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Comment Re:Keep them busy. (Score 2) 246

He called me a "miserable son of a bitch" and slammed the phone down.

It never ceases to amaze me how someone who is actively scamming you, and knows they're actively scamming you, somehow expects to be treated with respect.

I'm sorry, but do you think you deserve to be treated as anything but a lying sack of shit?

It isn't possible to run this scam without knowing you're scamming. So if you don't get a good response, you shouldn't be surprised at all.

Don't care if it's the only job you can find. You know you're ripping people off, so you deserve all the shit and abuse you get.

Comment Re:Copenhagen interpretation != less complicated (Score 1) 197

True, much work on it does need to be done before it is nearly as mature as the traditional interpretation.

In other words, it's voodoo mysticism which isn't useful for anything, and the author may or may not be reaching to make his theory look sound?

Because the GP kinda makes it sound like healing crystals, and generally not very useful at all.

When there is "much work to do" on your pet theory before it can explain a lightbulb, maybe your theory is worthless?

Comment Re:Established science CANNOT BE QUESTIONED! (Score 1) 719

So will a million other factors, most of which can't be foreseen or predicted. Would your Grandparents have foreseen the day that you could access the entirety of human knowledge on a device that fits into the palm of your hand?

The Earth and humanity have never been and never will be static entities. The climate has changed a great deal during the geologically insignificant amount of time that humans have been around. Most of those changes occurred before we started digging carbon out of the ground. Changes will continue long after we've moved past carbon based energy supplies. The notion that the climate was "ideal" during some specific period would be laughable if there wasn't a serious movement trying to use it to make public policy.

Robotics

The Dominant Life Form In the Cosmos Is Probably Superintelligent Robots 391

Jason Koebler writes: If and when we finally encounter aliens, they probably won't look like little green men, or spiny insectoids. It's likely they won't be biological creatures at all, but rather, advanced robots that outstrip our intelligence in every conceivable way. Susan Schneider, a professor of philosophy at the University of Connecticut, joins a handful of astronomers, including Seth Shostak, director of NASA's Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, NASA Astrobiologist Paul Davies, and Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology Stephen Dick in espousing the view that the dominant intelligence in the cosmos is probably artificial. In her paper "Alien Minds," written for a forthcoming NASA publication, Schneider describes why alien life forms are likely to be synthetic, and how such creatures might think.

Comment Re:Established science CANNOT BE QUESTIONED! (Score 3, Insightful) 719

The fate of the human race is at stake.

No, actually it's not. This is the kind of hyperbolic nonsense that makes it so hard to take the alarmist crowd seriously. It also gives ammunition to the deniers/skeptics/whatever-you-want-to-call-them. Project the worst case scenario for climate change and the human race survives. People in developing countries don't do so well and even the developed world takes a hit (higher food prices, greater frequency of natural disasters, and so on) but the human race isn't going anywhere. Homo sapiens quite probably survived a super-volcanic eruption, without the benefit of modern technology and scientific understanding. You think you can kill them off with melting ice caps, stronger hurricanes, and rising sea levels? Best of luck with that.

I'm in the crowd that believes the climate is changing and that homo sapiens are a contributory factor to that change. I get off the bus when the green crowd starts talking about pie in the sky solutions that sound great on paper but invariably result in a lower standard of living and greater Governmental control over our lives. Unless you're willing wholly embrace nuclear power (to their credit a few greens actually are) there's no way you can generate enough energy to maintain our current standard of living without sourcing some of that energy from carbon based sources.

Comment Re:10th amendment (Score 2) 484

It started with FDR (*), the New Deal, and a little known SCOTUS case involving wheat....

Thanks Democrats!

(*) Actually the progressive philosophy really got started with Wilson but that asshat didn't have FDR's cojones. I guess FDR did save Western Civilization as we know it; that probably should count for something....

Comment Re:Dry Counties? (Score 1) 484

I on the other hand have stayed away from all drugs (including alcohol) for years, but have enjoyed and used marijuana on a regular basis.

I hate to break it to you but THC is a drug by any definition.....

Mind you, so is caffeine, and I'm not passing judgment on you for using THC, been there done that. You just can't claim that you have stayed away from all drugs while simultaneously admitting that you use marijuana on a regular basis....

