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Comment Re:Alpha not so great. (Score 3, Informative) 210

For instance, "How do I plot a course from earth to Uranus?"

The really tragic thing about this particular example is that Alpha could just return (and indeed to any question involving Uranus):

"To plot a course to my anus, you're going to need to start by buying me a drink"

Thanks folks, I'll be here all night.

Businesses

How, and Why, Apple Overtook Microsoft 458

HughPickens.com writes James B. Stewart writes in the NYT that in 1998 Bill Gates said in an interview that he "couldn't imagine a situation in which Apple would ever be bigger and more profitable than Microsoft" but less than two decades later, Apple, with a market capitalization more than double Microsoft's, has won. The most successful companies need a vision, and both Apple and Microsoft have one. But according to Stewart, Apple's vision was more radical and, as it turns out, more farsighted. Where Microsoft foresaw a computer on every person's desk, Apple went a big step further: Its vision was a computer in every pocket. "Apple has been very visionary in creating and expanding significant new consumer electronics categories," says Toni Sacconaghi. "Unique, disruptive innovation is really hard to do. Doing it multiple times, as Apple has, is extremely difficult." According to Jobs' biographer Walter Isaacson, Microsoft seemed to have the better business for a long time. "But in the end, it didn't create products of ethereal beauty. Steve believed you had to control every brush stroke from beginning to end. Not because he was a control freak, but because he had a passion for perfection." Can Apple continue to live by Jobs's disruptive creed now that the company is as successful as Microsoft once was? According to Robert Cihra it was one thing for Apple to cannibalize its iPod or Mac businesses, but quite another to risk its iPhone juggernaut. "The question investors have is, what's the next iPhone? There's no obvious answer. It's almost impossible to think of anything that will create a $140 billion business out of nothing."

Comment Re:You can't disprove the existence of an idea. (Score 1) 755

Saying God doesn't exist is like saying that lunch time doesn't exist, or money doesn't exist, or the United States doesn't exist.

Complete and utter bullshit. I can take you to have lunch in the United States and pay for it with money. Good luck doing anything useful or at least demonstrable with your "god".

You can't disprove the existence of an idea; and dismissing the real influence of that idea (both good and bad) and the potential influence of that idea (both good and bad) is asinine.

Nobody is dismissing the idea; they're telling you that you're a fucking idiot for believing that the idea represents reality.

Comment Re:Well That About Wraps It Up For God (Score 1) 755

Will they laugh about our superstitions about GMO foods, or why we had all these different diets?

Non-idiots have been laughing at both of those things for years now.

Perhaps we have a better method then science to understand the universe.

As soon as you find one, please, let us know! That would be the biggest boon to science in history.

Comment Re:From Jack Brennan's response (Score 1) 772

Were the people who fought for the creation of the state Israel terrorists?

Yes and no, depending on which ones you're referring to.

Were the people who fought for the creation of the USA terrorists?

Yes and no, depending on which ones you're referring to. Mostly no.

Were the people who fought for the independence of Ireland in the early 20th century terrorists?

Yes and no, depending on which ones you're referring to. Mostly no.

Are the Palestinians who fight against past and future Israeli injustice and encroachment on their land terrorists?

Haven't met any of those, not convinced they exist. If they do, they're not terrorists, just fucking stupid. The ones lobbing rockets into Israel while treading on the faces of their own people, though? Yep.

Was the Saudi national who argued that the US military bases in his country were a form of occupation, and who founded an organisation to fight against this, was he a terrorist?

Yep.

I presume Saudi Arabia falls under your definition of `true nation state'.

Either you're making a suggestion which shows that you don't understand what "unaffiliated with a nation state" means, or this part just makes no sense whatsoever.

Comment Re:From Jack Brennan's response (Score 1) 772

We haven't really stopped any such attacks; we've brought attention to attempts which were never going to succeed, but that's it.

Oh, sure. All the attacks which get stopped are "ones which were never going to succeed", and all the ones which succeed are ones which "clearly show the incompetence and futility of the security apparatus", amirite? Nice rhetoric bro; wee bit lacking on the intellectual integrity front.

