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Comment Re:If not (Score 4, Informative) 130

Yea, there is some law of the cosmos that causes you to royally fuck up your grammar when criticizing spelling/typing of others.
Never flails.

Prevailing Consensus:

"Skitt’s Law" (1999) "Any post correcting an error in another post will contain at least one error itself” or “the likelihood of an error in a post is directly proportional to the embarrassment it will cause the poster.”

Contenders:

"McKean’s Law" (2001) “Any correction of the speech or writing of others will contain at least one grammatical, spelling, or typographical error.”

“Hartman’s Law of Precriptivist Retaliation.” (1999) "Any article or statement about correct grammar, punctuation, or spelling is bound to contain at least one error.”

“Bell’s First Law of Usenet” (1990) "Flames of spelling and/or grammar will have spelling and/or grammatical errors.”

... and I thought I was going to read a sort of warm and fuzzy thread starting out with a reference to Carl Sagan's, Contact. Instead, the Nazism was about grammar; not Germany's bounced message returned from the Vega.

Comment Re:Direct link (Score 1) 376

The "article" mostly quotes from Torrent Freak. Here's the longer source:
http://torrentfreak.com/police-raid-9-year-old-pirate-bay-girl-confiscate-winnie-the-pooh-laptop-121122/

Although I'm not vouching for the accuracy of the following, I thought it might be interesting to include what appears to be a legitimate post at torrentfreak a few hours ago by the father:

As a father of this 10-years girl, I would like to thank you all for a huge support in this case. We are still devestited of what happened, and my girl is still almoust in tears. I will take this as far it goes, and seek for justice for all other cases like this around a globe. Hopefully finnish justice system will find this as fucked up as most of Finnish & Europes social media, and regular people does. Thanx once again, it really matters a lot for us! Love & respect, Julietta & his Dad ps. Sorry for my bad English. Facebook: Aki"weq"Nylund

Everything looks proper, including the link to the facebook page; my apologies in advance if anything turns out to be otherwise. Fwiw, if it hasn't already been mentioned, the actual download that has caused the recent arrest happened in 2011.

Comment Re:Just another way to bash someone's success (Score 1) 422

If you knew anything about psychopathy, you would know that it's simply not possible for normal people to think like a psychopath. For example, it's simply not possible for them to feel remorse. The wiring just doesn't exist in their brain. While normal people can occasionally do bad things, they are hardly the same people.

The psychological studies are't science. It may become one some day -- going far beyond the scientific ground work developed by the likes of William James and others; until then, it's diluted with the politics of social engineering. There's too many sociopaths involved in this field using their position to advance their personal beliefs and professional careers -- by giving support to the group-think fashionable for the times. Once someone is accurately or inaccurately officially labeled anything by the psychological community, it'll be a problem for the rest of their life.

Richard Feyman's thoughts about psychiatrists and psychologists are classic examples of a definitive answer (imho) explaining what is wrong about their field of work and the standards they use to form conclusions.

Who are the witch doctors? Psychoanalysts and psychiatrists, of course. If you look at all the complicated ideas that they have developed in an infinitesimal amount of time, if you compare to any other of the sciences how long it takes to get one idea after another, if you consider all the structures and inventions and complicated things, the ids and the egos, the tensions and the forces, and the pushes and tthe pulls, i tell you they can't all be there. It's too much for one brain or a few brains to have cooked up in such a short time. However, I remind you if you're in the tribe, there's nobody else to go to.

That was from a published lecture series titled, "The Meaning of It All'. There's an unverified story members of the psychology department at the University of Washington in Seattle stood up in "solidarity" and walked out. He has elaborated about how psychology can be bad science on several ocassions, most notably in his discussions about Cargo Cult Science. Feyman was not one known for his diplomacy.

Comment New & Improved, Coming Soon (Score 2) 104

The article was an unpleasant read. It felt as if it was really written (imho) by a marketing department; sentences that included a variety of pleasant sounding adjectives that were abstract enough to give multiple meanings to the reader -- all designed to make the product's capabilities sound impressive, important and possibly giving the mistaken impression it's a new product release (without actually saying so).

From TFA:

"We reached out to Microsoft for comment on its Xbox set-top box plans and the company issued the following statement:"
"Xbox 360 has found new ways to extend the console life cycle by introducing controller-free experiences with Kinect and re-inventing the console with a new dashboard and new entertainment content partnerships. We are always thinking about what is next for our platform and how to continue to defy the life cycle convention."

Did I understand this correctly? It appears this could have been just as easily done with any potential product coming from any company

Firefox

Submission + - Mozilla Makes Prototype of Firefox OS Available (ostatic.com)

Thinkcloud writes: Even though the operating system hasn't arrived in a version for smartphones and tablets just yet, it is available as a prototype module that you can run on Windows, Mac or Linux computers. The initial Firefox OS phones are expected to arrive in 2013, and it's been reported that Alcatel and ZTE are the first manufacturers on board.

