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

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:They are burning down a city (Score 1, Funny) 203

For a REASON

So, the corruption you're worried about is something that you think will be fixed by trashing a liquor store? By looting and burning the local CVS? By burning down an almost completely senior center being built specifically to improve the local quality of life in that crappy neighborhood?

Yes, the democrats that have been running that city for decades have plenty to answer for in the way of imperfect services being rendered. But unless you think it's the city government's role to step in between two people and prevent pregnancy from occurring, or to follow thousands of kids around to make sure they actually bother to go to school, then what exactly is it you're proposing? Who is it that starts and populates violent local gangs? Who is it that kills the vast majority of those who die in that area, and scares those who aren't involved out of doing anything about it? Why is it that businesses don't see any point in risking their money to launch a venture in such a neighborhood - perhaps because they can't find employable local people to actually work there, and can't find a market for their goods and services in an area that's filled with abandoned buildings and fatherless kids running drug markets?

The problem isn't government corruption, the problem is in thinking that what amounts to a poisonous local culture is the government's area of responsibility. Those neighborhoods are crap because the people that live there can't keep their own kids under control long enough to turn them into viable members of human civilization. And those that do have the wherewithal to do so leave (along with whatever economic activity they might have represented) because the local culture is completely toxic to their kids' success.

Comment Re:Motive (Score 0, Offtopic) 203

There is a much more credible, obvious, proximate threat to life and property than there would be with some shadowy nonspecific radical-jihadist plot. Things were literally on fire, people.

A few thousand reduced-to-ashes New Yorkers might, if they were alive, argue with your dismissal of their deaths at the hands of radical jihaddis as being non-proximate, and shadowy. They are indeed quite literally dead. Multiple very non-shadowy attempts (some very successful) by the same and related groups to kill other people, in large numbers, have also happened since then.

Comment Also it seems to me it might be necessary (Score 1) 105

I guess it depends on who you believe, but there have been climate scientists that have said we are beyond the tipping point, that even if we reduce emissions warming will happen. Ok well if that's true, and if it is true that the warming will be a net harmful thing, then some kind of geo engineering would be necessary. You can't very well say "Reducing CO2 won't fix the problem, but let's do as much of that as we can and only do that and then cry about the problem!"

Comment Re:inventor? (Score 1) 480

Conglomerate steals credit & patents it

Which, of course, is BS and not at all how it actually happened. Which you know.

They guy who observed the mold's properties was terrible at communicating his thoughts about it, and had trouble getting help from chemists to stabilize the important stuff. TEN YEARS go buy, and other researchers get the work done. Then THEY travel to the US to find drug manufacturers that might be interested in taking on the complex task of mass production.

You know, pretty much the opposite of your troll list.

Comment No shit (Score 1) 253

If the problem is that the Argentine currency is unstable... well then Bitcoin is the WRONG answer. It is exceedingly unstable, it would be unstable even for a stock, never mind a currency, it moves like a thinly traded penny stock. So trying to use it for some kind of stability is just about the dumbest thing you can do.

To me, this seems like more Bitvertisement by which ever of Slashdot's editors is heavily invested in them and trying to drum up interest.

Comment Re:gosh (Score 1, Insightful) 164

Let me put it very simply: because I have no power to vote for or against American politicians, they should have NO power to influence my life.

So, should China have had any power to influence the lives of people in Japan when Japan started its whole Pacific Rim debacle some decades ago? Should the people of Eastern Europe have considered it just too rude to think about modifying the capabilities or behavior of their friendly neighbors, the Ottomans, as those neighbors gathered up a head of steam and sought to spread their friendly culture westward?

Do you live in a country that begins its legislative sessions with group chants about the destruction of other countries? Does your country aggressively support groups that state their objective of slaughtering others specifically because of their religion and/or heritage, and then indeed actually go and help them do it? Do you really think that the world isn't connected, and that people bent on an apocalyptic world view aren't a good fit for having the leverage of nuclear weapons as they seek to control, among other things, major global shipping lanes?

Do you think that just because you don't think someone else should be able to impact your life, that that will actually stop someone who thinks you should be killed for allowing your daughter to read, or for trimming your beard, etc., from not exactly seeing the world in a way reciprocal with you? Being an isolationist doesn't work when someone trapped in a brutal, medieval, theocratic mindset thinks you're suitable only for death, and thinks that isolationism by others is for the weak, and is to be exploited.

