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pierre_M

Re:Portal as a required college text on Saturday August 21, 2010 @03:16PM (#1623451)
It's also boring, ugly, and at a level of sophistication roughly equivalent to a depressed fourteen-year-old kid's poetry

Waaah, life sucks And you're going to die Isn't it horrible And meaningless?

Portal at least has some craft to it.

Re:Chile Wants to Borrow US Entrepreneurs for $40,000 on Saturday August 21, 2010 @03:13PM (#1623441)
How is it "borderline scam"? How are they hoping to profit at your expense by offering you $40K and then not letting you spend it?
Re:Chile Wants to Borrow US Entrepreneurs for $40,000 on Saturday August 21, 2010 @03:12PM (#1623436)
Isn't the scale of it comparable to YCombinator?

YC certainly gets a lot of mentions here (not entirely unrelated to the fact that they run the site, but still...).

Re:East India Company brand returns after 135-year absence on Saturday August 21, 2010 @03:10PM (#1623431)
At its peak, the company employed a third of the British workforce and was responsible for a huge tranche of global trade.

I knew it was big, but a third of the British workforce? That's insane.

Anyway, I welcome the East India Company back. I realise it has almost nothing in common with the original entity, but I personally might buy their tea if it becomes available here, just for the illicit non-PC pro-colonialism thrill.

Re:An 18 Billion Mile Journey is almost complete. on Saturday August 21, 2010 @03:07PM (#1623425)
"Same position in space" isn't well-defined anyway. There's no fixed set of coordinates permeating the entire universe. But it's clear enough what is meant in this case.

I wonder, though, it should be in the same position in the sky, right (after accounting for the Earth not necessarily being in sync with regard to its rotation)?

I'm not sure what you mean "after accounting for the Earth not necessarily being in sync"; since it isn't in sync it won't be in the same position. But if you were viewing it from the centre of the Sun, then yes, it would be in the same position in the sky.

Re:Why Drinks Taste Better When Sipped Through A Straw on Saturday August 21, 2010 @02:55PM (#1623392)
OK, that's part of the answer: now why do some other drinks (beer and wine spring to mind) taste worse through a straw?
It's not really nitpicking, "easiest" isn't well-defined. Quickest, lowest effort, or highest probability of working? I know a way to make a million dollars in the next 24 hours, but its probability of working is very low. I also know a way of making a million dollars with 99.9% probability, but it involves decades of hard work and thrift. I also have several intermediate plans, which still involve a lot of hard work and a probability of success which I am frankly completely unqualified to estimate. And finally I have several high-probability low-effort quick ways to do it, like the grandparent, which are nonetheless contingent on you having other things lined up in your life (eg a millionaire who wants to marry you, or rich parents, or a chest of pirate gold buried in your backyard.)

Which one would you like?

Trite BS. I don't know what the going conversion rate between pain and dollars is, but I'm sure if you go down to your local homeless shelter you can find someone who has suffered many millions of dollars' worth of pain and doesn't have two dimes to rub together.
Why, that's easy.

1. Get a job that pays $50,000 a year.

2. Live off the first $20,000 a year.

3. Put the remaining $30,000 a year into the highest-yielding savings account you can find.

4. After about thirty years, you will have a million dollars. Enjoy it!

That is the easiest, damn-near-risk-free, way to make a million dollars. If you can get a job that pays more than fifty grand, you can save more money each year and get there even faster.

But I really hope you're not expecting some kind of get-rich-quick scheme here.