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Comment Re:I don't see the relevance... (Score 1) 641

I don't know what else to say other than you are wrong. You're just wrong. If you demonstrate that a theory is not viable, you are not obligated to keep trying to tweak the broken theory in absence of a competing one. That's closer to how astrology works.

If you're a scientist, yes, you do need a competing theory because for something to be a theory it has to have passed a falsifiable test.

If you find a sufficiently serious methodological flaw in a theory after it is presented (such as bad data for instance,) it is no longer a valid theory.

Comment Re:I don't see the relevance... (Score 1) 641

In order for a rational person to believe anthropogenic global warming is not happening they need to either reject science entirely or they need to have a competing theory with more support.

No, they don't have to have a competing theory. They have to demonstrate that the anthropogenic global warming theory has axiomatic, logic, data or interpretation flaws sufficient to undermine findings, or that it is an unfalsifiable theory. That is sufficient to disregard the theory.

I am not saying this is the case with AGW, just that you do NOT need a competing theory before you can disregard another.

Comment Re:What climagate ? (Score 2, Insightful) 641

Because lying itself isn't against the law. Lying under certain circumstances, such as under oath in a court or fraudulently representing yourself in a business deal, is. The specific court case OP is referring to had to do with whistleblower status of two local Fox affiliate reporters who were fired for refusing to voluntarily redact claims made in an expose on rGBH hormones in cow milk. A replacement report was run that countered their claims.

link

The court found that the reporters were not eligible to be protected under whistleblower status because it is not against the law to lie on television and therefore they were not whistleblowing any crime.

There are a couple of reasons for this. One is that protection of the freedom of the press is taken very seriously in the USA. A law that created metrics for "truth" of reporting would be abused to silence reporters by government via self-censorship. The other reason the court didn't find the other way is because courts in the USA cannot find someone guilty ex-post-facto to established law, so even if this case made a point about lying on television, the court can't just up and make up a ruling and find Fox guilty. The court case was not about the legality of lying per-se.

This case was a terrible side-effect of legitimate concern for freedom of press in my opinion. Maybe there should be some sort of requirement for truth in reporting, I haven't thought about all the possible side effects or benefits of such legislation, so I'm not saying I think news organizations should be "allowed to lie" or anything like that.

Comment Re:That's not hoarding... (Score 1) 268

No kidding, that collection is for babby. I've got old SGIs laying around, stacks of ZIP drives, spare scanners (3) in case I need them, about eight laptops, eight different kinds of Macs, including a working SE with SCSI network adapter(!) I've got two RS-6000's that are too expensive to run. About ten towers of various builds. I've got a Windows NT4-Alpha machine for kicks.

My friends bring their friends over to stare in awe at the fruits of a life wasted on old junk, and that's not even to speak of the video game collection :-)

Comment Re:really? (Score 4, Insightful) 379

A few years ago, I don't remember what movie it was, but about five minutes from the movie was released onto the Internet as a promotion. I thought about how innovative this was, and wished other movies would do this too. This functions as a "demo" of a movie more than a preview does. I think it's comparable and good.

Crytek is acting like interactivity isn't a major factor in games. I can't truly evaluate a game without playing it for a little while. In particular this is a big deal because, unlike other things, I can't seem to return a game because it sucked.

Comment Re:But race is not a valid basis to form connectio (Score 2, Informative) 319

Actually, tests have been done that check for exactly this. Young children consistently will identify with the an illustration of a person the same skin color of them over someone who has a similar body shape to them/their parents. "Race" is artificial but ethnicity is not. It comes down to kinship, if a person has a different skin color than you, they are very likely not related, and therefore a higher risk. This appears to be built-in.

Comment Re:Of course (Score 1) 976

I always put the baby seat in the backseat facing backward, but it's helpful to remember that for many years in the USA there were not switches to disable the front seat passenger airbag, and in fact was illegal in many places to do so. It took petitioning the government for years before such a switch was finally allowed to be put in new vehicles.

Comment Re:Who cares how? The better question is why the b (Score 2, Insightful) 973

Crap, I was not logged in.

That is NOT the raw video, that's the "MP4 they provided [that is] larger but is still blurry and obviously not the source video." The file is an mp4 (do helicopter cameras use that? Doubt it.) Are the timestamps clear? No. Is it still in a boxed frame in a lossy codec with titles? Yes. Is this file in the format they received it in? Maybe, but I'd still like to have it without any of the tampering they did to it to add titles, etc.

Comment Re:False Advertising? (Score 1) 739

You're oversimplifying just as much. There were many factors that led to the Dreamcast's demise, not the least of which was Sony spreading flat-out lies about how their upcoming PS2 could render Toy Story in realtime so you'd better hold off buying. Or how Sega was already skating on thin financial ice and their first batch of games had a high defect rate. Or yeah, how fast it was possible to pirate games on it. Pretty much anywhere that had a college campus was a funnel of pirated software and games, Sega was just too weak to take hits from every direction.

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