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Comment Illegal example (Score 2) 140

I wouldn't have minded seeing an example of one of those illegal opcodes and how what it did was useful.

Brooks called such things "curios". Side-effects of invalid operations that people had started to use, and that had to be considered part of the specification.

My policy (seconded by my boss) is that I do not document such things. If a hack is documented people start to use it, then we have to support and maintain it.

...laura

Comment Re:Capitalism works...again (Score 3, Informative) 208

Capitalism works. Competition works.

Monopolies are bad.

For some reason there are a lot of so-called "conservatives" that think that monopolies are "good" and "natural" and think that breaking them up is somehow bad. ISPs are monopolies in many areas. There /isn't/ any competition.

Monopolies aren't capitalism. They are rent-seeking.

--
BMO

Comment Re:More asshatness from the Comcast fanboi... (Score 1) 208

There are basically two providers here in the Libertarian Paradise of Concord NH (Tea Potty Central). Comcast and the remnant of Verizon's "investment" in Internet connectivity (abandoned by VZN and saddled with VZN's debt) called Fairpoint, which is neither fair nor sharp.

Comcast is so fucking awful when it comes to customer service (my partner's daughter was seriously creeped out by one of their techs and when she turned down his advances he fucked around with her computer and basically trashed it. Comcast stonewalled settling and making it right.) that people like me will never deal with them and will prefer to go entirely with Internet service at all. Before I found out about this, I had scheduled an installation, and cancelling the installation when I did find out was not straightforward. I finally told the guy "I know what you have to do, just check off "other" and be done with it."

And this is just me. And I hear similar stories IRL.

They wonder why they have a bad rep.

I'd rather do business with the Mob on Federal Hill in RI.

--
BMO

Comment Wait, what? (Score 2) 36

The fraudsters register "typo squatting" domains that look like the target company's domain,

Since when do you need to effin' typo-squat a domain name to send something that looks like bossman@targetcompany.com to underling_grunt@targetcompany.com?

The FROM: header can be anything. Hell, you can telnet to port 25 and type it in manually. It's been that way since forever-ago, as far as I can tell.

I mean, come on, I've personally sent mail from satan@hell.org.

--
BMO

Comment Re:The Canadian middle class is dying out. (Score 2) 198

You blame the union members and the unions.

You blame them when the decision to sell shit products and ignore quality issues was an upper management problem, and remains to an upper management problem to this day.

Because if that responsibility doesn't lie with upper management, then why do they get paid fucking rockstar salaries? What do they do all day, financial masturbation?

--
BMO

Comment Well past its Best Before date (Score 1) 662

Top Gear was enormous fun at first, but it's gotten stale. It's lost its way. Maybe it is time for a re-think.

Like just about everybody, my picks for a new co-host include Sabine Schmitz and Vicki Butler-Henderson. But they have to look very carefully at the show and decide if its worth continuing first. I'm not convinced it is.

The original Top Gear production morphed in to Fifth Gear, which is definitely jazzed up fro the old Top Gear it started as.

...laura

Comment Did it the hard way (Score 1) 496

I lost 160 pounds a few years ago, and I too did it the hard way. Count calories, exercise. If you're not eating that much you have to eat well, and I'm now so healthy it's slightly stupid. I like it.

I didn't gain it overnight, and I couldn't expect to lose it overnight. It took a year and a half. No major skin sagging issues except for a residual flab roll, eliminated with a tummy tuck.

People often ask me what my secret was, and I tell them it's motivation: you have to have a reason. For me it was wanting to learn to fly, but I couldn't get the seatbelt around me.

...laura

Comment Been there, done that (Score 2) 224

In the noughties my employers set out to develop similar technology. We had GPS-based units that would record where a vehicle was and could be programmed to tell on you if you drove too fast, stopped for too long, went to somewhere you weren't supposed to go, and so on. They communicated over a 2 way paging network.

The technology worked. I did the mobile device programming and put together a test unit that used differential GPS. Instead of telling you which street you were on, it could tell you which lane you were in. :-) The marketing, on the other hand, didn't work. :-(

...laura

Comment Re:Yet another Ted Cruz bashing article ! (Score 1) 416

Wrong, wrong, wrong. It does not in any way require anyone to ignore evidence,, they can perfectly well accept the evidence as part of a more grand scheme that happens to not be scientific.

What's the evidence for YEC? Specifically which evidence is there that the "Earth is 10,000 years old"? Give one example that is not a folk tale. To believe that one must actively avoid all the media, courses, books, and basically everything in our culture that supports evolution.

