Slashdot Mirror


User: zeromorph

zeromorph's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
250
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 250

  1. Oh, Jamie, oh Jamie on Is Apple's Attack On Flash Really About Video? · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Either a strange coincidence or an badly disguised case of self-promotion:

    jamiegau writes:"Here we have ... The writer concludes ..."

    and the blog's name is "JamieG Analysis".

    If you submit your own article why not say it?

  2. Re:The Swedes on China's Great Firewall Infects Other Countries · · Score: 1

    the swedes, troll ... oh, sweet irony

  3. Re:Is it even needed? on Facebook Goes After Greasemonkey Script Developer · · Score: 1

    Well, it does not block that the applications write on your friend's page ;-) It blocks that this appears in your news feed on your page and that is an enormous relief.

  4. Re:The Free World or the Corporate World on German Data Retention Law Ruled Unconstitutional · · Score: 1

    Although I sympathize with your view on the role of corporations in politics. In this specific case it is all about independent and reasonable judges. Also something to cherish.

  5. Bright future to go. on Google Go Capturing Developer Interest · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It is an interesting concept for a low-level language and could be pretty important. And since the gccgo compiler has been accepted by the gcc steering committee (link), I am expecting Go to stay and prosper.

  6. Closed Ecosystem on Apple Bans Jailbreakers From the App Store · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That is one of the huge drawbacks of such a closed ecosystem.

    However, the original post is less agitate than the summary:

    Is Apple starting to ban those associated with jailbreaking?

    The answer is probably not. [...] however it definitely would put an iron grip on those who pirate free software. The details of what is going on remain extremely murky but maybe they are taking down some of the bigger players.

  7. Breaking News on Are All Bugs Shallow? Questioning Linus's Law · · Score: 1

    Breaking News! Neat one line slogan not completely accurate! More in our special feature at eleven.

  8. Re:For those who didn't RTFA on Bill Gates Responds To Apple iPad · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It would have been interesting to here some of Gates' reasons behind his statement.

    Indeed it would be, from TFA:

    "You know, I'm a big believer in touch and digital reading, but I still think that some mixture of voice, the pen and a real keyboard - in other words a netbook - will be the mainstream on that"

    So he says that he believes in touch and digital reading, but voice, pen and keyboard will be the mainstream on that!?

    WTF, seriously WTF! Either they mangled his statement beyond recognition or he has a very strange perception about what the iPad is, where digital reading is now (and what its problems are) as well as what most people do with their computers and smartphones

  9. You are somewhat right and somewhat wrong. on Anonymous Speaks About Australian Gov't. Attacks · · Score: 1

    Anonymous is a non-hierarchical group with no objectively defined membership and no legitimate representation, but saying that it is nonexistent is strange.

    That would be like saying coffee-drinkers or speakers of American English are nonexistent, just because they have no representative and there is no objective way to determine who belongs to this group. (Does drinking a single cup of coffee once in your life make you a member or only regular consumption? And what qualifies as regular? ... )

    Anonymous exists, it is currently troubling the Australian government and has troubled Scientology before. It seems to be hard to grasp - for some minds and prosecuters alike ;-)

    However, for that reason it is a non-story. I totally agree with you there.

  10. Re:We Are Anonymous on Anonymous Speaks About Australian Gov't. Attacks · · Score: 1
  11. Re:first post on How Easy Is It To Cheat In CS? · · Score: 4, Funny

    And you failed. QED

  12. Other Consequences on Does Personalized News Lead To Ignorance? · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It will affect social interaction in some way or the other, since you cannot be sure people heard something just in was in your news. This will lead to coordination problems due to the lack of common knowledge. (There is a nice book about culture, coordination, and common knowledge Michael Suk-Young Chwe.)

  13. Re:OpenBTS? on Open Source GSM Network At Dutch Hacker Convention · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Because they are running Siemens base stations and for that Harald started OpenBSC. Both projects are under GPL and are in close contact as far as I know.

    Harald had a talk at 25C3 about their project, and were running a small setup there in the basement. AFAIK, because all frequencies are sold in Germany - there should be at least one for independent testing, but they sold all to the telcos - maybe that's why they are running the larger test in the Netherlands now.

  14. Re:Twitter is a buzzword on Opera Being Composed On Twitter · · Score: 1

    Hey, relax! The twitter hype will pass and people will see it as what it is. It's like the 90s .com-hype - a lot of bullshit is thrown around, but it will pass, some things will stay, because they solve problems or enhance something, most will pass.

    For myself, I can't see what is it about Twitter, doesn't do anything with me, maybe I'm to old or to whatever. Nearly none of my friends really uses it. But then, for a lot of people it seems to be the current thing, so what.

    You and me, we poor souls are still clinging to /. - after all the years and all the bullshit here, that's pretty pathetic, too. (BTW I'm not as new as my number suggests.)

  15. Re:Depending on who you believe on Earth's Period of Habitability Is Nearly Over · · Score: 1

    But on Biblical scale a few hundred years is quite along time. You know, it's not that Earth is older than 6000 years or so. - But then, what would Xenu do?

  16. Re:Dang! Things were just getting fun on Earth's Period of Habitability Is Nearly Over · · Score: 4, Funny

    Yep, me too. So long, and thanks for all the fish ...

