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User: VortexCortex

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Comments · 5,203

  1. Re:Case in point on Machine Learning Susses Out Social-Network Fraud · · Score: 1

    No matter how often I've warned my friends against forwarding this stuff, they'll do exactly what they are told because they don't want to be accused of not caring about puppies or war heroes or orphans or Jesus or whatever.

    The end result is, no matter how hard I try to avoid it and how careful I am to restrict my account only to friends and colleagues I personally know, I still get spam from these phony accounts plastered all over my news feed.

    Well that explains why I get so little SPAM. My friends aren't any dumber, but they don't care about puppies or war heroes or orphans or Jesus or whatever.

    Puppies are food. War Heroes are instruments of death. Orphanages are rackets (seriously, try adopting a child some time), and Jesus stole my hubcaps.

  2. Re:Come on CEO... on Microsoft CFO Quits · · Score: 5, Funny

    Have you ever SEEN Ballmer? I have talked to him in person once and have seen a talk (incoherent rant) by him once. He is the bigges problem they have at MS. They have others but he is by far the biggest. He has the same reality distortion field Jobs had, but it affects only him.

    Hmm, sounds like he's such an ass that instead of a distortion field he's become large and dense enough to collapse into a singularity.

    Interestingly, it seems something like Hawking radiation is occurring at the edge of the singularity's influence: The Chief Officers begin radiating away from the company's event horizon giving one reason to those on the outside, while the actual reasons for departure fall back inward toward the singularity.

    If only there were a name for such phenomena where you become so dense and toxic that no intelligible thoughts escape you and everything within your reach turns to crap -- Sort of like a social version of a blackhole... hmm. Any ideas?

  3. Hmmmmmmmm. on Omnidirectional Treadmill: The Ultimate FPS Input Device? · · Score: 2
  4. Re:Now how to fool you inner accelerometer? on Omnidirectional Treadmill: The Ultimate FPS Input Device? · · Score: 3, Funny

    Very cool, but your inner ear is going to break the illusion - just as your retinal muscles are going to remind you that it isn't quite depth you're seeing with that stereoscopic headset.

    Progress of technology - new ways of getting motion sickness!

    I have it on good authority that the humans won't get motion sickness if they're exposed only to the simulated environment starting at birth...

    /me scrolls down

  5. Re:Well done to all involved on Privately Built Antares Test Flight Successfully Launched From Virginia · · Score: 3, Insightful

    May we never get to thinking that sending up a rocket into space is easy...

    We may never get to thinking that buliding a mechanical computation device is easy... However, regardless of how difficult that very complex engineering task is, you can't deny it's down right affordable now.

  6. Re:The Science Article in Question on In Development: An Open Source Language For Cell Programming · · Score: 2

    If you let these researchers keep going, their sentence structure will become self aware.

  7. Re:Please no Java or C#. on In Development: An Open Source Language For Cell Programming · · Score: 1

    If biologist-designed file formats are anything to go by, both Java and C# are likely to be an improvement over whatever they come up with.

    Java and C# are VM languages.... Have you seen the bytecode they output? It actually disproves the Intelligent Designer hypothesis.

  8. And the winner is... on Walking Distance from Wired: Kevin Kelly Surveys the Tech Scene · · Score: 2

    Sounded like a cool idea, so I decided to make my own version of the story. But, the thing is, I Live in Houston, TX. My office is just outside the inner loop. I have to walk 2 miles to get to the closest grocery story. I once biked across the entire city, It took the better part of two days -- I had to get a motel room and sleep, and tried not to traverse the known "bad" parts of town alone in the dark...

    So it turns out here's my list of businesses within walking distance, i.e., the distance I would walk a Labrador before feeling bad about animal abuse:
    Starbucks
    Wells Fargo
    Taco Bell
    United Way
    Starbucks
    Shell (fuel station)
    Citibank
    Burger King
    Kroger (grocery store)
    Pizza Hut
    Texaco
    Starbucks.
    Super Cuts
    Coin-op Carwash
    Mobile (fuel station)
    Sonic (fast food)
    McDonalds
    Frost (bank)
    A Fire Station
    Starbucks
    Half Price Books
    Starbucks -- Which you can see from the other one.

    Well I ended up getting all my breathable vitamins for the day. Notably absent: A police station, or doctor's office...
    For my next trick I'll be listing the individual ingredients of prepackaged food wrappers as steep in a burned coffee bean bath and gorge myself.

