, not a little today, a little more tomorrow.

  20. Re:Bar fucking barians ... on In Paris, Terrorists Kill 2 More, Take At Least 7 Hostages · · Score: 2

    Well, there's speculation that at least one of the twelve was himself Muslim (based on his name, "Ahmed Merabet"):

    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/08/ahmed-merabet-mourned-charlie-hebdo-paris-attack

    My point remains: courage is to be found throughout humankind, as is tyranny unfortunately.

  21. Re:Bar fucking barians ... on In Paris, Terrorists Kill 2 More, Take At Least 7 Hostages · · Score: 1

    (Not that Abu Muhammad al Maqdisi and Abu Qatada are "moderates" though. They favor al Zawahiri of al Queda.)

    http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2014/02/pro-al_qaeda_saudi_c.php

  22. Re:Bar fucking barians ... on In Paris, Terrorists Kill 2 More, Take At Least 7 Hostages · · Score: 5, Insightful

    OK, here's a recent article about a US lawyer who has friends in ISIS and was negotiating with them for the release of a hostage, the American aid worker Peter Kassig who was ultimately murdered by ISIS. The terms of the proposed hostage release:

    If consummated, the negotiations in which Cohen was involved would have included an agreement by ISIS to halt all kidnappings and beheadings of civilians; in exchange for this, Maqdisi and Abu Qatada, another widely respected jihadist theologian, would have agreed to cease and desist their scathing public denunciations of ISIS.

    Citation:

    http://forward.com/articles/211631/stanley-cohens-radical-detour-on-the-way-to-prison/?p=all

    So yeah, there are some influential Muslims who speak out, but you know, they can get murdered also for doing so. How many non-Muslim people do you know who will open themselves up to terrorist attack to speak out against injustice?

    Courage is in short supply in this world no matter the religious affiliation, ethnic group, skin color, etc.

  23. Re:Hey Bennett, on Four Facepalm Bugs In USPS Label-Printing Site · · Score: 1

    Poor fellow. My best advice to you: Do not go to France!

  24. Re:No, They Haven't Called Me on 65,000 Complaints Later, Microsoft Files Suit Against Tech Support Scammers · · Score: 1

    In fact I received a call from an unknown number (that Google later showed as belonging to a local hospital) and the caller did not leave any message. A few days later someone called again and did leave voicemail telling me that a very good, old, friend was in the hospital and had left my phone number as a contact. He died several hours later.

    While responding to the initial call would almost certainly have made no difference to my friend's survival, I wish that I had been alerted sooner. Just a "this is Dr. X calling about Mr. Y" would have been fine (and in fact was the content of the voicemail left in the second call).

  25. Re:Keep them busy. on 65,000 Complaints Later, Microsoft Files Suit Against Tech Support Scammers · · Score: 1

    When I got called, after they had me do some cool shit on my never-before-used Windows VM, the payoff was that they wanted me to purchase their tech support and software via credit card through one of at least a few online payment processors; we burned through three or four of them with my "bad" credit card numbers; finally they caught on to my scam.

    So I don't think it's that they are looking for Command and Control nodes but just plain old fast cash. The prices for their tech support varied from around $300 down to around $200 or so after I balked at paying so much to fix my computer instead of just throwing it away and buying another.