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Comment Re:gb (Score 1) 219

I do. I stay in touch with friends (real ones I know and care about from meatspace) in Vancouver, New York, Paris, Dubai, and Bangalore. I use it to send out mass invitations to events, share photos, and participate in conversations in a way email does not permit. Having all my information in one place organises my life and makes it simpler. Like it or not, Facebook has its uses.

Comment Re:Complete waste of money!! (Score 1) 102

If by 'believe' you mean 'accept without evidence', then you aren't much of a scientist. If by 'believe' you mean 'trust its ability to deliver a better future', then you're being myopic in this regard. There is no reason China and India shouldn't advance their scientific capabilities simply because they're poor. Development is not a sequence; all of it must happen in parallel. America hasn't shut down research because it has no decent airports, nor has Europe decommissioned the LHC because they're facing a debt crisis in Greece. If you're going to build a civilisation, you need to learn to do more than one thing at a time.

Comment Re:It's a good thing... (Score 1) 1090

I really hope the militant atheist faction on Slashdot takes note of this. Crazy people look for an ideology to justify their actions and prejudices. Sometimes they find one ready made in the form of Christianity, Islam, environmentalism, or the FSF. Other times they invent one. Similarly, all of these ideologies have a lot of mostly rational members (I've never met a completely rational human - and neither have you). Blaming the ideology for the crazy person is a lazy cop-out.

Atheists aren't the ones with a book telling them to slaughter people who believe differently, nor do are they the ones who insist eternal damnation awaits those people. They are certainly not trying to take away anyone's right to believe in any hokum they like. See the (many) differences?

Comment Re:So that's like... (Score 1) 153

b) The British Commonwealth equates to 'the English-speaking world' more legitimately than the United States alone

Are you bloody kidding? The US, has, by far, the greatest number of primary and first language English speakers than the rest of the world combined. KTHXBIBI.

The rest of the world covers more ground than the United States alone. America is not 'the English-speaking world' (related: it is not 'the world'.) America is one country, and unlike military or economic power, size alone does not dictate legitimacy in such matters. Millions use English for commerce or education at a first-language level and aren't counted as primary speakers merely because they have a different mother tongue.

Comment Re:So that's like... (Score 1) 153

I did not mean to imply the United States is still part of the Commonwealth.

I talk in English myself.

The entire British Commonwealth uses Celsius.

So... you meant to imply that we don't speak English in the US? Or what?

I meant to imply that 'talking in English' doesn't necessarily oblige one to use the Fahrenheit scale. Or any of the hideous Imperial units Americans seem to be so fond of.

Comment Re:So that's like... (Score 1) 153

The entire British Commonwealth uses Celsius.

Language wise, English equals British about as much as Spanish equals Spain.

In other words, lots of countries were subjugated many hundreds of years ago by the two empires. English is simply a footprint from that period of time, as is Spanish. Since most of the countries are now separate entities and disparate, logic would dictate that the ousted countries' activities would hold no bearing on said countries' activities.

a) The British Commonwealth includes the United Kingdom.
b) The British Commonwealth equates to 'the English-speaking world' more legitimately than the United States alone.

Comment Let's try an analogy.... (Score 2, Interesting) 702

'If the government regulates racial equality, policies for equal rights are set by one entity: the Constitution. However, if the government stays out, each state will set its own policies. If you don’t like the Union’s policies, you are stuck with them unless you leave the United States. If you don’t like your state’s policies, you can simply hop across the border to another one. So which model sounds better to you?' Etc.
First Person Shooters (Games)

Gamer Plays Doom For the First Time 362

sfraggle writes "Kotaku has an interesting review of Doom (the original!) by Stephen Totilo, a gamer and FPS player who, until a few days ago, had gone through the game's 17-year history without playing it. He describes some of his first impressions, the surprises that he encountered, and how the game compares to modern FPSes. Quoting: 'Virtual shotgun armed, I was finally going to play Doom for real. A second later, I understood the allure the video game weapon has had. In Doom the shotgun feels mighty, at least partially I believe because they make first-timers like me wait for it. The creators make us sweat until we have it in hand. But once we have the shotgun, its big shots and its slow, fetishized reload are the floored-accelerator-pedal stuff of macho fantasy. The shotgun is, in all senses, instant puberty, which is to say, delicately, that to obtain it is to have the assumed added potency that a boy believes a man possesses vis a vis a world on which he'd like to have some impact. The shotgun is the punch in the face the once-scrawny boy on the beach gives the bully when he returns a muscled linebacker.'"

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Top Ten Things Overheard At The ANSI C Draft Committee Meetings: (5) All right, who's the wiseguy who stuck this trigraph stuff in here?

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