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User: gestalt_n_pepper

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  1. Morality of providing such advice to readers? on The Laidoff Ninja · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Frankly, I was a bit surprised to see LON come out and suggest people should not commit crimes when they are desperate for money. I think this would be obvious to any rational person.
    Unless of course, you're laid off form the banking industry, in which case, you can start a hedge fund. After all, if you're going to commit a crime, start with the legal ones.

    There are some tips about maximizing your available financial resources by delaying payment on some utility bills. While legally OK, I question the morality of providing such advice to readers.
    Good lord, aren't we all just a bit past that sort of sanctimonious BS? The banks and credit card companies would dig up sell our dead grandmothers for hamburger seasoning if it helped their quarterly numbers a bit. Do you think we really owe them *any* moral consideration?

  2. Re:And abandoned fields... on Purple Pokeberries Yield Cheap Solar Power · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Actually poke gets toxic as it gets older. By the time it has berries, you'd best not eat it.

    Now shut up and start doing the hokey pokey!

  3. Re:Why? on Japanese Consortium Projects a Humanoid Robot On the Moon By 2015 · · Score: 2, Informative

    You obviously don't have children.

  4. I'm not sure, but... on Can 200,000 Women Cause a Boobquake? · · Score: 1

    it would definitely rock *my* world. :)

  5. I'm all for personal responsibility, BUT... on California's Santa Clara County Bans Happy Meal Toys · · Score: 1

    I think it's pretty clear that a large number of folks out there are barely able to clean their butts adequately on a day-to-day basis. Unfortunately, they drive, vote AND reproduce. The reality is that the under 100 IQ crowd probably isn't able to run its own life and does need regulation to avoid hurting themselves.

    What we need to do (collectively) is decide whether we want to help them, or let them kill themselves off and do it in a way that doesn't inconvenience others (driving, voting, reproducing).

    I doubt if we'll ever have the guts to do so.

  6. OK, I admit it. on The Mystery of the Mega-Selling Floppy Disk · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's me. I've been buying those millions of floppy disks. No. I don't know why. I just like them. You got a problem with that?

  7. Containers are pretty big... on New Russian Weapon Hides In Shipping Container · · Score: 1

    I'm reasonably sure you could fit a viable nuclear bomb in one, or a group of lesbian terrorist dwarves with stinger missiles, ready to down patriarchical planes for peace. So explain to me again how this is news?

  8. Re:One more war... on FBI, DoJ Add 35 Positions For Intellectual Property Battle · · Score: 1

    For every generation, the government has created a criminal class by making illegal something nearly universally done (e.g. smoking marijuana, downloading files, drinking alcohol, and so on). This makes it much easier to round up and jail the commoners should they get a bit too uppity and start questioning why a bunch of seeming twits are making millions or billions whilst other rather well educated and more deserving folks are running out of their unemployment and applying for jobs at Wal-Mart.

  9. Re:Sign of life? on The Mystery of the Missing Methane · · Score: 1

    I am cowed by your reasoning.

  10. Re:Why So Much Focus on Cows? on The Mystery of the Missing Methane · · Score: 1

    Because cows are funnier than decaying peat moss, OK? Now make a cow joke!

  11. Re:Wall-E? on Don't Talk To Aliens, Warns Stephen Hawking · · Score: 1

    You're talking about those psilocybin mushrooms you took again, aren't you? And no you do not look like Don King with green hair after they wear off!

  12. Re:Security through obscurity? on Don't Talk To Aliens, Warns Stephen Hawking · · Score: 1

    Well, that's alway's been my strategy. I'm *very* secure. Fish.

  13. Balderdash and nonsense on Don't Talk To Aliens, Warns Stephen Hawking · · Score: 1

    Any aliens with FTL are going to be advanced enough to cobble up anything they want or need using some local star's energy, metals from asteroids and hydrocarbons from the nearest Jupiter-like planet (assuming they're organic like us). They'll also have advanced computing and simulation so I think neither tourism nor entertainment will hold much attraction to them.

