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User: mcgrew

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  1. Re:Not if they know history on Should Google Get Aggressive About Monetizing Android? · · Score: 1

    History is ripe with companies that built a product that does something different

    History is developed to the point of readiness for harvesting and eating with companies that built a product that does something different? I think the word you're vainly searching for is rife.

  2. Re:Scientology is the truth on Scientology's Fraud Conviction Upheld In France · · Score: 1

    Legitimate religions aren't tax dodges. Yes, you can deduct your tithes and alms but many don't (I don't). What a legitimate church collects goes towards paying its bills and other expenses, whatever is left over goes to the poor. The church I attend (on the west side of town where the rich folks live) sent millions to Africa last year, as well as making sure that the poorest kids in town and their families actually got to eat during Christmas vacation (school breakfasts and lunches is often all some of these kids get), and completely redid the two poorest schools, new playground equipment, refurbished and painted the buildings, etc.

    Legitimate religions don't make anyone rich. Sham religions like scientology do.

  3. Re:Anti-science? See, now you have proof! on How Science Goes Wrong · · Score: 1

    That was insightful. If your understanding of science conflicts with your understanding of your religion, you either misunderstand the science or the religion, because they are not in conflict.

  4. Re:Anti-science? See, now you have proof! on How Science Goes Wrong · · Score: 1

    if you really want to talk to a young earth creationist (I don't know why you would)

    To teach, of course. And I echo everything you said.

  5. Re:Getting me started, man! on Support For NASA Spending Depends On Perception of Size of Space Agency Budget · · Score: 1

    That was a thought-provocative comment, thank you for writing it. As to pot, don't they have a problem with voting for a man who wants some of their friends and families in prison? I'd say that's pretty important.

  6. Re:Prejudiced much? on Oracle Attacks Open Source; Says Community-Developed Code Is Inferior · · Score: 1

    Thank you! I've bookmarked that, I guess I should read the whole site. The menu items are a little confusing; rotate 90 degrees is under tools -> transform with no arbitrary rotation.

    I was impressed with its paint and pencil tools. I haven't played with it much.

  7. Re:Bluetooth woes on For Playstation 4 Owners, Bad News On USB, Bluetooth Headsets · · Score: 2

    Their laws and mores are theirs. We shouldn't allow human sacrifice, but if it's their country and culture, the most I should do is speak out. Kind of like Russian homophobia, it isn't any of my business and the most I should do is speak out against it.

  8. Re:Sounds kinda like the Rat Park study on No, Oreos Aren't As Addictive As Cocaine · · Score: 1

    Larry Niven, Death by Ecstasy

  9. Re:This applies to television, too? on Is Choice a Problem For Android? · · Score: 1

    Doesn't the trend of "cutting the cable" partly stem from having too many channels to choose from?

    No, exactly the opposite, it's from LACK of choice. Rather than letting you choose a dozen channels you would want to watch, they charge you an arm and a leg for 400, none of which you'd ever watch except that dozen you'd like to pay for. Picture a bucket of dogshit with a dozen small diamonds in it. They charge diamond prices for the dogshit you have to search through to find the diamonds. A La Carte would result in my not having to pay $5 for ESPN because I don't watch sports, and you paying $25 for ESPN because you do. Why should I subsidize the god damned jocks?

    Plus, the quality of cable channels has been steadily dropping since 1985. There used to be no commercials in the cable channels, now not only are you paying with money but with your eyeballs, often while the content you're paying for twice is on (If I'm paying for content, ads are theft).

    And then you have the content itself going into the toilet. Empty-V used to play music videos, now they play the same kind of bullshit "reality TV" OTA shows. Discovery used to have science and technology, now it has "Trick My Truck". History Channel used to have WWII and ancient Greece, etc, now they have "Ice Road Truckers" and "Visitors for Outer Space".

    People are cutting cable because it used to be $10 a month for quality, now it's over $100 for garbage. I got rid of cable years ago, OTA and DVDs and the computer using the TV as a monitor works for me. Cable is just too damned expensive for what you really get.

  10. Re:This too shall pass. on Facebook Comment Prompts Arrests In Cyberbullying Suicide Case · · Score: 1

    I feel this is a behavioral bump in the road that may disappear as my generation becomes the parental generation.

