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Comment Re:Headline that asks a question (Score 1) 282

Well, for me the year of the Linux desktop is here since 2007. I just hope that not too many people get the same idea and decide to switch to GNU/Linux in future, because that would mean that I'd need to give free tech support to more people and I have no interest or time for that. It is better if GNU/Linux continues to stay under the radar of casual users, moms and morons (I was about to say "greedy business men" too, but then I realized that Android probably also counts as "linux").

Comment Re:Is there any point continuing GCC's development (Score 1) 99

I'm using GNAT Ada with GCC, as practically all other Ada users. GNAT is the only Ada version that implements the latest language features of Ada 2012.

Adacore alone is reason enough to continue developing GCC. The commercial version of GNAT uses GCC and is used in production systems like airplanes you fly with.

Comment Not due to Putin's ego (Score 1) 789

But he's also a realist.

No, he surely thinks so but he is not (really) a realist. He has in fact a rather distorted view of reality, influenced by historical Tsar novels and shitloads of intelligence reports, but believes firmly that his assessment of the world and other world leaders is 100% accurate. The only people he knows and regularly meets who could object to his world views are filthy rich oligarchs whose only interest is in staying filthy rich. He lives in his own bubble like most slightly mad dictators in history before him, and his reality distortion will become worse the longer he stays in power. Like many people he also entertains bizarre and incorrect personal pop psychology views of other persons, which in his case are the result of a relatively rough childhood (including being beaten by his father) and extensive KGB indoctrination.

If he were a realist he'd be primarily occupied with Russia's economy, which could be flourishing by now if there was still a middle class in Russia, rather than leading his country backwards and annecting territory of foreign nations in the 21st Century.

Comment Re:Hidden Files section? (Score 2) 369

Nah, you're not very knowledgable yourself. I'm not an expert either but at least read up a bit on history rather than referring to wacky websites. You're mentioning one of their historical justifications, but one of minor importance. (It's also among the most silly ones, because the Kalifats they admire so much and wish to rebuild were at their height at a time when the Muslim world was the most tolerant, when people of all faith were living together without problems while Christians were slaughtering each other in Central Europe.)

If you want to understand the motivation of these terrorist movements (which are pretty evil, no doubt about that), you need to look at the colonial history of the Middle East and how the French, Brits and the US messed up the region. And if you think that's the past and they have learned from their mistakes, think again, because they have just repeated them in Iraq and, very recently, in Egypt. When you install dictators and puppet military juntas in foreign countries and the only notable opposition left is radical islamic, then you ought not be surprised if radical islam arises in the long run.

Comment Re:Hidden Files section? (Score 1) 369

While I generally would agree with this suspicion, I don't think you're right this time.

IS poses a huge threat at least to European countries because they have so many fanatic supporters who will return with combat experience and indoctrination from Syria and Iraq. They are more radical than Al Qaeda in some respects. I'd be surprised if there weren't an increase in (attempted) terrorist attacks. Whether that justifies all the Western security theater is another question, of course.

Comment Re:"Moderation?" Don't you mean "Censorship?" (Score 1) 76

It has nothing to do with moderation anyway. People on social networks barely interact with each other, they're reading about others like in news feeds, and they don't really do anything together. It's kind of obvious that things like (random examples) playing in a band, having a barbecue, watching a movie with friends or doing wild river rafting tend to make most people more happy than browsing web pages all day.

Comment Re:"Programmers" shouldn't write critical software (Score 1) 157

Classical fallacy. The safety records for human drivers include each and every moron who drives piss drunk or under other drugs or simply cannot drive. Unless you're one of those, they will give you almost no useful information for deciding whether you should consider SDCs safe in comparison to your driving skills. And by adding personal anecdotes you confirm the OPs point even more.

Comment Statistics as standalone field (Score 3, Informative) 115

Quite the opposite is the case. Unless we are talking about experiments with terrabytes of data most software packages are complete overkill anyway, you could make your statistics with a pocket calculator instead. The problem is the conceptual work. Most institutes and individual scientists would be much better off if they employed a well-trained full-time statistician. Provided they were interested in correct and robust results rather than getting one more pilot study published as soon as possible (which will in turn be based on an insignificantly small non-random sample using an inadequate model).

Comment Re:I hope not (Score 1) 511

Ada favors readability over brevity, so it takes a longer to type programs but makes them much easier to understand. I find it so easy to read that I can dive into the code bases of packages and even GNAT itself and understand them without resorting to commentaries or additional documentation. It has its quirks, though, and a relatively steep learning curve.

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