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User: codewarren

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  1. Re:WTF?!?!?! on SSD Prices Continue 3-Year Plunge · · Score: 1

    What the fuck planet are they shopping on? Fell 10% my ass!

    I had assumed this was posted from an alternative universe where "fall by 300%" makes sense.

  2. Re:Can't wait on SSD Prices Continue 3-Year Plunge · · Score: 4, Funny

    I've never had an SSD, and had a very bad experience with a first gen one

    So what was the bad experience you had with a first gen SSD besides not having one?

  3. Re:This shouldn't involve political sides! on 27 Reported Killed In Connecticut Elementary School Shooting · · Score: 1

    Seriously? Mentally insane people go to a k-4th grade school and start killing people, and you post how it's related to a political party's stance on something?!?

    Why would this be unmentionable? One party wants to make it easier to get these guns. The other party has said over and over that this will make things like school shootings worse and more common. We now have another school shooting. It's the worst we've had. Why are we pretending to not notice the relevancy? What would be the appropriate time to notice that what they said would happen happened?

  4. Re:What about rain? on Hagfish Slime Could Make Super-Strong Clothes · · Score: 2

    What about rain? I am not sure I want my new shirt to turn back into slime if it gets wet.

    P.S. This post was NOT a joke.

  5. Re:Bitcoins are junk... on Race To Mine Bitcoins Drives Enthusiasts Into the Chip Making Business · · Score: 1

    So dollars have only speculative imaginary value for me? (Note i'm not paying my taxes in dollars)

    Yes.

    The only thing YOU can do with dollars is trade them with other people according to arbitrary exchange rates based on fluctuating speculative value. To others they have real value because they can pay taxes with them.

  6. Re:one condition on Over 1000 Volunteers For 'Suicide' Mission To Mars · · Score: 1

    The aphelion of Earth: 152,098,232 km.

    The aphelion of Mars: 249,209,300 km.

    Maximum distance: 152,098,232 + 249,209,300 = 401,307,532 km.

    Speed of light: 300000 km/sec = 1338 light seconds = 22 light minutes.

    22 light minutes represents worst case one way if the orbits were perfectly opposing, but they aren't. The actual figure is closer to 21 light minutes. Round trip therefore is 42 minutes latency.

  7. Re:Careful you don't run afoul on Murder Is Like a Disease (No, Really) · · Score: 0

    I'll take your seriousness seriously for a moment.

    So guns are not as dangerous to innocent bystanders as RPGs. You know what's even less dangerous to innocent bystanders than guns? Knives.

    My question is why is there a right to own guns? Because there is some imaginary line of acceptable danger to innocent bystanders?

    In fact, I think you'll find that you'll find the opposite is true anyway. You'd never fire an RPG for "cover" like you would a gun because of reload and ammunition costs. Thus RPGs tend to be much more accurately deployed. Chaotic and unaimed firing of guns, however, is common and leads to way more innocent bystander casualties.

  8. Re:one condition on Over 1000 Volunteers For 'Suicide' Mission To Mars · · Score: 1

    No... it is 21 minutes for each packet each way. I've already thought of that, of course. 42 minutes is the round trip time. I've also assumed that TCP/IP is not being used, but some other protocol. Doesn't matter how good that protocol is, though, because you'll never beat 42 minutes during the time Mars is at its farthest from earth. This is why I say "best case"

    You can have a proxy on earth for all the TCP/IP, arping, and nameserver I/O. You just need a way to send data to that proxy when you click a link, and a way to get all the data to construct the web page back from the proxy so that you can reassemble the page on Mars.

    There are of course other considerations. Data from Mars will have to be error tolerant because any retransmission would add another 42 minutes, so redundancy will have to be built in, thus reducing bandwidth. Ditto for the return trip. That's all very fascinating but my point is just that this idea that you can browse the internet for the rest of your life doesn't seem so great when everything you do takes 42 minutes to be actualized.

