At least he didn't make things worse. The funny thing about this one, is the the "debate" about paranormal beliefs starts off at absolute maximum conceivable stupidity. It has nowhere to go, but up.

when VMWare first came out, and there was all this amazement about all the cool things you could do with Virtual Machines. Very little mention anywhere that these were things you could do for decades already on mainframes.

This is probably due to the fact that for most values of "you," you don't have a mainframe. So the cool things switched from "things a-few-people-who-aren't-me can do" to "things I can do." That increases relevance.

Yes, blame the voters for refusing to vote

Ok, I do.

Get some candidates that are to the left of Reagan's corpse and we'll talk, mmmkay?

There are approximately-but-literally around a hundred million people in this country who fit that description and are just as qualified as the Republicans whom the voters gave the election to. I bet you can find one. I bet you are one. So stop bitching about lack of candidates (it's just totally absurd) and either accept ridiculous leadership, or do something about it.

This is democracy, and democracy is participatory. If you're going to sit around waiting for some party to give you a candidate, you might as well advocate monarchy or anything else, because democracy isn't a good fit for your personality.

You know why it tweaks people? Because the only reason you use it is because you consider it an insult.

But he has to call him "Hussein," because when he tried to drive people into a rage by calling the president "nigger," it actually made someone angry and the coward doesn't ever want to face a situation like that again.

Your comment has evidencist bias. Their (stated) point of view is that they're right and science will not back them up, because the very essence of science is deception.

You can't trust your senses; they will lie to you. Listen to the voice in your head.

While you're probably right that they're liars, they claim to be merely batshit insane.

But what percentage of the nuclear warheads do they have? What fraction of aircraft carriers and army divisions do they have? There's more than one way to measure who has the "most powerful political force." ;-)

It's about biology. Our eyes are by nature more accustomed to view wide scenes instead of tall ones.

If you evolved on a planet that has Predators then you're alive because your ancestors paid attention to the trees.

As long as it's behind a decent firewall you shouldn't have any problems.

Yes, up to now, Windows has mainly been attacked by Hackers(TM) connecting to its daemons' ports, because Windows sysadmins forget to turn off all its services. It's an old story: mom forgot to uncheck "share passwords" or "be an open mail relay" and it's true that a firewall will help with those kinds of problems.

But what if Windows ever grows out of its mainly-for-servers role and gets popular on the desktop? Can you imagine what sort of problems might appear if people start using that OS to run web browsers or read email? A lot of good firewalls will do then. Sure, 2014 may be Yet Another Year of Linux on the desktop, but what about 2015?

I don't know, but if you're considering using that OS, that's obviously something you'll need to find out first. If your preferences are anomalous (say, for example, you have objections to running malware) you might decide that the "#1 OS" isn't quite the right one for you.

What THE FUCK? The whole ad issue aside, that's not how you get software. You never know what page will have best SEO for a term, so even without ads, that technique (running random code from the web) is pretty much guaranteed to occasionally get you some malware, and you only need one infection to be infected. Those people ought to be installing VLC (and nearly everything else) from their repository.

def is_annoying(ad):
    # Problem too trivial to need AI.
    return ad is not None

That because every whiny turd who installs solar is selling it back to the grid when they don't need it, but expects to have power on tap when the fucking solar is useless.

Yes, sometimes-selling/sometimes-buying is the idea, but I totally don't get the "whiny turd" part.

That means the true cost is made higher for all the people who can't afford solar panels

True cost of what? Are you talking about the energy they're buying, or pollution they're mitigating, or the transmissions lines, or what? And aren't those true costs, things that are being reduced?

I don't produce solar energy so I'm just trying to figure out how someone is sticking it to me. If you know of a victim card I could be playing, then I'd be grateful if you would learn to write without sounding like a retard, just in case you have an actual real idea in there, somewhere.

If you were alluding to the subsidies for buying the panels, then I think you'd have an excellent point, but you didn't so much as mention that. You seem to be vaguely talking about the energy or the transmission, both of which solar is a win for everyone, whether you're producing or not.

You're talking about the post-scarcity dream (but not describing it that way): the AI success story where it's completely good and benign. 98% unemployment (2% still have to work as Blade Runners), where most everybody has nothing better to do than lay back on their couch while robot slaves feed them grapes, and where the nation is more of a "maker" than ever before, but nobody has to lift a finger to bring about that productivity. It's not a "service-based" economy; it's a "leisure-based" or "so much wealth that all the old economic textbooks were made obsolete-based" economy.

He's talking about Terminators and Forbin Projects and Demon Seeds and Matrices.

It probably depends on whether or not he's ruled by his fear. I know I might get killed (or horribly injured and maimed for life) in traffic if I drive to the grocery store. That is a very real threat and you would have to be insane or stupid to think it can't happen. But it's not likely (on any given day, or even in a given decade) either, and it'd be more insane/stupid, to starve to death instead of getting food. So I go. I don't even think about it, but if I ever said "it can't happen to me" then I'd deserve your derision.

Hawking says AI is a threat? BFD. Everyone already knows that. It's not even controversial. The real question is how likely the disaster is, and Hawking hasn't to-date said a damned thing that would lead anyone to suspect he has a specially privileged point of view on the subject.

As for old/insane, it depends on his policy. Is he in favor of pointing guns at AI researchers' heads, with the message "stop working, or else?" Or is he just just saying "be careful?" The former is insane, and the latter is just good advice and goes for driving to the grocery store too. Acknowledging that life has risks, isn't old/insane. It's only when you say "we must never take risks," (or "we must always take risks") that you've crossed the line.

It states that "Congress shall make no law..." but since this was a civil case, and did not involve congress, how does the first amendment apply?

Without Congress creating the court, how can there be a civil case? The court's decisions would be unenforcible, and they wouldn't have laws by which to judge cases anyway.