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Comment Re:OMG FAG LOL (Score 1) 183

Have you seen any alternatives to moderation/meta-moderation schemes that exclude this?

I haven't seen any implemented but a possible way is to keep the opposing groups apart.

If "A" doesn't like "B" just make it less likely that "A" and "B" end up in the same match (or see each others posts).

If "A" starts getting too picky "A" might end up in fewer matches. If "B" really is an asshole, then "B" might end up in fewer matches too.

I've proposed this before to an MMO and also a related "Points of View" method for reviewing products: http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

After a while you might end up with distinct groups and then you can do some research and datamining on them ;).

Comment Re:As a 40 something programmer recently interview (Score 1) 379

If you were really writing CGI apps in C and not using stuff like FastCGI then your apps would likely be slower than a FastCGI or modperl/modphp etc program due to the overheads of process creation.

So yeah it does seem silly to use C, a slow to develop language combined with CGI, a slow way of running webapps. Worse of both worlds.

How many pages per second and concurrent requests could your CGI C apps handle?

Comment Re:Antiseptic Mouthwash Raises Heart Attack Risk (Score 1) 63

Funny. Years ago I thought I remember research that said the reverse. Can't find it though - Google seems crappier nowadays (you just get zillions of hits for the 2014 item).

Even reduce premature births: http://www.dentistrytoday.com/...

Generally periodontal disease seemed linked to higher heart disease: http://www.webmd.com/heart-dis...
So maybe the particular mouthwash used was bad?

Comment Re:Huh? (Score 2) 334

"Death is wrong" is still stupid though. This is a nongeek/nerd article. Because any geek who knows his/her science knows what forever means AND thus logically won't want to live forever AND thus at a certain point Death is Right.

0) I doubt people are psychologically able and stable enough to _enjoy_ a mere billion years of existence. A thousand years, ten thousand years, maybe. But a billion? Now guess how long is forever. So many can barely tolerate a single day of no Internet access ;).
1) How many stars are going to last forever? What are you going to do when the last ones in your range die?
2) I doubt you want to live so long that this becomes very personally relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

When I posted a comment on this sort of thing before, someone basically said we all know what living forever means, you don't have to tell us. But this whole "death is wrong" story is evidence that not all of us do.

Lastly, "May you live forever" would be a pretty scary witchdoctor curse if it worked, maybe someone should write a sci-fi horror story... I'm a crap writer tho.

Comment Re: Don't they have to fly that thing around? (Score 3, Informative) 330

Yeah pure battery won't work well. Hybrid+battery/capacitor would be better. Electric motor tech is fine for heavy stuff - diesel electric locomotives are really heavy.

Depending on the engine/turbine you could even have multi-fuel support - gas, petrol diesel, vegetable oil. This gives you more options in crisis scenarios.

Comment Re:Similar to most studies (Score 2) 427

There's definitely a pay gap for pro tennis. Women who can't beat male tennis players ranked around #100 earn far more than the male players.

But more people will pay more to watch the women play than the rank 100 male tennis players play. Sexism? Gender inequality? Certainly. But vive la difference! :)

I think women ten-pin bowlers are as good as the guys though, some maybe even better...

Comment Re:Guild Wars 1 (Score 1) 669

The prophecies towns and cities are quite empty, but I find that many Eye of the North, Factions towns still have people. And nowadays they have the daily activities stuff which does help the players that are left gather together: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki...

You can play with heroes too. Yes it's often fun to go with some random PUG (even if you fail) but sometimes you just want to try a custom team build. It's like having your own customizable army - and I actually like that part of GW1.

GW2 can't be like GW1 - you can't have a noninstanced MMO with the same skills and mechanics of GW1. That said they didn't even seem to really try that much to the point that to me it seems like it's closer to WoW/SWTOR than GW1.

Comment Guild Wars 1 (Score 2, Interesting) 669

Yes - still playing the first one. I prefer the game mechanics - not so much of that skill tree and gear grind stuff you get in many other MMOs (including in a way Guild Wars 2).

I find Guild vs Guild fun even when my team loses (as long as I don't make too many stupid mistakes :) ). Just don't take it so seriously like some - after all nobody is handing out huge prizes for winning anymore.

Nowadays there's even a group starting Fort Aspenwood matches at about 10pm EST. But not enough players for round the clock nonstop matches so it's far from a full blown revival.

But who knows - the game is still decent for an 8 year old game, so more old players might come back and maybe a few new players join too.

Maybe there might be more players if Anet sold a more affordable and sane PvP package with full PvP unlock (e.g. you get to play all the PvP matches/missions, no need to grind faction to unlock skills, weapon modifiers etc).
compare: http://www.guildwars.com/produ...
with this:http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/PvP_Access_Kit
https://secure.ncsoft.com/cgi-...
https://secure.ncsoft.com/cgi-...
So getting everything unlocked for PvP will either cost you a fair bit of $$$ or a lot of time.

Or you could go instead play games like TF2 where you only need to spend money for silly hats ;).

Comment Re:Why is no one talking about this being a donati (Score 1) 128

What if you take the money and assuming you succeed you make the resulting product available to the whole world for the same price (could be zero or more) - donors don't get any preferential treatment.

You may get a lower amount of donations but how much less tax would you pay and how much less work would that involve?

Comment Re: A looping simulation, apparently (Score 1) 745

Fiction? So you don't experience the "I am" phenomena? I know that I definitely experience it. And more than a few others claim they do as well.

