Posts by Turtle

40,000 sign petition to oust Rep. Paul 'pit of hell' Broun

@ribosome

"And the amazing thing is that Queen Victoria approved of him, which really showed that she didn't get his views on Royalty. Talk about hiding something in the plain sight of everybody."

So well hidden, in fact, that almost none of the tens of millions of people who read his books even know it's there. So well hidden, actually, that it might as well not even be there. (And that's assuming that your ideas of his views on royalty are correct; I don't really care, though. No one else does, either. Well except for you, apparently.)

"And then there's the support for socialism; the race in which everybody wins and everybody has a prize."

And appropriately takes place in a fantasy world written by an adult for children.

Re: An important idea here.

"'But if he wasn't the object of numerous lawsuits, then one has to believe that his beliefs didn't effect his medical practice'. Are you saying he is lying to the Baptist convention about his beliefs or are you saying he gives his patients things he believes dont work (or even dont exist)?"

I neither said nor implied either of those things, and, more importantly, your two "explanations" of Broun's behavior do not come close to exhausting the possible explanations, and do not even contain the most likely one.

"Is either a good thing for an elected politician?"

If you refuse to vote for politicians who lie, then you don't vote at all. Is THAT a "good thing"? (Of course, I am only pretending to here to buy into your idea of what "politicians lying" is, when in fact what you would call "politicians lying", is most often only your inability to understand how electoral politics and representative democracy work.)

@Gr0nk: Re: An important idea here.

"One might imagine that his patients are of his own ilk and whatever happens to them is 'God's Will' and it wouldn't even occur to them to sue him."

Sure, you could *imagine* it but do you really think that it's true? Because to me, statements like that seem kind of... stupid.

Do you think that he screens his patients to be sure that their religious beliefs align with his? Do you think that the American Medical Association would permit that for an instant? Or do you think that he has one treatment regimen for fundamentalists and another, different, "AMA-approved" treatment regimen for non-fundamentalists, so that non-fundamentalists will not sue him when he harms them or members of their family? Here are some questions that can easily be given unambiguous factual answers.

Speaking of which, is there any evidence to think that fundamentalist Christians - or any fundamentalists at all, really - are significantly less inclined to accept medical malpractice as "God's will" and therefore be disinclined to sue? Now there's something very amenable to empirical investigation.

Broun's district appears to be about 40% Democratic. Are you saying that all of those Democrats are either fundamentalists - even the ones who voted against him - or that none of them ever used his services as a physician, because they were more concerned with his religious beliefs than with his skill as a doctor? Or some combination of the two? And if so, then you are supporting your assertions with... with what? Simply your foolish world-view and nothing more?

But then again, who am I to interfere with the fictions you create for yourself?

@Avatar of They

"The mans a tool, and a dangerous tool. He needs his doctors licence revoking and an investigation to be launched. As well as losing his position as anything to do with science or medicine."

You have completely missed the point.

My point was "If the El Reg hack - amongst many others here - thinks that Broun's Biblical literalism *must* have a deleterious effect his ability to be a doctor; then *where* is the proof of the deleterious influence exerted by his Biblical literalism?"

YOUR post likewise explains, but at greater length, why Broun's Biblical literalism MUST have a deleterious effect on his ability to practice medicine. But sadly, you have neglected to show any empirical evidence that it actually *does* have such a deleterious effect. You are answered my question by, essentially, repeating the post which caused me to set the question in the first place, without adding the requested evidence.

And since you seem to want to prohibit such people from practicing medicine, are we do so because Biblical literalism actually is harmful to patients, or should such people be prohibited from practicing medicine simply for the sake of religious persecution?

An important idea here.

"This El Reg hack would have severe doubts about going to a doctor who didn't believe in evolution, since that would mean certain problems in dealing with antibiotic resistance and pretty much all of genetic science, which is yielding some superb now drugs to treat human illnesses."

There's an important idea there.

