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Comment Re:Whoa what are the odds (Score 1) 147

There is an old quote about such things: "Just because I'm paranoid, does *not* mean they're not out to get me." The kinds of abuses and criminal behavior documented at Wikileaks is dangerous enough, and involves powerful enough people, that it shouldn't shock us if some of those people go to extraordinary lengths to ruin that leader or discredit him.

Comment Re:Windows... (Score 1) 100

Microsoft deliberately *broke* Kerberos integration in an embrace and extend process. The desires for annual licensing, rather than compatibility, also helped limit the Kerberos in Active Directory. FreeIPA is burdened by being a rebuild of Samba with a "big picture" corporate oriented design, and no control of the underlying codebase to ensure ongoing compatibility. And the sssd client is poor: The underdocumented, monolithic configuration file and the insistence on starting, working temporarily, then crashing as it attempts to download the entire contents of large upstream LDAP structures has not yet been fixed and makes it unwelcome in large corporate environments.

Comment When only men can get it? (Score 0) 163

Part of the political furor is that only biological men have prostates and can contract this form of cancer. But in today's political world of "gender is a social construct", even using the phrase "biological male" is likely to trigger a complaint from the local diversity advocates, much as "only biological women get pregnant" is likely to upset the gender diversity champions in a medical workplace.

Comment Re:Fun topic to hear about. (Score 1) 81

Fortunately, interstellar space is vast. The solar system is far, far less than the available space between stars. Sol is about 22 light hours across. The nearest star is roughly 4 light years away. The relevant "empty" volume is roughly ... 3000 * 3000 or roughly 10 million times the space of the solar system, even if we neglect "virtal" space. If we include the third dimension, it's roughly 3000 * 3000 * 3000 or roughly 30,000,000,000 times the space. It doesn't take a high density of cold, congealed matter to easily double the mass of the solar system, or to provide the missing estimated 30% or so of matter in the universe, distributed even more thinly in intergalactic space. Nebula show up in optical astronomy. Smallish rocks, up to the size of planets, are not so easily spotted. And we know from the comets that the Oort cloud is large and populated. Just how large is it, really?

Comment Re:Fun topic to hear about. (Score 1) 81

"Planets lack mass".... How many planets. If they're more common than realized in interstellar space, which is consistent with the numbers being found as our telescopes improve, there is plenty of space between stars to hold stellar masses worth of rogue planets. If they exist in even modest numbers in inter-galactic space, they'd be impossible to detect with current tools except by... let me think, what was it we were talking about??? Oh, yes, gravitational effects, which in no way require non-baryonic matter. They simply require matter that is not easily optically observed, or apparent to radio telescopes. Hmm, let me think.... what could hold large amounts of matter, far more than could be measured optically, but with no need for inventing physics based on nothing?? Cold rocks, you say, the ones that keep turning up even in our local stellar neighborhood as our telescopes improve?

Nahh, we couldn't have an extremely mundane explanation for anything that generates funding for untestable hypotheses and extravagant, physics shattering theories like string theory and multi-dimensional folded matter based on nothing but the fantasy of people who wouldn't know an error bar if they were forced to sit on it vertically.

Comment Re:Lol /. idiots like me (Score 1) 81

You've a point. The original meaning of the phrase "dark matter" referred to mass that was inferred from gravitational effects, but doesn't show up with optical or radio astronomy. However, the "luminiferous ether" metaphor is well earned. The variety of speculative and mutually inconsistent requirements for the many speculative forms of what is collectively and confusingly called "dark matter" has earned considerable skepticism. And let's be honest about the progress of science, mockery is part of the testing process for new theories.

Comment Re:Fun topic to hear about. (Score 1) 81

We're also discovering that there are far more rogue planets in interstellar space than previously thought, discovering them only as our optical telescopes improve enough to detect such cold, unilluminated objects within optical range. If they're more prevalent than previously expected, especially in the vast reaches of intergalactic space, they could easily be a considerable percent of the matter in our universe yet be undetectable to remote or to radio based astronomy.

Comment Re:Lol /. idiots like me (Score 1) 81

Have you discussed astronomy with any foreign scholars on work visas? They seem very eager, indeed, to study a field with endless opportunities for simply inventing new theories from the same original measurements.

Grad students are, generally, quite willing to pursue whatever research their advisor directs in the hope of working on their own topic of interest. And "dark matter" is what the "luminiferous aether" used to be to optical physics.

Comment Re:Excuses, excuses (Score 1) 363

Jews have been notoriously successful in Nobel prizes, in finance, law, medicine, and computer science. Their accomplishments in these and other fields are out of scale with their population. And Israel is a critical bastion of western civilization in a sea of Muslim nations in the Middle East. And it's difficult to ignore a wasp nest that destroys up your nuclear weapons program, as they have repeatedly done to Iran.

Comment Re: Are you talking about the 30k Gazan citizens (Score 1) 363

He apparently did not directly fund Hamas, but his government did allow money and resources to Hamas despite the blockade in place around Gaza since 2017. Claiming that Israel does not control Gaza is nonsensical with that blockade of air, land, and sea in place. Hamas's tunnels to Egypt are the only unfettered trade with Gaza.

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