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

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:The Internet of Things, aka (Score 2) 50

It's just a toilet seat that reports when somebody's on it. Everybody poops! There's nothing to worry about!

Until you realize that it's able to find usage patterns, and your insurance rates go up because they think you may be getting colon cancer.

Everything's connected, and I don't want every facet of my life being reported to some corporate overlord.

Comment Re:Yet another out-of-control govt agency (Score 1) 299

Dogs have been eugenically engineered by humans for tens of thousands of years, and are therefore an artificial life form. They usually eat food that comes from a factory, and is artificial. Since you have an artificial life form eating artificial food, it's excreting artificial poop. Its urine is water that has been polluted by artificial processes. Hence the impact study.

By some definitions, anything created by a human is artificial, so all of our bodily wastes are artificial.

Comment Not just iPhone (Score 1) 421

I'm convinced the 'SapphireGlass' display 'leaks' were iPhone-6 sized prototypes for the tempered glass screen protectors sold by a variety of manufacturers, for pretty much every model of smartphone.

Zagg, for instance boasts theirs has a hardness of 9H, which is in the same range as Sapphire.

Comment Re:they will defeat themselves (Score 1) 981

Also known as the global strategy of how to handle North Korea.

North Korea is resource poor, bankrupt, and starving - it took decades to build up nuclear capabilities, but they did it.

ISIL has oil, and lots of it. Sure, you could make selling their oil 'illegal' like blood diamonds, but the strategy didn't stop DeBeers from trading blood diamonds, and it won't stop the oil companies.

ISIL may not be able to obtain nukes, but they are well funded enough to do other terrible things to nations who would just as soon ignore them.

Comment Re:Great idea at the concept stage. (Score 1) 254

I'm really not sure about the "not replacing IPv4"...

Most Comcast customers have IPv6 now, and it's been silently working for quite some time.

I've taken the time to instrument my connection, and a lot of my traffic is IPv6. (The lion's share of bandwidth is IPv6, but that's easy to pin on Netflix.)

Comment I still like cubing... (Score 2) 100

I never really stopped liking the Rubik's cube. The remarkable thing I've found is the explosion of nxn cubes made by companies other than Rubik's - each with a very different feel (and much better performance).

In my opinion, the Rubik's brand are the worst available - overpriced, and literally painful to use for more than a few twists. Even a cheap $3 knockoff is a vastly superior mechanical design.

Modern speedcubes (non-Rubik's) are a lot more fun: your hands aren't hurting because the cube is painfully stiff or constantly locking up because of a tiny misalignment. The stickers don't peel up from a few minute's use... And they still cost less than the Rubik's brand.

Comment What good is free speech... (Score 1) 1116

What good is freedom of speech if you can't speak your mind without being vilified by everyone?

de Tocquerville even warned that freedom of speech is useless unless the speaker is allowed to voice their view without being persecuted for it.

He even closed "Democracy in America" with: "Tyranny in democratic republics does not proceed in the same way, however. It ignores the body and goes straight for the soul. The master no longer says: You will think as I do or die. He says: You are free not to think as I do. You may keep your life, your property, and everything else. But from this day forth you shall be as a stranger among us. You will retain your civic privileges, but they will be of no use to you. For if you seek the votes of your fellow citizens, they will withhold them, and if you seek only their esteem, they will feign to refuse even that. You will remain among men, but you will forfeit your rights to humanity. When you approach your fellow creatures, they will shun you as one who is impure. And even those who believe in your innocence will abandon you, lest they, too, be shunned in turn. Go in peace, I will not take your life, but the life I leave you with is worse than death.”

Freedom of speech is useless without the tolerance to allow a person's views to be heard, without persecution. Unless you can voice your view without persecution, "You will retain your civic privileges, but they will be of no use to you" is literally true - you can voice your view, but you will suffer for it, what good is it?

It's perversion of the spirit of the first amendment to say "You have freedom of speech, but not freedom from its consequence."

I may not like what I consider ignorant drek spouted by Neo-Nazis, KKK, certain Westboro Baptist Church members, etc. I may think they are personally the worst filth humanity has to offer. But I am willing to fight to give them the right to spew their bile and to protect them from those who seek to silence them by whatever means necessary. Anything less amounts to tyranny by the majority.

And that's precisely what is being done here - Eich voiced a view - years ago, and now that what was then the minority is now the majority, he is being punished for it.

The very cornerstone of freedom of speech is being willing to protect those whose views we hate, and the ability to exercise their right without fear of backlash or persecution.

I'm not saying Eich is left starving... far from it. The point is that nobody should feel a threat to their person, livelihood, or property because their views -- however unpopular, ignorant, or wrong -- are expressed.

Comment And an active development... (Score 1) 115

It also has an active development community; the git repo has regular and frequent commits (for a filesystem). ZFS on Linux seems to test more and release less often -- a fact I appreciate as I haven't lost a single bit of data on my ZFS filesystems, but have lost entire btrfs filesystems multiple times. (Yeah, sure, btrfs is "experimental" and will eat your data... so why is Facebook even thinking about using it?)

Slashdot Top Deals

"When the going gets tough, the tough get empirical." -- Jon Carroll

Working...