Since he *is* a doctor and since he *doesn't* seem to believe in evolution, (or a lot of other scientific stuff), we can follow the lead of the "El Reg hack" and wonder where are the actual, concrete examples of his anti-scientific outlook interfering with, or exerting any deleterious influence on, his medical practice. And since he seems to have been practicing medicine for 40 years or so, such examples ought to be easy to find. Especially considering the highly litigious society in which he lives and practices, and the surfeit of medical malpractice lawyers with which this country swarms.

Now, I'm not saying that such examples do not exist or can not be found - after all, that's why malpractice lawsuits are crippling the medical profession - but I would like to see some real, actual examples of the practical effects of Broun's religious beliefs on his work as a physician, and not just rhetorical examples having nothing to do with reality. If his beliefs crippled his ability to effectively act as a physician, I would expect that he would have been the object of many lawsuits - of which there will be publicly accessible records. But if he wasn't the object of numerous lawsuits, then one has to believe that his beliefs didn't effect his medical practice.

And if his anti-scientific religious beliefs did not negatively effect his medical practice, then it is clear that human nature is a closed book for the El Reg hack, and a variety of people commenting on this thread.

Google finds MORE slurped Street View data down under

Searching, Searching, Searching...

"Google finds MORE slurped Street View data down under"

"Ad giant unearths two more disks down back of sofa"

Apparently Google needs a new search algorithm.

@toadwarrior

"How do they expect anyone to trust them with their data?"

And yet people do so by the hundreds of millions.

Is lightspeed really a limit?

Limits.

“'If you really don’t believe that faster-than-light is possible, then humans will be limited forever,' he said".

Humans might be limited anyway; after all, faster-than-light speeds might be impossible regardless of human beliefs.

Pastafarians: Get your noodly appendages off that Facebook suspect

Oh clever.

"These hi-jinks prompted complaints from supporters of the neo-fascist Golden Dawn party as well as the Greek Orthodox Church. Golden Dawn recently gained its first seats in the Greek parliament."

So here we have yet another case of a half-wit, incapable of "thinking things through", deciding to ridicule a Greek saint in such a way that the authorities are going to prosecute him and the extreme right is going to be able to politically capitalize on it and, ultimately, rallying people to the very cause which he is ridiculing.

Clever.

Ubuntu 12.10: More to Um Bongo Linux than Amazon ads

The Logic Of Advertising

"Search for 'iPod' and Unity will find any iPod manager apps you might have installed and it may also return some results to buy an Apple iPod from Amazon."

If I am looking for an iPod manager of some sort on my desktop, that would seem to indicate that I already own an iPod for the iPod manager to manage, wouldn't it? And Canonical and Amazon think that, because I already have an iPod, they are going to succeed in selling my another one every time I look for my iPod manager? Or that being reminded that my computer use is being monitored in order to serve ads for products which I don't need to buy because I already own, is going to make using my computer more enjoyable and productive somehow?

And they are going to do this for the sake of earning what minuscule fraction of a cent per user per year?

*rolls eyes*

'What was Google going to do, force Apple to change its mind?'

@lauri_hoefs

"You trust us not to screw up on your machine with every update."

"Well I certainly don't!"

Best rejoinder I've read in months!

@Ru: Re: Generosity

"Voting with your feet and with your wallet is pretty much the only power the consumer has."

That's true, of course, but not quite my point, which was directed at the fact that the guy had to *announce* it, and highlight the fact that "it's, you know, Mark, it's ten bucks! If you don't change your policies, your not going to get these ten bucks that I will donate to Debian instead! So think about it carefully, Mark, because these ten bucks won't be here forever! I hope I'm making myself very clear, Mark - these ten bucks are yours to gain, or lose!"

Consumers vote will their feet and/or their wallets, but just like in real, national-scale elections, a single consumer, like a single vote, is worth essentially nothing; they only have value in very large numbers.

Generosity

"As much as I like Ubuntu, this feature is going to make me switch back to Debian and donate $10 a year to them."

Generosity.

There are some people who think that the world is full of fools who will do anything for the sake of a ten-dollar bill. Do you think that Shuttleworth is losing sleep because he is brooding over the possibility of that ten-dollar bill going to Debian instead of Ubuntu?...

