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Comment Re:Wow. (Score 1) 881

You may laugh now, but what will you do when riots break out in 2012? Hollywood is a bunch of Nazis (figuratively speaking). They see fear, and they see profit. They're just cashing in on the game the History Channel has been playing for years. If saying every prophet in the history of the world predicted destruction on 2012 gets you more money, then why not do it, right? Unfortunately, it seems this has gone much farther than the 2000 scare. With so many people freaked out about this whole thing, I think there is real potential for a minor cataclysm in 2012, caused by Hollywood and the television networks themselves. Not the end of the world, but possibly a major blow to civilization.

And I know it seems ridiculous, but you have to remember: Humans are emotional creatures. Poke their feelings and all logic goes out the window.

Comment Re:Hmm (Score 1) 511

Religions didn't start off as a scam. But form any institution, and people will rise to power within that institution to take advantage of its constituents. It happens everywhere, from Catholicism to the government to the Red Cross. While the uppers of many religious institutions may have been taking advantage of the lowers for years, the central belief that holds them together has remained the same for centuries... this applies to all religious institutions that I've seen, except for Scientology: which is clearly, without question, a scam. I honestly can't figure out how Scientology still exists. The fact that people are willing to believe in such a thing as Scientology makes me question my faith as a Christian. And that makes me a sad panda.

Math

Submission + - Analyzing Iran's Election Numbers

CaroKann writes: The Washington Post has an article in the Opinion section analyzing Iran's election numbers.

The authors base their analysis on the assumption that humans are very bad at creating random numbers. They examined the last two digits of the official vote count from each province, looking for evidence of two human foibles concerning how people pick random numbers.

First, when picking random numbers, people tend to pick some digits more than others. For example, humans tend to pick the number 5 less often than the number 7. In the election results, the last digit is a 5 only 4% of the time, and 7 17% of the time. With completely random numbers, each 5 and 7 would appear as the last digit about 10% of the time.

Second, people have difficulty creating random numbers with non-consecutive digits. This pattern also shows up in the results.

They authors conclude that the chances of the election numbers being completely clean are 1 in 200.
Censorship

Submission + - Google Suggest Disabled in China Due to Porn (nytimes.com)

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes: "The Chinese government has asked Google to disable Google Suggest because it has been suggesting that people search for pornography based on its analysis of the most popular search terms in China. This comes on the heels of a fake CCTV interview being used to support the government requirement that all new computers ship with the 'Green Damn' internet censoring program, which is still in force, despite reports to the contrary. Understandably, average Chinese citizens are not very happy about any of this."
Government

Submission + - Obama Proposes Spy Training Corps for Colleges

Hugh Pickens writes: "The Washington Post reports that the Obama administration has proposed the creation of an intelligence officer training program in colleges and universities that would function much like the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) run by the military services creating a stream "of first- and second-generation Americans, who already have critical language and cultural knowledge, and prepare them for careers in the intelligence agencies." Students attending participating colleges and universities who agree to take the specialized courses would apply to the national intelligence director for admittance to the program, whose administrators would select individuals "competitively" for financial assistance. The students' participation in the program would probably be kept secret to prevent them from being identified by foreign intelligence services, according to an official familiar with the proposal. The intelligence officer training program would build on previous pilot programs including the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program (PRIST) that provides monetary incentive to college students who pursue studies in critical language specialties, area studies, and technical and scientific specialties. Applicants to the PRIST are cautioned that they "must generally not have used illegal drugs within the last 12 months" and that although "friends, family, individuals, or organizations may be interested to learn that you are an applicant for or an employee of the CIA," their interest, "may not be benign or in your best interest.""
Music

Submission + - Zune's Licensing is Plain Evil (facebook.com)

Rjak writes: "DRM is a bad idea, poorly implemented.

One of the many many valid reasons to drop Zune and it's marketplace is the DRM validation error you see below. The vast majority of the music I had purchased last year is completely gone. There's no refund, the music doesn't exist on the service anymore, the files are just garbage now.

Here's the unbelievable error:

"This item is no longer available at Zune Marketplace. Because of this, you can no longer play it or sync it with your Zune. There might be another iteration of it available in Zune Marketplace."

Screencap Here

Did anyone else have Microsoft's licensing policy as a reason to jump ship? Or was the word "Microsoft" enough?"

Programming

Submission + - Attention Young Programmers: Save your money! (blogspot.com)

ajole writes: "One reader blogs about how he quit his programming job to become a ski bum bartender after his last couple of jobs have twisted his view of his favorite hobby. The topic caught the attention of several meta-comment sites, including the easily /.'able reddit.com. Here's an excerpt:"I quit my job two weeks ago. I don't want to program at work any more. I'm sick of being inside and stationary, and I'm sick of working in an environment where people don't talk to each other. Over the last few years I've worked for one company producing high-end music software. When I came in I was invincible, and after working for someone with a completely different approach to problem solving (right down to code style), I've become weak and ineffectual. Well, those days are over. I'm going to get my style back and get back on the wagon of invincibility. Programming is art and should be a pure and unadulterated stream of conciousness from the developer to the machine. Python is art. Good design is art. Milestones are art. Good energy is art. [...] I'm psyched to get back to coding for the sake of art, where the idea and the implementation are solid gold. I quit my job, gave up my place, and I'm going to go bar tend in a ski town and program for fun. I've got some PyQt dev kits to write to simplify audio software development, and have a huge Python GIL to deal with. We'll see what happens."

How has your job changed your perspective of programming as an art?"

Comment Re:Well, hm... (Score 1) 383

I can't think of any reason at all why they shouldn't have named it Colbert. They asked what people wanted the name to be, the people said Colbert, and then NASA turned around and said, "oh, we meant what BESIDES Colbert should we call it?"
And for what reason? Is there something inherently offensive about the name Colbert?

Comment Re:I don't get it (Score 1) 231

What's happened in the past doesn't apply here. All throughout human history, musicians and actors, okay well entertainers in general, have been confined to the lowest levels of society along with prostitutes and peasants. Hell, even the king's jester would regularly get killed for his royalty's amusement. While playwrites and composers may have earned some respect in the past, the actors and musicians never did.

Then came things like radio and the record. These inventions turned musicians into celebrities while making them rich at the same time (which are two mutually reinforcing conditions). And we all know that for every person who has a lot of money, there are 100 people ready to exploit them.

Is the ability to bypass payment for music not a return to the natural state of things? After all, while musicians may be making less money, they are probably enjoying greater popularity. And when in the past HASN'T popularity led to riches?

Besides, aren't we just praising and giving money to these people for possessing talent and beauty that is really not nearly as uncommon as they would have us imagine? There are thousands of girls who look like Christina Aguilera, can sing as well as her, and aren't dirty whores either. Why should Christina Aguilera have any more fame or money than the other women who possess the same talents and physical attractiveness? Do artists, actors, and the **AA really deserve all that money? Even if they never sold a single CD, they'd STILL be richer than 99% of the population.

Comment Re:It's fairer than suing people left and right. (Score 1) 278

I don't even think it will have to go that far. If the content providers are able to log every IP that downloads their content, and report it, it won't be long at all before a third of the user base is kicked off the internet, maybe even half. ISP's will be screaming for this law to be repealed.

Comment Re:9 Browsers compared (Score 1) 363

See, your summary makes it perfectly clear: obviously he didn't feel like being pulled over at the time, so if the cops had just let him go instead of infringing on his right to not be pulled over (and thus violating his right to drive drunk), everything would have been fine... ...oh yeah, what were we talking about? Browser speeds or something?

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Thus spake the master programmer: "After three days without programming, life becomes meaningless." -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"

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