Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment distraction (Score 1) 261

"Having the ability to touch any word on the screen and have definitions, translations, and wikipedia entries pop up as you read (which is great for many of the older books) is a fantastic benefit "

And thus bring up thousand more distraction to break your reading. In my experience (having tested both) it is far far better for comprehension and reading "wellness" to simply note on a side paper what you want to search later and leave it there until you are finished reading. Unless there is a word which stops you understanding completely (which should be quite rare for the average book) this works well.

Comment Who cares ? (Score 1) 681

When people look toward him, it is about his assessment on science in the US, not about proper manner or how to handle day to day relationship. Anything beyond checking what he said is an ad hominem. He could be the greatest asshole of the world, but what we should judge is his claim and the merit thereof. Far too many people look at personality or behavior where it is not proper.

Comment huge difference (Score 1) 448

There is not many article on cholesterol in comparison, believe it or not biology is far far more complicated than climate science, because of the many additional factor both camp "cholesterol is bad for you" and c"cholesterol is good for you" can be bot right, due to the way the homeostasis in our body work and what happen when it does not, body requirement, confounding factors etc.... This is why you see often study contradicting each other in biology "coffee is good / bad for you". This is not about settled science , this is about having far far many factors coming in. In climate science on the other hand , the system are huge, but the number of factors or confounding factors is relatively small compared to a human. Think about it : you cannot simulate properly a human by slicing him in single voxel of meat and simulating the interaction between each other. You can do that with atmosphere to predict short term and evolution, and you can do that on a different level to predict long term evolution.

Comment And even lower salary (Score 1) 448

Many scientist I know of which are "only" post doc do not even get salary here , they get 1/2 or 1/3 salary as long as they have no real tenure / place. $1.2 million is a HUGE deal. Now we do HAVE an example of scientist paid off. And guess what ? It is on the skeptic side. It is funny to find so few climate skeptic "it is the sun/volcanoe/scientist are paid off" protesting that huge ethical breach.

Comment Answer : no until they are in our face (Score 1) 576

As other poster pointed out : no because our detection system are mostly directed toward earth, and the few toward space cover not even a single % of sky at any time. But the reason why it is so is trivially simple : the energy requirement, and the distance make it an extremely improbable event, and why would we spend money for that ?

Comment Beyond flimsy (Score 2) 65

The "evidence" are : 1) babar & titi the names (babar from a children book published in 1931... and has pretty much international readership and has shows in canada) Or pretty damn simply a fan of soccer.

2) MSIE misspelled as MSI which anybody could have done

That is quiiiite flimsy. I hope they have more.

Comment Copyright ifnrigement has a DEFINITION (Score 2) 216

Copyright infringement is about the distribution of copyrighted material without the authorization of the original copyright holder. It has never been about posting instruction on how to get the file, which is what TPB is. The GP is correct : there is NO infringing file whatsoever, which is why the swedish prosecution tried to make up "an aiding" gambit, as no infringing file can be found on TPB server. As for traffic being majorly about copyrighted material or your pharmacy example, it is legally *irrelevant*, which is mostly why over the year TPB was not prosecuted successfully. You can legally tell people where to buy crack cocaine. That fall under free speech. Again, TPB is not the pharmacy selling the 1% crack, it is the street board telling you precise instruction on how to reach that pharmacy. Perfectly legal.

Comment It is not about knwoledge but about research (Score 1) 809

If you are asking for specific knowledge you will have to go thru vast amount of developer, and when you find those, they will lack other knowledge. But what differentiate a good developer to a bad is : what question to ask to get the requirement, and how to proceed to research for lack of information. So not knowing about a specific encryption is not bad, if the developer ask the correct requirement question and demonstrate a willingness to search for correct source depending on such requirement. the specific question does not matter, it could as well be about a robotic software to remove feather from dead chicken in an assembly line. In your specific case i would ask why you chose this specific encryption, if you have a specific vendor or open source in mind, what would be the timing requirement (can it run slow) what would be the memory footprint requirement , how often it is used, what would be the liability for vulnerabilities, how are the key managed, are there legal requirement on the key management etc...etc...

Comment Does it matter? (Score 5, Insightful) 215

As long as you can hide to the software you are debugging it, you can step by step through it until it is decrypted. So for all the money, all the added complexity, all you won is only a slight bit more time. The only real copy protection is when part of the code is not run locally but on a different remote machine. For example if you have something on a server which needs to be queried and allow you to continue with the software, like some of the online authorization.

Comment agreed with bobbied (Score 2) 54

"worker bee" have brain too, and in many cases in small enough organization, have enough access to the financials and the decision process to see how bad and stupidly short sighted some MBA decision are. On the other hand MBA's in financials have most of the time neither the overview of the business process nor the understanding of the fine working, as a general rule. There might be exception, but they are rare. That you use the monicker "worker bee" as if we were brainless drone shows a lot more about your lack of understanding of a highly educated workforce (as it mostly is in IT) than it says about bobbied's statement.

Comment I don't drink wine (Score 1) 480

I have a budget for "fun" activities though, and I consider powerball to be one (i.e. money I throw away for my own amusement). So why would drink a 2$ glass of wine be less "money thrown away" than buying a 2$ powerball ticket ? They are in the same class, and at 2$ your wine won't be that good that you have much more excitement than at the ball drawing.

Comment Very hard to imagine (Score 1) 191

Today you pay an OS and keep it for years, sometimes a decade. And it cost you 80-120 euro or dollar so it is a cost of maybe 10$ a year at most. can you imagine people suddenly asked a monthly or yearly subscription ? A lot of normal folk will suddenly be highly suspicious even if the price is lower.

Slashdot Top Deals

egrep -n '^[a-z].*\(' $ | sort -t':' +2.0

Working...