Comment Re:so long, it's been good to know ya (Score 1) 96
Genocide has become a liberal value because of Genocide Joe
Comment Re:so long, it's been good to know ya (Score 1) 96
I am not sure you know what far left means. That site turned into a vote blue no matter what they do and genocide supporting hellhole. Plus all the racism towards Chinese, Russians and Muslims. It is like a perfect microcosm of middle aged, white suburban democrats.
Comment Re:So we all know the guy is selling snake oil (Score 1, Insightful) 73
Unlimited growth is a feature of capitalist economies, not "all civilizations". Most civilizations throughout history in fact had a lot to say about excessive growth, greed and accumulation.
As for full employment, capitalist societies are not based on full employment. They require a mass of unemployed people to discipline labor and keep wages low.
Comment Re:what does it mean (Score 1) 55
And yet you have a ton of uninformed opinions you have shared.
Comment This is my shocked face (Score 4, Informative) 243
I get that studies like this need to be done, but this is obvious to anyone except an opponent of universal healthcare.
Comment Re:So it's OK, right? (Score -1, Troll) 413
I'm going to guess you are a white male.
Pentagon Readies Contingency Plans Due To BlackBerry's Uncertain Future 44
cold fjord writes "Nextgov reports, 'The Defense Department, owner of 470,000 BlackBerrys, is distancing itself from the struggling vendor while moving ahead with construction of a department wide app store and a system for securing all mobile devices, including the latest iPhones, iPads, and Samsung smartphones and tablets. Just two months ago, when BlackBerry announced the company would radically curtail commercial sales, Pentagon officials said their business partnership remained unaffected. ... A 2012 strategy to transition personnel from PCs to smartphones and tablets did not favor any one device maker ... "This multi-vendor, device-agnostic approach minimizes the impact of [a] single vendor to our current operations," Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Damien Pickart said. Implementation of the strategy centers on a "mobile device management" system to track handhelds that touch military networks so that they do not compromise military information or corrupt Defense systems.'"
Comment The Liberation of Earth? (Score 1) 1365
Probably not the most depressing, but a downer underneath all the snark nonetheless.
Comment Re:hmm (Score 1) 177
I've been there and loved it. Very excited that my neighborhood in Philly is getting a barcade soon.
Comment Re:African-American Racism Against Whites & As (Score 1) 199
I don't see anything about the racial bias in white's voting patterns. In fact going by the voting patterns of Asians and Hispanics whites should have voted 65% for Obama - which would have easily won him the election blacks or not. Way to push racism on one group while ignoring any others.
Comment Re:Halfway through the book, and ... (Score 1) 356
It's funny I actually have a different view because I was not a big fan of Snow Crash. I loved Cryptonomicon and liked the Baroque Cycle (yes it could have been trimmed a bit). Snow Crash seemed self indulgent to me, he also seemed to be pandering to his audience too much, his characters were how geeks saw themselves and how they should be in the world, not how their were. Whereas in Cryptonomicon geeks had a lot of power but it showed they were not the masters of their own destiny and superior to all the non-geeks. His main characters ha flaws. He did pull a weird ending out on that one, it did sort of fall flat, I think that is one of his flaws as a writer. I did not read the Diamond Age yet.
Algorithms Can Make You Pretty 288
caffeinemessiah writes "The New York Times has an interesting story on a new algorithm by researchers from Tel Aviv University that modifies a facial picture of a person to conform to standards of attractiveness. Based on a digital library of pictures of people who have been judged 'attractive,' the algorithm finds the nearest match and modifies an input picture so it conforms to the 'attractive' person's proportions. The trick, however, is that the resultant pictures are still recognizable as the original person. Here's a quick link to a representative picture of the process. Note that this is a machine-learning approach to picture modification, not a characterization of beauty, and could just as easily be used to make a person less attractive." Note: As reader Trent Waddington points out, the underlying research was mentioned in an earlier story as well.
