Comment Re:NASA bot in FFXI (Score 1) 102
Three grand is peanuts. How about spending $100,000?
Comment Innovations in Brewing (Score 1) 137
What are some of the most interesting and promising recent innovations available to the home brewer?
Comment Re:USPS should offer a subscription service (Score 4, Informative) 338
I don't know what USPS service you have, but in my experience:
1. USPS is rarely less expensive sending packages than FedEx or UPS.
2. USPS has slower delivery times than FedEx or UPS.
3. USPS has a much higher rate of package damage than FedEx or UPS.
4. USPS has a generally less helpful and less polite staff in the offices than FedEx or UPS.
It is inferior in every way. We can talk about delivery of letters to mailboxes, but I'm sure you know that the mailboxes on the side of the road are considered to be property of USPS. It is illegal for anyone other than USPS to deliver a letter, package, or anything else to that mailbox.
This means that if FedEx or UPS wanted to enter that business they would forced to set up secondary post boxes or deliver directly to the house by foot. I don't know how much this enters into the economics, but god dammit, that's my fucking mailbox.
I paid for it. I dug the hold. I set the post. I poured the concrete. It's my mailbox. Their dictatorial annexation of the mailbox that came from me is exceptionally douchey and for that alone USPS should be smacked upside the head.
If you have USPS service so exceptional that you find it to be truly better than all other alternatives, well, great, good for you. It just doesn't seem to mirror the experience that I and everyone else I know has.
Supreme Court Upholds Michigan's Ban On Affirmative Action In College Admissions 410
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: "The Supreme Court, by a vote of 6 — 2, has upheld a Michigan law banning the use of racial criteria in college admissions, finding that a lower court did not have the authority to set aside the measure approved in a 2006 referendum supported by 58% of voters. 'This case is not about how the debate about racial preferences should be resolved. It is about who may resolve it,' wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy. 'Michigan voters used the initiative system to bypass public officials who were deemed not responsive to the concerns of a majority of the voters with respect to a policy of granting race-based preferences that raises difficult and delicate issues.' Kennedy's core opinion in the Michigan case seems to exalt referenda as a kind of direct democracy that the courts should be particularly reluctant to disturb. This might be a problem for same-sex marriage opponents if a future Supreme Court challenge involves a state law or constitutional amendment enacted by voters.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor reacted sharply in disagreeing with the decision in a 58 page dissent. 'For members of historically marginalized groups, which rely on the federal courts to protect their constitutional rights, the decision can hardly bolster hope for a vision of democracy (PDF) that preserves for all the right to participate meaningfully and equally in self-government.' The decision was the latest step in a legal and political battle over whether state colleges can use race and gender as a factor in choosing what students to admit. Michigan has said minority enrollment at its flagship university, the University of Michigan, has not gone down since the measure was passed. Civil rights groups dispute those figures and say other states have seen fewer African-American and Hispanic students attending highly competitive schools, especially in graduate level fields like law, medicine, and science."
Justice Sonia Sotomayor reacted sharply in disagreeing with the decision in a 58 page dissent. 'For members of historically marginalized groups, which rely on the federal courts to protect their constitutional rights, the decision can hardly bolster hope for a vision of democracy (PDF) that preserves for all the right to participate meaningfully and equally in self-government.' The decision was the latest step in a legal and political battle over whether state colleges can use race and gender as a factor in choosing what students to admit. Michigan has said minority enrollment at its flagship university, the University of Michigan, has not gone down since the measure was passed. Civil rights groups dispute those figures and say other states have seen fewer African-American and Hispanic students attending highly competitive schools, especially in graduate level fields like law, medicine, and science."
Comment Re:Please change the name! (Score 1) 360
Could not agree more. Sticking Libre! on the front of everything is getting annoying.
Ask Slashdot: Hungry Students, How Common? 390
Gud (78635) points to this story in the Washington Post about students
having trouble with paying for both food and school. "I recall a number of these experiences from my time as grad student. I remember choosing between eating, living in bad neighborhoods, putting gas in the car, etc. Me and my fellow students still refer to ourselves as the 'starving grad students.' Today we laugh about these experiences because we all got good jobs that lifted us out of poverty, but not everyone is that fortunate. I wonder how many students are having hard time concentrating on their studies due to worrying where the next meal comes from. In the article I found the attitude of collage admins to the idea of meal plan point sharing, telling as how little they care about anything else but soak students & parents for fees and pester them later on with requests for donations. Last year I did the college tour for my first child, after reading the article, some of the comments I heard on that tour started making more sense. Like 'During exams you go to the dining hall in the morning, eat and study all day for one swipe' or 'One student is doing study on what happens when you live only on Ramen noodles!'
How common is 'food insecurity in college or high school'? What tricks can you share with current students?"
How common is 'food insecurity in college or high school'? What tricks can you share with current students?"
Why No Executive Order To Stop NSA Metadata Collection? 312
An anonymous reader links to this editorial at Ars Technica which argues that "As chief executive, Obama has the power to reform the NSA on his own with the stroke of a pen. By not putting this initiative into an executive order, he punted to Congress on an issue that affects the civil liberties of most anybody who picks up a phone. Every day Congress waits on the issue is another day Americans' calling records are being collected by the government without suspicion that any crime was committed. 'He does not need congressional approval for this,' said Mark Jaycoxx, an Electronic Frontier Foundation staff attorney."
