Posts by handleoclast

Re: No vaping in the workplace please

Because maybe the majority of the "Smoke" from an e-cig is water vapor?

No it is not.

The "smoke" from an e-cig is vegetable glycerine or propylene glycol. Usually it's a mix of the two, though the proportions vary from manufacturer to manufacture and product to product from the same manufacturer. Not because of crappy quality control but because of different recipes with different characteristics.

There is no more water vapour in exhaled e-cig smoke than in the breath you exhale. We all exhale water vapour. Vapers do not exhale more water vapour than non-vapers.

That's because you don't have asthma.

@AC

I do. And I'm happily sucking on a vape right now.

Re: Women Linux Lord ?

@h4rm0ny

I'm not sure any single person can be "a women".

These days, it's perfectly possible. It's all to do with allowing people to choose which gender pronoun they wish to be referred by, and stuff like that. So a transsexual might choose "he," "she," "ze" or even "they." No, I'm not making this up.

Anyway, even without all that, a single person with multiple personality disorder could (presumably) be "a women."

Re: @handleoclast ... As I understand it

@Ian Michael Gumby

The first amendment covers more than just freedom of speech. It also covers

the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Knight Institute's argument is, as I understand it, that Trump has made @RealDonaldTrump a place for official presidential statements (or so Spicey said), and that twitter is a public forum where people peaceably assemble. There they petition Trump for a redress of grievances. Admittedly, most of those grievances are the fact that Trump is president, but that's irrelevant.

Imagine what would happen if Trump decreed that news organizations could not publish anything he doesn't like about his official policy statements. Not even if it's true and not defamatory. That would be only a minor escalation of his Twitter policy.

That doesn't mean Knight is certain to win the case, just that your argument doesn't prove they're going to lose. If it goes to the Supremes then they probably will lose, but if so that's likely to be a political rather than a legal decision.

Your argument would apply to the White House web site. It's not a public forum. People have no right to reply in situ. Twitter is a public forum and Trump is using it to issue official policy statements. It's as if Trump suddenly decided to post official policy statements in these hallowed commentard pages and demanded that El Reg block anyone from replying to his posts if they said bad things about him.

As others have pointed out, Trump could avoid the legal problem entirely by making the account read-only. What they didn't point out is why he won't do that: he wants the adulation. He craves adulation. He's desperate for adulation. So he won't make the account read-only.

Re: As I understand it

@a_yank_lurker

You appear not to understand it very well. Or, at best, you are under-informed.

Here is a press briefing by Sean Spicer where he says that Trump "is the President of the United States, so they're considered official statements by the President of the United States."

So there you have the definitive, official answer on this. Until Trump decides to contradict what Spicey said. Which he probably will. And then the day after contradict himself.

Whether or not that then means Americans have a constitutional right to respond to those tweets is another matter. But they are (until Trump changes his mind) official statements by POTUS even if they come from @RealDonaldTrump.

Re: bonobos

@Scroticus Canis

Linnaean classification has been abandoned as unfit for purpose. People tried to patch it up with sub-orders, infra-orders, super-genera and hacks like that but it became unworkable.

These days, biologists use cladistic taxonomy: organisms are categorized based on shared derived characteristics that can be traced to a group's most recent common ancestor and are not present in more distant ancestors.

We, and bonobos, are apes because our most recent common ancestor had the characteristics of an ape. We, and bonobos, are also monkeys because our most recent common ancestor with monkeys would have been classified as a monkey.

You recoil from that? But you have absolutely no problems with admitting that we're placental mammals (like cats, dogs, etc). Or that we're mammals (which includes the non-placental mammals like kangaroos and the duck-billed platypus). We're also vertebrates (which includes birds, reptiles, amphibians, mammals and fish). You'll probably also admit that we're animals (although you might need to be pushed into that one by first admitting that we're not plants or fungi).

Cladistic taxonomy has some interesting outcomes. Birds are classed as dinosaurs. Which is really cool. Mankind really did walk with dinosaurs, and still does. Just not the big ones the creationists would have you believe.

Cladistic taxonomy is not without problems. Technically we're also fish. We're derived from that branch of fish that moved onto land. In that sense, birds, amphibians, and reptiles are also fish. Biologists tend to avoid mentioning that, but it's how the system works. A clade starts at one point on the tree of life and encompasses all of its descendants. Those of us who aren't biologists tend to use "fish" in a non-cladistic way because it's more useful in everyday usage.

So, yes, bonobos are monkeys. Unlike most monkeys, they're also apes. As are we.

For more details, see This video by Aron Ra (contains language that some people might consider NSFW).

Re: let me guess...

Whats wrong with Bombastics post?

My guess is that what those downvoters found wrong with Bob's post is that Bob wrote it. Nothing more than that. It is "argument from no authority" in its worst form.

Argument from authority and from no authority can sometimes be justified on Bayesian grounds: "X is an expert in the field and is usually right so when X says it [s]he's probably right." More often it is fallacious: "I think the sun shines out of Donald Trump's arse so when he says this he's absolutely right. Bigly."

I think most of those downvotes came from people who intensely disagree with Bob's ordinary posts (as do I) so they downvoted this particular post out of laziness (or even spite) instead of evaluating it for itself.

Looked like a reasonable argument to me, too. So I followed the link. It too, seemed reasonable. And Bob made the effort to restate it in his own words rather than regurgitate it verbatim, so he put some thought into it. It certainly didn't merit a downvote, in my opinion.

Re: "Brattitude"

I think Poettering is more of a twunt.