waps

25 ms·

1. 151.▲
   by waps 12y ago

   Human bodies : * require a constant supply of oxygen. Which is available effectively nowhere except deep inside gravity wells. * require a constant supply of water. Which is available effectively nowhere. H may be everywhere, but O is nowhe
2. 152.▲
   by waps 12y ago

   I will go so far as to say that the US is better than the UN Human Rights Committee. Why ? I have walked around in the US, in Europe, in Israel (and the West Bank, not Gaza though), and Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and India. The US, on the stree
3. 153.▲
   by waps 12y ago

   Sadly that's only accurate if you're not massacring the locals using said troops. Ergo, it doesn't work for the US, but is working for China, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, ... I would argue that you're entire premise is wro
4. 154.▲
   by waps 12y ago

   Supporting the UN human rights council ? Really ? Have you ever looked at who you're supporting just to get your way ? I mean, I'm all for holding those responsible to account, but, firstly, nothing will change unless the US itsel
5. 155.▲
   by waps 12y ago

   I love how the entire website is coloured red. I wonder why they went with that particular colour ?
6. 156.▲
   by waps 12y ago

   Sure, but if you're this cynical you could also make a strong argument [1] that companies work, or fail to work, to improve the life/goals of the managers of the company. Shareholders and employees get screwed on a regular basis.
7. 157.▲
   by waps 12y ago

   So there's 2 different things : 1) chaos theory This is an existential problem for climate theory. If you believe in statistics' mathematical foundation, then climate theory is wrong. Why ? Because the time series that are being u
8. 158.▲
   by waps 12y ago

   > And IQ happens to be a pretty sweet bell curve, so if you're an average white guy, then you're still dumber than 49% of the black guys out there, and dumber than 54% of Chinese guys. Those numbers are not accurate given the d
9. 159.▲
   by waps 12y ago

   I disagree. Take a hypothetical, but concrete, situation : blue people are less "bulky" than green humans, and thus can't carry as heavy loads. Then, if the situation is a fire department hiring, there's 2 ways to go abo
10. 160.▲
    by waps 12y ago

    You forgot the detail which massively complicates this : James Watson' claim about the test scores is true [1]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence Note the first paragraph in the Wikipedia arti
11. 161.▲
    by waps 12y ago

    Depends if you're basing decisions on the ethnicity or on the facts.
12. 162.▲
    How Wal-Mart Made Its Crumbling China Business Look So Good for So Long(bloomberg.com)

    2 points by waps 12y ago|0 comments
13. 163.▲
    by waps 12y ago

    Uh ? Fair use is (part of) a law. Laws are not subject to fair use. You are subject to laws, and yes, this changes some aspects of the legal concept that is called fair use (quotation rights), and that simply changes fair use. Quoting Spani
14. 164.▲
    by waps 12y ago

    This is such typical HR/manager dribble. 1) constantly compliment, in extremely general terms, their employees : "The world is better off without Capone’s expertise, but it’s not better off without yours", "how even the
15. 165.▲
    by waps 12y ago

    All online articles seem to indicate it goes through Israel : http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/20/israel-gaza-interne... But the problem for the internet in the Gaza strip is not Israel: http:/&#x2
16. 166.▲
    by waps 12y ago

    But suing the party doing the infringing would be much harder. They can't just go after Google/Apple/Microsoft because all they're including is a javascript interpreter. They'd have to sue thousands and thousands of
17. 167.▲
    by waps 12y ago

    I don't have an alternative. The point is that if we really were fully democratic world-wide, we'd be locking up or killing gays/lesbians, we'd have blasphemy laws for every religion and some ideologies enforced world-wi
18. 168.▲
    by waps 12y ago

    I was told in introduction to electronica that sadly it's terribly easy, and the teacher claims he has seen it happen. If you manage to take a 9 volt battery and scratch yourself with it (very easy with the negative contact, not so eas
19. 169.▲
    by waps 12y ago

    In the chromatin network there's no double helix, because it's always mostly unrolled and various things are bound to it. It looks a lot more like a ladder. The double helix as analyzed only exists as part of chromosomes.
20. 170.▲
    by waps 12y ago

    "Decoding DNA" is such a bad name. He figured out the double helix. DNA isn't decoded yet. Genes have a preamble, and postamble, and we have very little idea what they mean, we only know what compounds are "requested&quo
21. 171.▲
    by waps 12y ago

    In LISP, I would argue that the syntax is defined only partially by the concept of S-Expressions, but by the number of different kinds of atoms that can occur as the first atom in a free S-Expression. Well, all functions only define a singl
22. 172.▲
    by waps 12y ago

    A programmer complains that different programmers have different styles of programming in Scala ... and ... switches to a lisp. You know, languages that execute code by rewriting the syntax tree of the running program ... This ought to be g
23. 173.▲
    by waps 12y ago

    Water in the air has a large heatmass. So rain leaves a "shadow" in the infrared. Worse: it can make things invisible in infrared sometimes too. Rain/fog distorts an image because there's droplets in the air that functio
24. 174.▲
    by waps 12y ago

    Water is a lens. It doesn't just screw with cameras but with lasers too.
25. 175.▲
    by waps 12y ago

    Exactly. There is not a single European country without internet censorship, despite appearances. References : the Netherlands : http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http://www.nu.nl/int... Belgium : http
26. 176.▲
    by waps 12y ago

    This is the strongest argument against democracy I've ever heard. When it comes right down to it, fact is that >50% (and more likely >80%) is in favor of laws against LGBT. At least 50% of the 7 billion humans is in favor of crim
27. 177.▲
    by waps 12y ago

    While this is a communication pattern, it is still governed by evolution. Therefore, as a host, you get one vote. Either you live at least long enough to spread the virus a little bit, and you vote that what the virus is doing is good, or y
28. 178.▲
    by waps 12y ago

    Thanks for pointing this out. So the US is not, in fact, the only nation to have fired nuclear weapons at people. The USSR did it too, except it fired it at it's own people and soldiers.
29. 179.▲
    by waps 12y ago

    > Which is to say, that by maximizing first and then optimizing, you may be only ensuring the extinction of our species, and the fact that your civilization will still be around when the lights go out will be cold comfort. Compared to no
30. 180.▲
    by waps 12y ago

    Still don't understand. Let's take the changes you need to make : Foo.java ... class Foo { ... } SomeOtherFile.java ... Foo x = new Foo(); ... Equivalent in Python: some_file_in_a_librar