  9. Re:one condition on Over 1000 Volunteers For 'Suicide' Mission To Mars · · Score: 5, Informative

    This isn't 30 second latency we're talking about. When mars is furthest from earth, best case latency is a whopping 42 minutes. That means after you click a link, the very best case is that there are 42 minutes before you get a reply.

  10. Re:Careful you don't run afoul on Murder Is Like a Disease (No, Really) · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...And why does there need to be an NRA and not a NRPGA? Why did God give us the right to own rifles but did not give us the right to own rocket propelled grenades? After all, if you outlaw RPGs, only outlaws will have RPGs. And what about the NICBMA? To remind us that intercontinental ballistic missiles don't kill people, people kill people!

  11. Re:Let them die. That's what natural selection is on Congressional Committee Casts a Harsh Eye On Vaccination Science · · Score: 1

    It's time to admit that your original statement was stupid.

    Most of the U.S. population have no vote for most of the government. For example, only people in the districts of the two congresspeople mentioned in TFA could vote for them. The rest don't get a vote. These two could be literally brain dead and yet 98% of the population would have had no say in whether they got elected or not.

    Also natural selection doesn't work the way you think it does. Government != parents.

    Your comment is almost unintelligible. The irony of your declaration that the entire U.S. are idiots to be culled by natural selection is overwhelming.

  12. Re:Let them die. That's what natural selection is on Congressional Committee Casts a Harsh Eye On Vaccination Science · · Score: 1

    ...or work near them, or shop near them, or watch movies, or fly on planes, or ride trains. Where exactly is this place devoid of all idiots that you speak of?

  13. Re:Let them die. That's what natural selection is on Congressional Committee Casts a Harsh Eye On Vaccination Science · · Score: 2

    That's not how vaccination works. No vaccination provides 100% immunity to 100% of recipients. Instead it relies on getting enough people vaccinated to make it difficult for the pathogen to find fertile ground. This is known as "herd immunity". If large swaths idiots refuse vaccination, that in turn puts the non-idiots at risk.

  14. Re:my eyes glazed over after the third paragraph on Even Capped Prediction Markets Can Be Manipulated · · Score: 1

    So, learning how to fix cars would be antiproductive

    You are correct and a lot of people miss this fact, thinking they are saving themselves money by doing their own mechanic work, but this was not the point I was making.

    Learning new concepts, such as the intracacies of how economies work prove to be extremely useful in cases well beyond economics. This is not peculiar to economics either but is true of all things where you must learn to think in a new and abstract way.

    I know a lot about how quantum mechanic works. I'll never put this knowledge to direct work. But the concepts learned have proved useful anyway. I will never be an evolutionary biologist either, but understanding concepts which allow irreducibly complex things are built by evolution have proved to be useful conceptual tools.

    This was the point I was trying to make. There's an indirect benefit to understanding new concepts.

  15. Re:Misunderstanding of stock markets on Even Capped Prediction Markets Can Be Manipulated · · Score: 1

    It appears to me that he is presenting two scenarios: 1. You are not an angel investor and what you do doesn't net you money or, 2. your a successful angel investor but your scheme only works because investing works.

    I don't think he misunderstands financial markets at all. This looks like a reading comprehension fail to me.

  16. Re:my eyes glazed over after the third paragraph on Even Capped Prediction Markets Can Be Manipulated · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And you could have earned even more than that in the time it took you to learn all the stuff that allows you to make $100 in that amount of time.

    I could have made thousands of dollars digging ditches in the time it took me to learn everything that I needed to know in order to make $100/hr, but that wouldn't have made it worth while in the long run.

    I also could have made thousands of dollars in the time it took me to read some philosophy books that never netted me any money directly, but that wouldn't have made it worth it either.

    Sometimes it is just worth it to learn a new concept or think in a way you hadn't thought before.

    I hear this a lot from shoddy engineers (my field, but equally true in other fields) who can't be bothered to learn anything new unless it's on the company's dime because their time is somehow worth too much to take the time to learn more.