  9. Re:Facebook rules! on Facebook Revealed As Behind $1.5B "Catapult" Data Center In Iowa · · Score: 1

    I have a feeling Facebook's whole family is going down.

    Tell us more about this feeling. Is it like there's a party in your pants and everyone's invited?

  10. How to be retarded. Step one: Buy a Mac on Stolen Laptop Owner Outwits Mugger, Police, and the Media · · Score: -1, Troll

    This is the stupidest shit ever.

    All our informant remembers is waking up on Oxford Street when the sun came up to find his Macbook Pro had gone, along with his credit cards, which were subsequently to used to run up a £7,000 bill.

    A fucking Mac was stolen from a game designer: "He's f*cked with the wrong nerd", so now this moronic game designer is spying on some clueless fellow who likes chubby girls (which need love like anyone else, I might add).

    So, imagine your friend of a friend's acquaintance doesn't want his laptop anymore, and sells it to you for a really reasonable price. Now you're having your character assasinated by some hipster indie game dev fuck who thinks he's the digital version of Super Man. Oh, and even if that guy is the actual mugger, he can say he's the one who got it from a friend and now he gets off free: It's his word against yours -- "Are you sure this man mugged you, or did you just SPY ON HIM so many times that you think he's the one?"

    Stupidest. Shit. Ever. You call the cops. If they tell you to piss off because bigger shit than stolen laptops is going on in the world, then you fucking piss right off, dork. It's called "insurance", if you care about shit you get it insured. The police report is a formality to make it less likely you're trying to defraud the insurance company... Not because the cops are breaking out the drag-net to hunt down the dude that YOU HAVE NO EVIDENCE stole your laptop. Hell, for all we know you got drunk and gave it to him.

    Despite the uncertainty as to exactly how "Plumpy" might have come into possession of the laptop, the author is unapologetic about the blog, which he now plans to expand with video content of the unwitting subject.

    “My plan was always to go public with this if the police failed to act. I don't feel a connection with him as such but I am at last feeling some closure. And it's a lot of fun.

    That's right. It's a fucking excuse to fuck with some other sad fucker -- Hey, guess what? I feel sorry for the fucking guy now. He clearly needed a laptop or else he would have sold it for smack by now, right? The owner was being a careless self entitled prick with it anyway. Hey, here's a fucking Idea. You've got the guy's address then why not send him a letter or ring 'em up and ask for your shit back, like a fucking HUMAN would.

  11. Re:No because on The Eternal Mainframe · · Score: 2

    POTD

    I bet someone who orders high end men's shaving products, and then shops for $150 designer shirts, will soon be seeing online ads for gay wedding consultants mysteriously popping up on the news sites.

    Meh, I just use this VPS proxy for Slashdot and Google gives me ads for Tentacle Grape Soda and Russian Mail-Order Brides.

  12. Re:Mainframes and server farms the same? Hardly on The Eternal Mainframe · · Score: 1

    I suppose if you stand back from about 3 miles and never bother to understand the underlying architcture and how it scales while ignoring the flexibility of server farms as opposed to very much a box that mainframes put you in (with very minor flexibility) then yeah -- they're exactly the same.

    I think that was his point exactly:

    "In his latest essay, Rudolf Winestock argues he's about as bright as a box of rocks and that the movement to replace him with a bag of mostly water is simply re-inventing the dumbness, and will result in the same level of advice they were being given in the first place. Also, it's a conspiracy."

    You fail to see through to the real message hidden between the lines, which is: It doesn't matter what you say if you're talking to idiots, so long as you're slightly more knowledgeable than them and the sounds you make are vaguely recognizable, they'll probably believe you, especially if you get some other idiots to fall for it first then cite you by name.

    I personally believe the submission is a call to action about Wikipedia, but with this level of performance art you never can tell, truly.

  13. Re:Ending maintenance also ends control on The Eternal Mainframe · · Score: 2

    And their answer to every one of your questions is: WAY more that I even need! And this is a USED box!

