Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:This is good progress (Score 2) 145

But interestingly the very fastest lap was with an electric vehicle: https://nurburgringlaptimes.co...

Gas or diesel powered cars are in the tuning stage, not rapid development. Modern electric vehicles are in their infancy and they are still in the rapid development stage. There will come a point where it just becomes pointless to create gasoline powered super cars.

Comment Re:I really like these statisticians (Score 1) 153

I wouldn't say it will never catch on. Big tech firms are notorious for their heavy use of data to make decisions, to the extent that they collect so much data it's turned into a PR problem for them. There was the famous "50 shades of blue" rant by an ex-Google designer some years ago where he lamented that visual design was put through measurement rather than managers approving redesigns based on their personal perceptions.

Arguably one reason tech firms dominate is that they use evidence based management more frequently than other kinds of firms.

Comment But will it be Windows compatible? (Score 3, Interesting) 167

Sounds great if they can pull it off, but designing a modern OS with these features isn't that hard (by which I mean, it's really hard, but not so hard only Microsoft can do it). But migrating Windows itself to that state - now that's hard. It's also the only thing that really matters. Otherwise ChromeOS got them licked already.

Comment Re:Capitalism (Score 1) 357

I fully agree that Google seems to have gone downhill in recent years but to say it doesn't use the internet to decentralise its workforce is ridiculous. It has offices all over the world with teams that routinely work across different countries, all on their internal network. Why do you think the killer feature of Google Apps is internet based collaboration? It's much more globally distributed than most firms are.

Comment Re: Speeding fine (Score 2) 109

Why are you so angry? GDPR is clear about exactly nothing, I've read it. If you broadly agree with strong executive power you'll think GDPR is peachy and wonderful and people arguing with it are just stupid or malicious. If you think law should clearly enumerate in exacting detail what it forbids or allows you will think GDPR is incompetent and probably intended for political advantage.

The DPO issue is exactly like every other part of the GDPR - so vague as to be entirely open to interpretation. "Only organisations that do large scale data processing and collecting"? Yeah? What's large scale? What's processing, exactly? What is the precise definition of collecting? What does the term 'responsible manner' mean? None of these things are obvious and all can be argued with without limit.

Do you seriously believe Google hasn't invested huge sums of money in trying to be GDPR compliant? Do you seriously believe CNIL has precise and detailed guidance they followed when reaching this decision? If you do I wonder how much you've really dealt with regulators. Because I have and this is playing out exactly as I predicted - nothing these companies can do, no matter what, will ever be deemed in compliance. GDPR is a fine factory.

Comment Re: How France understands computer use (Score 2) 109

Pulling out doesn't mean blocking access to all EU IP addresses. It means shutting down EU subsidiaries, at most. ISPs would then have to decide whether to block google.com or not, but, good luck with that, given how many third party websites load things from Google servers.

The idea that the EU market is so large the EU can pull whatever nonsense it likes is probably going to be tested severely in the coming years. It looks increasingly like a lawless place - GDPR is a classic example of a law that says nothing and everything simultaneously, in which enforcement is entirely political. But there are many other such laws. The idea that the EU is a fair and predictable place to do business is increasingly stressed, and there are plenty of ways to make money from people in it without needing to follow EU law, no more than everyone in Europe has to follow every aspecft of US law to sell products to it successfully.

Comment Re: Who would have thunk? (Score 1) 715

Well, here's my view. I've played BF1 but that's my only Battlefield game. I'm not a big gamer anymore and never play outside of winter, got other things to do.

I am not an expert in World War 1. But I bought BF1 because I liked the trailer. It seemed pretty darn realistic, certainly about as realistic as it's possible for a video game to get. It starts with you playing soldiers who get killed again and again, relentlessly. The starting sequence of BF1 really impacted me, it makes you realise the scale of the slaughter and hopelessness of the fighting. in ways a po-faced documentary cannot. No matter what you do, you die within seconds ... and then the camera moves to another soldier. You play that soldier, you die within seconds regardless of what tactics you try. There is no way to survive. They made their point very well.

The rest of the story mode was equally well done, the multiplayer was fun. The graphics were great! The locations of real battles were used, the weapons looked convincing, the soldiers looked convincing ... oh, wait. Except for the black men in Germany's army?? Since when did World War 1 Germany have an army filled with black dudes? Since never? This is the country that just 20 years after World War 1 was fighting a war of white supremacy. Also one day the game updated and suddenly the startup picture was of a female soldier.

