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Comment Re:Weeding out is one of the intended roles (Score 1) 86

Weeding out is one of the intended roles of Freshman Calculus.

And what is the societal benefit of "weeding out" an entire cohort of students before they have mastered the topic? It seems to me that the primary purpose is for colleges to avoid scrutiny and duck responsibilities for some deficiencies endemic to the education system.

Comment Re:less of a barrier than their terrible UI (Score 1) 55

I've been using LO pretty much constantly for the last two years (even wrote a novel on it). Like any interface, it just takes time to become familiar. In fact, I like the way Writer organizes styles and style configuration far better than Word, and often, even for DOCX files, do initial style set up and layout in Writer and then move to Word if I have to (which is seldom enough).

LO is a damned good office system. Its default UI is older, but since I used MS-Edit and Word pretty extensively back in the 1990s, it feels familiar to me. There is a ribbon interface, but I've only tried it a few times before remembering why it is I actually don't like the Word ribbon.

Comment been there done that, educate yourself (Score 1) 55

I've spent time on the difficult end of black-boxing a BINARY file format. You jokers with your XML and LABELS have it faaaaaar too easy. Here, I'll tell you my secret:

Gather as many saved files as you can, from as diverse of a group as possible. (there is NO upper limit, literally grab as many as you can) Write a short little test script to import and then export every single one. Then compare the export with the original. Refer the mismatches to the dev. I had over 1,000 test files in my suite, and in the initial release only a SINGLE flag was missed, because of all those test files, nobody implemented that feature and the dev guessed the storage would be the same as EVERY other one. (it turned out to be quite unique)

Oh and as for XML depth.... it's RECURSION. It literally does not care if it's 5 levels or 200 levels deep. (unless your IDE has a truly pathetic stack size)

So it's not difficult. QYB.

Comment Re:Anyone curious as to how? (Score 1) 34

> How does someone get access to his location data?

  You pay $50 to a data broker, AIUI.

Half of the convenience apps you download include tracking libraries. Free apps often make their money by selling your location data to surveillance companies.

Ads are included so you don't think to ask what their revenue stream is.

Stock ROM's don't prevent most of this.

Comment Re:Is 3,295 authors unprecedented? Why so many? (Score 1) 24

It's interesting to watch old movies and the credits are maybe 30 people.

If you see a modern CG flick there will be thousands of people in the credits including the barista at the coffee shop down the street from where the IT backups subcontractor's office is.

Similar idea with IMDB and basically everybody lying on their resumes otherwise.

Interestingly software had credits pages in the 80's but California prevents noncompete agreements and poaching was rampant so the opposite occurred.

Comment that is of course complete BS (Score 4, Insightful) 55

Unfortunately, since the coding technology that was used in the previous app version is different from what is used in the new app, it is not possible to recover word lists.

Oh it's most definitely possible, but they have no convenient place to put them since users can't login anymore, and so they're just going to label it as "impossible" to get people off their back. (data conversion is relatively easy to do, I do it occasionally)
And if they honestly are saying they think it's "impossible", some PHB is being lied to or there's some severe incompetence afoot.

We might see a class-action for this. It's always risky just "deleting" a "lifetime" service without at least re-branding.

Comment Re:On the flip side ... (Score 1) 105

I've not followed the whole thread but perhaps the point is that the Bible is a bunch of inconsistent bullshit from thousands of years ago which has as much relevance to anything as the musical tone generated when a mosquito farts (or perhaps less) and whose sole purpose is to dismantle any tendency towards critical thinking exhibited by those who are exposed to it?

Comment Re:Really? (Score 0) 105

They're reeing about cuts to funding for medical programs in Africa that American taxpayers were funding.

When 25% of Americans can't even afford to get their own medical care.

At least Medicine stopped injecting kids with SV40 promoters from green monkey cells from 1970-2021. Massive cancer cause.

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