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Comment: Re:Internal only? (Score 1) 242

by Apathist (#43744355) Attached to: Leaked Microsoft Video Parodies Chrome Ad
While I agree that judging without prejudice is usually the best approach, I think in this case the liberal use of the second-person personal-pronoun (ie, "you") would have been a giveaway about who the intended target audience actually is... unless you think they are going to all this trouble to convince internal-only Microsoft employees not to use Chrome?

Comment: Re:Pull Your Head Out of Your Ass (Score 5, Interesting) 542

by Apathist (#42860543) Attached to: Pope To Resign Citing Advanced Age

People like you are what's wrong with organized religion and one of the primary reasons of why I am atheist. The people that run the Vatican and those in the past that have stood up and protected that power structure at all costs are fallible mortals. Shut up and deal with it or I'll throw you in with Scientology.

I dunno about you, but I'm an atheist because there simply aren't any gods... but an anti-theist because of the way faith and religion makes people behave. Small difference, perhaps, but I wouldn't want people to believe that my objective interpretation of reality is merely a response to the way those pricks behave.

Comment: Re:In the suicide-bombing age... (Score 1) 274

by Apathist (#35413494) Attached to: Cold Warriors Question Nukes
So this, don't get it. What happens after you've used up your quota of virgins? Do they magically get restored, or do you then have to spend eternity with a pack of thoroughly "used" women...? 'cause, assuming a standard rate, 72 virgins would only take a couple of months to get through, and I'm told eternity is much longer than that...

Comment: Re:Even easier than that. (Score 1) 245

by Apathist (#32003784) Attached to: Fake Antivirus Peddlers Outpacing Real AV Firms

This is just a side effect of the "real" anti-virus/security businesses having no interest in reducing/mitigating the "virus" threat. It makes too much money for them.

Said with all the arrogance and presumption of someone who knows exactly nothing of what they speak. Speaking as someone who spent over a decade as an anti-virus researcher and anti-virus engine developer, the truth is that it is infeasible for AV companies to keep up with the flood of (generated) malware that engulfs modern PCs... and, believe me, it's not for lack of trying. Have you ever seen how aggressively they complete over the VB100%* award?

* That award, like most AV testing is a sham (testing against a very small yet widely known sample of existing malware), but the point still holds: they really do want to catch the malware, if for no other reason than that the company that has the best detection rates can make the most sales.

Comment: Re:Do we really want him writing code? (Score 2, Informative) 293

by Apathist (#31219666) Attached to: After Learning Java Syntax, What Next?
When the number of items is small; when insertions and deletions are common and/or time-critical; when ordering is important...

Any of the above could alone be good enough reasons to use a linked list vs. a hash table, and obviously more than one criterion would make a stronger argument. But this is a very one dimensional discussion; in any of those cases, perhaps an array or an ordered tree would prove more appropriate... each case must be matched to a particular data structure on its own merits.

Comment: Re:$25,000 barrier to entry (Score 5, Insightful) 270

by Apathist (#28631805) Attached to: Experimental Fees Settle Royalty War For Internet Radio

Why are we all so busy blaming Pandora for this?

IIRC, they were just trying to save themselves from getting annihilated by these preposterous fees... and now we're giving them a hard time because they didn't save every other tiny internet radio station all at once?

Seems to me that we won the battle, but not the war (yet). So let's celebrate that instead of flagellating those fighting on our side, yeah?

Businesses

Meetings Make You Dumber 207

Posted by Zonk
from the not-cumulatively-thank-everything dept.
Maximum Prophet writes "Robert Heinlein once said that the committee was the only life form in the universe with three or more bellies and no brain. MSNBC reports that his statement may have some statistical truth to it. Researchers are finding that meetings are actually bad places to be creative. You're not actually 'dumber' when you're in the meeting, just more likely to lose your creative edge. Studies have now shown that, as collaborative primates, the more often a possibility is mentioned the more likely the group is to go along with it. Individuals placed by themselves were more likely to come up with imaginative alternatives to products, for example."

I would much rather have men ask why I have no statue, than why I have one. -- Marcus Procius Cato

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