Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Blow the whistle in other countries (Score 1, Interesting) 161

So, Germans defend the right of people to tell the world when things go wrong in other countries.
And yeah, building statues is clearly the right thing to do, especially after Snowden clearly said that he didn't want the world to focus on his person but rather on what he revealed. How about actually helping these people instead? They aren't dead yet you know.
For me it is an empty political move.

Comment Re:Hahah (Score 1) 246

Probably more than you might think. I did have ideas of burning stuff for trivial matters when I was a kid, many of my friends did and one of them acted it (thankfully, he was unsuccessful). A good thing that starting a fire is not that easy and that kids are not too dedicated...

15 is a bit too old for that shit though.

Comment Re:VR isn't the only thing we're on Pong level at (Score 1) 125

You won't believe how advanced these fields are.
It's easy to dismiss modern game design as "just better graphics" until you learn why things are the way they are. You may not like some design choices, especially if such choices are driven more by profit than player enjoyment, but there is often a lot of things going behind it.
So sure, there is room for improvement, same for graphics, but AI, GUI, plot and mechanics are mature fields, with a significant history.

Comment I have hopes with FirefoxOS (Score 1) 161

FirefoxOS is basically a web browser with JS APIs to access the hardware.

All apps use web-based technologies, which means that the only thing needed for any OS to use FirefoxOS apps is a web browser that support these APIs, no need for native code unless you really need performance. You can already run some apps on Android as using Firefox components.

I really hope that the guys at Mozilla focus on the compatibility aspect by making it easy for developers to use the FirefoxOS framework on other platforms (Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Desktop, ...) rather than attempt to compete.

Comment Re:Always the same thing (Score 1) 630

Assuming no mistake, I guess you are somehow intolerant to aspartame.
The thing is : for almost every substance, someone will be found intolerant. And I'm not just talking about chemicals, after all, diabetics can't handle regular sugar normally.
Except that intolerances like this may not show up during testing, only when the product is out in the market for millions of people to consume. And of course, a substance that make some people sick, even if it is one in a million, will get bad PR.
As a result, companies will stop using it (a good thing for intolerant people) but they will also replace it with another substance that will probably make other people sick, and the cycle repeats again.

My opinion is that we should stop sweetening everything : no sugar, HFCS, aspartame, sucralose, stevia, etc... Learn to appreciate tastes more complex than the sweetness we are hardwired to love like an addictive drug. It won't completely solve the problem but it would be a great step forward. And we should promote variety too.

Comment Always the same thing (Score 0) 630

- Unpopular substance X is used
- Scientists discover substitute Y
- Y is tested safe and approved by the FDA
- Companies massively use Y so that they can advertize "X-free" products
- Out of the now millions of consumers, a few of them develop conditions that appear to be caused by Y
- No matter how real the problem is, the information spreads wildly and Y become unpopular
- Repeat the process with Y as the new X

Comment Re:Persistance (Score 2) 359

Google is persistent. They have been trying to build a social network for years, Google+ isn't their first attempt. They bought several companies like Orkut, there is also Google Wave and Buzz. And it is obvious they failed and keeping the service in its current form won't do it any good.
Facebook is a different story, they didn't launch their service alongside myspace, waiting for it to overtake it. They grew slowly but steadily, from a glorified address book for Harvard students to what we have now.

Comment Re:They should be doing the opposite (Score 1, Interesting) 309

Remember that copyright also include include free software.
And 5 year or less copyright would be a huge blow to the FOSS community as it would make all 5 year old GPL software including linux into the public domain.
As a result we'll see plenty of software based on outdated GPL software just so that it can be made proprietary. Hardly a good thing.

Slashdot Top Deals

"A car is just a big purse on wheels." -- Johanna Reynolds

Working...