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Posted by timothy
from the literally-anti-competitive-behavior dept.

Comment: Re:Users make the final decision ... (Score 1) 406

by EvolutionInAction (#47043549) Attached to: Did Mozilla Have No Choice But To Add DRM To Firefox?

Arguing with several people in the same thread is annoying.

I am not arguing against the security measures that Mozilla is putting in place. Those are good! I'm arguing against the violation of one of the principles that the browser was launched on. Maybe it is "bowing to reality" but I honestly don't care about that. Stick to your guns, or what's the difference between you and google's chrome?


by EvolutionInAction (#47035941) Attached to: Did Mozilla Have No Choice But To Add DRM To Firefox?

This is the inclusion of closed source, liberty restricting software in a product that touts its open source, free and open internet stance. Not including software that restricts your freedoms is not restricting your freedom in any way. You are free to use another program to get that closed content. You are free to write a plugin that implements EME.

And yeah, I'm still free to chop out the cruft from firefox. Yay, I guess. What's wrong about this is that Mozilla is bowing to external pressure to break its principles.


by EvolutionInAction (#47034301) Attached to: Robbery Suspect Tracked By GPS and Killed

I'm kinda confused here. You say that killing a cop is a terrible idea because you get 500 police with guns coming to get you, but if the patrolman doesn't have a gun he'll get shot because he's unarmed?

It's still a bad idea to kill the cop! It's not like NONE of the police have guns, just the patrolmen. So if you shoot at that guy you're going to get taken down hard, if you just run maybe you'll get away.

Comment: Re:ANOTHER DEAD BODY! SWEET JUSTICE! (Score 5, Insightful) 450

by EvolutionInAction (#47027705) Attached to: Robbery Suspect Tracked By GPS and Killed

It's not that they don't trust the officers with a gun, it's that everybody knows that patrolmen don't have guns. Why spend money to get a gun when you know that you're not at risk of being shot at to start? And then why shoot at an officer who you know won't shoot at you?

The idea is that it lowers the stakes all around.

Comment: Re:Vampirism (Score 1) 178

by EvolutionInAction (#46921121) Attached to: Elderly Mice Perk Up With Transfused Blood

Hmm, what's the best way I can put this?


No. Evolution happens when offspring get mutated genes from their parents. Actually, the older an organism gets the more mutations it's likely to pass on to its offspring! But this of course misses the larger point: Evolution is not good nor bad, it just IS. There's no advancing, wonderful goal. It's just a process that happens over time. We don't need to respect it or some garbage like that. We are alive, and we can do wonderful things. The only reason people romanticize death and "living forever by passing on our ideas" is because we have no choice. We've been beaten by death for so long that we have to try and justify it to stay sane.

There is some truth to the saying that science (and everything else) advances one death at a time. Entrenched interests and viewpoints are hard to get rid of when they won't die off. On the other hand, I refuse to condemn people to death because I find their viewpoints annoying.

Comment: Re:questionable axiom (Score 1) 465

by EvolutionInAction (#46895395) Attached to: Lessig Launches a Super PAC To End All Super PACs

The fuck are you on about?

The idea behind "one man one vote" principles is EXACTLY equality of speech. Nobody is supposed to have more or less say.
Right now the rich have far more power - hell, there was a study posted just the other week about that. You know, the metastudy that concluded that the policy records of the government correlated with the will of the top couple percent quite strongly, and with the will of everybody else quite poorly? Yeah.

The "problem" with advertising is human nature. It works on you. It works on me. The more you think it doesn't work on you the better it works! It's horrifying, but it's true. The way to deal with it is at the source.

Comment: Re:questionable axiom (Score 1) 465

by EvolutionInAction (#46895101) Attached to: Lessig Launches a Super PAC To End All Super PACs

Except because that rich guy can pay more than 90% of the population put together, he's got more say than that 90%. That's kind of antithetical to the basic tenets of democracy.

Even if you want to say that the politicians are unswayed by huge donations (ha!) it would still be a problem. It's well known that if you don't advertise you aren't going to win anything. So the politicians who are likely to win are all the ones who agree with one rich guy or another. You have to see why this introduces a rather frightening bias to even an uncorrupted system.

Comment: Re:Impossible (Score 1) 600

by EvolutionInAction (#46837055) Attached to: The US Public's Erratic Acceptance of Science

You're aggressive and not particularly helpful. Since you seem to think that insulting me is more important than convincing me, this will be my last post on this.

Measles. Polio. Meningitis. Hepatitis. Whooping cough. Rubella. Chicken pox. Diphtheria. Tetanus. Mumps. Smallpox. These are a few of the diseases that we've massively reduced via the use of vaccines. Many of them were fatal or horribly crippling. Before the polio vaccine there were something like 15,000 reported cases of paralysis per year in the US due to the disease. Smallpox had a fatality rate of somewhere around 30% and no treatment. You seriously think things were better?

One of the great things about science is that the burden of proof falls on the people challenging the status quo. See, it's fairly easy to make up a theory. If we had to investigate every single theory that anybody ever came up with we wouldn't get anything done. Instead, you've got to give some kind of evidence that you're correct.

If you're not willing to try and even explain what you're talking about, it's certainly not worth my time to try and figure it out. I'm sure you'll go and froth a bit about how I'm a horrible person, but frankly you've used up all the fucks I had to give. Have a good life, I hope that your hatred of science doesn't burn you too badly. Even more, I hope it doesn't burn the rest of us.

Weekends were made for programming. - Karl Lehenbauer