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Comment Re:Pft (Score 1) 962

And have you listened to what those types of gamers say to everyone they play against? We're talking about mouthy juvenile delinquents of varying ages who've never evolved beyond that of the 12 year old. They're assholes to everyone and they threaten everyone with disembowlment, murder, and other such crap. The only "special" insult they make to women is rape, because they know that will piss them off. And that's all that sort cares about: pissing the opponent off.

Maybe the game industry is worse than others -- I don't know; I've never worked in that sector. But I have never seen women in banking, telecommunications, government, financial services, or the aeronautics industries be subjected to any more or any less jibing and insulting than "the guys" on the team were. Maybe there is just something about gaming that attracts demented juvenile delinquents, but everyone at work received about the same level of respect from their co-workers everwhere I worked over a 30 year period in the tech industry.

Then again, I've been out of the industry for almost five years now. Maybe society has taken this mad rush to the bottom in the intervening five years. If so, that's sad, because tech used to be one of the few industries where women and men were judged more on their skillz than anything else.

Comment Re:Pft (Score 5, Insightful) 962

You realize that there's more difference between your average man and your average woman than between your average NFL linebacker and your average man, right? (seriously, compare the stats some time - height, average bench strength, etc). You do realize how commonly women are raped and abused by men, and how they might happen to be more sensitive to the implicit or explicit threats of violence from someone that they're highly unlikely to be able to fight off?

I'm tall, 182 centimeters, and I still once had a guy literally pick me up and carry me back to his apartment when I tried to walk away from him.

Comment Re:Pft (Score 2, Informative) 962

There's a bit of a difference in that one in every four women actually will be raped in their life, and a sizeable percent of those getting those threats already have been.

Yes, men are raped too. About 91% of rape cases are male->female, 8% male->male, 0.8% female->female, and 0.2% female->male. Men are virtually always the perpetrator, but even when the victim is male (not nearly as common, but still way more common than we as a society should accept), the perpetrator is still overwhelmingly likely to be male.

(and if the excuse for the stats is "men aren't as likely to report being raped by a woman because of shame"... so is there no shame for a guy to report being sodomized against his will by a man?)

The basic point is: when you're threatening a violent crime against a person who may well have been a victim of such, and even if they haven't, very likely has friends who have and is more than aware of their vulnerability in this regard, that's taking it to a whole different level.

Comment Re:Pft (Score 4, Insightful) 962

Nice being a straight cis white male when a venue is dominated by other straight cis white males, isn't it?

And just to make clear, the problem of insulting people isn't along the lines of "ching chong chow chee" or whatnot. The problem case is along the lines of:

Scenario 1:

Man: "What does that do? Sorry, I don't know perl."
Crowd: "You don't know perl? Geez, you're stupid."

Scenario 2:

Woman: "What does that do? Sorry, I don't know perl."
Crowd: "Geez, women are stupid."

Submission + - UK to use Open Document Format for government documents (themukt.com)

sfcrazy writes: UK has decided to use ‘open standards’ for sharing and viewing government documents. The announcement was made by the Minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude. One of the primary objectives of this move is to create a level playing field for suppliers of all sizes. The move must put some pressure on Google to offer full support for ODF in Chrome, Android and Google Docs.

Submission + - U.K. Cabinet Office Adopts ODF as Exclusive Standard for Sharable Documents (consortiuminfo.org)

Andy Updegrove writes: The U.K. Cabinet Office accomplished today what the Commonwealth of Massachusetts set out (unsuccessfully) to achieve ten years ago: it formally required compliance with the Open Document Format (ODF) by software to be purchased in the future across all government bodies. Compliance with any of the existing versions of OOXML, the competing document format championed by Microsoft, is neither required nor relevant. The announcement was made today by The Minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude. Henceforth, ODF compliance will be required for documents intended to be shared or subject to collaboration. PDF/A or HTML compliance will be required for viewable government documents. The decision follows a long process that invited, and received, very extensive public input – over 500 comments in all.

Comment Re:Yes, but... (Score 1) 454

Contary to popular belief, broomsticks can't fly and are not aerodynamic.

If 16th century India could do it... (why a person would believe that the warhead has to be the frontmost part of a rocket is beyond me, given that the interceptors themselves aren't built that way - yet the entire logic behind the interceptor's detonation system relies on that assumption)

In any case the missile will miss its intended target if it was hit by shrapnel.

Nope.

Comment Re:Maybe (Score 2) 454

1. A hit by a few pieces of shrapnel each weight no more than a few grams is not going to have a noticeable impact on something that's dozens of kilograms moving at roughly half their speed. It's simple physics.

2. The warhead is the whole point. A warhead-less rocket won't penetrate your roof. If you're out walking in the park and it lands on your head you might get seriously injured, but apart from that. no.

3. What are you talking about? The payload of the Tamir interceptors is is 11kg, that's no secret. And again, it's not designed to work by concussion, it's designed to work by shrapnel. The energy of the explosion is mostly spent in the process of creating high velocity shrapnel fragments.

Beyond that, the length of time of any exposure here to any explosive force is simply miniscule. The rockets pass each other at a rate of 1200 meters per second - nearly half the speed of the explosive shrapnel itself. Even if they passed directly past nearly grazing each other (which is grossly implausible), they'd only be within a meter of each other for less than two milliseconds. And even things that are right near explosions the whole time get surprisingly little push from blast shockwaves (Mythbusters did a full episode about this). Relevant push from explosions requires confinement of the gasses.

Comment Re:5% 0%. (Score 1) 454

Israel's GDP is the equivalent of about US$250 billion. They can easily afford tens of thousands of intercept missiles if it keeps the population safe.

And Palestine's is 4B GDP. Yes, they're poor, but not *that* poor. They can afford to spot weld fins onto a piece of drainage pipe, drill holes into a bit of steel plate and spot weld it on, fill it with sugar and fertilizer, and attach onto the front end a hollow shell containing several kilos of smuggled or homemade explosives triggered by a bullet casing connected to a nail and a spring. That's literally all a Qassam rocket is.

Comment Re:Maybe (Score 2) 454

Iron Dome isn't designed to hit rockets in the boost phase; when it hits them, the motor is not in operation. You could turn 90% of the rocket into swiss cheese, if you don't hit the warhead it's still going to explode when it comes down, and it's going to come down right where it otherwise would have (the Iron Dome interceptors work by shrapnel, not by concussive force that could push a rocket onto a different trajectory)

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