Comment This is actually great (Score 2) 79
Can you imagine the number of lawsuits this is going to bring against the people who installed it?
Comment Not the original title (Score 1) 121
It was actually called "White Angel", until 2008 when Lucas decided it wasn't urban enough, and CG'd the titular character.
Comment Re:They've invested billions (Score 3, Insightful) 142
They've invested billions if not trillions in the surveillance networks and infrastructure.
Is anyone going to really believe it's all been mothballed at the stroke of a pen?
I won't.
I don't think its the sunk money that matters to them. It's the heady feeling of autocracy and superpowers which they'll never give up. The NSA and CIA are significantly staffed by bad, treasonous, anti-democratic people.
Comment law vs. justice (Score 1) 776
The law may or may not be on the plaintiff's side.
Either way, the employer should be beaten with a tire iron, in my opinion.
Comment Re:Yes if you can afford the time (Score 1) 267
> Does anyone actually use modern FORTRAN though?
Some physics models do.
When Enthusiasm For Free Software Turns Ugly 177
An anonymous reader writes: Bruce Byfield writes for Linux Magazine about the unfortunate side-effect of people being passionate about open source software: discussions about rival projects can get heated and turn ugly. "Why, for example, would I possibly to see OpenOffice humiliated? I prefer LibreOffice's releases, and — with some misgivings — the Free Software Foundation's philosophy and licensing over that of the Apache Foundation. I also question the efficiency of having two office suites so closely related to each other. Yet while exploring such issues may be news, I don't forget that, despite these differences, OpenOffice and the Apache Foundation still have the same general goals as LibreOffice or the Free Software Foundation. The same is true of other famous feuds. Why, because I have a personal preference for KDE, am I supposed to ignore GNOME's outstanding interface designs? Similarly, because I value Debian's stability and efforts at democracy, am I supposed to have a strong distaste for Ubuntu?"
Comment Re:Hard to take sides (Score 2) 355
Also, at least one of his cheating allegations was investigated and overturned by their university's administration. This sounds mostly like sour grapes.
Maybe. In a kind-of related note, though, I heard of one Brown CS professor who found pretty damning evidence that some students had cheated, and the University refused to do anything at all about it.
I can understand how a professor's patience would reach a limit.
That don't justify his particular response, I'm just saying I can see why he'd lose it.
Comment Prof's response was too coarse-grained (Score 1) 355
I think two outcomes should have been upheld:
(1) Each student was graded according to his or her own merit.
(2) The prof. should perhaps have sued the school for a hostile workplace. And maybe the disruptive students arrested for disorderly conduct and/or suspended.
Comment Re: This never works (Score 1) 304
you wouldn't steal a policeman's hat!
Well, not before coming across Netflix's Jeeves and Wooster videos. Now I'm not so sure.
Comment Re: This never works (Score 5, Funny) 304
Whoa there. You wouldn't steel a car, would you???
Comment Re:Short memories (Score 1) 80
Germans are essentially stupid when it comes to totalitarianism in any form. After all, this is the country that hat to start and lose _two_ world wars in order to find out that they are may not be the master-race.
Beim dritten Mal ist ein Charme!
Comment Short memories (Score 4, Insightful) 80
Damn, lots of Stasi victims are still of working age even. You'd hope the Germans had developed more antibodies against this crap.
Comment No disrespect to GCC, but why not LLVM? (Score -1, Offtopic) 78
Given the nice, modular nature of LLVM, I would think even the GCC developers would find it to be a more enjoyable best to work on.
Any idea why most GCC developers don't simply port their front-ends / back-ends of choice to LLVM, and walk away from GCC?
I know there's the licensing issue, which I assume matters to some heavy-duty OSS advocates. But in my experience most programmers who work with OSS aren't super passionate about GPL vs. Berkeley -style licensing.
Comment Re:Is it a matter of sexual attraction? (Score 1) 599
I did cover bi. I don't know enough about transsexuals to know where they fit into this schema.
Comment Is it a matter of sexual attraction? (Score 2) 599
If it's a matter of not having students who are sexually attracted to each other, they have a serious logistical problem:
- You can't have any girl with a straight boy.
- You can't have any boy with a straight girl.
- You can't have a gay girl with any girl.
- You can't have a gay boy with any boy.
I'm not positive, but I think you'd need something like this:
- It's only okay to pair a gay boy with a gay girl,. Or else each needs his/her own dedicated school
- Every bisexual student needs his/her own dedicated school
- All straight girls can be in the same school.
- All straight boys can be in the same school.
