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Comment Re:VIM (Score 1) 359

That's funny. It's almost as if some people just can't grok emacs while other can't grok vim.

I suspect you are right in this: maybe the first exposure is the one determinant factor. If you learn Emacs first (I remember trying it for the first time on my Amiga 500 - Lord, I am getting old) then you are going emacs all the way. If it's vi you learn first, then vim is the one you use. Almost philosophical.

Comment Re:VIM (Score 1) 359

Well, I was told to learn vi because... it's everywhere.

And, as I have said, while far from being a vim master, I really believe learning 20+ commands is enough to make you very productive under vim.

I have tried and tried and tried to ''get'' emacs, but I always give up after learning 5 or 6 Ctrl+something commands. Maybe I'll just give up one day and use vile, but vim is enough for my needs right now.

As the joke goes, "vi a veggie peeler knife, vim is a finely-honed, precision surgeon knife and emacs is a light saber. Most of the time, I cook, but, once in a while I need to fight hordes of battle droids."...

Comment Re:VIM (Score 2, Interesting) 359

Here is my problem in the vim-vs-emacs debate:

Vim is pretty much the standard vi/editor/$VISUAL on every Linux distribution I use. Emacs is usually an extra package. Therefore, vim is installed, while emacs is not.

Once you have mastered the basic commands of vi, and its mode dichotomy (edit/command) you can edit text in a very efficient manner. Not to mention the goodies of vim, such as "vim -d" or "vim -x". I am so used to vim that, these days, I find myself hitting the Escape key under Word or Firefox. And I still have a lot to learn!

Emacs, on the other hand, is a complex, jumbled mess, a crazy carpal-inducing kitchen sink of a program that requires you to master its twisted logic before you can actually benefit from all the lispy goodness hiding inside. In the meantime, if you master, let's say, about 20 commands under vim, you undertand that its power is in its own logic, so to speak. Vim is complex, but it seems to me much more predictable and logically organized than Emacs.

Submission + - The Open-Source Everything Manifesto

Noryungi writes: Interesting article at the Guardian about the Open-Source Everything Manifesto, the latest book by Robert David Steele "former Marine, CIA case officer, and US co-founder of the US Marine Corps intelligence activity", who posits (a) that conditions are ripe for a revolution in the USA and the UK and (b) that the only forward for humanity is by open-sourcing everything and conducting all government business — even foreign intelligence — in an open-source, let's-share-everything manner. Robert Steele is known as the inventor of open-source intelligence.

Comment Re:Also... (Score 1) 165

No, this is another case of the topic brinring out the stupid in Slashdot. Are you seriously suggesting that Golden Age comics have controversy about them similar to vi versus emacs or Windows versus Linux?

Did everyone take the original post, pick out the word "comics", and ignore the rest of it?

You don't get out much, do you?

Comment Re:Also... (Score 1) 165

I'd like to commend ''BlackPignouf'' and ''Trepidity'' for the magnificence of their comments in this thread.

Seriously: Go back to these comments. Read them. Re-read them. Savor their perfect balance of snark, trolling and irony. This is simply superb - it almost brings tears to my eyes.

Ladies and gentlemen of /., this is why the Internet was created in the first place. That, and cute cat pictures, of course.

Comment Re:A "trick"? Seriously? (Score 1, Informative) 346

He was in Hong Kong, not in the "PRC". Document yourself instead of spouting nonsense.

And he knew the FSB was going to be interested in him, he was just hoping to leave Russia ASAP to go to South America. The Obama administration revoked his passport, stranding him in Russia. Furthermore, I believe that most of what Snowden gave to Greenwald, the FSB/Russian intelligence knew already: NSA, like many other US agencies have had its share of moles.

Comment Re:Not About Growth Anyway (Score 2) 97

Champagne is a French trademark that is valid and applicable everywhere in the world, not just in the USA.

It was trademarked because French Champagne producers were frankly, tired, of inferior, sometimes even really shitty products, being sold as ''Champagne''.

In other words, if you want to sell shitty bubbly wine, go ahead and produce/sell it, just don't call it Champagne. That, for once, is a reasonable application of Trademark/Intellectual Property.

Comment Re:announcing goatsecret (Score 1) 127

There have been too many problems with existing crypto code so I've developed something better: goatsecret. Instead of relying on math, it relies on a frenchman's gaping asshole. Basically, the software breaks your message/file/whatever into small chunks and superimposes the data in the goatsecret image. Sure, it's not encrypted, but who is going to stare into the void just to get your data? No hacker/cracker/big business/three-letter-agency is that desperate.

... neither is the intended recipient of the data.
That's the only flaw with your scheme I can think of.

... Except if the recipient is French, of course!

(By the way, wasn't the goatse.cx guy American?)

Comment Re:Who Cares? (Score 0, Flamebait) 354

This is not about a plastic guns, this is about a paradigm shift that is no less momentous than VHS and later MP3s.

I am not so sure about that. 3D printing has the potential to become a very important technology, but right now, printing cheap plastic trinkets is not what I would call game-changing. But that's just me: it just strikes me as a seemingly good idea - a little bit like flying cars - that can go both ways. It can be truly revolutionary (Crete your own factory in your garage! Let a thousand entrepreneurs bloom!) or it can be the kind of thing that never really lived up to its promise. Time will tell.

And another thing: whether the printed plastic gun really is unsafe or not, I believe it illustrates the risks of 3D-printing. In other words, if you really know what you are doing and printing to specs, using equivalent or better materials than the original creator, it's great. Or you can make a complete fool of yourself, and just print it, because, well, you can! And find yourself severely maimed - or worse - because you did not check the 3D file or whatnot.

On the other hand, the next time some idiot decides to rob a bank or convenience store with a printed plastic gun, the results could be highly amusing. I can see the TV announcements from here: "Another redneck gun-toting moron gets face full of lead and melted plastic. Film at 11".

As an aside: what's with Americans and their guns? Sheesh, people, grow up. You don't need a plastic-or-metal penis to be a real man. (And let the flame wars begin!)

Comment Re:EROEI? (Score 1) 280

tl;dr Science may be easy, but engineering is expensive and we all know how hard it is to get funding from governments if you don't know the special handshake.

Except, of course, they already got funding from NASA-JPL in the past - so you could argue they do know the "secret handshake" or whatnot.

I believe (after a bit more research) that they did not get Government or other fundings because their main scientist is really controversial. He may be a plasma specialist, but his cosmological ideas also run counter to traditional views & theories.

Make of that what you will - he may be right (on Fusion power, at least), but he should have taken a more back-seat role for the (non-crowdsourced) funding effort.

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