Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment "very telling" indeed (Score 3, Insightful) 157

Just asking this question (in a serious context) is foolish and ruining America:

Greenwald's argument is very telling: that society can rely on corporate interests for protection. Is it true that representative government is a lost cause and that lawmakers would never knowingly yield authority?

The enemies of freedom want us to be asking fsking moronic questions like this!

**of course 'representative government' isn't a lost cause**

The fact that we are even putting this on /. is the thing that is actually "very telling"...it shows people have forgotten the basics of being a free individual

Comment Re:Nuclear Test Ban? (Score 1, Troll) 523

well, if you're sure then i believe you...it's just that if there's no ban then it'd be crazy not have been developing it for space...

so we could have been using nuclear in our spacecraft this whole time?

see, like any kid in the 80s with an interest in space and too much time in the library, i wondered why we didn't have a RAMJET powered single stage to orbit space plane powered by a big version of 'mr fusion'

or something like that anyway...the X planes were on the cusp back in the 60s for crying out loud...

i thought there must be some kind of archane law like that, otherwise it would be foolish not to use nuclear power...

but if you're sure...

Comment what is good research? (Score 1, Troll) 111

Mr. Gladwell, thanks a bunch for taking questions from us! I read you book 'Blink' and it was definitely value-added, esp. the story about war games...and how they gamed the war games.

My question: How do you, personally, evaluate research science? How do you differentiate the good research from hype? What is your process for evaluating scientific research?

I ask because everyone in media is quoting "research" now..."pop science" is a thing in our culture...I'm interested in how *you* a person known for writing about science, evaluates the research.

___________

When I did data analysis in grad school, any human survey research would automatically send me to the Methodology section to see **the actual text of the questionaire** that was given. I find that helps me fight through the hype of an unscrupulous article

Comment not disaster (Score 1, Insightful) 69

aw, c'mon now!

everyone in the known universe wanted to see those harpoons...they didn't launch...that's a failure...

same with the retro-booster

but it is nonsense to call it a disaster

a 'disaster' is a shuttle exploding, or a probe failing because of metric/english unit conversion errors (google it)...

for this mission...if Rosetta had missed it entirely, no rendevous...or if the lander had totally not worked...maybe that's a 'disaster'

but this is not that

Comment true (Score 0) 337

what you say is true, but i think your attitude is a bit off...

sure those are failures, but ESA has alot of catching up to do...how many ESA astronauts have been killed on the launch pad?

how many ESA shuttles have be lost?

ESA should celebrate success wherever they find it...

no excuses of course...they should just...do better next time!

Comment Re:free market (Score 1) 219

Linux isn't a total solution for education/academia but it's definitely in the mix all over the place

at my last university, all the computer labs were iMacs that could boot into windows or the reverse...keyboard and mouse were standard on all...it really was just preference

it also depends on where you tried to implement Linux...for graphic design as much as i hate it they have to use Adobe CS which doesn't reliably run on Linux...obviously GIMP should be part of the cirriculum, but you can't go in there with janky Ubuntu ACS installs and expect them to say yes

Comment Re:awkward fenced swimming pool (Score 1) 135

alice/bob = if Bob can figure it out, then you can...theoretically...the same way Bob does. I don't think this is an earth-shattering claim.

one-time pad = if and only if you destroy the key sheet...from the wiki: "Both Alice and Bob destroy the key sheet immediately after use, thus preventing reuse and an attack against the cipher."

Bob/Alice as hostage...one way to intercept the message is to stand next to Bob with a gun to his head...if you get my meaning...no this is absolutely not any proof that all crypto is breakable...but once it gets to the receiver, and decoded...it's not crypto anymore...its just some info in a person's head

thanks for responding...i learned a bit about Claude Shannon I didn't know...

also, I don't think my assertions were that far off base from the start, but "perfect secrecy" does definitely exist in theory just as any message that can be received can be intercepted in theory

Slashdot Top Deals

An authority is a person who can tell you more about something than you really care to know.

Working...