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

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Hmmmmm (Score 0) 676

Not sure where to go with this. I truly doubt I'll want the Republican candidate, but I don't particularly want Hilliary for President either. That doesn't leave much other choice. You heard me Libertarians/Greens/RonPaulFans

I do not understand American politics in this sense. Where are the alternatives? Is it always the choice of either a 90% guaranteed wackjob on the Republican side (you know who), or a massively (Emperor-grade) corrupt Democrat?
Do you somehow compare your Republicans to Gary Busey before they're allowed to run?
Do you require that your Democrats are atleast stage 4 on the Dark Side scale (not yet Palpatine but slightly worse than Vader)?

I hear about the Greens every now and then, but they seem to get less than 3% of the votes. It seems like you are all simply resigned to this cycle. Is that the case? Is it pointless to try and change the outcome? Just the let the giants battle it out?

Comment Re:The perfect summary of the case: (Score 1) 365

Or maybe they'd go; Gee whiz, we really are hiring mostly males for these positions. Perhaps we can take a closer look at these ladies to see what they're offering.

Then they'd be accused of soliciting prostitution.

Badum-tish.

Funny and informative at the same time, just like Sesame Street.

Comment Re:One more view. (Score 4, Insightful) 365

Jury: Kleiner Perkins not liable for Pao’s gender discrimination claims [Updated]
Trial highlighted Silicon Valley's male-dominated tech and investment culture. via http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...

Absolutely loving the reasoning here. There are two possible outcomes.

1. Kleiner Perkins freed of all charges. This highlights just how male-dominated and sexist the tech industry is.
2. Kleiner Perkins guilty of all charges. This highlights just how male-dominated and sexist the tech industry is.

Perhaps this could be used as some sort of Turing test for feminazis?

Submission + - Did Neurons Evolve Twice? (quantamagazine.org)

An anonymous reader writes: When Leonid Moroz, a neuroscientist at the Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience in St. Augustine, Fla., first began studying comb jellies, he was puzzled. He knew the primitive sea creatures had nerve cells — responsible, among other things, for orchestrating the darting of their tentacles and the beat of their iridescent cilia. But those neurons appeared to be invisible. The dyes that scientists typically use to stain and study those cells simply didn’t work. The comb jellies’ neural anatomy was like nothing else he had ever encountered.

After years of study, he thinks he knows why. According to traditional evolutionary biology, neurons evolved just once, hundreds of millions of years ago, likely after sea sponges branched off the evolutionary tree. But Moroz thinks it happened twice — once in ancestors of comb jellies, which split off at around the same time as sea sponges, and once in the animals that gave rise to jellyfish and all subsequent animals, including us. He cites as evidence the fact that comb jellies have a relatively alien neural system, employing different chemicals and architecture from our own. “When we look at the genome and other information, we see not only different grammar but a different alphabet,” Moroz said.

Comment Re:Here's MY test (Score 4, Insightful) 522

If you can substitute the term "white male" into your premise and suddenly find it offensive, then was actually racist/sexist all along.

Why on earth would you find this offensive if you made the swap? Because you're a white male and it would highlight how virtually no software fails the white male test, but a huge amount fails the female test?

Why on Earth is it relevant if a software project passes the test? Does it make the code better?

This is a completely made up non-issue. Should we start rabblerousing about the white guy Bechdel test in the NBA? What about the unfairness of native English speaking programmers in Russia? Should we start a test for them? No, because it's fucking stupid, and contributes 0 to anything other than the wallet of those who get "offended" about "representation" as a profession.

Comment Re:Here's MY test (Score 1) 522

So you don't understand the difference between the words "minority" and "majority". Thanks for telling everyone.

I totes agree, that guy is a cock mongrel. How dare he imply that all people are created equal, like he's some Jefferson of misogyny. It's almost as bad as the patriarchy's so-called Charter of the United Nations and their oppressive hatespeech about equality and universal peace.

They should know by now that a minority is worth much more than a white guy. It's like duuh, of course you cannot be prejudiced against white cis males, what planet are you from? Stupid cis-scum the lot 'em, right?

(For reference, the UN charter http://www.un.org/en/documents... . Check out Ch 1 2, and Ch 1 3. Specifically,

To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; ...)

Note the "without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion". Does that sound like the Bechdel test?

Submission + - Leaked US Antitrust Report on Google Adds Weight to Rivals' Complaints (itworld.com)

itwbennett writes: The report, which was mistakenly provided to the Wall Street Journal as part of a public records request, reveals that FTC staff concluded in 2012 that Google’s business tactics had caused 'real harm to consumers and to innovation,' and the staff recommended a lawsuit against the company. Among the findings: Google inflated rankings for its own services and scraped other companies' content, while threatening to remove those sites from its search listing if they objected.

