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Comment Re:Fiat can crash (Score 3, Funny) 753

Yes, you had the only one. And it took a very unusual series of events for you to get a reliable Fiat.

It was a rare Wednesday that was also a National holiday. The regular crews were all off, and the temps were called in, but it was a Wednesday not a Friday so the temps weren't drunk. Being not drunk they remembered that they had played cards last night with the crew of a Saudi Royals yacht. This crew was all nubile Japanese girls who were taking a holiday from their work building Camries. The Fiat boys convinced them to take their shifts, and behold - the one ever reliable Fiat was built from 1969 through 1988.

Comment Re:Does anyone oppose this? tsarkon reports (Score 2) 155

You are making stuff up. We know the Jurassic was much warmer, being tropical or sub-tropical over most of the world. We think the sea level was much higher. There is no evidence of ice at either pole. Pangaea was starting to break up.

We have no reliable measurements of either O2 or C02 in the Jurassic.

The point you seem to be missing is that the climate change we are experiencing now is happening MUCH faster than any in the past, and we are causing it. Yes, life will go on, but it will disrupt millions of people if we do nothing about it. I'm not sure why so many people think the short term profits of large energy companies are more important than the general welfare of millions of people.

Comment Re:Apparently dedication = autism (Score 5, Insightful) 608

Generally when people say autistic, they don't mean a mildly afflicted, high functioning person, but someone who never speaks, rocks in a corner, and screams if their normal routine is changed. You DON'T have to be autistic, or be anywhere on the autistic spectrum to be a great programmer.

Like becoming good, even excellent, at anything it requires hard work, dedication, and practice. Any normal person can do it. Programming, and I've been doing it since an assembler was a real cool tool, can be mastered by normal people. Sure, I've seen a few odd balls in the field, but no more so than in other fields.

As far as making programming easy for the masses: that is fine for little toy systems, but if you want a large system built, you want properly trained professionals working on it.

Comment Re:It's working so well in Venezuela (Score 1) 530

Why would you expect poverty when robots produce the same or more than all human workers?

Capitalism, regulated by government to prevent the worst abuses, has proved itself the best economic system given our current level of technology, and culture. When everything you could possibly want is produced without human labour then capitalism isn't going to work. There will be NO work. Obviously, some sort of socialism will have to replace capitalism. This theme is explored in a number of SF books, and often labelled "Post Scarcity".

The current economic recovery in the USA is often called the "jobless recovery" because while corporations profits have recovered the number of jobs that have been created has been much lower than in previous economic recoveries. This trend of increasing productivity through automation is going to accelerate.

Some form of socialism is inevitable in the long term. Dogmatic free marketers are just going to have to learn to change. The culture is going to have to change to value something other than "work" as a good use of one's time.

Comment Re:Not surprising. (Score 4, Informative) 725

Pretty much everything in your post is wrong. The IPCC's latest report does NOT state that the science supporting global climate change is "weaker than ever". Sure, a few minor botches were discovered in the report, but that doesn't change the fact that there is overwhelming evidence, supported by over 90% of climate scientists, that global climate change is real and caused by human actions.

Comment Re:Not surprising. (Score 1) 725

Many people are much more willing to change their mind when presented with evidence that contradicts favored beliefs than religious fundamentalists, and others who strongly identify who they are to a particular dogma.

There seems to be a .lot more "noisy" republicans/conservatives that are proud of not changing their mind in the face of evidence than there are democrats/liberals with this trait. For example some liberals are now promoting nuclear energey now that global climate change has proved to be a much bigger issue.

Comment Re:A win for freedom (Score 1) 1330

I don't think it is a win for freedom when your company, run by very few people at the top, gets to tell the employees, a generally much large number of people, how to run their private lives. Each person should be free to make important decisions about their lives without interference from companies or the government when their decisions harm no other people. Embryos are not people.

More importantly, no secular government should be paying any attention to any religious belief when making laws. Iron Age superstition has no place in deciding important moral, philosophical, or law questions. Our body of knowledge about what is moral has change drastically since those days, and especially since the enlightenment.

Keep religion out of the law - it is the only way to have freedom. There are thousands of religions, and even if you restrict yourself to Christian sects, you still have thousands of sects - there is no way to pick the "correct" morality from this mess of contradictory, and generally backward beliefs.

Don't get offended when I call Christian beliefs backwards; go read the bible. I'm always amazed at the number of people calling themselves "chistians" who haven't bothered to read the bible. Often, reading the bible, and/or making a serious study of theology cures one of religion.

Comment Re:I believe it because.. (Score 2) 291

And everyone in that plane is going to want to kill you after only 5 hours. For the love of god, don't do it unless you have a miracle child that will sleep through the whole flight.

As a parent of three grown children, I never inflicted my perfect, but often screaming, children on theaters, high end restaurants, or long plane trips. It is is selfish, unthinking, and rude.

Comment Re:Anti-competitive (Score 1) 238

...slimy business practices...

I don't see how a bug that will likely be fixed soon is a "slimy" business practice. Normally if an imessage doesn't go through it gets resent as a normal sms. Some sort of bug is causing the resend to not happen.

From my point of view this is frivolous lawsuit, I hope apple wins, and the plaintiffs lawyers lose a bundle.

Comment Re:Efficiency? (Score 1) 234

And, while this is interesting tech, a large stationary power-plant should be more efficient - even with transmission losses so I'll be waiting until I can get a battery powered car at a reasonable price with good enough range. Battery research is what cars need.

Electricity is cheap where I live so my "fuel" costs would be cut by about 85% if I got an electric. (7.5Km per dollar for gas vs 50k per dollar for electricity).

Comment Re:Rewarding the bullies... (Score 2) 798

What boggles my mind is that this despicable behavior was done in front of a teacher! Any school I, or my kids went to, that bullying tirade would have been stopped, and the student marched down to the principals office by the teacher. A "cut it out" is for talking to your friend when you should be paying attention.

I'm from Canada, but I'm going to guess the bully was an athlete. Untouchable.

And I agree with others that have pointed out that the school admin seems more concerned with protecting the schools reputation and athletics program than with learning and justice.

And in what way is tirade shouted out in a classroom not public? What is wrong with that magistrate, and that cop?

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