I admit, it did bother me. I put it to one side and continued to enjoy the game, but it bothered me for all the great reasons explained elsewhere on this thread - because I know the game developers tried hard to be realistic in other areas and deviated in these specific areas because they believe shitting on men like me is virtuous. It's not some holy commitment to realism that caused me to be bothered. It's because I know the aggressive and unpleasant tactics that would have been used to create this unrealism, because I know why DICE did it.

I resent it because I know that they were trying to subtly rewrite history as they genuinely believe that if I see a woman holding a gun when I start my game at night, tomorrow I'll go give a job or a pay rise to the women in my team ... not those awful 'privileged' white men. I resent how delusional this belief is, and how they think they can influence me by lying to me about what WW1 was like. I dislike where this is going because all totalitarian societies in history have been characterised by ideologies of racial hatred, rewriting of history and massive lying in attempts to manipulate the population.

And ultimately, when I saw the adverts for BF5, I thought about whether to buy it or not. Again, I'm not a serious gamer. If I had bought it I'd probably have played it for maybe 10-15 hours tops in the next 12 months. If I'd been in love with BF1 I might have made an impulse buy, Xbox Live certainly makes it easy, but I quickly Googled BF5 and saw people complaining about the even more amped up SJWism and all that it implies. So I decided to pass .... the slight temptation to play a game with nice graphics and music was outweighed by the apathy I felt at financially supporting people who hate me for no reason. I bought Red Dead Redemption instead although so far I don't think I've made it through the tutorial, I'm still stuck on some snowy mountain.

People like me are sort of like the dark matter of the video gaming universe. We don't make or comment on Youtube videos, we don't play intensely, we suck at multiplayer and on the few times we try it we always come last in the league tables with 15 deaths and 1 kill if we're very lucky. But we pay the same for our copy as everyone else. It doesn't take much to sway us from one title to another. Maybe that's part of why BF5 didn't sell well.

Comment Re:Like Weinstein? (Score 2) 344

So Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos both repeatedly raped their wives, then? Because both men asked out women who worked for them, repeatedly, before they said yes. Gates I believe even looked up Melinda in the company's HR system.

The idea that persistently asking for sex = rape is idiotic and extremist, even by the standards of 30 years ago. No woman was forced to have sex with Weinstein. They made the hard-headed decision that their career as an actress would benefit from doing so and effectively slept with him for money. They could easily have become actresses without interacting with Weinstein - just maybe not getting to the top as easily as sleeping their way there.

Comment Re:The politicians are just as bad (Score 1) 470

Which British political parties are talking about kicking out Italians who have been here a decade? Because I'm pretty sure there are none: they've all said anyone already here can stay indefinitely. Your "fear" isn't justified by anything real, which rather proves Cederic's point.

As for the extremist overlords, you realise it's the EU itself that insists on a two year exit period during which partial de-integration is completely disallowed? And that it's the EU that has been responsible for the total lack of progress so far? If you're so scared of de-integration why not go protest in Brussels and get them to be allow a staged process? Maybe you suspect they won't care about what you think.

Comment Re:Yeah yeah (Score 2) 470

Why should they take any responsibility for a mess? They didn't cause these problems.

Indeed, the idea that the EU is so unreasonable and hard to deal with that we must leave is exactly what Brexiteers have been arguing for years, and they were repeatedly ignored. Instead ever more power was given to Brussels by pro-EU politicians, powers the EU now isn't hesitating to use to create as many problems as possible for the UK.

As far as I can tell, if the Brexiteers had been more influential, if they had been able to throw the brakes on EU integration or partially reverse it without the EU forcing a full exit as a consequence, things would be a lot more peaceful and a lot more reasonable. They had the option when Cameron tried to renegotiate. However, the EU only recognises one option as being legitimate - total and complete submission ("integration") to the will of Brussels. Any attempt to negotiate a partial integration or partial collaboration simply makes them start shitting about cherries.

Slashdot Top Deals

UNIX is hot. It's more than hot. It's steaming. It's quicksilver lightning with a laserbeam kicker. -- Michael Jay Tucker

Working...