Comment This is beyond asinine. (Score 1) 367

What in the nine hells is this whining? It's a god damn app on a cell phone!
You want to "prevent the havoc"? Turn the damn app off! The world doesn't owe your delicate sensibilities a damn thing, and not every app must censor that which you may not want to hear.

Is this some kind of joke? Is it an Onion piece? Is it one of those far-far-far-left progressive campaigns again, where everything must be acceptable to everyone, or be literally Hitler and threatened off campus? I cannot make any sense of the accusations here, as it seems to be a completely voluntary situation.

Comment Misleading assertions (Score 2) 188

>>"But evolution seems to have mainly selected biomolecules that are quantum critical, implying that that this property must confer some evolutionary advantage. Exactly what this could be isn't yet clear but it must play an important role in the machinery of life and its origin."

A scientist should understand evolution sufficiently well to not use arguments like this.

Why are we carbon based and not silica based? Either works just fine. Evolution doesn't pick the "best" option, it picks a "functional" option. After something has proven to function, evolution stops caring (until it no longer functions). Why iron and not copper in our blood? Either works fine.

Why quantum critical "bio"molecules? Because they work. There is NO other criteria. They could be better than the alternative, they could be worse, they could be the same. But they work. That is all we can assert.

Comment Re:Two things (Score 4, Insightful) 247

1) Going to another country simply to resign is not the sanest action.

2) We really need a clear International consensu that governments do NOT have extra-territorial jurisdiction. Actions taken in one country should abide by the laws of that country, not any other country - even if it affects the other country. Any country that refuses to abide by this simple rule (I'm including my own beloved United States which routinely violates this simple legal concept.), should have punitive trade restrictions placed on them.

When I'm in New York state, I have to abide by NYS laws, not New Jerseys. Similarly, when I am in the US, I should abide by the US laws, not any other countries.

Sounds like a good idea, but how does that work when the internet is involved? Does Facebook count as everywhere? What about phone calls? Mail?

It's a tricky system to get right.

Submission + - Kaspersky discovers hard-drives riddled with NSA spyware (reuters.com)

Tasha26 writes: The NSA has figured out how to hide spying software deep within hard-drives made by top brands including: Seagate, Western Digital, IBM, Toshiba, Samsung and Maxtor, giving the agency a means to eavesdrop on the majority of the world's computers.

An analysis by Russian firm Kaspersky Labs revealed that NSA found a way to install its spyware inside your hard-dirve’s firmware meaning the malware (nls_933w.dll) capable of persisting across machine wipes to re-infect targeted systems. Kaspersky said it found personal computers in 30 countries infected with one or more of the spying programs, with the most infections seen in Iran, followed by Russia, Pakistan, China, Syria, Yemen and Algeria.

Submission + - TrueCrypt Audit Back on Track After Silence and Uncertainty (itworld.com)

itwbennett writes: In October 2013 Cryptography professor Matthew Green and security researcher Kenneth White launched a project to perform a professional security audit of TrueCrypt, partly prompted by the leaks from Edward Snowden that suggested the NSA was engaged in efforts to undermine encryption. Their report, published in April 2014, covered the first phase of the audit. Phase two was supposed to involve a formal review of the program’s encryption functions, with the goal of uncovering any potential errors in the cryptographic implementations—but then the unexpected happened. In May 2014, the developers of TrueCrypt, who had remained anonymous over the years for privacy reasons, abruptly announced that they were discontinuing the project and advised users to switch to alternatives. Now, almost a year later, the project is back on track.

Comment Re:Seems ripe for abuse (Score 1) 112

I don't know, is att a big owner of content, like time warner an their ilk? Maybe they are trying to deferentiate from the competition. Seems like a good strategy to me.

It looks like fast lanes and slow lanes to me, just from a different perspective. Of course, if I'm wrong, and they build a better protocol for torrent traffic, I'm all for it. Improvements are great, and necessary.

If the new tactic is to simply prioritise torrent traffic, then it's a fast lane. What's the difference between prioritising 9 types of traffic and throttling the 10th? None at all. This could just as well be used to throttle unwanted traffic (let's say WB starts prioritising everything *except* torrent traffic).

Much like an overly broad law, it's great when it's used to improve the things we care about, but it could just as easily be used for the opposite. And should this new *great* idea be used as an argument to curtail the net neutrality rules (let's allow fast lanes but not slow lanes instead of banning both types), then you can expect the opposite usecase to come about shortly.

The one thing I'm certain of is that AT&T will happily screw you over for a dime, and any consumer-friendly initiative from them should be scoured under the looking glass several times over for the devils signature.

Slashdot Top Deals

A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable. -- Thomas Jefferson

Working...