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User: mastropiero

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Comments · 53

  1. Re:2 fundamental question on NASA Finds New Life (This Afternoon) · · Score: 1

    4. Can they eat us?

  2. Re:Atheist on The Advent of Religious Search Engines · · Score: 1

    Let's say you pick the model with a god. Now you have one more claim in your model that you need to show is true for your model to be valid. Until that happens, the most reasonable thing to do is suspend judgement on the truth of your model.

  3. Re:Atheist on The Advent of Religious Search Engines · · Score: 1

    So what you are saying is that from the point of view of cosmology we have no way of assessing which model is more likely (at least for now). Then still the question is why believe in the model with a god in it?

  4. Re:As an atheist... on The Advent of Religious Search Engines · · Score: 3, Interesting

    They are not mutually exclusive.

    (A)gnosticism refers to what you know, and (a)theism refers what you believe in terms of gods. They are two independent dimensions. Think cartesian plane with one axis for theism and the other for gnosticism. You can be an agnostic atheist, a gnostic theist or everything in between. Gnostic atheists are hard to come by, but many gnostic theists are pretty loud about it.

  5. Try updating firmware of routers and cards on What To Do With Old 802.11b Equipment? · · Score: 1

    WPA with TKIP is compatible with a number of .11b devices. A firmware/driver upgrade is usually what you need to support it.

    If that doesn't work, then recycle them.

  6. Re:Ah My on Pakistan To Scour Google, Yahoo For Blasphemy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Precisely the reason why I think the government of Palistan is doing a disservice to its people by censoring information that even if shocking to them, will make them think.

  7. Re:Grow up on Pakistan To Scour Google, Yahoo For Blasphemy · · Score: 1

    As a matter of fact I believe in no god, so none of those rules apply to me. I can mock anything I wish (including you and me) as it is my right as a human being. I will exercise my right when I need to remind those who will have peace by running a sword through the dissidents.

    they CAN detonate nuclear bombs, and they're more likely to do so the more you exercise your rights to provoke them.

    Your masochism is noted. All those people need to put the finger on the Doomsday Switch (TM) is for you to write a work of fiction, and for them not to read it. Enjoy your defeat, but I ask you to not do so in my name.

  8. Re:Ah My on Pakistan To Scour Google, Yahoo For Blasphemy · · Score: 1

    I am not disallowing them from using those processes. I simply assert their religious process is inferior because it is irrational, and brings them to the wrong conclusions.

    I am also saying that if the two sides are to understand each other, they should use the better of the two processes. If the west is in the wrong, so be it, but the way to reach that conclusion if it is true is not through religious means.

  9. Re:Muhammad on Pakistan To Scour Google, Yahoo For Blasphemy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Except for one thing: religion is not someone's identity. It is a set of ideas you can be persuaded of or reject, as shown by the capability of conversion from one to another. Disagreeing or mocking such a set is not hate, because it is not directed at the humans, nor are those humans forbidden to practice their faith if they so choose.

    Unfortunately it seems you have fallen for the argument that religion deserves extra respect from criticism or mockery. There is no reason why we should mock it any less than anything we already do.

  10. Re:Ah My on Pakistan To Scour Google, Yahoo For Blasphemy · · Score: 1

    But by claiming that W fails to understand M, you imply that there exist a set of values that both will recognize. If that is true, then the best way to find out what those values are is through reasoned argument, not through the application of a recooked version of a medieval plagiarism of bronze-age myths. Religion should not be allowed to be a player in this game.

  11. Re:Grow up on Pakistan To Scour Google, Yahoo For Blasphemy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You miss the point of this entirely. Prohibition of blasphemy is a rule you set up for the members of *your* faith only, not for others. Trying to impose your rules over people who have not signed up for your religion has to be called on.