  17. Re:Many different system on How Famous OS Logos Got Started · · Score: 1

    In the Berlin and Kay classification, red, green, yellow and blue would be stage five. (Basic colour terms). Colour terms are fun, if you are in idle mode anyway, check out: Test your own color terms

  18. Re:Much ado about nothing. on Entropy Problems For Linux In the Cloud · · Score: 1

    http://xkcd.com/221/

    Probably obvious to everyone - just to make sure Mr. Munroe gets the credits he deserves.

  19. Re:Umm.. why? on Even More Restriction For German Internet · · Score: 1

    Yes I think this is important, the law mimics laws in Scandinavia or Australia. Technically, it will be a blacklist for IP-addresses somehow connected with child pornography. I think it is a good sign for Germany that the debate is lively and the resistance rather fierce.

    The German speaking Internet is all at rage:

    There are songs on youtube, comedians are taking rhather hard on the minister, protest is organized on the net and in Berlin in September

    The law is badly made, probably highly ineffective (just take a DNS-server outside of Germany, use Tor, whatever) and may have far reaching consequences. The resistance against it, however, is well organized and and I am rather optimistic that might have some effect, at least in the long run.

  20. Re:Bad metric on A.I. Developer Challenges Pro-Human Bias · · Score: 1

    Yeah, they were the worst that ever happened to (obligate) anaerobe organisms and their rise was probably one of the major disasters in earth history, as far as I understand it (IANB), hitting hard on a up to then succesfull survival strategy. Turned out quite well for us, though.

    This, however, emphasizes the problem of valuing survival, over human-like intelligence, as an indication for intelligence - it's more or less chance. In a highly interconnected, changing system survival depends on situational (chaotic?) factors. That is all fine, but how this is connected to any sensible meaning of "intelligence" is not clear to me. Survival indicates solely that: being good in surviving. This results in a reliable chain of transmission, but this is not intelligence.

    If Mr. Barbalet thinks A.I. is about reliability of transmission or survival that is fine with me, but then please call it not "intelligence", but "(artifical) system stability" or "(artificial) transmission reliability".

    p.s. to GP they can be quite harmful to animals (including humans).

  21. Re:Missed the best feature! on Emacs Hits Version 23 · · Score: 5, Informative

    They also missed to mention the full unicode support, which is quite nice.

    Anyway they could have linked to NEWS.23.1, which has a concise list of new feature.

  22. Re:World improves on UK's FSA Finds No Health Benefits To Organic Food · · Score: 1

    It's incredible how far off a thread can get over a few posts, I started out by defending what you call traditional genetic engineering as a technology. (The poster I responded to seemed to suggest that it's not.) - For me both technologies can produce benefits.

    I only wanted to argued against the benefits brought by the big agribusiness. That is all. I have no problems with genetic engineering (breeding or controlled modification). There are dangers there, as with more or less every technology, and it's not rational to deny that - but the technologies are fascinating.

    Genetically modified food brought a bunch of nasty side effects, like DRM-like crops, biopiracy and other problems associated with patents on beings. I think this are serious issues, but this are not problems of the technology, but with our usage of it.

    Thanks for making me clarify my position, I got derailed, during the argument. No thanks for calling me stupid.

  23. Re:World improves on UK's FSA Finds No Health Benefits To Organic Food · · Score: 1

    Ok, I'll bite.

    Well considering they were the first to genetically modify plants, you can stop wondering.

    This is incorrect, first you are talking about commercial uses, and not genetically modification in general. Second, Calgene were the first to commercially produce genetically modified food (Flavr Savr). Later they were bought by Monsanto, which is not that a big contribution by Monsanto.

    However, even if that particular company had never done a single beneficial thing for anyone, your argument is fallacious.

    Not much of a argument you bring here. I accept that one could argue that some genetically modified plants have some benefits overall, but I personally have a hard time to see them, after removing the whole PR-bullshit that surrounds them. I think there are good arguments that they are in the end mostly only beneficial to the companies that sell them. This is however open for discussion.

  24. Re:World improves on UK's FSA Finds No Health Benefits To Organic Food · · Score: 2, Insightful

    But organic food processing is a technology and not always and necessarily an old one.

    There is an attitude among many people that if it is distributed, divers, and non-destructive it's not technology and if it involves large companies, big industries and has fatal side effects it's technology. I think that this attitude is utterly wrong.

    In the end technology just means instruments and procedure that assist you getting things done, and their instrumental character defines a good technology, not whether or not a consortium can make big bucks with it.

    I have a hard time seeing what improvement Monsanto (for example) brought to anyone than themselves, I'm not sure organic agriculture technology does badly in comparison with the "agribusiness" technology, at all.

  25. Re:Lol... on Microsoft and Yahoo Reach Deal · · Score: 1

    I actually avoid Google search. Don't get me wrong, it is still the best and not always and not easy to avoid, but I love GMail and I really don't like all my searches and emails in hand of a single company.

    My search engine of choice is ixquick. It has a very good privacy policy, e.g. you can use https and it's not storing IP addresses - I'm looking at you Google Inc. - that makes it the first place for me to go. Ixquick uses - among other engines - Bing , but I couldn't care less.

    Most people here at slashdot are not MS-phobic, but hell, there are good reasons to distrust MSFT. This however is true for any company, so I for my part maintain a relaxed, unagitated distrust against every company (or governmental agency) and try not to depend on any single company too much.