A bit of a whoosh there: Firefox was the tiny fast lightweight browser last week (that's the joke), before Chrome became the tiny fast lightweight browser browser yesterday. As for tomorrow, well, it'll probably be on a smartphone :)

Isn't that even better? That way trolls will just leave without trying to get back at you or other asshattery, and the good users won't see any disruption, so you probably wouldn't gain much of a reputation as an unreliable site. Is there a downside I'm missing?

Instacloner? What instacloner? I distinctly remember a duplicator with an ethicator (and built-in moral compromise spectral release phantasmatron, naturally), but instacloner isn't ringing a bell.

And don't forget about the transmogrifier gun! A great advance in the field of transmogrification.

Also, there's Google's cached version.

But regardless, I'd probably remove it, too, since there's a huge, unreasonable, internet shitstorm over nothing. Yes, their example is oversimplified, but it's intended for the average college freshman (not always the brightest tool in the shed). It's also an example of things they would be wise to avoid, not a rule. If you don't know how to secure your router, it's probably best not to set one up in your dorm room.

Having not seen the episode Drakkenmensch is referencing, I cleverly used my reading skills to deduce that "over there" references the "genius school" that Bart was sent to, and "this system" refers to the sort of system that the various linked articles (and, indeed, this very Slashdot discussion) are about. Reading is fun!

There are a bunch of alternate themes that come with a default install, and all the other themes have the buttons on the right. Unless you specifically want everything else to follow the default theme, it's really quite easy to fix with no downloading required.

I think the value of the Turing test is that strong AI would be able to pass it, so if something fails the test you know it's *not* strong AI. If a system passes the Turing test, well, it may be strong AI, but it's not conclusive.

Well, we could have way more efficient queues if we had unisex bathrooms. Are there any objections that wouldn't be satisfied by having isolated stalls (i.e. floor-to-ceiling walls and doors without cracks to see through and which lock reliably)? I'd be totally in favor of that. Does anyone have a problem with washing their hands in view of someone of the opposite gender?

A more general comment on "self segregation": isn't all segregation "self segregation"? What's the difference between "We want to keep them away from us" and "We want to keep ourselves away from them"? The obvious distinction is majority vs. minority -- when the minority does it it's "self segregation" -- but if you're still looking at the granularity of an ethnic group or similar, it's no better.

If an individual wants to join a private group, that's totally fine and reasonable. If a group of Saudis decide that all Saudis should be segregated by gender, is it ethical to force that on the rest of them?

(Answer: No.)

You jest, but there are some really good short films which are shared on YouTube. A few random examples:

Schwarzfahrer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFQXcv1k9OM
Validation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cbk980jV7Ao
Complete History of the Soviet Union: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWTFG3J1CP8

And yes, I know that's a different definition of "quality" from the one used in the summary. I'm responding to a joke :P

The "baby/bathwater" saying is only applicable when the proverbial baby is actually valuable in some way. Preventing only the autocompletion of a few random words seems more like throwing the soap suds out with the bathwater.

The only ones I'm aware of are those who play Nethack (or its variants) on a server like nethack.alt.org :)

There are more details here.

Personally, I'm just gonna sit back and watch this unfold *grabs popcorn*

Quite honestly, I'm surprised this didn't cause some sort of panic...

That's more of an adblock-equivalent, and I found it lacking when I first tried it (I don't remember my specific complaints, and it may have gotten better). The more direct noscript-equivalent is "NotScripts", which is quite simple and works pretty nicely.

Indeed, I was shooting from the hip a bit. I didn't mean to argue that integer factorization *cannot* be NP-complete, in the same way that I wouldn't argue that NP != PH or P != NP. However, among experts in the field, it's generally expected (not known, not proven) that all those things are true. When I said it would be "surprising", I meant that many well-informed people would be surprised. I like using words to mean what they mean.

Basically, yes, it is possible that P = NP = CoNP = PH, but it's reasonable in many contexts to assume otherwise.

As for NP=CoNP implying NP=PH, that was actually out of my notes for a computational complexity course I took. There's a proof in these lecture notes under Theorem 3 (not the course I took, and I haven't checked the proof in detail, but it looks about right).