    Their adolescents *might* send down the occasional silvery, large-eyed avatar in a ship to interact/goof with us for research, or fun with anal probes, or something, but that's probably as far as it would go. They won't *need* us.

  14. Strong economic discipline... on Economy Tanked While Government Surfed Porn · · Score: 1

    The SEC employees have simply come face-to-face with the fact that the debt, which has handcuffed our economy, now has us down on our knees, and that our continued monetary domination depends on our being whipped into shape through very strong, painful discipline.

    Whatever comes, the SEC knows how to beat this thing, and they simply rose to the occasion like men.

    Ah...Is it getting hot in here?

  15. So, had they NOT been surfing for porn... on Economy Tanked While Government Surfed Porn · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Would the economy be OK now? Just asking.....

  16. Re:Uh, no on Fatal System Error · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Ubuntu only *appears* safe. It has fewer viruses because it's not popular enough to attract virus writers. If Ubuntu ever became a common desktop OS, you'd see common Linux viruses. The issues are ecological, not technical.

  17. Re:Compensation? on Brain Training Games Don't Train Your Brain · · Score: 1

    Supplements? While I doubt that they do much for my abstract reasoning ability directly, I find huperzine, vinpocetine and phosphatidylserine to be effective enhancers of memory and attention, two components of overall intelligence. I also noticed that practicing memorization does seem to have an effect on my short-term memory, but nothing else.

  18. Re:So they don't do any QA at all then? on McAfee Kills SVCHost.exe, Sets Off Reboot Loops For Win XP, Win 2000 · · Score: 1

    As a QA guy, I can tell you from experience at past companies (not the present one, thankfully) that some dimwitted middle manager was in a hurry to make a deadline. You get to pay for that.

  19. Running "shutdown -a" will stop the reboot on McAfee Kills SVCHost.exe, Sets Off Reboot Loops For Win XP, Win 2000 · · Score: 1

    long enough for you to become utterly frustrated that there's no easily downloaded fix from McAfee.

  20. The Muslim extremists simply can't Bear it... on Extremists Warn South Park Creators Over Muhammad In a Bear Suit · · Score: 5, Funny

    OK, OK, *Somebody* had to make the joke.

  21. Re:Well it's profitable for the corporations... on Oracle Wants Proof That Open Source Is Profitable · · Score: 1

    I think you need to re-read my subject line.

    Yes, it's profitable for corporations to use open source. It's not profitable for developers to write open source. Developers, rarely, if ever make a dime.

    FYI, neither Google, Yahoo, Amazon make money developing open source software. The same goes for all the others. Corporations make money by using open source as a free resource in the same way a company might use air as part of its manufacturing processes.

    It's still a con. It's a way of getting free labor from developers.

  22. I've looked at web code, but... on Thoughts On the State of Web Development · · Score: 1

    I washed my brains afterward. Ick.

  23. The funny thing is (not haha funny)... on Why Computer Science Students Cheat · · Score: 1

    I cheat all the time. I rework my old code. I steal code from the internet and copy and paste it into stuff I'm writing, sometimes only changing the comments, variable names and a few other tweaks to make it work in my infrastructure. I've reworked entire applications, morphing them to my purposes. Admittedly, they're unrecognizable by the time I'm done, but is that cheating?

  24. Re:Because that first step is a doozy on Why Computer Science Students Cheat · · Score: 2, Informative

    It's a matter of logic, not language. VB.net isn't the issue. It's now so close to C#, that it might as well *be* that. It's certainly no easier, or harder, for that matter.

    The most useful "programming" course I took, other than algorithms and data structures was symbolic logic. I'll bet that this course would be a fairly accurate predictor of who passes and who fails in programming.

  25. Because that first step is a doozy on Why Computer Science Students Cheat · · Score: 3, Interesting

    CS is just difficult for some people. We didn't all grow up programming in the basement. I've seen students who finally got their program to "run" by commenting out every line, and sadly, were so clueless that they were quite proud of the fact.

    Oddly, it's actually easier now that computers are ubiquitous and going to the CS lab to complete an assignment isn't necessary.