  12. To newspapers: on Judge Thinks Linking To Copyrighted Material Should Be Illegal · · Score: 1

    Well, boo-hoo. Nobody forced newspapers to put their content online. It sure is convenient for us readers, but if they were not prepared to deal with what is happening now, then they should just pull out and go to just print or subscription only. Let's see how well that will fare. Will they want people writing about their stories banned?

    The Internet's whole point is copying and sharing information, and if you don't want to share your content or cannot afford to, then don't freaking put it there.

  13. Sitting ducks again on Amazon Releases iPhone Kindle Software · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Cue the author's guild bitching about how they lose money because now their ebooks can be read by two devices instead of just one in 3...2...1...

  14. Re:Surprised? on Cuba Getting Internet Upstream Via Venezuela · · Score: 1

    As a matter of fact, yes. I am Ecuadorian, and we consider ourselves american, just as a Frenchman considers himself European.

    Then again, I am pretty pedantic, too.

  15. Re:Surprised? on Cuba Getting Internet Upstream Via Venezuela · · Score: 2, Insightful

    United Statians, not Americans. Americans as in Ecuadorians, Colombians, Venezuelans, Brazilians, etc have the freedom to visit Cuba.

  16. Easy answer on Gmail, SPF, and Broken Email Forwarding? · · Score: 1, Informative

    You need to implement sender-rewriting scheme in your mail server. Google it.

    Next issue?

  17. This is old news on Microsoft Releases Pre-2007 Binary File Format Specs · · Score: 2

    I knew about this since august 2007 and even submitted it to slashdot twice, although it didn't get picked for front page. See http://developers.slashdot.org/~mastropiero/journal/

    This is definitely useful for app developers of free software.

  18. Re:Correct me if I'm wrong... on Sourceforge.net Blocked In Mainland China · · Score: 3, Interesting

    By the same token I could say that free software is a perfect capitalist market with an entry cost only proportional to the difficulty to read the code.

    Anyone can bend the concepts like that.

  19. Re:yes, well... on Boy Scouts Ask Open Source Community For Help · · Score: 1

    Well, they are not much of a private organization if they receive tax money and services from the government (as I seem to remember from some documentary I think)

  20. Re:Sore losers on Microsoft Bought Sweden's ISO Vote on OOXML? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm sorry to break this to you, but ISO approval of standards is supposed to be governed by TECHNICAL considerations. By this logic, a vote on whether OOXML is approved by fasttrack should be based on the TECHNICAL merits of the proposal, not on how popular Micorosft Corp. is.

    Sadly, the fact that these people joined the discussion only *after* the debate on those technical merits was over only shows that this process has become nothing more than a high-school president election in a bad B-movie.

  21. I KNEW IT!!! on Hotmail vs Goodmail · · Score: 1

    All those chain letters I sent to avoid making hotmail a paid service and so many people dismissed them, they even regarded it as a hoax! I am so dissapointed....

  22. Re:It'll just get reposted on YouTube to Host Presidential Debate · · Score: 3, Insightful

    And the questions will be spammed out into oblivion with posts like: "In 1923 a little girl called mary was found dead with the word yram in her back. You have been cursed now. Now your daddy will get clamydia unless you repost this in 74 more videos"

  23. Re:There is only one number they can be sure of on Piracy Stats Don't Add Up · · Score: 1

    In the case of Ecuador, a small card is emmitted with your fingerprint in it and it is given to you after you come out of the ballot. It is required to be shown for every procedure, either private or public. Examples include: opening a bank account, applying for a job, car registration, applying for insurance... it goes on. If you don't have the latest voting document, you're screwed basically.

  24. What about shock? on Cringely's Shameless Self-Promotion · · Score: 1

    Hey, I'm as much concerned about the environment as the next guy, but I would think foil platters, similar to floppies would make the disk much more vulnerable to head crashes. The disk would be cheaper and more env-friendly, but would crash fatally much more often...

  25. Re:First?! on Microsoft's Charles Simonyi to be 1st Nerd in Space · · Score: 5, Funny

    Exactly, he is as much the first nerd in space as IE7 is the first tabbed browser....