  14. Re:George Carlin: Baseball vs Football on Baseball Software Can't Score What Jean Segura Did Friday · · Score: 1

    Ah, typo bug in my description: s/decrement/increment/ -- the counters are never decremented unless they are being reset (or refs are in debug mode). This was an oversimplification anyway, not bad considering I haven't played the game in 20-odd years. Might as well take the opportunity to explain the "score glitch": A runner tried to make it to 3rd base, and another player took up residence on 2nd as the guy was chased back to 2nd base. The returning runner would have been safe -- It was up to the guy on 2nd to run back to 1st to maintain the order of the queue and 1 runner per base, but since he didn't he would have been out (considered between 1st and 2nd still -- bumped backwards in the queue by the returning runner). When the fellow who should have been safe on 2nd thought he was tagged out, he stepped off base, but then he realized the guy on 2nd wasn't in play anymore -- Not being able to return to 2nd due to the ball there, he rolled back to 1st base. A simple linked list would have handled this just fine: When they both arrived at 2nd, the guy there would have been considered as being in transit to 2nd, and when the tagger tagged them both, the score system would have marked the guy coming from 1st as out. When the safe runner made it back to 1st base without someone tagging him out, a simple linked list would have allowed this state change as well.

    I've got a sinking suspicion it was PEBSAC though, (problem exists between scoreboard and chair). Blame the computer when they mess up inputs. Doesn't seem like a very tough problem to solve. GIGO, as they say.

  15. Re:George Carlin: Baseball vs Football on Baseball Software Can't Score What Jean Segura Did Friday · · Score: 5, Informative

    Does England not have the room for a proper field

    Hilarious, because cricket grounds are *much* bigger than baseball grounds ;p

    Okay here is a deal: Explain me baseball, and I will explain you Cricket, because frankly baseball is totally whacky for me (not that cricket is any simpler, mind you...)

    In baseball the object is to iterate as many tokens as you can through a 4 slotted dequeue FIFO (implemented internally as a self referencing doubly linked list); Iteration run time is earned by the batting team by causing the hardest to solve ball sorting problems possible for the other team (most entropic ball state). The opposing team manages a counter labeled "Outs" initialized to 0 each "inning". If the counter is incremented to 3 the teams switch objectives, and a the out counter is reset. Each full iteration of a player though the buffer increments a team's "run" variable. The team with the greatest runs wins (typically by earning the most loop execution time).

    The team managing the out counter distributes themselves optimally around the field such that they'll be able to detect the ball's location within a short period of time -- AND -- so that they can sort the ball back to their prime ball holder, the "pitcher". To get a chance to increment the out counter (and thus eventually have their turn at bat, and increase their runs) the pitching team gives the batting team a chance to hit the ball (and cause the ball sorting problem). While the ball is being sorted player tokens can iterate through the FIFO buffer nodes (bases). Only one additional player can enter base queue per sorting problem created. The bases are allowed to be null (no players), and players can move in both directions around the loop.

    A pitcher must give adequate chance for the ball sorting problem to be created by passing the ball through a volume called the "strike zone" which is created by clipping the prismatic space above home plate to the vertical interval between the batter's knees and the midpoint in their chest. The midpoint is a point half way between the shoulders and top of the pants. Note: Creating an impossible planar strike zone by pulling one's pants down to the knee and bending at the waste to bring the shoulders in line is considered extremely rude "unsportsmanlike conduct". If the batter does not swing at a valid pitch then it is counted against them as a "strike". If the bat is swung at the ball and no valid sorting problem is created it is considered a strike whether the ball passed through the strike zone or not. If a batter accumulates 3 strikes it is converted to an out and their iteration is preempted. The pitcher may throw outside the strike zone to trick the player into leaping at an unfair starting condition, but if the player does not swing at such invalid pitches then they are considered unfit "balls", four such balls allows the player to automatically reach 1st base safely, and if occupied the bases will increment, possibly causing a run to be scored. This is called Walking, since there is no danger of being interrupted. Walks in the park are quite nice, but do not make for good games.

    A batter must cause a valid sorting problem with the ball within 3 attempts (swings) at valid pitches, or they lose their chance to enter the FIFO and the out counter is decremented. Valid sorting problems are those where the post-hit ball travel vector is within the area formed by rotating a ray extending from home through base 0 until it intersects base 3 (inclusive). If the valid ball is hit out of the park (or strikes the pole erected along the base lines to make the problem space visible, while above the fence) then the ball sorting problem is considered infinitely complex and the iteration queue can be emptied of all players actively in the FIFO buffer and they all count as runs -- This is called a home run. The ball sorting problem is considered too simple if the ball is caught from out of the air dir

  16. Re:More "designer" bullshit on Improving the Fedora Boot Experience · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yep, that's why I ditched UEFI. Flashed my /boot/ right into the BIOS with Coreboot. Just as secure as UEFI if I want it to be, and the system literally boots instantly.

  17. Re:Why? on Improving the Fedora Boot Experience · · Score: 2

    That's been taken care of by modern file systems.