Most biofuels fail green test: study

"five-litre 4x4 SUV "

The people who can afford to drive five-litre 4x4 SUV's can afford any tax that will be levied on gasoline. Those five-litre 4x4 SUV's need to be outlawed.

Rambus' patent evidence-shredding slices into Hynix DRAM payout

Re: Rambus. Ugh.

"IBM ?! You are making me laugh. When was the last time you saw IBM dragging their competitors in courts allover the planet ?"

It is not always necessary to initiate court proceedings, as the following story will illustrate:

"July 2011: 'An awkward silence ensued. The blue suits did not even confer among themselves. They just sat there, stonelike. Finally, the chief suit responded. “OK,” he said, “maybe you don’t infringe these seven patents. But we have 10,000 U.S. patents. Do you really want us to go back to Armonk [IBM headquarters in New York] and find seven patents you do infringe? Or do you want to make this easy and just pay us $20 million?” After a modest bit of negotiation, Sun cut IBM a check, and the blue suits went to the next company on their hit list." http://www.osnews.com/story/24987/Microsoft_s_Android_Shakedown_IBM_Did_It_First/

Or consider TurboHercules, if you will.

Rambus. Ugh.

Nearly everyone likes to condemn Apple's patent suits as an egregious abuse of law, but I have always found Rambus to be the real abuser, along with IBM. A borderline criminal organization, as far as I can tell.

Neil Gaiman’s saucy pop wife agrees to pay her musicians in money

Do not forget....

Do not forget that Gaiman and Palmer once had a Kickstarter campaign to raise $20,000 to fund a poetry tour they wanted to do.

Gaiman and wife may not have any fucking sense of shame at, but they do seem to have a well-developed sense of entitlement.

NASA working on faster-than-light drive capable of WARP TEN

"Scientifiction"?

?

Does not appear to me to be a useful neologism. Did you make it up yourself?

Windows 8: Never mind Office, it's for GAMING

@Lee Dowling & @TechnicalBen: Re: @Turtle Steam + Linux

You could both be right about it but I am very skeptical. When facts prove you right, then I will be more than happy to admit that I'm wrong. We will see....

@Sutekh: Re: GFWL

"Penguin to celebrate Valve's incoming support for linux."

You possibly do not realize that the Steam client is one thing, and the games that Steam distributes are something else entirely. You can have a Steam client on Linux and still be very very far away from having a worthwhile selection of games to run. For example, because I run XP, there are DX10 games that I can not play. Expect to find yourself in a similar but much much worse situation...

And this is even before before the question of Linux drivers for gfx cards is broached.

Twitter bows to subpoena, releases Occupy protester's tweets

@I.App... Re: How did you get an upvote?

"In the USA you are allowed to say anything."

This is not true. This is probably not even close to being true anywhere in the entire world. It is impossible to imagine any polity in the world where people are "allowed to say anything".

I would think that if we consider the polities that have laws against libel, defamation, and slander; blasphemy (encompassing pretty nearly the entire Moslem world, and only a very few other polities), lese majesty; incitement to race hatred; laws against harassment including but not limited to racial, ethnic, and sexual harassment (in which the sanctioned conduct is purely verbal); endangerment (i.e. by shouting "Fire" in a crowded theater), conspiracy (possibly a borderline case), and, perhaps most pertinent to this discussion "incitement" - and this list is not to be considered exhaustive by any means! - we would find that there may be almost no places in the world where one is "allowed to say anything".

I have omitted many instances of restrictions of freedom of speech which are more limited in scope, such as, for example, that fact that it is illegal, in Iran, to express support for Israel. or that "insulting Ataturk" is a crime in Turkey, as is Holocaust denial in Germany and a few other places in the West.

Need I even mention Truth-In-Advertising laws and similar?

Consider laws regarding what one is allowed to say in legal matters, or to government investigators or police, or in court. There are many documents which require, under penalty of law, truthful and exact answers. Making jokes (i.e. "fucking around") while undergoing a security screening in an airport in the US is an arrestable offense. Making threats against the President Of The United States is a very serious felony in the US. Examples can surely be multiplied at will.

