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Comment Re:Awesome (Score 1) 1855

I wish I could have shot Osama myself for all the wasted hours I've spent in TSA lines because of his antics.

Antics ?

Yes, that rascal! He's a nincompoop, he is.

(Yeah, I'm sure that you didn't mean to such a frivolous term to describe the murder of thousands, but still... )

Comment Re:Nothing new to see here (Score 1) 373

When Holmes died the first time it's because Conan Doyle actually was irritated by the whole thing and wanted to kill him off. He survived because readers of The Strand Magazine went ape about it and demanded the return of their favourite detective. So ACD bent to the will of the people and the promise of a lucrative paycheck on that one.

Right. Which makes the situation remarkably similar to many of the resurrections described here.

Holmes was dead, but even back then, death could be overcome by popular demand.

Honestly, I was genuinely touched when I read the story of Holmes's death --- despite the fact that it was in a collection of stories and obviously not the last one. I felt more than a bit duped when he returned, even though, as far as returns go, it was well-written, entertaining and reasonably believable in-story.

Comment Re:Correction... (Score 1) 1027

In fact, the blurb has it wrong.

18% of Americans said that the sun revolves around the earth, rather than the earth revolves around the sun. The question sounds badly worded to me (the earth orbits the sun -- I wouldn't say it "revolves around" the sun), but more importantly: the wrong answer was not that the earth is the center of the universe.

It's a wrong answer, but it doesn't bother me nearly so much as the notion that the earth is the center of the universe.

Comment Re:The readability seems to be questionable. (Score 1) 355

This piqued my interest so I took a look at an article on "Actualism". Here is the first paragraph:

So in virtue of what is it true that there could have been Aliens when in fact there are none, and when, moreover, nothing that exists in fact could have been an Alien?

If this is a representative sample then I'll stick to wikipedia. Can someone decipher that last sentence for me? I've read it several times and I can't seem to grasp what it is saying.

The problem is that you're not used to certain kinds of philosophical jargon.

The author is asking: Given that there are no aliens and that nothing which exists could have been (counterfactually) an alien, what would make the sentence "There could have been Aliens" true?

It's abstruse philosophy about the problems of what could make a sentence that "X is possible" true, given that X is in fact false, as I understand it. (Perhaps my move from "there could have been..." to "...is possible" is not an equivalence on this view, so read with a grain of salt. I'm not familiar with this theory.)

Comment Re:Bullshit. (Score 1) 416

If you're actually interested: fewer relates to countable nouns, less to uncountable. Less water, fewer glasses. "Less glasses" sounds as wrong as "fewer water".

Of course, few people read edited prose these days, and so most lack the "ear" for poor usage. It will be an odd time for language, with almost everyone literate but not reading books.

Unfortunately for pedants like us, this is just not historically so. The word "less" has applied to countable objects from the beginning. Only relatively recently (1770, according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fewer_vs._less).

While I share your pet peeve over less/fewer, we have to admit that this rule was arbitrarily added to the conventions. It's not that people began breaking a rule formerly honored — it's that the rule was made up later.

Comment Re:see all this time (Score 1) 212

i have tried in my life to be lucid, coherent, and persuasive in what i say

little did i know all you have to do is say "kiddie porn", and whatever you are trying to argue for, people instantly flock to you sympathetically

so, in that spirit, instead of making a rational argument here, i will simply say

kiddie porn kiddie porn kiddie porn

kiddie porn kiddie porn kiddie porn

...

there!

You're not supposed to chant it as if you're cheering kiddie porn on in a football game.

Comment Re: I believe they are... (Score 1) 341

Wires are public property when public funds subsidize them, or legislatively mandated customer fees provide reimbursement to the telecom companies for building FTTH.

I don't see how that follows. If the government gives money to the telcos to lay wires, ownership depends on the agreement between gov't and telco. It may be that the gov't retained some ownership or control over the wires, but maybe not. It all simply depends on what was decided at the time (and I don't know about that).

If I give you money to purchase a car (slashdot analogy), then I don't own that car unless we decided so at the time. I can't later restrict your use of that car unless this was a precondition of the subsidy.

Comment Re:riiiiight (Score 1) 341

Bullshit! If you want the Internet to become as bad as cable tv is these days then buy into this bogus horseshit idea this guy is peddling.

Maybe his argument is fallacious, but you sure as hell didn't prove so.

He didn't argue that net neutrality is bad for the internet. He argued that laws requiring net neutrality violate the fifth amendment. Your response is utterly irrelevant.

I'm not saying he's right. I don't know constitutional law, but I do know that, to refute his argument, you need to actually address his claim. You didn't do so.

Comment Re:Solution... (Score 1) 362

Simple solution - don't use tabs in browsers.

I don't think this solution fixes anything. As near as I can figger, the guy that uses multiple windows (instead of tabs) is just as vulnerable to this issue as the tab user --- assuming that his top window(s) block the view of other browser windows entirely. The only real issue I see in the article is that, when your attention is diverted from a page and it is hidden from your view, its contents may be changed.

So, tabs are, as far as I can, a red herring here. It's not really about tabs at all. (Someone may correct me if I've missed something.)

The first thing I do to any browser I sit in front of, is to immediately disable the use of tabs. I have never understood why many people think they are a good idea - I think they break a heap of good UI principles.

Thank goodness that your loyalty to UI principles does not restrict my browser's features. I don't want a dozen browser windows, taking up space on the screen and making it difficult to find what I want. I want one window with tabs that have visible icons and (partially visible) titles, so that I can pick the right tab quickly.

Maybe it is an inconsistent use of the ideas of tabs, but it's damned useful nonetheless.

In any case, your primary criticism about tabs has nothing to do with this security issue.

Comment Why is this about tabs at all? (Score 1) 362

As far as I can tell, the script merely waits a while (hoping that the user's attention is diverted) before changing the contents. Surely, the same idea works about as well if the user uses multiple windows rather than multiple tabs. Just as soon as attention is diverted from the appropriate browser and it is covered by other windows, the content could be changed without the user noticing.

The only difference is that, with multiple windows, a portion of the window may still be visible when the user is looking at another window. In my limited experience, folks tend to maximize windows anyway (I *hate* that!), so that's not a significant issue.

Am I missing something?

Comment Duck tape (Score 1) 643

You mean duct tape. What the fuck might "duck tape" be?

"Duck tape" might be the original name of duct tape. Some folks who have presumably actually looked into the history of the term believe that "duct tape" is a mispronunciation of the original term, rather than the other way around.

See, for instance, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duct_tape#Etymology.

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