Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:What if... (Score 1) 133

What if...

Instead of a stupid troll you were actually interested in the answers. Interested enough to either take some classes on the subject, or expend some effort educating yourself.

We live in an age where the vast majority of the world's information is available for little to no cost or effort, yet you actively choose to remain ignorant.

Step 1: Understand what science is. http://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/whatisscience_01
Step 2: Take a class or look it up. http://space.about.com/cs/astronomy101/a/astro101a.htm
Step 3: Keep digging

Comment Re:Is banishment legal? (Score 1) 271

Well, keeping you out of the public eye is an appropriate punishment when you're convicted of a political crime. But we shouldn't recognize political crimes.

If people want to pay attention to what this guy has to say because he gyrocoptered in restricted airspace, that's their business. Even though it's a pretty stupid reason, it shouldn't be a judge's role to sit in judgment of that.

THere's an important flip side to freedom of speech that is often overlooked: freedom of listening. As a citizen you should be able to hear what the government doesn't want you to hear, unless the government has a compelling reason, and even then the restrictions should be narrowly tailored. "That guy just pulled a stupid stunt," is not a compelling reason to intervene in what people choose to listen to.

Comment There is the small issue of academic freedom. (Score 1) 320

You can't fire a faculty member because outside the scope of his duties he expresses an opinion you don't like -- even if it's a clearly crackpot opinion. If you could, Stanford would have kicked Linus Pauling out when he became a Vitamin C crackpot.

The difference, though, is that Pauling was a sincere crackpot -- brilliant people are often susceptible to crackpottery because they're so used to being more right than their neighbors. Dr. Oz is a snake-oil salesman; when he's faced with people who are educated -- not necessarily scientists but critical thinkers -- in a forum he doesn't control, he speaks in a much more equivocal fashion. That shows he knows the language he uses on his show and in his magazine is irresponsible.

So selling snake-oil isn't crackpottery, it's misconduct. But somebody's got to find, chapter and verse, the specific institutional rules of conduct Dr. Oz's misconduct violates. There will have to be due process, particularly if he's a tenured professor, which will probably require lesser disciplinary measures than dismissal be tried first.

Comment Re:yeah, not too surprising (Score 1) 161

You fool.
When he spoke about the spying on Americans, he was doing the right thing.
When he spoke about the NSA spying on other nations and terrorists, he became a traitor.
The reason is that the NSA was set up to SPECIFICALLY to spy on other nations, terrorists, foreigners, etc.
And consider that just about every nation in this world attempts to do the SAME THING, and regards it as legal, means that it is legal for NSA TO DO THE SAME.

Comment Re:Isn't Cheaper, the American Dream? (Score 1) 294

LOL. Obviously, you are being sarcastic, and these companies deserve it.
I had been offered jobs from multiple Indian contracting houses. In each case, they offered me less than 1/2 (and once, less than 1/3) of what the job paid. And the Indians that got the jobs, with less experience, education, etc, were literally paid more than double what I was offered.

Tata and others are full of shit.

Comment Re:Wow. Just wow. (Score 1) 325

So... They didn't test the iPad / content combo to establish usability / feasibility / usefulness prior to dropping all this cash?

That's speculation. Feasibility is no guarantee of performance.

I read the attached article, and there were two specific complaints cited. The first was security, which is a non-functional requirement; that could well be a failure of the customer to do his homework on requirements but presumably a competent and honest vendor could have done a better job on security. It's often the vendor's job to anticipate customer needs, particularly in projects of the type customers don't necessarily have experience with.

The other complaint is that the curriculum wasn't completely implemented. If the vendor failed to deliver something it agreed to, that's purely the vendor's fault.

Sometimes bad vendors happen to good customers. Bad vendors happen more often to bad customers, but every project involves taking a calculated risk.

Comment Re:Sign off. (Score 3, Insightful) 325

Well, until the details of how the contract was awarded and how the vendor failed have been thoroughly investigated, it's premature to fire anyone.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for accountability and decisiveness, but picking someone plausible and throwing them under the bus isn't accountability. In fact that may actually shield whoever was responsible.

Comment Re:Proprietary Services (Score -1, Troll) 179

Open is nice, but the Cyanogen people need to pay the bills.

There's no point to CM if it's not secure. If they're installing Microsoft blobs by default, it's not secure. We know Microsoft openly cooperates with the NSA on eavesdropping technology - I even wonder if this is a subtle warrant canary.

Assuming the least-bad possbility, then if they want to offer an easy-to-use tool to install a tested Microsoft bundle from the CM servers, then fantastic - for people who want to make that trade-off.

Comment Re:Advanced Voting Solutions (Score 1) 105

Virginia is overwhelmingly Democratic at the state executive level, so it's not that surprising that they voted Democratic at the Federal level. Most of VA's population growth over the past decade has been in the urban and suburban NOVA and Tidewater areas as well, which are Democrat voting strongholds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

PA has been voting Democratic for decades, so it seems neither of us know WTF you're talking about.
http://www.270towin.com/states...

Comment Re:Getting undercut by those... (Score 1) 294

"What these people don't understand is that they are lowering said life style."

What do you expect them to think? "Oh, sorry, I don't want to affect your much higher standard of living. I'll just stick to my subsistence living with my postgrad education then."

Would you care that you were "lowering said lifestyle," if half the standard of living where you're going is multiple times better than the standard of living where you are now? Probably not. I certainly wouldn't.

The blame doesn't fall on people wanting to work for a better life. I don't blame them at all, and most of them are good people, just like anyone else. I do blame a system that is stacked toward hiring foreign nationals before citizens. That's a policy problem and a regulation problem, and to a lesser extent, a problem with the businesses that take advantage of these policies -- although they're making good business decisions.

Most of the blame, though, lies squarely on the shoulders of elected officials, and the people who elected them or failed to participate. We can't just not pay attention and then expect things to work themselves out. Nobody is going to give more of a shit about your interests than you do, so make your voice heard, and tell others to do the same.

The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy. -- Montesquieu

Slashdot Top Deals

FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed -- it is hardy, occasionally blooms, and grows in every computer. -- A.J. Perlis

Working...