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Submission + - Dice, what are you getting by butchering Slashdot ? 2

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: Before I register my account with /. I frequented it for almost 3 weeks. If I were to register the first time I visited /. my account number would be in the triple digits.

That said, I want to ask Dice why they are so eager to kill off Slashdot.

Is there a secret buyer somewhere waiting to grab this domain, Dice ? Just tell us. There are those amongst us who can afford to pay for the domain. What we want is to have a Slashdot that we know, that we can use, that we can continue to share information with all others.

Please stop all your destructive plans for Slashdot, Dice.

Submission + - What site would you recommend to replace Slashdot? 1

Submitted by koreanbabykilla
koreanbabykilla writes: Now that it looks like I'm no longer going to be able to use Slashdot due to beta.slashdot.org, I need somewhere to kill a few hours a day at work. Any suggestions?

Submission + - Owner: Vote, your choice: Get rid of Slashdot:Beta OR everyone goes elsewhere (slashdot.org) 1

Submitted by Ying Hu
Ying Hu writes: Slashdot Beta is not Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/journal/63...
What was loved about Slashdot does not appear in the new design — those creating the latter, please fire yourself and go work for a commercial consumer site (which we never read, and never will). OUR site should work without JavaScript, and JavaScript that IS used should to do something actually desired by a reader or commenter, not waste our bandwidth and CPU, and electricity, sending CRAP onto our computers. Improvements/ plugins, http://userstyles.org/styles/9..., won't be enough.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Opinion of slashdot beta? 9

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: What are your thoughts about slashdot beta? Post your complaints here so that I don't have to see them elsewhere. Additionally, if the beta is so bad that you don't want to stay, what other news website do you recommend?
Google

Building an Open Source Nest 195

Posted by Soulskill from the birds-need-not-apply dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Google's recent acquisition of Nest, the maker of smart thermostats and smoke detectors, has sparked concerns of future plans for the devices, and how Google's omnipresent thirst for information will affect them. Thus, a team of engineers at Spark sat down and roughed out a prototype for an open source version of Nest. It looks surprisingly good for such a short development cycle, and they've posted their code on Github. The article has a number of short videos illustrating the technology they used, and how they used it. Quoting: 'All in, we spent about $70 on components to put this together (including $39 for the Spark Core); the wood and acrylic were free. We started working at 10am and finished at 3am, with 3.5 engineers involved (one went to bed early), and the only work we did in advance was order the electronic components. We're not saying that you can build a $3.2 billion company in a day. But we are saying that you can build a $3.2 billion company, and it's easier now than it's ever been before.'"

Comment Science-Based Medicine (Score 1) 554

I know people have been hating on this article because it only addresses a few specific conditions, but it is one in a long line of studies that have shown vitamin supplements to have no positive (and occasionally negative!) effects, unless you are actually deficient in that vitamin.

People are so taken by advertisements and anecdotes about vitamins that they neglect the reality. If you hear a commercial that says "You might be deficient in X!" you suddenly need to take that vitamin/mineral "just in case." Rinse and repeat for every single vitamin, mineral, or "energy/immune/etc booster," and suddenly you're taking 100+ supplements and spending an excessive amount on useless pills.

The takeaway is this:

Unless you actually have a condition that requires you to supplement a specific nutrient, you do not need to take vitamins, to say nothing of multivitamins.

If you are concerned that you are actually deficient, go get a blood test from your doctor. Saving yourself the cost of supplementation over the next 20 years when you find out that you don't actually need them will more than pay for the appointment.

Comment Re:Peer review (Score 1) 707

by xepel (#44346095) Attached to: The Man Who Convinced Us We Needed Vitamin Supplements
According to your very own definition of a quack ("someone who doesn't use the right process, who avoids peer review, who insists they can't be wrong"), Pauling *was* a quack.

Yes, he had two nobel prizes in a completely unrelated field. Just because he was an expert in that field does not mean that he is an expert in all fields, nor does it mean that he even felt he should use the scientific method in other fields. (Obligatory SMBC.)

There had already been studies showing Vitamin C didn't cure colds before Pauling made his claim. His (completely anecdotal) claim made other people do *more* studies which also showed no link between Vit. C and curing anything. From the article: "Although study after study showed that he was wrong, Pauling refused to believe it, continuing to promote vitamin C in speeches, popular articles, and books."

Yes, he was a smart guy and brilliant in some ways. But in medicine, he was a quack, by your own definition.

Comment Re:This isn't as bad as it looks (Score 1) 741

by xepel (#38842289) Attached to: Man Who Downloaded Bomb Recipes Jailed For 2 Years
It is still a thought-crime, however. He bought no weapons, built no bombs, created no toxins. He did nothing but possess knowledge and harbor some crazy fantasies. If he had started to enact those fantasies, I would totally agree that he would have to be arrested. Until that point, however, he had committed no physical crime.

It's interesting that you can get over two years of prison time just for *thinking* about doing something bad, but if you are in the right position, you can murder 24 civilians and get away with it.

Comment Differing Standards (Score 4, Insightful) 591

by xepel (#38700486) Attached to: The New Transparency of War and Lethality of Hatred
I never quite understood why it is so abhorrent (by comparison) to do things to dead bodies (which cannot feel or be affected by such acts) while the actual act of killing those people (which obviously affects those people quite a bit...) doesn't get much mention. We don't care that these men were killed, we care that they were peed on afterward. Why the differing standards?

Comment Re:Boats... (Score 1) 314

by xepel (#38689436) Attached to: Nanocoating Waterproofs Any Gadget

I think the idea behind coating electronics is that you can coat them both inside *and* outside. When you are applying such a thin layer of (what is apparently) plastic, you have to worry about friction wearing off the coating on the outside. When it's also applied to the inside electronics, which are not exposed to wear and tear, those parts can stay waterproof over a long time, keeping the device safe.

A boat is different, however. Instead of applying this waterproofing to inside, non-worn parts, you'd be applying it to the outside of the hull. Those are the parts which would receive the most friction, and would likely cause the coating to wear off very quickly. Unless you plan on coating your boat before every ride, I have doubts that this would be terribly (long-term) useful.

Comment Re:Alcoholic puddings? (Score 3, Informative) 215

by xepel (#38483676) Attached to: Face-Scanning Vending Machine Denies Children Access To Pudding
Read the article. They aren't restricting who can buy their products. They are only restricting who can get *free samples.* No shopkeep or store will refuse to sell these pudding cakes to children, but the company can certainly refuse to give *free samples* to children (who are not their target market).

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