And BTW, I have to note that back in Darwin's day most naturalists knew that evolution took place, but the debate was over the method by which it happens (whether Lamarck was right or not) and since then, the debate is always over smaller and more precise ways over how it works. YECs look at this debate as if it's a weakness of science and that "well, hurr, they don't actually know anything do they?" Which is an oversimplification and just plain wrong.

As i already pointed out, the evidence being part of the creation for whatever reason is how that can happen. Its no different that 2(1+1) and 2+2 both equalling 4.

Both of your math examples are observationally (in this universe) true irrespective of any folk tales. Claiming that each are equal to 4 can be tested. The claim that the Earth is 10,000 years old cannot - because for every challenge there are excuses made by those that support YEC; not any excuses that can be tested, either. There is absolutely bupkis in evidence outside of fairy tales.^1

Read this: "The Dragon In My Garage." http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LI...

Science can do nothing about that either because science cannot falsify it.

But there is a difference between unscientific claims and being anti-science, and the people who obstinately believe that YEC is true are truly anti-science. It's exhibited through their actions - that not only do they not believe that the Earth is OLD but you must also believe it's only 10,000 years old (or ~6000 years old (4004 BCE) depending on which lunatic you're talking to). This includes various arguments of the "dragon in my garage" style as exhibited above and such nonsense as the Dover PA school board idiocy. It's the active opposition that makes them anti- something and not just un- something. That's what the actual dictionary definition of "anti-" means.

Anyone trying to claim science disproves religion

  What has been done is that evidence has been presented that the Earth is older than 10,000 years notwithstanding evidence to the contrary. It's a fine distinction, but an important one. It's that scientific conclusions are always contingent on whatever evidence there is, not dogma. YECs have to show at least some evidence that the Earth is as young as they say it is for their point to have any standing. And they can't. Because they have no evidence outside of circular "logic" and outright fraud. I mean, come on, the whole Noah's Ark thing in KY and Discovery Institute BS is all about grift and fleecing the marks (the "true believers")

And what YECs really don't understand is allegory, when you get down to it.

>I'm simply wrong

No, I'm not actually. You're just a troll and IHBT. But whatever. An unused blade becomes rusty.

--
BMO

Footnotes:

1. And yet every Sunday I turn on the television set, and there's a priest or a pastor reading from my book, and interpreting it, and their interpretations, I have to tell you, are usually wrong. It's not their fault, because it's not their book. You never see a rabbi on the TV interpreting the New Testament, /do you?/ If you want to truly understand the Old Testament, if there is something you don't quite get, there are /Jews who walk among you,/ and THEY - I promise you this - will take TIME out of their VERY JEWY, JEWY DAY, and interpret for you anything that you're having trouble understanding. And we will do that, if, of course, the price is right.

Was the earth created in seven days? No. For those of you who believe it was, for you Christians, let me tell you that you do not understand the Jewish people. We Jews understand that it did not take place in seven days, and that's because we know what we're good at; and what we're really good at is bullshit. This is a wonderful story that was told to the people in the desert in order to distract them from the fact that they did not have air conditioning. I would LOVE to have the FAITH to believe that it took place in seven days, but - I have /thoughts./ And that can really fuck up the faith thing. Just ask any Catholic priest.

And then, there are fossils. Whenever anybody tries to tell me that they believe it took place in seven days, I reach for a fossil and go, âoeFossil!â And if they keep talking I throw it just over their head.

There are people who believe that dinosaurs and men lived together, that they roamed the earth at the same time. There are museums that children go to in which they build dioramas to show them this. And what this is, purely and simply, is a clinical psychotic reaction. They are crazy. They are stone cold fuck nuts. I canâ(TM)t be kind about this, because these people are watching The Flintstones as if it were a documentary.

-- Lewis Black "Red White and Screwed"

Comment Re:Yet another Ted Cruz bashing article ! (Score 1) 416

You must have a very dificult time with reading comprehension. I never said the concept was scientific, i said you cannot use science to disprove it. Therefore saying the earth is 10,000 years old is not anti science, its just unscientific.

Oh hey look, a semantics argument that is absolutely bereft of logic.

Insisting that the Earth is 10,000 years old /is/ anti-science because it requires one to completely ignore the evidence to the contrary and to embrace a folk tale that is the sole evidence "for" it. It requires vehemently closing one's eyes to the world.

Science requires observation. It's right there in the definition of the "scientific method" as understood by just about anyone with functioning neurons. Refusing to observe is therefore anti-science.

Q.E. motherfucking D.

Now go play in traffic. Because I assure you that if you shut your eyes to the automobiles whizzing around you, they will disappear.

--
BMO

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