There are countries with laws that prohibit mentioning the names of people under criminal investigations. I believe that there are also laws that guarantee anonymity to convicts who have served their sentences with, I believe, sanctions against (certain classes of?) parties that breach that anonymity (although I am not sure of how these laws operate.)

Then there are the odd cases concerning people like Irving Schiff, for example. But those are of much more limited scope.

Now, if you want to have a different but related discussion about things that you are legally allowed to say but which will land you in a hospital if you say them in the wrong place or to the wrong people, that is also an interesting discussion for which an *infinite* number of examples can be adduced...

@mark 63: Re: Re:JDX

"I think great effort should be put into deleting midless drivel "

Nice!

Work for beer, Neil Gaiman's wife tells musicians

@Irk: Tin Cup, Web 2.0, Wealthy Husband: Of course it matters....

"Whether she's Neil Gaiman's wife doesn't factor into the decisions she makes as a musician or businesswoman." (Well, for "musician" and "businesswoman" read "attention whore" and "con artist", for the sake of intelligibility.)

Of course the fact that she is married to Gaiman "factors in". Why exactly didn't her husband (worth, I have read, $20 million) fund this project? That's an interesting question, don't you think? How did it become preferable to put out a tin cup and panhandle on the internet instead of investing her own money? Do you really want to say that "Amanda Palmer the Attention Whore" and "Amanda Palmer The Wife Of A Man Worth $20 Million" have nothing to do with each other - or that neither of them have anything to do with her husband? You must be joking. What the fuck do people get married for in the first place, in your opinion? To pretend that they are complete strangers and have never heard of one another?

"Just because a wealthy person is near a person being quite open about their expenses doesn't mean that wealthy person is automatically responsible for the situation."

No one has said that Gaiman is "responsible" for "the situation" - but the fact that he could have financed the whole operation (or even cosigned a loan) but didn't, is telling - even if it tells *you* nothing.

But you know, I think that the whole Kickstarter campaign was primarily a publicity stunt. It really is difficult to believe that she actually *needed* to use Kickstarter. I think that Palmer, the grasping little pig, found herself, almost certainly via her husband's connections as illustrated at least partially by his membership in the "Open Rights Group", in the position of being able get herself a great deal of free publicity, and someone in her camp realized that a Kickstarter campaign could be used not only to nab some cash but also garner publicity in a way that simply funding the project with, let's say, a loan under her own name, cosigned by her husband, could not have - thereby satisfying, at the same time, both her greed, and her need for attention!

And the fact that she wants musicians to work without pay just makes it even more "Web 2.0" now doesn't it?

@bg2b: Re: Enough snark already

"Just because she can find plenty of people willing to be used doesn't make it less immoral."

Sorry but I needed to make a small edit in your comment. I hope that you do not mind too greatly.

Re: Enough snark already

The "problem" is that you'd, well not YOU per se, but most people would expect her to have maybe just a little empathy and some kind of feeling of solidarity - however weak and attenuated - with other musicians, and here she is trying to enlist people who are basically scabs and strikebreakers, really.

As for how much of the $1.2M is "profit": your arithmetic is way off: it was ALL profit. SHE got it and SHE decided what she wanted to spend it on, and she spent it all on herself. Her PROFIT, in other words, is the album and the tour. Along with the chance to enlist any gullible musicians who are willing to work for "exposure"... as opposed to something that can actually "pay the rent" or "fund health insurance" or help with whatever other trivial concerns that they might have and which Amanda Palmer doesn't ..

Re: One small thing omitted from the article...

"One small thing omitted from the article is that Ms Palmer's album can be downloaded for free via her site."

Well then we can take it that she knows what her album's worth, now doesn't she.

German court turkey-slaps Motorola in patent case

@DF118

"Glad you can get your jollies from the successes of a multi-billion dollar corporate entity whose fortunes presumably (going by the fact you're here posting comments) have zero effect on your own. Mind you I suppose it must save you money on rent boys. Now off you pop and get yourself a pair of clean underpants, there's a good fanboy."

Oh, I see that I've touched a nerve there! I suppose you prefer to touch it yourself.

And thanks for the homophobia!

: )

Ahhhh...

Now that's what I call a *very* enjoyable article. And I am looking forward to reading *many* more like it. In the near future.