    Of course you do, you're only 30. What you don't know is that every generation since 1880 has had the same problem. Nobody had a clue what telephony would lead to. Nor the automobile (F.L. Allen had a bit to say about that in his 1931 book Only Yesterday), movies, comic books, TV (OMFG Elvis), VCRs, now the internet and cell phones. I have no more idea what will come up in 20 years that will confound parents' abilities to raise their kids than than someone freaking out over Elvis' gyrations had any idea that some day everyone would have a camera and a phone in their pocket.

    Yeah, you get the internet. You won't get what's next. Nobody will (and the youngsters take to new things like fish to water, a geezer like you has to work at it).

  11. Re:Prejudiced much? on Oracle Attacks Open Source; Says Community-Developed Code Is Inferior · · Score: 1

    And GiMP? Don't get me started.

    Amen, now I see why folks pirate photoshop. I need cover art for Nobots, so DLed GIMP. Wanted to simply have a black background with NOBOTS in a bright red upper case 72 point Aral Black font above "mcgrew" in darker blue lowercase Aral Black. No fucking fonts. So I loaded some photos out of my camera to straighten out some crooked shots, and WTF?? You can only rotate 90%. A graphics program that came with a $100 scanner I had fifteen years ago was better. So was the one that came with the Corel office suite twenty years ago. GIMP is well named, it is indeed badly crippled.

    Fuck it, I'll use a goddamned crayon and a scanner. I wish I could find the disk for that old graphics program...

  12. Re:Won't take off, but may Rip You Off on Square Debuts New Email Payment System · · Score: 1

    Nope, no drug dealer in the world (illegal anyway) will sell drugs for a credit card* or a check and they wouldn't use this. They want cold hard cash.

    * they do take LINK

  13. Re:Whew! on Tiny Pacemaker Can Be Installed Via Catheter · · Score: 1

    I thought that science had finally proven that the path to a man's heart isn't through his stomach once and for all... :(

    That old canard is misunderstood. The best way to a man's heart is through his stomach if you're trying to stab him to death.

  14. Re:Tax Avoidance on Irish Government May Close Apple's Biggest Tax Loophole · · Score: 1

    Just curious. Do YOU pay more taxes than you're legally obligated to?

    Yes, I do. I could take the charity deduction, but then it would be a tax dodge and not charity so I just don't take it.

  15. Re:You mean DMLS? on ESA 'Amaze' Project Aims To Take 3D Printing 'Into the Metal Age' · · Score: 1

    This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (September 2013)

    Damned right it does because it's incorrect if it's what I saw demonstrated at SIU in the late seventies (although that one may have been a hot spray, it's been an awful long time ago).

  16. Re:SubjectsInCommentsAreStupid on Is Choice a Problem For Android? · · Score: 1

    I think there are too many nitpicking unemployed english majors on the loose on the interwebs.

    And I think there are too many uneducated morons at slashdot who had no majors in anything because they very obviously dropped out of high school, plus never read a book they weren't forced to. I cut slashdot "editors" slack, they're technologists, not writers. But some mistakes are just sofa king stew pot (like this sentence) that it makes the comment unreadable. Someone saying "there car is over they're and they should loose they're license right hear and now" shouldn't be commenting at a site where it is assumed a large proportion actually has attended college; you don't need to be an English major to avoid stupidities like that.

    Note that with "sofa king stew pot" an aliterate would figure that out before someone who reads regularly because they have to sound the words out (BTW, note that I did not mean to write "illiterate", it isn't a misspelling or typo).

    That said, there's nothing wrong with the summary, and your comment seems to have been written by someone literate, although "on the loose" might have made an aliterate stumble. "On the lose? Huh?"

  17. Re:She wasn't just the first woman programmer on The Curious Mind of Ada Lovelace · · Score: 1

    Nerve sells are basically transistors but with far more options for where the signal will go

    Pssst, hey buddy, wanna buy some nerves? Got 'em cheap. Maybe you can build a NAND gate with a few.

  18. Re:Oh yes yes on ESA 'Amaze' Project Aims To Take 3D Printing 'Into the Metal Age' · · Score: 1

    Yes, it was invented and in limited use (racing), but it wasn't widespread in passenger cars until the eighties.

  19. Re:She wasn't just the first woman programmer on The Curious Mind of Ada Lovelace · · Score: 1

    You misunderstand the GP. Before electronic computers existed, "computer" was a job title. They did things like work out logarithms, ballistics tables, scientific math, etc.

  20. Re:Deep down.. on Ask Slashdot: Why Isn't There More Public Outrage About NSA Revelations? · · Score: 1

    Small problem; wealth inequity in this country has never been this bad, not by a long shot.

