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Comment: What's with all the threats of physical violence? (Score 1) 775

by Oidhche (#43838957) Attached to: Google Glass: What's With All the Hate?
It seems like every other comment is saying something like "you better not record me or I'll punch you in the face". Why is it that the first reaction these people have is violence, instead of say, ignoring it, leaving the scene, politely asking the Glass user to stop, or even demanding that he stop? While your arguments against Glass may have merit, you're basically bringing it down to the level of "let's beat up that dorky kid with the glasses".

Comment: Will you stop all that whining? (Score -1, Flamebait) 74

by Oidhche (#43817991) Attached to: Google Releases Glass Factory System Image, Rooted Bootloader
Every post about Google Glass is flooded with comments about "invasion of privacy", "douchebags", "dorks", "hitting them in the face if they try to film me", "blah blah". WTF is this site, Jocks' Central? What happened to "news for nerds"? You don't like Google Glass, I get it. Now GTFO and back to your Facebook to post about what a great fuck your latest girlfriend was.

Comment: Re:This is now antique technology (Score 1) 148

by Oidhche (#38773260) Attached to: Project Bifrost: (Fission) Rockets of the Future?
Ion engines have wonderful Isp, but very low thrust. And it's not just that a journey with such an engine would be longer - low-thrust transfers are inherently less efficient than Hohmann transfers, negating some of the Isp advantage. Moreover, you couldn't reach a nice portion of c with current ion engines: their Isp is good, but not that good. Most of them only have at most a few hundred km/s of effective exhaust velocity, limiting the maximum delta-v to like 0.3%-0.5%c under any design with realistic mass ratio.

Comment: Re:save lives by exposing military tactics.... (Score 2, Insightful) 711

by Oidhche (#33234378) Attached to: Wikileaks To Publish Remaining Afghan Documents


Your analogy is false because no one is blaming the victim here. Or have you seen someone claiming that it's the soldiers' fault if they get killed as a result of the leak? It's obvious that it's ultimately the fault of whoever pulls the trigger. That doesn't mean others are not to blame for creating the circumstances that allowed the killing to happen.

You want a better analogy? Imagine a boarding school for girls. Let's say that the guard on night shift in the dormitory has a habit of sleeping on the job. A journalists finds out about it and writes an article for the local newspaper. Another man reads it, sneaks into the dorm at night and rapes one of the girls.

Now, whose fault is it? Obviously not the victim's. Apart from being the victim, she's not a party in this discussion. The rapist is of course guilty of the actual crime. But who's guilty of creating the circumstances that allowed the crime to happen? The journalist, who exposed a hole in the dorm's security, or the guard, who created that hole?

My opinion is that the guard it guilty. His job was to protect others and he failed it. Similarly, it's the fault of whoever was responsible for keeping the documents secret if their exposure results in somebody's death. The journalists were simply doing their job - drawing public attention to the failings of people who were supposed to protect others.
