Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:A contest (Score 2) 60

Or do you think this is precisely the outcome he was going for? A ton of dead weight that showed itself the door, with only the rockstars left behind.

Uh... maybe I'm rooted in a quaint past, but traditionally the people who bail from toxic companies are the ones with the best options to land somewhere else. There's usually a strong correlation between that group of employees and the "rockstars" to which you refer.

So no, it's more likely that it's the dead weight being left, and the high-performers getting the hell out of Dodge because they are in a position to do so.

Comment Coastal waters only? (Score 1) 47

I'm sure there's a technical answer, but I'm having trouble picturing what kind of orbits these satellites must be in such that only land masses are covered. Not like they get to the edge of a continent, decide they're rather not swim, and just turn their orbit around in the opposite direction.

Anyone know the real reason? A quick Google didn't turn up anything obvious....

Comment Re:Better Help Facility (Score 1) 82

Ah yes, the golden days of VC++ and the tight integration into the MSDN docs. These days it's Russian Roulette as to whether you'll get a meaningful answer when you hit F1 in the code

Going back even further, I remember reporting an issue to MS about QuickC. Somehow the conversation got around to the fact that nobody at MS used QuickC for "real" development. They used the "big compiler" along with their homegrown ED editor. I was flabbergasted that they didn't see what a productivity win it was to be able to click on the compiler output and instantly be brought to the source of an error or warning. That plus having both the source code and error message on the screen at the same time.

But then, the VIM vs IDE wars continue to this day, so color me unsurprised I guess...

Comment Re:As reported yesterday: (Score 1) 238

After reviewing the charts of every COVID-positive patient at UCSF hospitals on Jan. 4, Dr. Jeanne Noble, an associate professor of emergency medicine at UCSF, determined that 70% of them were in the hospital for other reasons.” Also: Head of COVID response for UCSF's ER dept.: 'I have not intubated a single COVID patient during this Omicron surge'

Silly question that I honestly don't know the answer to... wouldn't the intubation be done after the patient is transferred to the ICU? Ya know, out of the ER dept's purview? In which case it's not all that surprising that an ER doc could make that claim without it meaning a whole lot.

Comment Re:So it's FSM? (Score 1) 110

FSM for the blindly religious

But did FSM ever actually enlighten anybody? If it did, would we still need this?

Actually, my understanding is that a faction of theologically-minded people proceeded to run with it using the angle "well, why is FSM any more absurd than mainstream religions?" Which resulted in rigorous debate between FSM and mainstream theologists, with FSM holding its own surprisingly well.

So, unclear whether anyone was enlightened exactly, but it did spur some rather novel discussion that might not have ordinarily occurred.

Comment Re:Issued a patent (Score 1) 46

If others have come up with the same idea independently, it means the invention is an obvious one .. therefore a patent shouldn't have been granted. Nowadays patents are pretty much rubber stamps with maybe one or two token back and forths with your attorney.

From my experience, the obviousness test is essentially never applied. The USPTO will look in the existing patent base for prior art, seemingly subscribing to the fantasy that if there is no patented prior art, then no prior art exists.

That was how it worked when I filed for a patent: the only feedback from the USPTO was to point to patents that were vaguely similar and we easily refuted why they didn't constitute prior art. When I was in a defensive position against a very weak patent, it didn't take much digging to find commercially available prior art that had existed for a decade before the patent was filed. Literally the patent covered a feature that was built into OS/2, among other places.

Of course, the name of that game is that it's often not worth trying to invalidate the patent after the fact, when the patent owner can just charge a nominal royalty. As such, we ended up doing a royalty contract, disabling that one small feature via the license key. If a customer absolutely needed it, we could issue a key that enabled the feature and we owed a small royalty. The irony? Nobody ever missed the feature in question, hence we never paid a dime to the patent holder.

Comment Re:Choices (Score 4, Insightful) 485

In any case, 18 is an adult. They made adult decisions and now they have to live with the consequences.

18 is an adult only by social contract. Executive function in young adults doesn't fully mature until six years later. Exposing them to a situation where they are allowed to make such risky decisions without guidance is what makes them vulnerable, and we now have a system which exploits that vulnerability.

If the student is lucky enough to have parents or mentors who can help guide them, then they are fortunate. Those who do not are easy pickins' for a system which profits from their lack of readiness to weigh the consequences.