Comment Re:Failed state policies (Score 2) 435

Please explain to the childish hamster brain why all the cars in Cuba were built during the Bautista administration.

It is not true that all the cars in Cuba were built during the Batista administration. It is true that all of the American cars predate the embargo.

But the Russian, Chinese and Korean cars which are all over the place? Not so much.

Again, do you know anything about Cuba?

Are you really going to make the claim that Cubans are better off now than they were during the Batista days?

As a matter of fact, I am ... Batista was overthrown in 1959, and in the last 55 years a lot of incremental changes have happened in Cuba.

Do attribute that all to the glory of communism? Not really. Do I personally know numerous Cubans with educations, access to health care, and insights into their society who have talked to me about what life has been like over the last several decades and how it has changed? As a matter of fact, yes.

Under Batista, pretty much everything in Cuba was to benefit a ruling wealthy, and American businesses which were mostly ran by the US mafia. Everyone else pretty much got nothing at all. This wasn't some noble democracy with freedoms which was overthrown.

Back in power, Batista suspended the 1940 Constitution and revoked most political liberties, including the right to strike. He then aligned with the wealthiest landowners who owned the largest sugar plantations, and presided over a stagnating economy that widened the gap between rich and poor Cubans.[5] Batista's increasingly corrupt and repressive government then began to systematically profit from the exploitation of Cuba's commercial interests, by negotiating lucrative relationships with the American mafia, who controlled the drug, gambling, and prostitution businesses in Havana, and with large multinational American corporations that had invested considerable amounts of money in Cuba.[5][6] To quell the growing discontent amongst the populace--which was subsequently displayed through frequent student riots and demonstrations--Batista established tighter censorship of the media, while also utilizing his anti-Communist secret police to carry out wide-scale violence, torture and public executions; ultimately killing anywhere from 1,000 to 20,000 people.

Batista was a thug and a crook operating under the approval of America, so don't paint yourselves as the white knights here.

Cuba is much more complex and nuanced than your ridiculously reductionist view of it.

You seem to indicate you think it is OK to just take foreign property in your response.

Tell you what, if you ever find yourself as a small nation in which most property has been bought by foreign entities, and you essentially have no rights so you can make money for foreign owners ... you decide if nationalization is a viable option.

Nobody said "go to any country you want and seize their stuff" -- that's what America was talking about with Iraqi oil in 2003 and the notion that stupid war would be paid for with oil revenues.

But when that foreign country essentially occupies yours and you have nothing? Well, if you think making yourself a serf in favor of foreign property ownership is a good choice, that's up to you.

Me, I would be inclined to think "fuck that".

So, please, when you know something about the topic, chime in. In the mean time, you're just another clueless idiot who doesn't know a damned thing about it.

Comment Re:I don't see the big deal here. (Score 1) 182

The yield doesn't have anything to do with how deliverable the weapon(s) are. You said that North Korea's nukes are WW2 sized in a comment about missile technology. I'm curious what you based on that assumption on? Or perhaps you were speaking about yield all along, rather than deliverablity, though in that instance I'd wonder why it came up in a discussion about missiles. In any case, a 7kt weapon is enough to kill tens of thousands of people in an urban area. Even a fizzle might manage to do that, via prompt radiation. North Korea's nukes can't be casually dismissed....

Comment Re:Going back (Score 1) 280

You know, the "mean spiritedness" comes down to people rolling their eyes and thinking this story boils down to "Waaah, I took the wrong degree, and now I can't find a cool job, how do I get into the profession I didn't get a degree in?". Because that's exactly what I thought when I saw this.

Slashdot isn't your guidance counselor, or your parent. Slashdot certainly isn't even your friend. Slashdot is the collective snark and bile of thousands of people across the interwebs with questionable social skills.

Do you want us to offer him a warm cup of tea and see how he feels about his bad career choice? Do you think that will change anything?

I'm sorry, but if you want warm and fuzzy ... you're in the wrong place. We mostly do caustic and bitter, with a side of "take responsibility for your own actions".

An English major who finds himself outside of the STEM field? Well, that's not exactly surprising to anybody, is it?

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