Comment Yep, usually "bad class" means "bad professor" (Score 2) 355

Bad students are certainly a thing but any time I've seen a professor talk about how bad a whole class is (and I've seen it, I do IT support at a university) is the PROFESSOR who is the bad one.

We had a guy who only lasted one semester before being told to leave. He disrespected his students, did a shit job teaching anything, and expected everyone to have advanced processor design knowledge that was PhD level or beyond. He gave them an impossible project and then raged at them when they couldn't do it.

While there may well have been a few lazy and/or disrespectful students in his class, the overwhelming problem was him. He expected everyone to kiss his ass all the time, not expect anything from him, and have education far beyond their years. With unrealistic expectations like that, of course he was disappointed in his class.

Everyone "failed" his class by raw numbers but he just curved it so in the end grades were a representation of intelligence, not mastery of the subject.

Comment And for that kind of money there should have been (Score 4, Insightful) 239

I mean if you are going to take a 75% cut, well then you can afford to spend the fucking time curating your shit. If they are going to charge that kind of cut, they can afford to have people review the content. Given that they are taking a much larger cut than the dev, it should stand to reason that goes to paying for some work on their part.

Have it where you submit a form to Valve with what your mod is, what it does, etc. They screen it to make sure it sounds like a reasonable idea, and then send you stuff to sign where you declare that this is your work, you aren't violating copyright, you've paid commercial licenses for software used on it, etc. Once they have that, mod gets submitted and then it goes off to Bethesda for QA. They test it to make sure that it does what it says, doesn't crash the game, and so on. Maybe even help fix bugs possibly. If that's all good Valve does a final check to make sure they don't see any copyright violation (maybe an automated system that flags and then a human checks i there are flags to see if it is legit) and it then gets posted.

If they were doing something like that, then ok maybe there's some justification of the price. Ya there's a big cut getting taken, which means higher prices, but you are getting something more along the lines of paid DLC. QA like that might be worth it.

However they were just letting anything and everything get posted. They were treating it with the same indifference as the rest of Steam, which is just not ok.

Comment Re:Don't forget legacy BROWSERS. (Score 3, Insightful) 218

This is tricky. It's tempting to support legacy browsers, but if you do too good a job of supporting them, you don't incentivize your users to ever get their sh*t sorted, and upgrade their browsers. It's a vicious cycle I am eager to avoid.

Yeah, but when your "users" are more properly called "customers" -- or even more important, "potential customers" -- then some web dev's desire to preach the gospel must take a back seat to doing the job the way it needs to be done, rightly or wrongly.

It's fine to push for strict browser standards when the only people who will ever see your web applications are within your own organization. Public-facing sites are a different matter.

Comment Also it is a lot of calories, and empty ones (Score 1) 630

Soda has around 100 calories per 8 fluid ounces (varies slightly with type of soda). So you get a 32 ounce drink, that's 400 calories. That's a fair bit, even by fast food standards. Most fast food burgers are in the 800-1200 calorie range (a double quarter pounder with cheese is 740 calories for reference). So you are adding 33-50% more calories to a meal with a 32oz soda.

Well the thing is, the calories in that soda won't do much if anything to fill you up. Drink as much as you like, you still feel hungry. Not so with a hamburger. While it isn't high quality nutrition, it is still plenty of protein, fat, and carbs and your body is going to be satisfied by the consumption of it.

Thus cutting out the soda really can help. You reduce a non-trivial amount of calories and it isn't likely to make you feel less full. Ya, you are still eating fast food and it is not high quality nutrition, and it is high calorie for what you get, but it is better than just drinking sugar water which is more or less what soda is.

Weight loss and eating healthy isn't an all or nothing proposition. There is better and worse, and cutting out soda is doing better than leaving it in.

Comment Re:danger vs taste (Score 1) 630

Except they aren't losing weight, they're just gaining weight at a slightly reduced rate.

But ... the administration says that slightly reducing the rate at which we add on trillions more in debt is a proud accomplishment. So, this has to be similar.

Slashdot Top Deals

There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.

Working...