Error found in climate modelling: Too many droughts predicted

Re: drawing conclusions

"This seems a really bold conclusion given the data presented - my guess is that changes like this will be slightly chaotic to the output of the model rather than linear as you suggest. All that this shows is that a particular part of a model is wrong. Its not until the system as a whole is modeled that you can say what the overall implication is - I'd suspect that it will be extremely dependant upon the layout. "

If you are saying that changing the basic assumptions of the AGW model are not going to change the model's prediction then I agree with you completely... except that the reasons for the predictions remaining unchanged have *nothing* to do with science...

Li'l Clarification.

"There's broad agreement on all sides of the environmental debate that climate change is occurring: and indeed that it always has been. Disagreement generally begins on exactly what it is that the future holds, who is responsible, and what is to be done.."

I added a li'l clarification there. I don't that anyone will object.

(And, appropriately, a little echo of tt. Lenin & Herzen there, no? кто виноват? и что делать? And we all know how *that* worked out. But then again they also thought they knew what the future held.)

Dreaded redback spider's NEMESIS: Forgotten Captain Cook wasps

Oh yeah? Re: Not that dangerous

"Red-back spiders aren't really considered that dangerous down under and there have been no deaths since an anti-venom was developed."

As a general rule of thumb, I, personally, would consider any creature, for the bite of which there is an anti-venom, to be dangerous. But that's just me.

Picture's Mouseover - Full Text Restored!

"A nigricornis was having killed a redback spider. And doesn't afraid of anything. Credit: Florian and Peter Irwin".

Once again I find myself called up to restore the part of the quote that was, somehow, omitted when the mouseover for the picture was being written.

Thomas-Rasset faces $220,000 file-sharing bill after losing appeal

Re: Statutory. (Note correct spelling please.)

"The clue is in the embarrassment they felt at the size of the fine... Where did they get the jury?"

Probably the same place where they got the SECOND jury that awarded the record companies $1.92 million, and the same place where they got the THIRD jury that awarded the record companies $1.5 million.

Did you actually read the story?

@Jerome 2: Thomas-Rasset Is Herself At Fault

Maybe you missed the part of the story where she had already done a research paper on Napster's legality and yet claimed not to know that filesharing was and is not legal? Or did you miss the part of the story about the fact that she destroyed evidence?

Let me paste those parts right here:

"As the appeals court ruling points out, [the jury returned a guilty verdict within minutes and set damages at $220,000] in part because Thomas-Rasset clearly had knowledge that what she was doing was wrong. She authored a college case study on the legality of Napster but denied knowing anything about Kazaa or having used it. The jury heard evidence that she had swapped a new hard drive into her system before handing it to investigators."

People like her and Joel "Blame The Foster Child" Tenenbaum get screwed because insulting the jury's intelligence with the exceedingly transparent excuses they dream up is *not* an ideal way to get the jury's sympathy - and in an action where the jury can set the damages, that's about as stupid a strategy as can be devised.

Anonymous doxes Cambodia after Pirate Bay arrest

Priorities.

"“You will find there lotsa stuff including Cambodian and Nepal drug trafficking authorities, army, consulates, Kyrghyztan and Ukraine classified documents, Belarus, India etc etc all related to Cambodian authorities and business. Also included internet banking certificate depos and clients which belong to the mentioned authorities.”"

So, uh, they wouldn't have released this stuff if Cambodia hadn't arrested Warg?

Well we all know how important it is to have one's priorities in the right order.

Oz court to test AdWords' WHOLE BUSINESS MODEL

@AC 13:54 GMT

"This is more of a scam by Google against the advertisers. The top results are coloured so that on many LCD screens they are hard to spot so that they blend into the search results."

Ah, so it is not the specific settings on my monitor. That's worth knowing.

"However, if you own a brand such as "Joe's Jeans" you have to bid on search words such as "Joe's Jeans", "www.joesjeans.com" etc as your competitor might bid on these keywords if you don't."

It is not unlike an extortion racket: you need to buy the rights to your own name/brand/trademark or your competitor will get the use of it. This practice really needs to be outlawed.