Comment Build it at home? (Score 1) 88
The original idea was simply to encourage others to build their own open source laptops at home
Yeah, um, let me see, I'll just fire up my clean room and source some rare earth stuff and plug in the old CPU creator I got at the garage sale, and I can bake screens in my oven I just add some plastic and finger paint and voila!
IPCC's "Darkest Yet" Climate Report Warns of Food, Water Shortages 703
The Australian reports that "UN scientists are set to deliver their darkest report yet on the impacts of climate change, pointing to a future stalked by floods, drought, conflict and economic damage if carbon emissions go untamed.
A draft of their report, seen by the news organisation AFP, is part of a massive overview by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, likely to shape policies and climate talks for years to come.
Scientists and government representatives will meet in Yokohama, Japan, from tomorrow to hammer out a 29-page summary. It will be unveiled with the full report on March 31.
'We have a lot clearer picture of impacts and their consequences ... including the implications for security,' said Chris Field of the US’s Carnegie Institution, who headed the probe.
The work comes six months after the first volume in the long-awaited Fifth Assessment Report declared scientists were more certain than ever that humans caused global warming. It predicted global temperatures would rise 0.3C-4.8C this century, adding to roughly 0.7C since the Industrial Revolution. Seas will creep up by 26cm-82cm by 2100. The draft warns costs will spiral with each additional degree, although it is hard to forecast by how much."
The work comes six months after the first volume in the long-awaited Fifth Assessment Report declared scientists were more certain than ever that humans caused global warming. It predicted global temperatures would rise 0.3C-4.8C this century, adding to roughly 0.7C since the Industrial Revolution. Seas will creep up by 26cm-82cm by 2100. The draft warns costs will spiral with each additional degree, although it is hard to forecast by how much."
Comment Re:Nope (Score 1) 230
The single biggest problem with PHP is the tendency for old code and old programmers to keep their bad habits [...] code reviews will be rushed (or nonexistent)
I would be very surprised to learn that code review quality is language dependent. I always thought it depended on one's organization and the people working on the project. I also thought that a bad programmer would be bad no matter the language, too.
Here I was, writing well-formed PHP for over a decade (I had a background in C, C++, and Java before I started with PHP), using well known software patterns, dependency injection, and other best practices, but then I read this comment. Your well thought-out and decisive commentary has certainly changed my mind.
I haven't been writing good code at all! Obviously this is the fault of the language. I've never provided a good code review either, again, because of the language. That magic quotes thing? The thing that has been discouraged for the past decade, could always disabled, has been disabled by default many years, and has been removed completely? Yup, still a problem. It's the languages fault though, PHP made me use it, even though I could turn it off!
On a serious note, PHP does have its problems, but code review quality? Come on. Complaining about an ancient, deprecated, removed feature that nobody used (it wasn't a workaround, either - it was supposed to be a convenience feature)? Saying that the language itself creates bad developers? You're really reaching.
Poor education, bad mentoring, laziness, and plain stupidity make bad developers. Bad developers make bad code reviews. Bad developers rely on crap like magic quotes. Your problem isn't with the language. It's with the people who churn out crap. Let me tell you a secret: Bad developers will be bad no matter what language they're using.
Comment Re:CSS variables? (Score 1) 256
Clunky indeed. Prepending var- in front of everything? It sure looks like a hack bolted on in desperation to provide this kind of functionality. I'm afraid I might need to DIM something next. Or perhaps even PIC.
Sure, it provides some nice functionality, but the great thing about the preprocessors like SASS and LESS is that they're very flexible, generally easy to read, and very extensible.
Thing is, with the tools available, I'm not convinced that CSS variables are even necessary. Do we really want to be injecting code into a style language? Wouldn't it be better to keep things relatively simple and leave the complex things to external tools, reducing the amount of cruft that browsers "have" to support?
Comment Re:Ridiculous. (Score 1) 914
Do you find the story objectionable, or do you find it objectionable to find this story on Slashdot?
I agree to the former but not the latter. I think it is very, very important that these kinds of stories get LOTS of exposure. A bright light shining on the people who think this is a good idea is the best way to prevent them from taking the next step - implementing that idea.
Obama Administration Transparency Getting Worse 152
schwit1 writes "The government's own figures from 99 federal agencies covering six years show that halfway through its second term, the administration has made few meaningful improvements in the way it releases records. In category after category — except for reducing numbers of old requests and a slight increase in how often it waived copying fees — the government's efforts to be more open about its activities last year were their worst since President Barack Obama took office."
Comment Re:CALEA (Score 2) 114
I hope you're not implying that having a (D) in charge instead of an (R) would make a difference. Both parties are full of filth.
Comment Re:I refuse to play "online" (Score 1) 270
Not to mention that most online gaming communities are full of sociopaths. An online game may have amazing gameplay, but if I'm being called names every minute or to I lose all interest.
