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Comment Re:Yes (Score 2) 356

FACT: A good team of average people, working together, will accomplish more than a single person over the course of two months.

This is categorically false. Individual output of programmers vary by an order of magnitude (10x source). Literally one guy can be worth ten others. And this is why the "do you really need rockstars" is always a yes. Even if you are not trying to solve hard problems you can either hire 10x guys @ 50k a year or one guy at 150k a year. You make the choice.

Comment Sometimes Its A Healthy Thing (Score 1) 139

Not sure if thats the case here, but often as large companies grown they end up with two divisions doing the same thing or products that are end of life. If one division made another redundant or is no longer generating revenue (and has no prospects for new revenue) you can expect it to be cut. It is just the natural cycle of things. I don't know if thats the case here though.

Comment The Ethical Implications are Staggering (Score 3, Interesting) 230

Oh god, the ethics debates on this one will be fantastic. What if we can reverse Downs Syndrome in full grown adults. By modern legal definitions those with it are not competent, but could we ethically force them to take the "cure" if they don't want to? What if a mother does not want to have it "fixed" in her unborn child, is she a competent parent?

Comment Industry uses 100Gbps all over the place (Score 1) 14

1) Major ISP's and backbones use 100Gbps links all over the place. F5 will offer 100Gbps load balancers shortly.
2) 8.8Tbps is theoretical capacity, not used.
3) It is not being used as an intranode link, but an intrasite link, meaning that apparently the data back plane was fast enough on a node to node basis.

Comment Quoth Neil Gaiman (Score 4, Insightful) 34

He's the finest living male American writer of SF and fantasy – possibly the finest living American writer. Most people haven't heard of him. And that doesn't bother Gene in the slightest. He just gets on with writing the next book.

If you have not read him, do it. The Book of the New Sun is a literary masterpiece independent of genre. But he wasn't a one hit wonder, Home Fires (his latest) is amazing. Gene Wolfe is the kind of author that puts most pieces of "literary" fiction to shame. He not only deserves this award, but a Pulitzer too. To bad literary community can not remove its collective head from its ass. Cheers to him and I can't wait for the next book.

Comment You are floating above the Earth like Helios (Score 1) 147

You are floating above the Earth like Helios riding a chariot of fire across the sky. The greeks would have believed you a god atop Olympus. The blue earth turns below you, so captivating in its beauty that generations have marveled at the blue marble. The night sky is so full of stars it is dizzying in its beauty. You are participating in mankind's first steps to becoming immortal among them.

But the coffee sucks.

Comment Re:Supply and demand. (Score 1) 625

Subsequently, a study by McPhedran and Baker compared the incidence of mass shootings in Australian and New Zealand. Data were standardised to a rate per 100,000 people, to control for differences in population size between the countries and mass shootings before and after 1996/1997 were compared between countries. That study found that in the period 1980–1996, both countries experienced mass shootings. The rate did not differ significantly between countries. However since 1996/1997, neither country has experienced a mass shooting event despite the continued availability of semi-automatic longarms in New Zealand. The authors conclude that “the hypothesis that Australia’s prohibition of certain types of firearms explains the absence of mass shootings in that country since 1996 does not appear to be supported if civilian access to certain types of firearms explained the occurrence of mass shootings in Australia (and conversely, if prohibiting such firearms explains the absence of mass shootings), then New Zealand (a country that still allows the ownership of such firearms) would have continued to experience mass shooting events.”

Comment Re:Supply and demand. (Score 4, Informative) 625

Except banning guns in two cultures very similar to ours has had no effect on either of those from an empirical perspective. You are basically plato reasoning about the five elements right now. No matter how well you construct your thought process the empirical, statistical evidence disagrees with your result. I have linked you to the associated articles on the effects of the gun ban in Australia, please take the time to read them.

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