Comment Re:Meh? (Score 1) 28

So it has a slightly larger but OLED screen for $50 more. Is that it? Meh?

Agreed. Most games (to my older eyes) are barely playable on the built-in screen as they are clearly optimized for readability on a large TV. I tried playing a couple of the games I have on the built-in screen and quickly realized the user experience was greatly diminished. So I just leave it in the dock 99+% of the time, and a nicer screen has no real utility for me.

Caveat is that I originally bought the switch solely to play RingFit during the height of COVID lockdowns, and only have a few other things on there as I'm not really a gamer.

Comment Re: Is this Apple-dot ? (Score 1) 189

Name anything besides Intel that MS has devoted more than a year or two into, as a side-project? Yes, Windows 10 ARM almost counts at this point; but as you said, their efforts seem "tepid", at best. It could be different; but so far, not so much.

Certainly no one else has jumped onto a non-x86/x64 Platform with an "all-in", sink-or-swim approach...

And so far, the results speak for themselves, especially considering this is just the beginning of their non-mobile ARM offerings!

Point taken, the analogy is loose, but Apple still isn't the only manufacturer to branch out from their original architecture. People ran Windows on Alpha for quite a long time, but of course the difference being that it was by choice.

Agreed though that Apple's move away from Intel to a chipset that wipes the floor with it from both a price/watt and price/performance standpoint is stunning. And doing it as seamlessly as one could hope for.

Comment Re:Is this Apple-dot ? (Score 4, Insightful) 189

I know, like, this is supposed to be News for Nerds. How could the sudden upending of several CPU monopolies in the laptop and desktop space with far-reaching consequences be relevant?

After decades of "Year of the Linux Desktop" failing to deliver, nobody even bothered to wonder when it would be the "Year of the Non-Intel Powerhouse". Yet here we are, merely a year away from seeing a major manufacturer expunge Intel from their product line. Head-spinning comes to mind.

Oh, wait, you're right. That manufacturer is Apple, so therefore it's not news. (/sarcasm)

Comment Re:I get a flu shot every year (Score 1) 408

Well if that is really their reason for not getting the vax; that is childish. Not all of us refuse it for that reason though. Some of us have actual principles. Like I don't use the products of abortion - which every single available covid vaccine is. Sorry I don't want to profit even in terms of my own safety from the murder of someone else. Doubly so when that someone else was entirely innocent and without any capability to defend themselves. Its unethical. You can protect yourself, you can isolate if you are so worried about covid.

Calling vaccines "a product of abortion" is a bit of a stretch: https://www.nebraskamed.com/CO...

That aside, I guess you're ok with murdering other people by becoming an asymptomatic carrier? So a willful act that causes multiple people to die in the present, is on principle, more acceptable than benefiting from science that became feasible as a result of (in COVID's case) a single death that occurred nearly 40 years ago?

Comment Re:And in related news (Score 1) 368

Everyone who will want vaccination will have access to it in US in a few months time so what's even the benefit to anyone in any of this?

You've answered your own question: the problem is that there is a huge percentage of people who will refuse the vaccine. Why these people want to prevent us from reaching herd-immunity is anyone's guess, but that's essentially the consequence of that choice.

How will this be used? Who will be asking for vaccination papers and what will the limits if any be? If someone is not vaccinated will they be denied access to employment, supermarkets, travel? Will life be made so miserable that they are effectively forced to be vaccinated? Nobody knows what passports mean or how they will be used. If people feel strongly about vaccination benefits to society then they should be advocating laws on the front end to force people to get shots under threat of violence rather than perusing backdoor attempts to accomplish something you don't have the legitimacy to pull off the right way.

You make this sound insurmountable, when we have existing examples of common-sense rules to guide us. Schools and camps require proof of MMR vaccination, airlines do not. Per your example, yellow fever vaccination is required to travel in high-risk parts of the world, but your grocery store will never stop you at the door to demand those papers. Instead, it may take 6-9 months before grocery stores and other high-traffic venues loosen mask restrictions, which is the more reasonable course of action for that particular case.

So instead of "we don't know how these will be used so let's not do it", it should be "let's put in place some common-sense guidelines to ensure that these are used equitably." Was that so hard?

Slashdot Top Deals

The first Rotarian was the first man to call John the Baptist "Jack." -- H.L. Mencken

Working...