Comment Life imitating art (Score 1) 176
Okay... so it's not particularly good art, but it is art nonetheless. If they invent e-balls as well, I totally want to see one of these in action!
Comment Re:Pay for it (Score 1) 164
This is the answer to almost every Internet-inspired drama. The internet wants to be free. Information wants to be free. The bottom line instead is, everything has a price including the internet and your information. Pay for it, own it and no one else can.
Submission + - Study Says Excess Coffee May Be Linked To Early Death (forbes.com)
Mr.Intel writes: Should we believe it? Those of us under 55 who drink a lot of coffee – more than four cups per day – may be at greater risk of an early death. And not death from heart problems, but death from all causes. The study, from Mayo Clinic Proceedings, followed people for almost two decades, and found that in both sexes, younger people were more likely to die of anything than people who drank less.
Comment Re:Who else would they report to? (Score 2) 569
This is a panel to determine if the US "employs its technical collection capabilities in a manner that optimally protects our national security and advances our foreign policy while appropriately accounting for other policy considerations, such as the risk of unauthorized disclosure and our need to maintain the public trust."
This isn't supposed to be oversignt. It's entirely for the NSA's benefit.
Well, that's the problem, isn't it? Whoever determined the purpose of this panel (ostensibly, Mr. Obama) missed the point of why Americans are upset. Furthermore, it indicates that the Administration has no intention of changing the status quo. This is why it is newsworthy and why it's to our benefit to know and understand what a "privacy reform panel" looks like. There are other threads discussing how to go about realizing real change (in the broken American political system), so I will refer you to those if you want to talk about changing how and why this panel is the wrong answer to a large problem.
Comment Re:Market has fixed the problem (Score 5, Insightful) 238
Sorry, the problem with the declaration The free market has fixed this problem is that it only fixed it AFTER I spent my $500 on a really crappy phone...
No, the free market fixes the problem when no one else buys their phone after you spent your $500 and told the rest of us about it. That's the other part of a free market society that some people forget: risk. You weren't forced to but a new phone without researching it first and if you were the first to buy it you just took a risk and in your scenario, it was a bad one.
Comment Re:idiotic politically correct fears indeed (Score 1) 1223
If Mormons can't see past one dev, can't see that Linus is just one cog in a very large machine, that's their problem and not his.
Don't worry... most of us are fairly even keeled. Bigoted attacks on my religion, I can handle. Ad hominem attacks on my personal views? No problem. Just don't take away my tax credits for charitable contributions. I'd much rather support the homeless than Uncle Sam.
Comment Re:Mormons (Score 1) 1223
Sigh.
While there is a slight argument to be made as to whether or not it was for "political expediency," those are indeed beliefs and traditions the LDS church has followed at one time or another (speaking to you from the heart and soul of Mormonism in Provo, UT):
- Polygamy
- Adam/Eve aliens (key word being "from another planet")
- Blood Atonement
- Blacks in the priesthood
Now as far as the Warren Jeffs, 12 year old bonking crowd, yes they're crazy, but no they merely started at the same root of the tree. No original-orthodoxy Mormons are left, they're dead. The rest -- at least much of the rest here in Utah -- seem to want to live their lives with blinders on about the past (and the outside world, help! I'm trapped in a bubble!). Go and ask your bishop about all of these things and he'll, a: sigh, and b: give you a well thought out, and historically accurate accounting of the church's somewhat malleable belief system.
Or as I do for the members of my ward who ask about these things, c) explain what Elder Oaks taught about the two channels of revelation and how understanding the history of the church ends up hinging on how well you and I can access knowledge from God.
Submission + - Supreme Court: Affordable Care Act Constitutional (supremecourt.gov) 17
reebmmm writes: The Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care act and it's most contentious provision: the individual mandate. In a split decision, Chief Justice Roberts writing for the majority said the individual mandate survives as a tax.
Comment Absolutes are always absolutely wrong (Score 1) 287
There's a long list of games I love and play over and over to the point of digging out emulation software or nursing along ancient hardware to play them. None of them are perfect, but they are good enough for me to love. To say that games today are amazing but no one is happy is a long stretch, IMO. Maybe I'm too distanced from mainstream gaming nowadays, but there are several games that are both modern and successful. There will always be detractors, especially when a game is widely praised. That doesn't mean "no one" is happy.
Submission + - Injunction Granted in Teacher Facebook Case (msta.org)
Technology and Moral Panic 262
pbahra writes "Why do some technologies cause moral panic and others don't? Why was the introduction of electricity seen as a terrible thing, while nobody cared much about the fountain pen? According to Genevieve Bell, the director of Intel Corporation's Interaction and Experience Research, we have had moral panic over new technology for pretty well as long as we have had technology. It is one of the constants in our culture. '... moral panic is remarkably stable and it is always played out in the bodies of children and women,' she said. There was, she says, an initial pushback about electrifying homes in the U.S.: 'If you electrify homes you will make women and children vulnerable. Predators will be able to tell if they are home because the light will be on, and you will be able to see them. So electricity is going to make women vulnerable. Oh and children will be visible too and it will be predators, who seem to be lurking everywhere, who will attack.' 'There was some wonderful stuff about [railway trains] too in the U.S., that women's bodies were not designed to go at 50 miles an hour. Our uteruses would fly out of our bodies as they were accelerated to that speed,' she says."
Submission + - Study: Caffeine linked to hallucinations (baltimoresun.com)
Mr.Intel writes: "Australian researchers at La Trobe University have just published a study suggesting that people on a serious caffeine buzz are prone to hear things that aren’t there. The study might raise new concerns about the safety of caffeine. But for the average person who’s weary of conflicting reports about coffee and health, the new findings may not amount to much more than background noise."
Submission + - WHO: Cell Phones May Cause Cancer (bbc.co.uk)
Hartree writes: A World Health Organization group of experts doing a review of previous studies concluded that they could not rule out the the possibility that cell phones increase brain cancer risk. The judge the possibility to be great enough to warrant measures to reduce exposure. Hands free operation or testing were mentioned.
Skype Crashes and Burns In Worldwide Outage 347
Stoobalou writes "VoIP and instant messaging service Skype has disappeared from the Internet, nary a fortnight after Microsoft snaffled up the outfit in a $8.5 billion deal."
Comment Re:How much are they getting paid though? (Score 2) 390
Anecdotally = Pulled it out of your ass.
Well, he *is* talking about methane...