If an open theater of war comes in earnest, we will have Americans who can remember government prattling and a single attack, versus Arabs who can remember friends and family dying in bombings of coffee shops by Americans across decades.

This is just uneducated white-guilt garbage. Yes, it's Americans who are walking into Arab coffee shops and detonating themselves. Sure it is. It's the small fraction of Arabs killed by Americans which other Arabs will remember; not the much larger fraction killed by the factions within their own borders. Ignore the Iraqis and Kurds all crying for help within a couple years of the US leaving; it's not because they need saving from the same people we've been fighting all along, but rather because those poor bastards must have been so terrorized by the Eevil Amerikkan Pigdogs that they've developed Stockholm Syndrome. They hate the US so much they can't wait to see you again.

To combat this, we basically bomb other countries, call anyone over 18 a soldier ("militant"), and prove to the world that we're the axis of evil that must be removed.

And this is just ignorant anti-American bullshit posing as open-minded progressive thought. Yes, just go ahead and label an entire nation an "axis of evil", based on the demonstrably false claim that they're targeting "anyone over 18". Go ahead and mix lies and hypocrisy, in an attempt to justify bigotry.

I know that you don't actually believe what you're saying; I'm just not sure if that makes it more evil or less. I do, however, know that you are scum, and that I have far more in common with the average Iraqi than I do with a fanatic like you.

Comment Re:From Jack Brennan's response (Score 1) 772

It doesn't matter if they're right, it's incredibly easy to rationalize the acts of your side. Just to be certain that you're not one of the bad guys yourself you need to keep your actions way above reproach.

Judging by your example there's no point in trying. You're basically saying:

"people are going to lie about what you did and then hate you based on those lies, so you have to be perfect, which will magically stop them from lying about you"

Comment Re:Really? (Score 1, Insightful) 772

Waterboarding was regarded by the US as torture and at least a couple of Japanese officers were tried and put to death over applying it to captured US soldiers in WW II.

-5,000, Lying Bastard

Suggesting that what the Japanese did was equivalent to the modern usage of the word "waterboarding" is a bit like suggesting that the Nazis really did just give the Jews a nice shower.

Comment Re:Really? .. it comes with the job (Score 0) 772

Sure, it satisfies that, but then you lose the moral high ground. And that shit is actually important.

Hah. As if any of the blame-America-first crowd would ever concede any kind of high ground!

"What's that? You're not torturing? Well, err, you're invading. For OIL!"
"What's that? Not invading? Err ... umm ... well, you have too many bases around and the world and that's bad because reasons!"
"What's that? No more bases? Well, erm, you're evil because racism! And bad healtchare! And hicks!"

Face it - doesn't matter what the US does or doesn't do; the battle lines are already drawn. Trying to placate those who hate you is asinine. As for those of us who don't hate you, torturing a few scumbags certainly isn't going to push us over the line.

Comment Re: One should be careful on the logic here (Score 1) 155

I'm kinda certain that even they KNOW it's unsafe but ... well, there's money to be made.

Certain based on what? The zero scientific evidence which shows any risk of harm greater than existing drilling methods?

How can you be certain that someone whom you've never met or spoken to actually knows something which cannot even be shown to be true? This would be like me saying "I'm certain that Obama knows that an alien spaceship was recovered in Roswell, but he's covering it up because there's money to be made". Hilarious, maybe, but completely nonsensical.

Comment Re: Maybe Putin could help (Score 1) 155

This basically says "no effect either way" from my non-expert reading of it

Um no, not exactly. It basically says ChrisMaple was right, and drinkypoo has once again lived up to his name. The article admits that small quakes DO take some of the energy away from larger ones, and do delay them by "temporarily easing stress on the fault line". It merely points out that the massive disparity in energy levels means that a single small quake (or even a hundred small quakes) cannot permanently avert a much larger one. If, however, you keep repeating this "temporary" fix, you end up with a long-term solution.

The rest of your comment is bang-on though. Small quakes are of no concern.

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