    Also, do you apply security patches to your kernel on-the-fly somehow, or how come you don't have to reboot?

    What is this bait? I mean, really? Every damn time someone mentions uptime?
    Fine. I'll bite.

  18. You're done. on Ask Slashdot: How To Track a Skype Account Hijacker? · · Score: -1, Troll

    I would just call the FBI and tell them you're thinking about breaking the fucking law, so they should just put the cuffs on now.

    Then, to ensure I had no plausible deniability, I would crow about finding the hijacker's info on Slashdot and ask for help hacking, like some kind of idiot who got the first post and doesn't know what to say.

  19. Must be replaced by better options. on TSA Accepting Public Comments On Whole Body Airport Screening · · Score: 1

    We know why these damn things sell so well. They're every teenager's dream come true: X-Ray Glasses!
    The problem is they were build by morons, and have no adequate safety testing.

    We must replace the scanners with better options, while considering the actual target market.
    It's clear we need non-ionizing under the clothes imagining systems that replace people's bodies with those of a supermodel's.

    Put out a call for engineers married for at least seven years, or with children. They have the required experience.

  20. Re:Ah, now the delays make sense on TSA Accepting Public Comments On Whole Body Airport Screening · · Score: 1

    But I will still not give up my liberty for my security. I will die for my Freedom and rights, including being a victim of an attack.
    Unfortunately, I am not the only one in this country... so I must yield to societies decision.

    Now you're jumping to conclusions, and ignoring the obvious solution.
    Do you think it a futile endeavor to convince society to make the right decisions by sharing your mind with others?
    Have you no drive to become everyone in the society? This is why you will be assimilated: As predicted, your resistance is futile.

  21. Re:Anteres is the most overrated event on Weather Delays Antares Launch From VA Spaceport · · Score: 1

    Seriously, OSC has built little to NOTHING of it. All they have done is assemble other ppl work. And most of that, came from overseas.

    Typical fanboi. Protip: This isn't a Google or Apple or MS article.

    If history has proven anything its that affordable reusable components are a good thing.
    The more spacers the better, IMO. I wish them luck.

  22. Re:Fool question (Start taking your meds) on Weather Delays Antares Launch From VA Spaceport · · Score: 1

    If you get back on your medication the voices won't bother you so much. All those people who are out to get you will not seem so threatening, and the hidden messages on TV that only you can understand will not be broadcast any more.

    Sounds boring. Fuck the meds, I say.

  23. Re:Timing? on TSA Accepting Public Comments On Whole Body Airport Screening · · Score: 2

    Isn't it a little late for a public comment period?

    Welcome to America. We shoot first then ask question later.
    If you're far enough north we'll do it half in French, then apologize.

  24. Re:Had this same problem with women on Baseball Software Can't Score What Jean Segura Did Friday · · Score: 5, Funny

    I've had this same problem with women. One day you can get to second or even third base, then suddenly you're sent scrambling for first again.

    At least you got back to 1st base! I was accused of playing short stop when I should have been tending home plate -- I know! Makes no sense, right? That's what I said. Anyway, I held up in the dugout for the rain delay and when I finally was able to step up to bat they had called in a pinch hitter from the bullpen!

    That was a pretty foul play, but that's not even the worst of it. The guy turned out to be a catcher batting for the other team! He should have been disqualified so I rushed the mound, but thankfully a Ref was being a real friend and held me back. The managers got involved, and I found out this was more about contract politics than anything. Eventually everyone was ejected from the game for unsportsmanlike conduct.

    Now I'm out in deep left, fielding balls all by myself, again...

  25. Re:Flying car? on Hyundai's Flying Car Flies For an Audience · · Score: 1

    There is no flying car there. All I see is a muti-rotor platform, lifting a mannikin. A scaled-up Parrot AR. Whoopdi freakin do.

    Yeah, and how can they even consider a man removing the tire from a car, then slapping it on a bicycle and using the stored energy to motor away on "flying" at all is beyond me. That driving centipede thing was totally land based too -- It practically CRAWLED up stairs!

    Hell, the compact transforming motorcycle thing and mobile tea-cup ride were barely even aerodynamic! None of the vehicles even have wings! One was just a Guy in a Plastic Bubble! It's a travesty to call this a new line of flying cars!

    Oh, wait, they didn't call it that... It's just a bunch of folks competing to make the most FUN, and innovative personal transportation systems they can think of -- Yep, flying quadrotor was actually the least interesting, IMO, but someone had to do that one, eh?