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Comment Re:Cause of death (Score 5, Interesting) 85

Without a doubt, heart attacks. I work with lab mice every day, and they're very high strung creatures. When we order mice from a supply house they often pack in one or two 'extra' mice in the event a death occurs in transit. This is just regular shipping via truck/plane, so the stresses of going through a launch into orbit being so much more I'd expect a high mortality rate.

Comment Re:The World is not entirely filled with idiots (Score 1) 582

How much better off would the US -- to say nothing of the rest of the world -- be, if we'd just shrugged off the 9/11 attacks as unique criminal acts by deranged cultists, rather than a military event that called for multi-trillion-dollar wars?

Impossible to say, really, one may as well ponder the state of the world if Christianity hadn't come about as well. But if I had to guess, the US wouldn't be in so much debt and they wouldn't be as hated in some countries. Saddam would still be killing his own people and the Taliban would still be hanging people from goalposts in soccer stadiums. On and on it goes, and I see no relevance in speculating about it. Any 9-11 discussion, especially here on slashdot, tends to get out of hand no matter what your viewpoint, so I tend to avoid them. My point was that it is normal for attitudes to change in response to tragic events.

Comment Re:The World is not entirely filled with idiots (Score 1) 582

Well, I'm Canadian so I can't speak with certainty on how laws are 'dictated' in the states, but here we vote in our politicians, and so the laws they 'dictate' are a consequence of having the majority of the populace choose their leaders. You may be more informed, but I don't believe that the vast majority of Americans are insane. Maybe what you meant was more like this:

There's something to be said in favor of not letting... the politicians you voted into office to overreact to tragic events and allow insane people to indirectly dictate the laws that the rest of us have to follow.

Don't like your laws? Blame your politicians, and vote them out in the next election. The 'Insane People Dictating Laws' lobby can't have that many supporters, could they?

But I guess that's pre-9/11, pre-Sandy Hook, pre-Dunblane, pre-Oklahoma City thinking, huh.

I think the vast majority of sane people realize that it's normal for world/societal views to change after major events. It's a strange view to take that things should just be a shrug of the shoulders and a 'business as usual' attitude... but that may explain some things in itself.

Comment Re:The World is not entirely filled with idiots (Score 1) 582

Now of course in this big World and with the Internet, we will see some asshat who will print a gun using sub standard material, load it up with high pressure rounds, turn the camera on... and kill a bunch of kids.

It's a dickish reply to your comment, I'll admit, but the first thought I have when reading about 3D-printed firearms is that regulation is necessary because many unstable twats out there have access to the internet, and while 3D printers aren't all that widespread just yet, I see them becoming more popular in the years to come. I think the point is that if someone is of sound mind enough to qualify to purchase/register a firearm, is this kind of thing really necessary?

(From a technical standpoint, though, this is pretty cool stuff I will admit. I'd like to see this kind of thing used to repair something on the ISS)

Comment Re:What about my privacy? (Score 1) 620

I think the fact that you automatically (automagically?) believe that the cop has enough psychiatric training to arrive at such a conclusion after just minutes (I'm assuming) of encountering the individual 'having a breakdown' is pretty interesting. I'd have to wonder what qualifies this cop as being able to determine the difference between a person having a mental breakdown and someone who's consumed a quantity of 'recreational substances'. If indeed the person was having a breakdown, I'd agree, that shouldn't be uploaded anywhere. But videos of drunks and crackheads being arrested by cops occasionally happens on prime-time TV, doesn't it? The point is whether or not you believe that the cop in question missed his chance at a shining career in mental health with his diagnostic acumen, or whether or not he was just pulling it out of his ass to cover himself after the fact.

One scenario isn't funny, the other is. Hard to say without a psychiatrist/psychologist weighing in. Personally I believe the cop is full of it because he sounds full of it, trying to charge a bystander weeks later with a bs charge.

Comment Heh (Score 1) 133

Of course, if you live in Calgary and you have to drive anywhere via Deerfoot, Crowchild or Genmore anywhere near rush-hour times you're painfully aware of how congested the traffic is, no need for realtime updates when there's 40 cars of stop and go in front of you.

Comment What a long, strange road it's been... (Score 1) 867

First few were via sneakernet....

Slackware > Debian > Slackware > Mandrake > Slackware > Redhat > Slackware > SuSE > Slackware....

And there have been secondary machines with Libranet, Ubuntu, Xandros, Puppy Linux, various BSD's and such. Even took SkyOS and QNX for a spin on the desktop, but Slackware will always be the favourite, methinks.

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