    Pedantic nit: It hasn't been this bad since the 1920s (which were alarmingly like the times we're living through now).

    However, we don't have one anymore; we have the poor, and the super rich. The line separating those two is getting thinner every year.

    It's not QUITE that bad... yet. I'm median income and I'm not hurting, but I'm certainly not rich, let alone super rich. I can afford everything I need and most things I want. But it is getting there. You know what wealth inequality brings? Economic collapse and depression.

    What Allen says in the linked 1931 book pretty much mirrors what my grandmother (born in 1903) told me -- the roaring twenties only roared for a few. It was a miserable time for most.

  21. Re:'Habitable Zone' Bull***t on First 'Habitable Zone' Galactic Bulge Exoplanet Found · · Score: 2

    Oh, yeah, those scientists are SO stupid... sheesh.

    Just because our planet is a certain distance away from the sun and supports life, doesn't mean that every planet has to be in the exact same place in other systems to support life.

    Stars are classified as to size, spectral class, etc. The "goldilocks zone" is different for every star and guess what? THEY KNOW THAT, fool. They are perfectly capable of discerning how far away from any star a planet must be to have water in all three stages.

    Also, there is no way that all life in the universe is going to be carbon, there are going to be silicon beings out there, and who knows, maybe even things more exotic!

    You need to read more science and less sci-fi.

    silicon has several drawbacks as an alternative to carbon. Silicon, unlike carbon, lacks the ability to form chemical bonds with diverse types of atoms as is necessary for the chemical versatility required for metabolism. Elements creating organic functional groups with carbon include hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur, and metals such as iron, magnesium, and zinc. Silicon, on the other hand, interacts with very few other types of atoms.[6] Moreover, where it does interact with other atoms, silicon creates molecules that have been described as "monotonous compared with the combinatorial universe of organic macromolecules".[6] This is because silicon atoms are much bigger, having a larger mass and atomic radius, and so have difficulty forming double bonds (the double bonded carbon is part of the carbonyl group, a fundamental motif of bio-organic chemistry).

    We don't know that we're not the only planet with any kind of life whatever. It's unlikely that this rock is the only place with life, but not impossible. We just don't know.

  22. Re:choice doesn't *require* bad defaults on Is Choice a Problem For Android? · · Score: 1

    For me, first it's price; I'm not going to carry a fragile, easily lost item I can't easily afford to replace. Second is features (being waterproof is the killer feature for me on my phone, I've lost two phones from water). But it has to fit comfortably in my pocket, so screen size is important to me -- if it's too big, I don't want it.

  23. Re:Oh yes yes on ESA 'Amaze' Project Aims To Take 3D Printing 'Into the Metal Age' · · Score: 1

    The microwave oven took 15 years to go from proof of concept to an affordable counter appliance. and another 10 years for decent ideas on how to use it practically.

    It didn't take that long. My parents were using our microwave to reheat coffee since the day they brought it home. (30 years later, that's still its #1 use.)

    Wrong. The microwave oven was invented in 1945, thirty five years before they were affordable. Citation

  24. Re:This on Facebook Comment Prompts Arrests In Cyberbullying Suicide Case · · Score: 1

    People who are prone to the real suicide are much more quiet about it than some drama queens who are shouting "I'm going to kill myself!" several times a day.

    That's a dangerous misconception. Often, but not always, a person may show certain symptoms or behaviors before a suicide attempt, including:... "Talking about death or suicide, or even saying that they want to hurt themselves".

    Always take suicide attempts and threats seriously. About one-third of people who try to commit suicide will try again within 1 year. About 10% of people who threaten or try to commit suicide will eventually kill themselves.

    The person needs mental health care right away. Do not dismiss the person as just trying to get attention.

  25. Re:books are on computers now on Neil Gaiman On Why Libraries Are the Gates to the Future · · Score: 1

    That's funny, because I've often wished that dead tree books were keyword searchable.

    Nonfiction books have this thing in the back called an "index" that lists the words in the book and what pages they're on. For fiction, word search is useless. If you want to find where you were last time you were reading there's this thing you slip between the pages called a "bookmark".

    For browsing for ebooks you haven't found yet, there are ebook index sites and web search engines.

    How is a search engine going to find a book you've never heard of by an author whose name you don't know? If you find something on an index site, how do you know it's worth paying for?

    I swear, you kids today...