Note: I'm not talking about free-will. I talking about consciousness.

I don't see how the existence of a time delay between an event and my awareness of it indicates that I am not conscious. Especially if I am conscious of the fact that I am conscious.

If you are actually self-aware but your own awareness of your own awareness isn't enough to prove to yourself that you have self-awareness then it's going to be hard to find any proof that will ever be enough to prove anything about anything to you.

To me that's the only thing I know for sure (and even then it's a very tiny knowledge - I don't know why or how or what exactly it is). The rest of what I know, actually requires some faith.

Comment Re: A looping simulation, apparently (Score 0) 745

The "I am" is the main peculiar thing- Consciousness. if you just based it on current known math (and science that I'm aware of), there is no obvious reason why there would be this consciousness phenomenon, which at least I experience (I have faith[1] that many other people experience it but I have no hard evidence that they do). Is it emergent? Why? How? And how do we tell between a genuine one and one that's just simulated - or will consciousness magically emerge in all such simulations?

If you use the "Occam's Razor", why would there be need of this consciousness thing? We could be machines behaving like conscious creatures but not have consciousness. There's no need for it right? Or is there?

As for the simulation thing. It's why I think it's silly for people to be so sure there is no Creator of this universe. It's as silly as entities in a fancy computer game claiming that there is no Creator just because the internal rules of the computer game don't require the existence of one.. But yes you could reasonably claim that based on what you know of this universe's rules and information you _believe_ there is no Creator. But being _sure_ there isn't is a different thing.

Heck for all we know those Creationists might be right in a way and this particular universe instance could really have been created 6000 years ago ;). After all if those astrophysicists start a 13 billion year old universe simulation 5 minutes ago - is their universe simulation 5 minutes old or 13 billion years old?
But what if you run it at a slower/faster subjective time, stop, change things and restart it etc. How old is it then?

[1] Yeah I have faith you have an "imaginary friend" that you call "me", but I don't have hard evidence of it other than I experience the same thing and I don't think I'm that special. Even if one day scientists wire you up and turn stuff on and off it'll still be hard to prove things 100% - since they might just be turning off the ability to write to persistent memory the experience of consciousness and not the consciousness itself. You might actually still be conscious while you are asleep or under anesthesia, it could be just that you can't do much "read" or "write" from/to "main memory" - you might still experience stuff from your senses...

Comment Re:How stupid (Score 1) 240

Most shopping malls and commercial buildings don't charge you to use their elevators and escalators. They make their $$$$ elsewhere.

So I'm thinking that at least in some places public transportation should be free, and there shouldn't be an assumption that users have to be charged for it.

It actually costs a fair bit of money and other resources to charge. Imagine if a subway system didn't need ticket booths, turnstiles, etc and people to check that people pay. So how much more would it cost to run it for "free" if you can phase out all of that? How much more subsidy would you need? Or would it even turn out to be cheaper?

Maybe that's not viable for poor places. But I'm thinking richer cities and countries should be make enough money from other things- like land taxes.

Comment Re:He's winning b/c he gets the right answers (Score 1) 412

Not saying Jeopardy should change their rules to prohibit this particular thing. But the attitude that it's all the rulemakers fault is wrong.

Some sociopaths (companies and people) do/did a lot of arguably bad things just because the written rules allow/allowed them to. Are you going to blame just the rule makers?

Sure they could add a zillion other rules too to prohibit stuff that hasn't been done yet and make the rulebook too big. Or write "default deny" rules to restrict behavior to only a "allowed behaviors" so much so that fewer participants and viewers are interested.

There are a lot of unwritten rules in games (and society). If you're a person who is well aware there are zillions of unwritten rules in daily life you'll know there are unwritten rules in many games involving humans too.

And it's not all black or white. Certain things might be fine if done just once in a while. Just nobody has sat down to decide the exact line where it becomes unacceptable, and maybe nobody has needed to yet.

Often written rules get added when someone has been too much of an asshole. And then rules alone become not enough and you need to resort to 3rd parties like judges.

Regarding your "bard" exploit example- part of the blame goes to the players who exploited it. Since the game might otherwise still be playable and fun for a long time for everyone if a bunch didn't "collectively piss into the pool" just because they could, especially so if they knew the long term consequences. What if it's a free game and so not so well maintained? You could all have an agreement to not abuse it so the game remains playable for more people, or have more players leave and the remaining players spend hours just doing the same thing, abusing the exploit but not having a great advantage over the other players (who do the same thing after all), while getting an arguably less entertaining game experience.

As it has been said: "The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."

Comment Re:The Slashdot beta isn't annoying. It's shit. (Score 1) 249

And real slashdotters aren't the same target audience those websites serve.

For example here's why the Beta sucks for "real slashdotters"- it hides user IDs. Real slashdot nerds are not afraid of numbers, we're not afraid of extra info, in fact we often thrive on extra info. I've noticed enough imposters around on Slashdot so we need those numbers to more easily tell them apart. Beta also hides times and dates, and other stuff.

We're slashdotters. What's useless noise to normal people might be location coordinates being transmitted at 1200 baud 7O1 Bell 202 to us. If they trying to turn Slashdot into a tech site for people who can't handle extra info, I might as well go to other websites that do it much better.

So every time Slashdot shows me the beta version, I just go do something else. If it stays the same crappy Beta I will just have to go away for longer. I might end up more productive ;).

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