Submission + - The world's oldest original digital computer springs back into action at TNMOC (tnmoc.org) 1

prpplague writes: "After a three-year restoration project at The National Museum of Computing, the Harwell Dekatron (aka WITCH) computer will rebooted on 20 November 2012 to become the world's oldest original working digital computer.
Now in its seventh decade and in its fifth home, the computer with its flashing lights and clattering printers and readers provides an awe-inspiring display for visiting school groups and the general public keen to learn about our rich computer heritage."

Music

Submission + - Best way to know which online Intnl Music Stores are legit?

rjnagle writes: "I'm an American lover of music who is interested in buying legally music from other countries. How do I know which CD/online music stores are legit and actually benefit the artist? I'm very cost-conscious and prefer indie music anyway, so the types of international music for sale on Amazon/itunes tends to be from the bigger labels. Suppose I wanted to buy music from Pakistan/Ukraine/China/Brazil/Chad. What's the best way to identify which labels or online stories are authorized to sell them? Perhaps all I need is a list of the best known online music stores for each region (Yesasia.com, etc)."
Medicine

Submission + - Modern Medical Terms Still Named after Nazi Doctors

Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Ilana Yurkiewicz writes that in 1977, a group of doctors began a campaign to change the name of an inflammatory arthritis after discovering it was named after Hans Conrad Julius Reiter, a Nazi doctor who planned and performed gruesome forced human experimentation that killed thousands. The doctors suggested that the inflammatory arthritis then known as “Reiter’s syndrome” should change its name to “reactive arthritis.” In 2003, a group of rheumatology journal editors decided against continued use of the eponym in their journals and the official retraction from the doctors who originally proposed the eponym came in 2009. "The campaign to remove Reiter’s name should not actually have been morally ambiguous," writes Yurkiewicz. "Medical eponyms are meant to honor individuals who contributed to the field. Torture and murder are not things we wish to honor." Since then, other medical eponyms tied to Nazi crimes have surfaced. The “Clara cell,” a type of cell lining the airways to the lungs, was named after Max Clara, an “active and outspoken Nazi” who made his discovery using tissues from murdered Third Reich victims. Then there is Friedrich Wegner of the vessel disease “Wegener’s granulomatosis”: Wegener joined the brownshirts eight months before Hitler seized power, joined the Nazi party in 1933, worked in “close proximity to the genocide machinery in Lodz,” and was wanted as a war criminal. "The least we can do is erase any praise of him and others like him," concludes Yurkiewicz. "Saying their actions were deeply antithetical to the values of modern medicine is an understatement.""

Submission + - A better brain powered computer cursor (stanford.edu)

An anonymous reader writes: Stanford Researchers have developed a new algorithm that significantly improves the control and performance of neural prosthetics: brain-controlled computer interfaces for individuals suffering from spinal cord injury and neurodegenerative disease to aid interaction with computers, drive electronic wheelchairs, and control robotic arms and legs. With this algorithm, monkeys implanted with multielectrode arrays in motor regions of their brain controlled a computer cursor more quickly and accurately than ever before, including navigation around obstacles. Further, the system maintained this high performance across 4 years, demonstrating long-term reliability. These improvements in performance and robustness are crucial for clinically-useful neural prosthetics, and pave the way for success in clinical trails.
Software

Submission + - Best Strategy to Start Development Career Without Degree

An anonymous reader writes: Hey slashdotters, first time poster here, hope I'm following protocols. I'm looking to change careers and go into software development. I have the equivalent of about a first year CS education — understanding of OOP, understanding of algorithm design and analysis, ability to code up non-trivial programs (mostly in Python), etc. However, I don't have a degree. I have enough cash set aside to where I can spend about another year honing my skills, but I will need to be making a liveable income after that. I'm located in a major metropolitan area. I was thinking about using the year to familiarize myself with programming libraries, picking up a few more languages, learning some front-end/design principles and methods, involving myself with a number of open source projects, and picking up a little bit of work from friends/contacts. Would anyone care to critique that strategy or maybe add some specifics to it?
Science

Submission + - Cancer can teach us about our own evolution (guardian.co.uk)

hessian writes: "Cancer, it seems, is embedded in the basic machinery of life, a type of default state that can be triggered by some kind of insult. That suggests it is not a modern aberration but has deep evolutionary roots, a suspicion confirmed by the fact that it is not confined to humans but is widespread among mammals, fish, reptiles and even plants. Scientists have identified genes implicated in cancer that are thought to be hundreds of millions of years old. Clearly, we will fully understand cancer only in the context of biological history."

Feed Google News Sci Tech: Facebook And Yahoo Discussing Search Partnership, Report Says - TechCrunch (google.com)


TechCrunch

Facebook And Yahoo Discussing Search Partnership, Report Says
TechCrunch
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg are discussing a potential partnership, according to a report in The Sunday Telegraph. The story is based on anonymous sources, who seem primarily to be “Yahoo insiders.” It's vague on the ...
Facebook and Yahoo reportedly seeking search partnershipCNET
Report: Yahoo's Mayer Laying Hammer Down on StaffPC Magazine
Yahoo! plots alliance with Facebook in new search dealTelegraph.co.uk
Business Insider-Search Engine Journal-Sydney Morning Herald
all 27 news articles

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