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Submission + - XKCD covers comet landing "live" (xkcd.com) 1

garry_g writes: In yet another epic animated series, XKCD ist currently covering the Philae landing on comet 67P/Tschurjumow-Gerassimenko in real time.

Comment At least at the right places ... (Score 1) 398

At least they decided to put them where they really belong ... in Germany, it appears as if a large amount of mobile speed checks (and in part, permanent also) are done at places which guarantee for a good income - revenue from most tickets (unless the drivers are so much over that it's something like a felony, requiring prosecution through the state) goes to the communities/cities, and is usually a calculated part of the yearly budget. Often, they are placed in school zones for a short time, before moving them off to places like two-lane out/inbound streets or ones that have an illogically low speed limit that doesn't really belong there ... especially if the places have a low accident rate to begin with.
Of course, being caught is still the main fault of the driver, not the speed camera.

Comment Re:atheists (Score 1) 534

I believe what you are trying to do is move science into the same uncertainty as faith is, as you can't do it the other way around.

Anyway, sciences work completely differently ...

Faith takes an assumption, and even without proof and even under objective contradiction, sticks with the assumption, arguing away contradiction (which doesn't go away by that)

Science takes an assumption and researches whether the assumption is correct. If there are valid contradiction, the assumption is either dropped or corrected, then repeats from the beginning, until proof is found that the assumption is correct. But even then, new findings may raise new contradictions, at which real scientist will not hesitate to start the whole cycle again.

I reckon the latter is a whole lot more sensible ...

Comment Of course ... (Score 1) 534

... for one, the question should also include whether religions are even suited for modern life and scientific advances. Religions mostly still operate on century and millennia old superstition and mysticism, and most (albeit shrinking number of) people will still gladly accept everything thanks to childhood teaching when everything is unquestionably accepted from parents and authority figures.

Anyway, religious leaders (which may or may not "coincide" with political leadership as well) will find a way to lie around contradictions between scientific facts and religious texts. Anything to continue their hold on people's minds, souls and money ... even if 100% exact proof against religious beliefs were presented, people will still cling to their faith and will try to argue why the proof is wrong. Look e.g. at evolution of species ... e.g. the Bible doesn't say species evolve, still people believe in creation by God. It's a choose and pick situation, where some passages of scriptures will be taken literally, while others are chosen not to be ...

Comment Typical ... (Score 1) 107

Of course, supposedly no hard evidence or witnesses.

The general attorney is part of the ministry of justice ... Merkel and other leading politicians have made it clear they do not see any reason to prosecute the U.S. for the privacy invasion the NSA has committed ... now, the general attorney decides there's not enough evidence. Go figure.

All lying bastards ... too bad the general public does not understand (or care) what most politicians are doing ...

Comment Typical of German authorities ... *sigh* (Score 2) 334

Unless some A**hole posts private pictures after a break-up (or even during a relationship - most likely causing a break-up) - how is anybody going to prove somebody still has any pictures, or from the other side, prove that they deleted compromising pictures?

How long will it be until legislators, courts, etc. arrive in the 21st century? Or the late 20th, for that matter ... that would already be an improvement ...

Comment Only could be worse ... (Score 1) 164

... if Adobe had started following the suite of App-Developers in the mobile arena ... requiring in-app purchases to use features ... ;)

Ultimately, customers are at fault - they shouldn't have renewed any services with Adobe that require the online connection ... but companies will keep on abusing customers as long as they keep buying their products ...

Comment Figures ... (Score 1) 431

After the alteration of the writing rules several years ago (adapting spelling and punctuation rules to the stupidity of the people), I reckon this is just the inevitable next step ... going back several centuries to pre-Duden-times, the results should be clear - uncertainty when reading a text as to what the writer actually meant in some cases, and the helpless anger of people that still follow the rules and figuratively hurt when reading wrong spellings (like they're/their/there in English) ...
Why is it so hard to either teach children correctly, or fail them if they don't learn? Of course, with the trends like "no kid left behind" or contra-productive financing decisions (reducing financing for schools that have too few kid finish successfully) seem to favor this ...
Of course, kid failing in school have multiple reasons ... while sometimes teachers may be at least part of the problem, a most likely larger problem is the home of the kids ... parents that don't care about their children, and/or because they themselves are schooled below average.

Comment That should be quick ... (Score 1) 667

When providing scientific proof of God, the show should be over quickly ...
Sure, you can prove that certain events have happened in one way or another (e.g. great flood, Sodom & Gomorrah, ...), saying those are acts of God is more to the point of man of the day being unable to distinguish natural phenomena from said acts ... just as nowadays' technical advances would be seen by a 19th century person ...
Also, seeing what havoc religion creates on the grand scale (not talking about the personal level - rather what is caused by the conflicts between people of different faith), earth might be better off without it ...
As for the personal level - speaking of the relation between the individual and the church and/or state - at least some religions seem to be focused in keeping people at bay ... succumbing to authority, letting them do with you more less how they desire, and not doing much about it ... plus, states more or less enforces that image ... even in countries that say they've separated church and state, the ties are still there ...
Don't get me wrong - there's a lot of good things being done by religious people. But that's just that: the PEOPLE are the ones doing the good things!

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