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Comment Can't replicate (Score 4, Informative) 135

I can't replicate it either. The YouTube video claims I double-tap the home button but the second tap is slightly longer? By the end of the first tap it's already bringing me back to the lock screen, i.e. by the time I'm pressing down for the second tap, I'm already being taken back to the lock screen. iPhone 5, updated last night to 7.0 (11A465).

Submission + - Another Climate-Change Retraction (thinkprogress.org)

jamie writes: It seems every time someone twists global-warming science into 'good news,' a retraction is soon to follow, and so it must be for Slashdot. Yesterday, the conservative Wall Street Journal published yet another apologetic claiming "the overall effect of climate change will be positive," by someone who (of course) is not a climate scientist. Today, Climate Progress debunks the piece, noting 'Ridley and the WSJ cite the University of Illinois paper to supposedly prove that warming this century will be under 2C — when the author has already explained to them that his research shows the exact opposite!' We went through this same process last year, with the same author and the same paper, so it's pretty embarrassing that he 'makes a nearly identical blunder' all over again.

Submission + - Gore Misquoted on Hexametric Hurricanes (washingtonpost.com)

jamie writes: In a story on Thursday, Slashdot and its readers had a little fun at the expense of Al Gore, who was quoted as saying that the hurricane severity scale was going to go to 6. A correction was made the next day. The author of the piece that Slashdot linked now writes "I retract the balance of my criticism." Turns out Gore was misquoted.

Luckily for Gore, this is the first time he's been ridiculed for something he didn't actually say. Well, except for Love Story, Love Canal, farm chores, and everyone's favorite, inventing the internet.

(The original Slashdot story is at http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/08/22/2111247/for-overstated-claims-gore-tesla-upbraided-by-nws-nhtsa-respectively and its central link now includes the Washington Post's correction.)

Comment Re:He's right - Android is eating iOS's lunch (Score 0) 692

OK, I'll bite. Without using brand names, please tell me what you can do (e.g., use cases) with an iOS device that you can't do with an Android device of equal or lessor price?

I can give an iPod or iPhone to my kids and trust that they're not going to download any malware or spyware or SMS-overcharging trojans onto it.

All other things being equal, the inherent security of the iOS ecosystem is leaps and bounds better than anything Android is even capable of coming up with.

Comment Re:sick of windows at work (Score 2) 251

OSX isn't competing with Surface, per se, and OSX may be a POSIX compliant system, but why does Apple do things like make Safari non-compliant with regard to standards like the W3? One web site I worked on had the worst rendering with Safari. I mean, almost useless W3 non-comliance. We had to develop a plug-in to deal with some of our stuff. Firefox, IE? No issues. We could use the stock browser components.

What website would that be? I prefer to do my testing in WebKit browsers, personally.

Comment Hate the artist, love the art (Score 1) 1448

My mom is a huge opera fan, and my brother goes along with her often when he can. It's not my thing, but I respect the history of the art form and I don't hate the music.

As a German-American family, perhaps, they're especially fond of the Ring Cycle. When they get a chance, they buy tickets to all four productions and go see them one after the other.

This is despite the fact that everybody who knows anything about opera knows that Wagner was a *huge* anti-Semite.

They both know this, and reject his point of view. But that doesn't stop the music from being great.

Now, it's a bit different when the artist is still alive and making money off his work, I'll grant you. But all the same, I have a hard time judging Card's work based on his personal points of view.

Yes, his Mormon-influenced views about people marrying young and as virgins and then having at least three to five children are a prominent influence on his plots. But I don't remember seeing anything anti-gay in his stories, either. He seems to keep that in a separate compartment from his creative life.

I'll go to see the movie, and judge it based on its own merits.

Comment Re:Hypocrite (Score 1) 447

But it's not a hypocritical act to sacrifice yourself so that others may have greater freedom.

If he was sacrificing himself, he would have stayed in the USA after distributing all the documents he'd stolen and proudly stood trial for what he'd done.

Instead, he ran for it. And now he's having to deal with the unfortunate reality that most countries aren't going to stick their neck out to protect him from the United States if there's nothing to be gained.

Comment "Everyone has the right..." (Score 1) 447

"Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution." That's not the same as saying that other countries are obligated to grant you asylum.

Also, I'm personally not sure if this is a "case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes". Theft of classified government data does not, in my opinion, qualify as a political crime.

Comment Re:Oh dear (Score 5, Insightful) 656

"Good at computers" ?

you should put that on your résumé.

That was about my reaction.

Long bio short: I was *great* in math in high school, pretty good at calculus, but differential equations and their non-algorithmic problem solving methods just confused the heck out of me. (In hindsight, I should have asked my teachers for more help.) At the end of my freshman year I was introduced to NCSA Mosaic and then Netscape 0.9, started teaching myself HTML and, later, JavaScript, and got a job coding web sites. I still do that.

I took to programming so well, I wished I'd tried it sooner. Turns out that programs and math proofs use the same sort of abstract logic -- get from point A to point B using these pieces.

I always liked computers, but I don't suppose I'd describe myself as "good with computers." That means USING software, not WRITING it. Writing software requires judicious applications of logic and optimization, with varying levels of analysis and computation sprinkled in.

And the further you get in programming, the more advanced math you need. Graphics? Uses trigonometry. Animation? Matrix algebra. You probably won't need calculus or differential equations unless you're actually doing engineering, but how do you know at this point that you won't?

Heck, my state university wouldn't even let me get a CompSci minor without passing a class in circuit design, and you'd better believe I needed to know algebra when designing a binary multiplier.

My point is this: computer science IS math, just with a different vocabulary. Being a CS major because you're "good with computers" is like being an auto mechanic because you're "good at driving".

Math isn't about numbers, it's about logic and problem solving, and computer science is even more so. If you can't even find something to enjoy about simple algebra, then with all due respect, you're in the wrong field.

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I tell them to turn to the study of mathematics, for it is only there that they might escape the lusts of the flesh. -- Thomas Mann, "The Magic Mountain"

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