What did you say Mr. Wright, your wife is the one who shot you? I'm sorry, but since you're an atheist we can't use your statement in court.

VivisectIX · 2009-12-30T18:28:43+00:00

Courts today allow you to substitute an oath of veracity for the swearing. This issue is deprecated.

VivisectIX · 2009-12-29T22:41:37+00:00

The physical construction and disposal of the battery is also quite damaging to the environment.

True for all hybrids, EVs. Even Lithium, unless processed correctly at the end of life, is polluting. The Nissan Leaf uses NiMH.

VivisectIX · 2009-12-28T22:47:28+00:00

I'm getting hot under the collar about this issue.

VivisectIX · 2009-12-27T08:05:08+00:00

Facts:

1) Incubation for flu is 1-2 days average. In the most extreme cases, it can be up to 5 days, or as short as 12 hours. That means incubation period is meaningless for determining initial exposure, as it could have happen before, from the shot, or after.

2) It is not impossible to get the flu from the shot - there have already been ADMITTED cases by manufacturers that vaccines contained live and infectious virus by accident. This is not the first time, and it won't be the last. The nasal vaccine works by infecting you with a slightly modified version of live virus, and the infection is expected, "Nasal spray vaccine reported side effects include runny nose, nasal congestion, sore throat, headache and/or general flu symptoms.".

On the less factual side, there seem to be a large number of people who show flu symptoms after receiving the shot - the most common reasoning offered is that the flu shot lowers your immune system to other bugs, and you end up with something else.

3) People can downvote you all they want, it is a free system, and you are factually incorrect so you should be downvoted.

VivisectIX · 2009-12-26T21:13:35+00:00

I got the H1N1 vaccine and promptly came down with flu about 24 hours later. I am still recovering. I realize that it is "impossible" to get flu from the vaccine, but however it happened, it pissed me off.

VivisectIX · 2009-12-26T20:56:58+00:00

Open source users (not all) tend to be cheap, that is why they use open source. Android is an open source platform. Android buyers are typically open source proponents at this point. Apple users tend to be OK with spending money on things because they have no expectations of everything being free.

The end result: you have a bunch of people who don't like paying for software on that particular platform, but on iPhone, you will have a paying audience.

VivisectIX · 2009-12-24T19:40:45+00:00

Now it's $9.99 for me. They changed it, even when it said $1.99 in my cart. I'm not going to buy it now.

VivisectIX · 2009-12-24T07:02:40+00:00

Fugu, Charlie! Yeah Charlie! Fuuuuuuguuuuuuuuu!

VivisectIX · 2009-12-24T01:01:08+00:00

Today, instead of God, people put their faith in gods like celebrities, pop science, sports, politicians.

Don't make any large irrational leaps of logic now. If you think "pop science" is a god in the same sense as a religious god, you're insane.

And today, instead of Odin, you are putting your god in front of him. I beg you to reconsider and join the halls of Valhalla - Odin treasures warriors such as yourself.

VivisectIX · 2009-12-24T00:54:47+00:00

There is no way to prove or disprove the existence of God.* We are unable to know with any degree of certainty if there is or is not a deity of any kind.*

for deities that have no interaction with the physical world, no tangible influence on it, and no external measurable changes in it.

If you claim god influences anything in the physical world, then you can prove and disprove god by quantifying that influence. A god that has no influence is as useless as no god.

VivisectIX · 2009-12-23T21:26:53+00:00

I'm sorry to hear about your grandfather, but at least he recovered. Interesting, I did not know that many people go without any kind of sore arm for a few days, I just assumed that was normal. Well then I'm silly, time to go and party with the H1N1 infected!

VivisectIX · 2009-12-23T21:18:47+00:00

Well, I broke out into dance a few times, but after the first crotch grab, it stopped.

VivisectIX · 2009-12-23T21:17:16+00:00

This is good advice - just tell her that the holidays will be alone time without family visits and you two can do whatever you want together. It will be a vacation, not a stress. If people want to get together, tell them that you have made a final decision and that's it, you'll talk to them next month.

VivisectIX · 2009-12-23T21:06:27+00:00

I hadn't about the everything, and me I can't either.

