Come on slashdot... If i wanted to read stuff like this i would read my email spam folder. I refuse to get sucked into discussing security when this is just blatent pulp advertising. Booo! Hisss!

whats next? studies on "black people take a shorter lunch breaks", "short men talk too much in meetings", "christians take fewer sick days" Appart from encouraging discrimination, it is worthless.

Hiya, this is not a problem with Make as such

make
make reinstall

or even

make uninstall


Could work fine in theory but it requires the code author to write a sane 'uninstall' and 'reinstall' hook. I have seen stuff like this in few source tar balls, but generally they dont. The code author cant be bothered with this sort of thing, as they assume you are using your own package manager. Just because you are building from source does not mean you dont use your package manager. I primarily use Arch Linux, when i install source build things, i either install it under /opt and not worry about it, or a wrap it up into a package and install it like any other. One reason i use Arch is that this is particularly easy to do, but you can also man .rpm or .deb packages or whatver your distro uses. They are all really just a compressed archive of the files with an extra config file or two. There are lots of other options (such as put your entire filesystem into a source control system like 'git') but I would recommend just trying to make your source-built stuff fit in with whatever distro you use (or stick it under /opt and not worry).

First - Scientific method has nothing to do with statistics. It is to do with formation of hypothesis, using that hypothesis to postulate results that are not in the current known data, and then the discovering the predictions were true (not 99% true, ACTUALLY true). For example Quantum mechanics has made a large number of weird and wonderful predictions of things no-one has ever seen before at the level of small scale things. Then, with the improvements in technology over they years we have observed all those things were actually true which means it evolves to a well respected theory. If something, anything was discovered that didn't fit, then this is a problem with the theory, not a statistical anomoly (QM doesn't work for very large scale things, this tells us that the theory is not a perfect picture of everything, and points to where to look to make a better one) You seem to have confused the fundamental principles of science with the mathematical technicalities of analysing results.

Second - Physics deal with statistics at many levels; it is their bread and butter. Quantum mechanics is largely the study of probability distributions (take a look at Quantum Statistical Thermodynamics, which is takled at the undergraduate level). To infer that (real, qualified) physicists have a fuzzy idea of dealing with statistics compared to psychologists is absurd. Its like a shop assistant saying that mathematicians dont know anything about maths because they havn't seen them work the till. If you *genuinely* believe this, then please point out a few statistical flaws in published physics papers.

I only half believe in psychology, never mind the psychic bullshit. I mean psychology is really just one step away from freudian psychiatry nonsense. The whole area is hampered in becoming a genuine manture science by the fact you cant treat human beings like lab rats without getting into major ethical (and legal) issues. So although there is undeniably 'something to it' it is a far from being a genuine mature science. In my opinion it is a bit like where western medicine was a few hundred years ago.

Yes it is safe. neutrinos pass through you all the time. They pass through you because they do not interact with anything, if they dont interact with anything they cant harm anything inside you. This is why they can 'go though the earth', it is also why the the idea is completely impractical, 99.9% of the neturinos will pass straight through your reciever.

I suspect Dan just said this to please the suits who probably sign off on his funding, while laughing to himself. Using a "neutrino communication system" sounds a bit like buliding a house out of ice cream. It might be *just about* possible with huge expense and effort, but it is laughably ridiculous compared to the other options that are available.

I am strapping the electrodes to the elephant now...

I suspect Dan just said this to please the suits who probably sign off on his funding, while having a giggle to himself. Using a "neutrino communication system" sounds a bit like buliding a house out of ice cream. It might be *just about* possible with huge expense and effort, but it is laughably ridiculous with the other options that are available.

This sort of epiphany evangelism is just fluff, and does not contribute anything at all. IDE's have been trying to do this sort of thing for the last 15 years, the attempt has brought us a few nice features (powerful inline debuggers, RAD tools, gui drag n drop, code generators), and also sometimes brought a few nightmares. Ultimately it has not removed the need for traditional coding, and there is no sign of it happening any time soon. The bottom line is that a system that removes coding will have to make assumptions about the nature of the problems it is trying to solve, the nature of the inputs and outputs. The ecosystem changes relatively rapidly in the programming world in the last 2 years for example there has been a massive shift to broweser/client side processing with jquery, around eight years earlier there was a shift from desktop to web. Anything that makes too many of these assumptions becomes quickly redundant. Traditional code has many advantages, it is very flexible, context independant, readily testable, easy to extend/supplement and keep stable.

First a large proportion of 'amateur' programmers are actually professionals during the day. Second, one of the best programmers I know works as a manual laborer in a fish farm. He tried the professional programmer route, but simply could not take the shit you have to put up with from incompetent managers. Thirdly I also know that the MAJORITY of professional programmers I know do not have the ability to 'make it' in most 'free' programmer ecosystems. There are a lot of stupid guys somehow survive in the corporate environment, largely because their managers value bullshitters more than talent.

You see posts like this quite a lot. "I have this idea for a game, now i just need someone to help me write it" This is getting things backwards. Concepts are cheap, execution is everything. You are a programmer, bite the bullet and get your hands dirty. In the 'programming for fun' market noone wants to write *your* game because they are busy writing *their* game. You will only attract external talent if you already have something concrete and valuable that they will want to be a part of. First thing is to pick a platform (sounds like you fancy it as a web app, so html5 or flash), then all you have to do is take it one step at a time, 'how do i get it to draw something' , then 'how can i get it to move', learning the tools and techniques as you go, and then keep going, refactoring as you find better ways of doing things.

From reading the article, it sound like it is because LSD allows people see themselves in a different light. It sort of makes you question whether this stuff should be illegal at all, if they are right, and this is *why* it works, then it seems likely that LSD could be useful to people in all sorts of situations.