Just posted this here.

Yeah, damn Microsoft for making software that just works without forcing the user to read the manual or learn anything.

The fact is that half the population has a sub-100 IQ. Those people will never grasp Linux in its current form. The solution is certainly not telling them to go and learn something -- they went through years of schooling without managing that. The solution is making software that an idiot can use and making software that an idiot can't break. Microsoft has done the first of these. Linux fails at both.

Why are there so many idiots willing to spout that Panspermia nonsense? It is batshit crazy. Its one purpose appears to be making Intelligent Design seem less crazy. Every argument that I've seen in its favor starts off with nuttery.

There is no reason that Earth should not be the first, second, and third place to look for the orginal self-replicators. And once you have self-replicators, evolution takes care of the rest.

I just installed Windows OneCare beta. It's very nice, and works well with limited user accounts. Only the administrator can let apps through the firewall, of course, but "Run As" makes that reasonably easy. (It'll be nice once Microsoft makes it easier for apps to ask for the admin password to do things like Macs and a lot of Linux distros do. On the other hand, Microsoft's way is probably more slightly more secure at the moment.)

The backup utility should come default with Windows, however. I haven't tried the OneCare method yet, but I wonder if you'll be able to restore data after canceling the service? I hope so.

I have a few suggestions for how Slashdot should improve moderation:

• Reduce the value of positive moderations for the earliest posts and increase the value of positive moderations made to later posts. The highest rated comments aren't generally the best comments. They're the first comments.
• Allow anybody to "rate" a comment once it gets to +5 This allows the best +5s to be picked out from the pile.
• Remove the Flamebait moderation. I've never seen this one used correctly.

To update my last entry, a good discussion was started by the post, but it got driven down to -1 one pretty quickly. As usual, the IQ deniers had no actual support for any of their positions. I've argued with both IQ-deniers and creationists, and I have to say that the creationists come off as more reasonable. Every once and a while they'll try to support what they say with some small piece of evidence rather than wishful thinking.

I wonder what will happen to this post about the number of people with above-110 IQs—by population:
Game development, not gaming

Mercedo's Journal

What a find. I've added him to my friend list.

Slashdot does not have any sort of Journals homepage. It needs something like what Kuro5hin does with diaries.

You can get nearly the same sort of functionality by using search, however. Therefore I've updated by sig to this: Recent Slashdot journals by all users

Since the chance of the editors adding the Journal section is slim to none, please feel free to whore this link around if you want. I don't keep a journal, but there are slashdotters who post some intelligent stuff in their own.