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User: 0p7imu5_P2im3

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Comments · 230

  1. Re:It's sinking. on Ninety-Nine Percent of the Ocean's Plastic Is Missing · · Score: 1

    Actually, It could really be sinking. It could be a(n) (un)fortunate side effect of the dispersants used to disrupt the BP oil spill in 2010. Plastics are made of oil, after all.

  2. Re:Wait a sec on Belief In Evolution Doesn't Measure Science Literacy · · Score: 1

    Yes, but natural selection is won by pissing contests!

  3. Re:Should Be Illegal on Verizon's Plan To Snoop On Its Customers · · Score: 2

    Unfortunately, the only way to fight this is with a customer boycott. That is to say that Verizon (and others) will not cease such clandestine activites without their advertisers pulling out.

    The only way advertisers will pull out is with customer backlash, and that means we have to stop buying from companies who use such advertising.

  4. Re:All publicly funded research needs public relea on VA Supreme Court: Michael Mann Needn't Turn Over All His Email · · Score: 1

    I suppose I could see grounds for such an unusual privacy policy. It protects controversial scientific theories from dooming a person's political or academic aspirations, though not from the ridicule of colleagues who receive the emails.

  5. Re:All publicly funded research needs public relea on VA Supreme Court: Michael Mann Needn't Turn Over All His Email · · Score: 2

    That's a valid point, but it doesn't apply in the case of a university email address (as opposed to a personal email address), especially when the data can be significant to future discussion of the process used today. Historical correspondence between scientists is more often harolded for its benefits to the scientific community than for any fear of political backlash.

  6. Re:All publicly funded research needs public relea on VA Supreme Court: Michael Mann Needn't Turn Over All His Email · · Score: 1

    And can you imagine what would have been lost had the public reacted in knee jerk fashion by keeping those letters private because of some short sighted political pundits?

    So tell me again why we're okay with this today?

  7. Re:All publicly funded research needs public relea on VA Supreme Court: Michael Mann Needn't Turn Over All His Email · · Score: 1

    The US constitution stands on it's own merits. The daily tos and fros of negotiating the thing over those 4 months are irrelevant.

    And yet, for decades after that original publishing of the US Constitution, those very tos and fros of negotiating were slowly trickled out, leading to some of the most foundational Supreme Court rulings which have preserved our country's freedoms.

    Dismissing the process for the results is like missing the trees for the forest. Just as in politics, in the scientific method, the ends do not always justify the means, and pretending otherwise can lead to atrocities like eugenics. Apologies for invoking Godwin's law, but it does sufficiently demonstrate the point.

  8. Re:All publicly funded research needs public relea on VA Supreme Court: Michael Mann Needn't Turn Over All His Email · · Score: 1

    Your exemplary use of the English language astounds, and it most certainly elevates your point to the level of attention gathering.

  9. Re:All publicly funded research needs public relea on VA Supreme Court: Michael Mann Needn't Turn Over All His Email · · Score: 2

    In my government place of business we have a warning before login that we are required to accept which states that all our activities are subject to monitoring. Business email is for business use. Personal email is for personal use. It's not difficult for me to understand that and I'm a mere Computer Engineer. Certainly a respectable climate scientist of doctoral status should be able to understand such a social limitation.

  10. Re:All publicly funded research needs public relea on VA Supreme Court: Michael Mann Needn't Turn Over All His Email · · Score: 1

    The thought processes behind the research can often give insight to new data that arises later. Many of Einstein's theories would not be as well understood if not for his correspondence with other notable scientists of his day.

  11. All publicly funded research needs public release on VA Supreme Court: Michael Mann Needn't Turn Over All His Email · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If the public pays for it, the public should receive it in its entirety.

  12. Re:Enjoy your Death March on Ask Slashdot: What Do You Do If You're Given a Broken Project? · · Score: 1

    I think you mean "gyro" ... but the argument is sound.

  13. Re:Enjoy your Death March on Ask Slashdot: What Do You Do If You're Given a Broken Project? · · Score: 1

    I salute you, anonymous coward, for you brought an evil grin to my face... even if only momentarily.

  14. Re:Enjoy your Death March on Ask Slashdot: What Do You Do If You're Given a Broken Project? · · Score: 1

    You only think you're laughing now.

    I bought red Swingline staplers for everyone with which I had worked at the company. I labeled each "Property of <my name>" so they'd remember me.

  15. Re:Enjoy your Death March on Ask Slashdot: What Do You Do If You're Given a Broken Project? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's not that bad. Results are more important than intraoffice politics, if your superiors enjoy making money.

