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Comment I use neither KDE nor Gnome (Score 1) 818

I used to run Gnome 2 on and off, switching between that and PapuaWM/EvilWM, but when Gnome 3/Unity came out I completely ditched it. I find it way too extensive and cluttered for what I'm doing (a few virtual desktops, one with a few terminals, another with Firefox and a third with misc. stuff), so I've settled with Musca --- a dynamically tiling window manager --- and a few support apps. Also, I don't like to take my hands off the keyboard and Gnome 3/Unity only allows for so much keybinding customization.

Comment Re:Science or Pseudo-science? (Score 1) 1046

I only mentioned voice disguises because the website of EVB promises that EVB has no problems with voice disguises, which is completely unrealistic, hence I don't put too much stock in the software. Yelling/screaming is considered a form of voice disguise and should be treated as such, as it changes certain qualities of your voice --- e.g. raises your fundamental frequency, affects speech rate/syllable rate, etc. --- which need to be accounted for when doing forensic analysis. But please, keep telling me about forensic linguistics.

Comment Re:Science or Pseudo-science? (Score 3, Informative) 1046

I'm not familiar with this particular piece of software, but I am however very familiar with the subject of forensic phonetics. The usual MO isn't like that of Hollywood, where the software does it all for you and simply gives you a percentage chance that it's X. (Judging from the website of Easy Voice Biometrics, however, it seems that that is what they're going for, which is an incredibly bad idea.) Usually the forensic phonetician will use software like Praat for working with the speech samples, but all conclusions will be his/her own.

Oh, and I really have a problem with the word Biometrics in the name of the software, because the human voice isn't very dependent on biometric factors --- it is extremely easy to manipulate. I can't imagine any program being capable of reliably identifying and eliminating voice disguises as they claim EVB does. (Source: Working on my MA thesis in forensic phonetics.)

Comment Re:Hmm (Score 2) 470

I like the awful fight scenes and over-dramatic acting. It simply wouldn't be TOS without them. But then again, I also prefer the original Planet of the Apes, love Bela Lugosi and think that the sci-fi genre was at its top from the early 50s to the late 60s (When Worlds Collide, Forbidden Planet, The Day The Earth Stood Still, War of the Worlds, Star Trek: TOS, etc.)

Comment Re:Lax attitudes toward child pornography (Score 1) 722

First of all (to make it completely clear), I'm absolutely fine with the removal of those subreddits. I never visited them, i.e. I'm not going to miss them either.

With that being said, I think the main concern among many redditors is that there was rarely anything that legally constituted CP posted in those subreddits (as far as I know, but IANAL). Some girl snaps a photo of herself in a bikini, uploads it to Facebook and makes it publicly accessible? That's not CP, right? No one would accuse the girl or Facebook of distributing CP. But apparently that very same picture, when reposted in one of the removed subreddits, becomes CP in some way. That's what I think is the slippery slope they're talking about, because the content is deemed "illegal" (or at least immoral) based mainly on context, while the content itself is --- strictly speaking --- not illegal.

I'm not trying to say what's right or wrong here, I'm just relaying my impression of what the fuzz is about.

Comment Re:I wonder how long until it "accidentally" leaks (Score 1) 1224

You're completely missing my point.

First of all, leave all of the biblical stuff out - we're talking about a synchronic distinction in language use. You know, how people use language ... today!

Second, I'm saying that 'murder' implies intent. That doesn't mean that 'kill' is inherently unintentional, since I'm also postulating that 'murder' is subordinate to 'kill'. In turn, this means that you can replace the word 'murder' with 'kill' in a given phrase and still get the same meaning, but not the other way around (i.e. replace 'kill' with 'murder').

Some examples:
1a) the queen murdered the king
1b) the queen killed the king
2a) curiosity killed the cat
2b) curiosity murdered the cat
See the difference? Both 1a and 1b are perfectly fine, since 'murder' is inherently intentional, while 'kill' is optionally intentional. 2a and 2b aren't the same, because in this case the killing is unintentional, so paraphrasing 2a as 2b clearly results in a different meaning, since 'murder' is inherently intentional.

Go look at some corpora of English, and find me some instances of 'murder' being used in a sense that doesn't mean 'intentionally killing' if you want to disprove my argument (and no, metaphorical uses don't count - they're an entirely different species), otherwise you're just wasting my time.

I love how you jump into a discussion of semantics and apparently want to discuss everything but semantics.

Comment Re:I wonder how long until it "accidentally" leaks (Score 1) 1224

And you base this distinction on ... what?

'Murder' is subordinate to 'kill' --- i.e. it's a type of 'killing', hence entailing that while murder signifies intention, you can still also intentionally kill someone while you can't unintentionally murder someone. Well, you can of course, what with free will, plasticity of language and all, but that doesn't change the way the distinction is actually made by language users.

You'll have to elaborate further on 'justifiable', because I can't see how that has anything to do with the distinction.

Comment Re:I wonder how long until it "accidentally" leaks (Score 1) 1224

Here's my take on a distinction (based on my memory of a semantics course):

kill: to cause something to become dead
murder: to intentionally cause something to become dead

So the keyword is: intent.

This is based on how the words are actually used in the language, it may not agree 100% with dictionary definitions. You can accidentally kill someone, while it sounds odd to accidentally murder someone.

Comment Re:And Slashdot cheers on the pirates (Score 1) 560

There's actually some truth to that. I have maybe 150 GiB of video on my external HD and ~260 DVDs in my ever-growing collection. At least half of those DVDs I would never have bought, if I hadn't had a chance to check them out beforehand and maybe download/watch related movies. I downloaded and watched 36th Chamber of Shaolin, which in turn caused me to buy it along with Drunken Master, Come Drink With Me and King Boxer - how can that NOT be good for business?

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