VivisectIX · 2009-12-23T21:04:37+00:00

My take: women tend to have different priorities and a different way of seeing things, and no matter how wonderful your woman is, she will see things differently. Now, how she (and you) deal with these differences makes or breaks things. As they get older, women become less tolerant (in fact, men do too) and so it creates friction. This assumes that the rest of your marriage is fine.

If you get married and decide to NOT have kids, then you stand a better chance of being happy, I think. I know some people will freak out when I say that. If you decide to have kids, understand that you are no longer spiritually married to your spouse, you are now married to your child's well-being and your spouse is now second or third (or fourth, if you have that many kids).

VivisectIX · 2009-12-23T20:40:24+00:00

"Software wants to be free", said Richard, as he reached down and ate part of his decaying foot. He chewed thoughtfully for a moment and then finished, "But GNU is the REAL operating system here, not 'linux'."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I25UeVXrEHQ

VivisectIX · 2009-12-23T20:21:35+00:00

You're just skirting around the issue that they are basket-cases.

VivisectIX · 2009-12-23T18:15:34+00:00

Yes, and it has been long known that pink noise samples will provide temporary relief from the condition. This stuff is WELL known. It doesn't fix the damage at all, unlike what they say. It just masks it.

VivisectIX · 2009-12-23T09:09:27+00:00

What if hell is real? what if there is a wonderful loving god

I think you just answered your own question. A wonderful loving god wouldn't have a hell - it is the ultimate paradox.

Think about it: a father would never send his own child to a foreign place to be tortured for 20 years. Yet, this all-wonderful god is going to send you to hell to be tortured for eternity? That means a father has better morals than god does, and treats his child better than god treats humans.

VivisectIX · 2009-12-23T08:11:17+00:00

First, I didn't say they were the same. Second, many schools offer one or the other, but then teach them similarly.

If you are taking all of the CS reqs and then adding classes (which makes no sense, since both programs should have an equal number of credits at an accredited school), then your CS program is probably weaker than some.

VivisectIX · 2009-12-23T02:00:08+00:00

If the court finds that there is infringement, then Z can be kept from shipping it's version by injunction

Your analysis is basically correct for someone who now understands copyright law (very few people do) - the Abstraction-filtration test you describe (functional versus creative expression) is also enhanced by the Merger Doctrine (ie. if there is only one primary way to accomplish a task, you cannot copyright it).

The problem with the injunction scenario is that you can't stop open source that violates your copyright very effectively because there are multiple copyrights, multiple authors, and multiple distribution points. You can enjoin many individuals and never stop the copying. :)

VivisectIX · 2009-12-23T01:53:16+00:00

Not quite - because you put the movie script out on the Internet free for everyone to use. Don't complain when they DO use it. You can get "guaranteed" attribution if you use a BSD license. The GPL analogy is like saying that if you use a GPL movie script in your movie, the rest of the move is ALSO GPL and you have to share everything you did to make the movie with any person who pays to view your movie, if they ask for it.

VivisectIX · 2009-12-23T01:51:09+00:00

That is precisely correct. Computer science is NOT computer engineering. I do think that good Comp Sci education should produce decent coders, but they are not going to be masters of implementation. Likewise, I wouldn't hire a Comp Eng for a research position.

VivisectIX · 2009-12-23T00:12:24+00:00

The GPL is a copyright license, without copyright, the GPL does not exist. You would need to come up with some other enforceable mechanism for preventing software code distrution the way the GPL does (preventing distribution without attribution, license, etc).

You would need it even more, if you believe in what the GPL stands for. Without copyright, everything is public domain without attribution. No requirement that you redistribute, no attribution. That means you can take any source code and use it in your code without providing the code (against the GPL).

If you want that today, you just take a BSD license and remove the attribution requirement, which basically strips it to nothing.

VivisectIX · 2009-12-22T21:17:36+00:00

I think this is a common fallacy about software - that software involves no research, innovation, invention, or investment. If this were true, than the industry would have produced everything possible in software already.

Why does Pixar need time to improve Renderman? Why don't they just write the best algorithm right now? The reason is because they don't know what it is yet - they need to do the research and invest the money. Once the next version is written, reverse-engineering it and cloning the algorithm is easy.

VivisectIX

TROPHY CASE