@heyrick

"I dunno about in Australia, but around these parts most of Google's sponsored adverts are in a pink box. "

Here too, but on my screen, the shade of pink is so light that you can only actually see it if you look at the screen off-angle. (I understand that in my case this could easily be a consequence of my monitor settings, though.) Whenever I use Google, and there is more than one advert at the top of the results, it takes actual effort to see which of the top results are real results and which are Googlespam.

Re: Advertising misleads & deceives? Colo(u)r me surprised! Not.

"Any idiot who believes advertising is ... well, an idiot."

That's true, and that's also why Google invests a certain amount of effort into disguising their ads so that they are not necessarily or always easily recognizable as such.

"Regulator insists ad placements can misled and deceive"

Especially if they're not in English....

Windows 8? Nah: Win Phone 8 should give Apple the fear

@Steve Evans

Apple and Microsoft signed agreements not to sue each other years and years ago - one such agreement in 1985 and another in 1997. (There might be other agreements, not sure.)

(For something similar, recall that Apple and Google had an unwritten agreement not to poach each others personnel so as to artificially deflate salaries, or at least keep a lid on them.)

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/03/24/business/company-news-apple-and-microsoft-disclose-a-1985-pact.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Microsoft_Corporation

http://corporate.findlaw.com/contracts/planning/preferred-stock-purchase-agreement-apple-computer-inc-and.html

There's Targets And There's Targets.

"Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi posits: "I am sure that vendors in the Android ecosystem are wondering how long it will be before they become Apple’s target."

Maybe the vendors in the Android ecosystem are also wondering how long it will be before they become Googlerola's targets.

E-publisher 'fesses up: 'Apple UDIDs were ours'

Discontinued.

"The publisher says it has discontinued the collection and reporting of UDIDs."

If it is possible for them to conduct business without collecting UDIDs, then why were they collecting them in to begin with?

Aside from the usual idea of there being penalties for not protecting user data, there should be more severe penalties for not protecting user data that was not needed in the first place.

Foxconn: We're not FORCING interns to make iPhone 5

That bit at the end.

"In the statement this week, Foxconn has retorted that it is the schools which select the students and that the work can be beneficial for the youngsters as well as lead to full-time jobs in some of the country's most prestigious salt mines and peat marshes."

That bit at the end got lost in translation somehow. So I restored it.

Apple chatting up labels for Fanboi Radio: Pandora, boxed?

"Rewind And Repeat" Not Only Songs, But History....

"...they are trying to strike special deals that would let them use the music more flexibly than other services can - allowing users to rewind and repeat songs for example."

The labels would be stupid to allow this. So they will probably will....

Sun daddy: 'Machines will replace 80 per cent of doctors'

"could be replaced" - "are being replaced"

"90% of doctor's consultations could be replaced today... with Nurses. "

I can not put a number on it, but more and more of the work that a physician does is now being done by Physician Assistants, and Nurse Practitioners. This is becoming very very common.

ENCODE’s ‘junk DNA’ claims spark biological bunfight

Re: Dark mass!

"It's a sorry day when the scientifically divined truth of a matter is seen as less than idea, because it might give weight to unscientific thinking."

Somewhat related is the idea that certain scientific positions should be accepted because of their political, ideological, or propagandistic utility. Three really obvious examples that spring to mind are: Leonard Susskind's assertion that string theory should be accepted and supported because it strengthens atheism; the underemphasis - sometimes to the point of complete denial - of the influence of genetics in human behavior; and the overemphasis - sometimes to the point of strict determinism - on the role of genetics in human behavior.

Examples both historical and contemporaneous could of course be multiplied ad libitum.

Climate denier bloggers sniff out new conspiracy

@h4rm0ny: Re: Giggle

"In what way is it a 'brilliant story'"?

He liked the results of the study. He can simply dismiss climate skeptics on, let's say, "psychological grounds" and so avoid the thorny, and (to my mind) intractable issues with the "evidence" - such as it is - supporting AGW.

What if....

How 'bout a study along the lines of "Capitalism is evil, therefore global warming is real"? We'd get the same kind of conclusions.