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Comment: Re:I suppose I'll be the first too ask (Score 1) 5

by PopeRatzo (#46496261) Attached to: Jonah Goldberg QOTD

The brain responds to challenges to closely-held beliefs the same way it does to mortal fear of death. You're not going to make any progress using logic here.

Smitty believes that anyone who isn't a conservative is a Democrat and all Democrats support Obamacare. He believes Obama is a "leftist" and anyone who doesn't believe the way he does is a "leftist" and that the two poles of the political divide are "Left" and "Right". He hasn't figured out yet that the divide is really "Top" and "Bottom".

Even if you could penetrate the quasi-religious certainty in his world-view, I'm not sure it would be safe to do so except in a therapeutic environment.

Comment: Re: (Score 1) 58

by PopeRatzo (#46495389) Attached to: Steam Controller Drops Touchscreen


Yes, but remember, the PC gaming market has already shown a willingness to pay more than twice the cost of a next-gen console for a really kick-ass gaming experience.

The key to Valve's success with its Steam Box, IMO, is to keep in mind that PC gamers are a very different market than console gamers. And, they have more money to spend. If they try to position Steam Box as nothing more than a direct competitor to consoles, they will fail.

I'm already putting together a Steam Box that's going to end up costing about 4 times what a next-gen console goes for. A few more bucks for a groundbreaking controller is not a big deal.

Having said all that, I'm not sure a touchscreen in a controller is a good idea. Maybe just a simple touchpad, but a full-blown touch display would make the controller too delicate for me. My controller takes a fair amount of abuse. And I don't want to have to look at the controller at any time.;

Comment: Re:Thanks Jenny (Score 1) 718

by RockDoctor (#46494807) Attached to: Measles Outbreak In NYC
You ask :

Why are people taking medical advice from her over their doctors?


She is a bleach blonde playboy model [...] a recipient of botox and breast implants,

... she's got big tits and full lips, so she must be right.

Britain's worst anti-vaccination mass murderer was a run-of-the-mill surgeon with a dodgy line in research ethics and failure to declare a financial interest (which is why he lost his license to practice - and presumably why he's practising in America now.).

Comment: Re:Already denied (Score 1) 371

that's barely more than the apparently-now-discontinued offering from Garmin, which used telephone networks rather than satellite.

Fascinating. Tell me again about your extensive experience at getting phone communications from somewhere a mere 50km from land. Oh, you were talking about using Iridium. Different scale of costs - which is probably why the quarter-billion dollar vessel I'm sitting on (and have been on for 45 days of the last month - bitch, moan) has two Iridium phones to several hundred (completely useless) GSM phones on board.

Then again, we're nearly 100km from land. Then again, being 1m from the land (i.e., standing on it) doesn't guarantee you getting phone coverage either.

Comment: Re: The difference is scale. (Score 2) 304

by PopeRatzo (#46494651) Attached to: NASA-Funded Study Investigates Collapse of Industrial Civilization

Sailing is practically free transportation. The adjustment of the sails can be automated so a single human operator can run the whole ship.

And poor people, after the global economic collapse, are going to buy that automated sailing ship how again?

Most people don't see the flaw in thinking that they're going to weather the coming social breakdown because they have a high limit on their Visa card.

Comment: Re:This is what Thatcher was good at (Score 1) 705

Are you still dancing on that woman's grave?



So, your conservatives are a bunch of lightweights? Or didn't really, really hate Stalin in the way that Thatcher was hated in Britain.


I know : I was involved in organising our local ones. And I'm proud of it.

Dig the bitch up, so that we can burn her again. Unfortunately - and quite sensibly - they ashed the bitch and have hidden the ashes.

I hope that her son gets the jail time that he deserves for trying to make his own private countries in Africa.

Comment: Re:either everyone's ancester or nobodys (Score 1) 88

by RockDoctor (#46494549) Attached to: How Tutankhamun's DNA Became a Battleground
William the Bastard (his name at the time ; the "Conquerer" bit was only added a few generations later) was sufficiently far back that everyone in Britain is related to him by multiple routes. While both Guillame Le BatÃrd and Charlemagne were of Germanic descent, I think Charlemagne's antecedents came out of the forests of Germania (as the Romans called it), probably under the impetus of invading Tatars from the east. Guillame Le BatÃrd, on the other hand, came from a more Nordic stock, and his immediate ancestors were involved in stealing land from Charlemagne's descendants. Probably there were indirect relationships, but by means of political marriages, not blood.

Nasty bunch of robber barons, the lot of them. Your Welsh antecedents were probably no better. Ditto for my antecedents in Britain and Ireland.

Enjoy your castle. I'll enjoy central heating and negligible death duties.

Oops, not logged in ; fixed.

Comment: decomposing correctly (Score 0) 127

by epine (#46494441) Attached to: Forests Around Chernobyl Aren't Decaying Properly

Nice. What's different or unfamiliar is incorrect.

'cause on the first day God wrote a specification document, on the third day he coded madly, on the sixth day God ticked off the last box on the acceptance test plan, and then he sat back and cracked open a can of Galactic Suds.

It comes in galaxies? You bet.

Comment: Re:Just in the last 16 years... (Score 1) 92

by Maxo-Texas (#46494065) Attached to: How Data Storage Has Grown In the Past 60 Years

I went to college for 11 years.

And actually I graduated in 1993 (didn't feeling like posting to correct that) so the drive was pre 1993- and probably pre 1991.

I don't clearly recall events that happened over 20 years ago (tho I can still see the house I bought the drive at- it was on a corner with a bayou behind it).

I was a teetotalar back then but I had cancer in 91-92 and the chemo noticeably affected my brain. These days I'm a social drinker.

But for the nitpickers...

The oldest drive I remember was a 5MB for the apple 2 a friend bought for several hundred dollars. Capacity rapidly doubled after (while price dropped) that so 5-10-20-40-80-used 80 was probably about 6 years after the invention of mass market hard drives.

Per the WIKI

Hard drives had the capacity I remember around 1988 to 1990 so that fits.

Comment: Re:Manners (Score 4, Insightful) 304

by Maxo-Texas (#46493987) Attached to: NASA-Funded Study Investigates Collapse of Industrial Civilization

Hmm. I wonder how polite the romans were for 700 years of conquering.

700 years is a pretty good run.


I think Mr. Heinlein had on some thick rose colored glasses with regard to government and how people actually behave.