    This pervasive attitude that only what makes you the most money in the here-and-now is all that's worth doing is a real problem.

  17. Re:Can't keep this up on Mars Rover Finds Complex Chemicals But No Organic Compounds · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Is it NASA that is crying wolf? TFS suggests only "rumors" of "major findings" and that NASA was downplaying those expectations.

  18. Re:Product Quality change? on In a Symbolic Shift, IBM's India Workforce Likely Exceeds That In US · · Score: 1

    [Says American:] "It's 6 'o clock EST and I'm going home. I don't care how important your deadline is, I've got other things to do" - Indian peers are far more accommodating

    [Says American:] "I don't care about scheduling calls at 2 AM your time because I know you are cheap labor willing to be exploited"

    I think you may find that the sentiment expressed by your hypothetical Indian in #2 is what eventually leads to the sentiment of your hypothetical American in #3.

    Being willing to work overtime forces everyone to be willing to work overtime. Those who pressure you to do it pretend that it shows that you are "not lazy" and "dedicated" and therefore preferred. But really it means you are "more exploitable" and have a low opinion of your own worth.

    In addition to this, if you work past closing time, you may imagine that upper management sees you as dedicated. In reality this is seen as an attempt to simply compensate for a lack of the skill necessary to actually complete by closing time.

    Quitting at quitting time is not laziness, it's simply a refusal to compete in the race to the bottom.

  19. Re:First on Search For "Foolproof Suffocation" Missed In Casey Anthony Case · · Score: 1

    It is important to distinguish between punishment for the sake of 1) retribution, 2) deterrent and 3) protection of others. A person's state of mind and health of mind definitely matter for the first one. There is no need to seek retribution on an insane person's actions, while it may still be wise to punish as a deterrent or at least incarcerate in order to protect others.

    Also, the cause of a person's state of mind also can matter in some cases for 2 and 3. It is certainly possible that a "tumor" did it, for example, which means that when the tumor is excised, there is really no cause to keep punishing yet another victim of the tumor.

  20. Re:wasn't this GIFF on GIF Becomes Word of the Year 2012 · · Score: 3, Funny

    No one uses that. Do you use "thou" and "thy" and shit?

    Yes to the third one.

  21. Re:Civilization removes natural selection. on Study Claims Human Intelligence Peaked Two To Six Millennia Ago · · Score: 1

    As soon we form fixed civilizations, natural selection is no longer in effect.

    No. As soon as we formed fixed civilizations, we changed what nature selects for.

  22. Re:no on Study Claims Human Intelligence Peaked Two To Six Millennia Ago · · Score: 1

    This statement fails to distinguish between intelligence and knowledge. If the whole world were as intelligent as the most intelligent person ever we still couldn't put a robot on Mars without tapping into knowledge which we've obtained over centuries (including what we got from ancient Athenians).

    This statement also fails to distinguish between average intelligence and extraordinary intelligence. The fraction of people today able to assemble a robot is embarrassingly tiny, let alone put one on another planet.

  23. Re:Two lessons here on How the Inventors of Dragon Speech Recognition Technology Lost Everything · · Score: 1

    Lesson 1: blame the victim.

  24. Re:So now Google is literally a bunch of faggots? on Google Launches International Campaign For Recognition of Same-Sex Marriage · · Score: 2

    Google isn't saying we need marriage for gays, exactly, they are saying that we need equal treatment. If the government is giving preferential treatment to heterosexuals and denying it to everyone else, then that's wrong.

    So then the question of whether or not "marriage" should be a legally recognized thing at all is another question. It may or may not be. But, consider that if children also need protection from government, then it actually could be in a government's interest to control the environment they're raised in to some extent.

  25. Re:I'll be impressed when... on Google Launches International Campaign For Recognition of Same-Sex Marriage · · Score: 1

    Said the anonymous coward.