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Submission + - Jack Vance dead at 96 (io9.com)

Submitted by angelofdarkness
angelofdarkness writes: Jack Vance died Sunday evening. He was 96. Thank you for the stories and adventures and for influencing the game i still play after all these years.

From the article:

A science fiction Grand Master, Vance is probably best remembered for his four Dying Earth novels, which take place in a far-future Earth where the sun has dimmed and magic has been reestablished as a dominant force. They feature a brilliant picaresque adventure tone, including the unforgettable thief Cugel the Clever, and they were also celebrated in a recent anthology Songs of the Dying Earth, edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois. These books contain Vance's characteristic ironic, lightly humorous style, which has influenced generations of science fiction writers.

Comment Re:MOD UP Re:This is blindingly obvious (Score 1) 183

by angelofdarkness (#43001077) Attached to: Lessons From the Papal Conclave About Election Security
True, but the paper ballot lends itself to countless shenanigans and vote buying. And there is the non-trivial matter of counting the millions of votes and the associated interpretation of what constitutes a legal vote (i.e. the X is not centered on the party's symbol so this vote is null). As previously noted, the system scales badly with increasing number of voters.

Comment Re:So (Score 1) 542

by angelofdarkness (#42868987) Attached to: Pope To Resign Citing Advanced Age

You do know that the retiring pope is one of the progressive guys who brought about Vatican II, right? He's also a philosopher with tons of PhDs (as was the previous one) and in that position explicitly said he doesn't believe Jesus either resurrected or actually is God incarnate. These are a few among the many, many reasons actual conservative Catholics don't like him.

HAHAHAHAHHA!!! Don't know if you're serious or trolling, but this is the funniest thing I've read in this thread. Seriously, Pope Benny XVI progressive ?!?!

This pope, as the old one, are a bunch of far-right conservative pricks and all the PhDs in the world won't make them less reactionary.
A meddler in the politics of other nations, the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (previously known as the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition) and the puppetteer behind Pope John Paul II is a progressive guy? HEHEHE you're killing me.

This pope is resigning because he is tied to a whole bunch of scandals: the cover-up of child offending priests, the Vatileaks scandal and the Magdalene laundries in Ireland are just some of the controversial issues he is being associated with.
He is resigning because he is beginning to be bad publicity for the vatican.
He doesn't care if actual catholics do not like him, if they don't follow what the pope says (Papal infallibility) they are simply not good catholics and should conform as soon as possible to the status quo (his) or burn in hell. And I can't even say good riddance because they will elect another reactionary, close minded world affair meddler to replace this one.

Comment A mix of choices (Score 1) 348

by angelofdarkness (#41420161) Attached to: Favorite way to add capsaicin to a dish:
Depending on the dish it could be:
- fresh or dried chili homegrown and added to the pot
- a mix of different chilies soaked in olive oil for 40 days.

The oil is good for adding heat to a dish after it is cooked, while fresh/dried chilies are best added while cooking.
Oh, and all my chilies are home grown (2 o 3 different varieties).
The Internet

Submission + - Sociologists Rule Wikipedia a "War Zone" not a collaborative Project (msn.com) 1

Submitted by
horselight
horselight writes: "A new study by sociologists studying social networking have determined that Wikipedia is not an intellectual project based on mutual collaboration, but a war zone. The study finds that although the content does end up being accurate as a rule, it's anything but neutral or unbiased. The study includes extensive data on access and editing patterns of users related to major events, such as the death of Michael Jackson and the edit storms that ensued."

Comment Re:Bought or just acquired? (Score 1) 298

by angelofdarkness (#38629572) Attached to: Books I bought to read, but haven't yet:
I don't read as much as my partner and with a kid I have less time to read these days but it is possible to read 30-40 books in a year without trying. I read during train rides to visit grandparents, before going to sleep and in my ... ahem... personal reading room... (toilet). As some already pointed out, if you're a fast reader you can read 2-300 pages in a day, I know I have. You can also read two books at once, I usually go with different genres, say science-fiction before going to sleep and fantasy on the toilet. Now my partner, SHE is an avid reader and the owner of 70% of the 1000 or so books in the house and she easily reads 60+ books a year: that's a little more than one a week. Just this December she read the 5 books of Games of Thrones + a couple others and some fan-fiction off the interner (which she doesn't count in her total read). We've both been reading since our pre-teens and we are 39 and 38 now. I work while she stay in the house, does normal house keeping and cooks; our kid does go to preschool for most of the day.

Comment Re:not happy to ditch for windows 7 (Score 1) 471

by angelofdarkness (#37843354) Attached to: 10 Years of Windows XP
I never got this working consistently (XP, Vista or Win7) so if I need to order files by date I name the files something like filename_YYYYMMDD and then globally sort by name (which works).
The strange thing is that on my boss' computer (Win7) with sort and group by date everything just works... never understood how or why.

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