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User: gestalt_n_pepper

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  1. Re:Will the new pope run Linux? on Pope To Resign Citing Advanced Age · · Score: 1

    I'd suggest a change to OS X Mountain Lion, but that would be equivalent to a religious conversion and probably violate his terms of service agreement. Much more user friendly, though.

  2. Re:Infallible? on Pope To Resign Citing Advanced Age · · Score: 1

    Two wrongs don't make a right, or do they?

  3. Retirement plan not updated for hundreds of years. on Pope To Resign Citing Advanced Age · · Score: 1

    So, does he get a pension? Full medical? How about dental? There's probably nothing in place. I vote for creative taxidermy, but that's just me.

  4. Here are your choices. on Should Techies Trump All Others In Immigration Reform? · · Score: 2

    1) Import a bunch of smart, engineerish types who will undercut the salaries of current engineers in the USA.

    2) Leave a bunch of smart, engineerish types in their home countries, where they do the work for $5/hr or less, and who will undercut the salaries of current engineers in the USA.

    Like it or not, the first option is probably less damaging to your salary and career, and better for everyone in the USA in the long run.

  5. Re:Do it for all nationalities. on Should the Start of Chinese New Year Be a Federal Holiday? · · Score: 1

    You want all nationalities to celebrate Chinese New Year? Well....let's see. Big dinner of good food with family. Gift exchanges. Fireworks. Colorful dances. OK, this works for me. Oops! Gotta go buy some moon cakes. See Ya!

  6. Earie crisis stalks land. May pop soon.... on Corn Shortage Hampers US Ethanol Production · · Score: 1

    So, we make less net-energy negative fuel... And release less of this energy as heat into the atmosphere. Thanks for letting us know! Is there any downside?

  7. Re:Oops on Russian Search Engine Yandex Beats Bing · · Score: 1

    It gets harder to tell them apart every year.

  8. Re:The theory of gravity is under review :) on Texas School Board Searching For Alternatives To Evolutionary Theory · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I was treating it as a boolean issue (i.e. gravity exists). Kinda like evolution.

  9. Re:Theories of "gravity" and electricity under rev on Texas School Board Searching For Alternatives To Evolutionary Theory · · Score: 1

    Depressingly true. I had *exactly* this experience driving home on I-10 just outside of Houston during rush hour. Veering out of the moron's way in the rain caused my truck to do a 180 in the middle of the freeway. Luck was with me. I ended up rear ending a retaining wall. My right turn signal was still on.

  10. Re:Why would anyone voluntarily live in Texas? on Texas School Board Searching For Alternatives To Evolutionary Theory · · Score: 1

    Well, the money's pretty good.

  11. Theories of "gravity" and electricity under review on Texas School Board Searching For Alternatives To Evolutionary Theory · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sigh. There's just no cure for stupid. Full disclosure. I live in Texas and yes, this embarrasses me.

  12. No fan of either Bush, BUT... on E-Mail Hack Exposes Bush Family Pictures, Correspondence · · Score: 1

    They're now private citizens, and deserve some regard for their personal privacy. IMHO, they should be left alone and this guy is a dick.

  13. Well, the words are English... just wrong on Ask Slashdot: Do Most Programmers Understand the English Language? · · Score: 2

    I'm sorry, but programming jargon like "regular expressions (pattern substitution), service packs (bug fixes), binding (pulling information from elsewhere), tuples (an ordered list), virtual void functions (as close to masturbation as it gets in programming) and even web browsing" seemed more designed to obfuscate and inflate the self importance of programmers than convey useful information to anyone who wanted to understand what computing was about.

    In contrast, loops, if-then statements, variables and constants all were pretty clear and made immediate sense

  14. Re:Part of a series on Fox News: US Solar Energy Investment Less Than Germany Because US Has Less Sun · · Score: 1

    It's a little more complicated. There's a broad campaign to influence the mainstream media and google search results to convince the public that peak oil and energy supplies are not a problem. Oil companies need this perception so that their stock prices stay up, their assets don't lose value, bank financing keeps rolling in and everyone gets their bonuses.

    It's nonsense of course. Net energy from oil keeps declining even as available supplies increase slightly or stay stable. Prices keep going up and will keep going up. It's just more expensive to get oil out of a deep water well in the Gulf of Mexico, or Antarctica than it is in Saudi Arabia or West Texas, both of which are seeing their major field production decline.