    I have been in this specific situation. In my case, the ultimate answer was to rewrite the portion of the program that was worst, mostly from scratch. We had some proprietary libraries for which we had obtained the source code. Going through said source showed that the flaws (in this case, performance drag) were well entrenched, so I decided it would be necessary to write our own code from scratch to replace it. There were no political ramifications because we no longer had a business relationship with the original company, as it had gone bankrupt, and the original code was now owned by our customer. It was on my head to succeed, and succeed I did. The performance of our software went well into the useful range and I had impressed my superiors immensely. Not only that, but about two weeks later, the other customer of our software had canceled their project, so this project that I had just brought to fruition was now the only project using our software. I saved 20+ jobs and was now in charge of our group's only project. I was a hero.

    That's when politics begin to matter. Another group in the company had lost all it's customers at the same time as our group lost our other customer. That group's manager needed a project at which to work, so after arranging a public shaming of my group's manager and taking over my group, he had me moved to the basement in another building... literally... He had to replace me with 3 managers and 2 programmers and 4 operators, but then, he was able to charge the customer for 9 employees' time instead of just 1 employee's time. Now he looked like the hero and I was looking for another job. If not for charging time spent to the customer, he probably would have lost that fight.

    The moral of the story is: Do your absolute best and, if money is more important in your company than politics, you will be rewarded.

  16. Re:NoScript on Ask Slashdot: Are AdBlock's Days Numbered? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Amen! Preach on ma' brotha'!"

    Seriously, though. That is exactly why I installed an ad-blocker. I specifically allow sites I visit in order to live up to that philosophy, but I have yet to see a single site since 1999 that hosts 100% of its own advertising. I actually enjoy seeing in house ads for exactly this reason, even if the site reviews the product it is advertising, because it shows that they give a care about their users/readers.

  17. Re:If you're concerned... on Largest Bitcoin Mining Pool Pledges Not To Execute '51% Attack' · · Score: 1

    If all the money that has been given to banks in Quantitative Easing had instead been given to those who were receiving forclosure notices, the bubble would not have burst so detrimentally and the economy would be more stable for the common man today.

    The simple fact is: Quantitative Easing is a method for the banks to keep the money in the banks and out of the hands of the people.

  18. Re:If you're concerned... on Largest Bitcoin Mining Pool Pledges Not To Execute '51% Attack' · · Score: 1

    If all the money that has been given to banks in Quantitative Easing had instead been given to those who were receiving forclosure notices, the bubble would not have burst so detrimentally and the economy would be more stable for the common man today. The simple fact is: Quantitative Easing is a method for the banks to keep the money in the banks and out of the hands of the people.

    Now explain to me how that is a right wing point of view...

  19. Re:If you're concerned... on Largest Bitcoin Mining Pool Pledges Not To Execute '51% Attack' · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Ironically, the 51% attack is very similar to a phenomenon with the US Dollar that is commonly referred to with the politically correct monicker "Quanitative Easing" and the derogatory, though very applicable, term "bailouts."

  20. In this SQL happy industry... on SQL Vs. NoSQL: Which Is Better? · · Score: 0

    I see no benefit to SQLs as they are typically just regurgitation and rehash of the previous platform. Yes, there is some minor benefit to being able to forgo character exposition, but often they are simple cookie cutter copies of other SQLs... Wait... we're not talking about movies, are we?

  21. Re:Beware Dihydrogen Monoxide on The Rise of Chemophobia In the News · · Score: 1

    Yes! Dihydrogen Monoxide is so prevalent in our polluted environment that we likely breath it in with every breath we take!

  22. Re:SpinRite on Ask Slashdot: How Do You Test Storage Media? · · Score: 2

    While SpinRite does a good job of recovering data temporarily on bad drives, it's intended use is to exercise the drive's SMART controller so that it will check the drive for problems more often, thus moving data from bad sectors before they fail completely. This has the fortunate side effect of reporting whether a drive is past it's stable use lifetime as well as other basic statistics regarding normal drive use.

  23. Re:Marie Antoinette on Netflix Deflects Rage Over Price Increase · · Score: 1
    You are clearly missing the correlation. This is the last hole of entertainment that many have been able to afford for quite sometime, after having already passed up eating out, driving anywhere other than work, paying the foreclosure fees, or ever even considering purchasing over-priced burnt bean water.

    After food, clothing, and gas to get to work, there is only netflix for some people. This has just cut deeply into some people's lives and he goes and says, "It's just one or two lattés for most people." Most the people on netflix already can't afford lattés and he tells them to just give a few up. "Let them eat cake!" is about as à propos as one can get.

  24. Skip Logic Rocks! on Vivek Kundra Quits As Federal CIO · · Score: 3, Insightful

    His speeches about how IT should be handled were some of the worst. He was most likely looking for buzz words on Wikipedia an hour before each of his speeches. No Agenda covered one of them and had some fun at his expense... but they never covered another one of his speeches IIRC. Not really surprised that Harvard took him.

  25. You forgot the inverse tachyon pulse on SQL and NoSQL are Two Sides of the Same Coin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    An inverse tachyon pulse would disperse the relational quantum silica into a focused warp field, thus purging all forms of slipstream space based SQL databases from subspace.