    Natural gas, which is a bright spot, energetically speaking, isn't making any money. So, the talk is about oil and how wondrous it is.

  15. Re:What more proof do you need? on No Transmitting Aliens Detected In Kepler SETI Search · · Score: 2

    You first. I'm baking them cookies.

  16. Re:keep trying on No Transmitting Aliens Detected In Kepler SETI Search · · Score: 1

    FYI, water, which you'll have to carry anyway, makes pretty good shielding.

  17. Just download a start button substitute. on Ask Slashdot: Buying a Laptop That Doesn't Have Windows 8 · · Score: 1

    Windows 8 is pretty tolerable if you know and do a few things.

    1) If you can't find something, just type the name and it will probably show up as an icon.

    2) Properties are at the bottom of the screen when you right-click and icon.

    3) Move the mouse in diagonally from the left corner to get the stupid "menu."

    4) Immediately download a start button substitute like classic shell.

    Once you dig down, it's windows 7.

    Microsoft apparently doesn't treat the acquired knowledge of their products by millions of users and developers is the extraordinarily valuable asset that it was. As Windows 8 continues to circle the drain, it's possible that even Microsoft's management may be getting this lesson. If so, expect Windows 8 "Classic" or "Business" or something. If they're just too collectively nutty to admit they made a mistake, well, Linux is a great thing, eh?

  18. Encryption? Light? Virtual particles? Stars? on No Transmitting Aliens Detected In Kepler SETI Search · · Score: 2

    And any signal we might detect would have most of its entropy shifted to the main signal block, followed by a little orderly decryption section, which to us, would also look like noise, so running your signal though a zipf analysis probably wouldn't work.

    Frankly, I think the radio thing is a bit silly. The detectable radio interval for any civilization is likely to be quite short. Even we're moving to photonics wherever possible. We'd probably do better looking for light signals, or astronomical star sized objects that look like artifacts, or creating large area Casimir antennas in space capable of detecting wide area, coherent changes to virtual particle activity.

  19. Re:Compromise on Microsoft Surface Pro Reviews Arrive · · Score: 0

    I can't help thinking Microsoft still doesn't really get design

    You think? Ditto for language design, corporate organization design. Frankly, if it's something that needs to be appealing and useful to humans, you'd be better off asking your garbageman.

  20. Manipulating LIBOR? That used to be a conspiracy on Paper On Conspiratorial Thinking Invokes Conspiratorial Thinking · · Score: 2

    If I assume there's more to a story than what appears in the mainstream media, I must be experiencing "conspiratorial thinking." Or I could be assuming that most journalists are morons who are paid to write *something* whether they know anything about it or not.

  21. Human factors is for wussies, says Microsoft on Microsoft Surface Pro Reviews Arrive · · Score: 0

    You'll take the crap we're shoving down your throat and you vill like it!

  22. Re:Oh, the surprise. on Leaked: Obama's Rules For Assassinating American Citizens · · Score: 1

    Nor would I disagree with you, unless of course, said "dude" was selling the location to a nuke he had acquired to someone who was less than fond of the USA, in which case, his national affiliation might seem a tad irrelevant.

  23. Re:Oh, the surprise. on Leaked: Obama's Rules For Assassinating American Citizens · · Score: 1

    Simplistic horseshit. If you had to shoot a fellow American to save your city from a nuke, what would you do?

  24. Re:Oh, the surprise. on Leaked: Obama's Rules For Assassinating American Citizens · · Score: 1

    Um. No. Nor did I ever even mean to suggest any of that. But look, intelligence information is always incomplete. Moral choices are fraught with ambiguity. Would you refuse to shoot an American if by shooting him, you could save your city from a nuke? Or a weaponized virus? A dirty bomb? How about just saving everyone in a big building. These are exactly the kinds of choices a president makes. Not easy. You can take a moralist, absolutist stand if you wish, but that stand could kill a lot of innocent people.

  25. Re:If you don't believe in God... on Ask Dr. Robert Bakker About Dinosaurs and Merging Science and Religion · · Score: 1

    There is no single "end result." There is adaptation to circumstances. That's all. It's non-purposive. The universe may have intelligence in the form of genetic algorithms, but there's no obvious evidence of a unified consciousness with some sort of intent and/or direction, or any concern for us, for that matter.