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User: jejones

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  1. Re:Looking in the wrong places on X-Prize Founder Wants Ideas For Fixing Education · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I don't know about child abuse, but... from Mamoru Iga, "Suicide of Japanese Youth" (Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, v.11, Issue 1, pp.17-30): "The uniquely intense stress due to the Examination Hell (shiken jigoku) not only generates a basic drive for Japan's economic success but also contributes to a high rate of young people's suicide."

  2. Huh? Did they stop? on Is It Time For Hacker Scouts? · · Score: 2

    My sole experience in Scouting was with an Explorer post at what was then the Oklahoma City Western Electric works where my mother worked. A group of us (I remember two sisters and their brother and myself) went there, I forget how many evenings a week, and learned FORTRAN on an IBM 1130 and FOCAL and PDP-8 assembly language (on a PDP-8, of course). That would be around 1973 or 1974.

  3. Should government rule our schools? on Tech Billionaire-Backed Charter School Under Fire In Chicago · · Score: 2

    At least these schools give one a choice. Unfortunately, I bet that everybody still has to fund public schools whether their children go there or not--and while that's precisely analogous to the "Microsoft tax", I bet there will be slashdotters who will defend it.

  4. Give the user control on How a Gesture Could Get Your Google+ Profile Picture Yanked · · Score: 1

    Google should give the user control. In my estimation, someone who puts up a profile photo giving the viewer the finger is likely to be a jerk that I'll have no interest in, so I'll avoid that person, and would like tools a la the old newsreader killfiles so that I'm not troubled with that person's output, be it visual, text, or audio-- but that's just my opinion; I'd rather a social network that I use not make that decision for me or other users.

  5. Re:You're... on Linux Mint Developer Forks Gnome 3 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Actually, Jon McCann, in an interview, seemed to say that user configurability is a bug, detracting from GNOME presenting a single face to people who might consider switching to GNOME. "And I think there is a lot of value to have that experience you show the world to be consistent. In GNOME2 we didn't do that particularly well because everyone's desktop was different."

  6. Re:Strange names on Researchers Expanding Diff, Grep Unix Tools · · Score: 1

    Shame on me for typing literal greater than and less than. That should have been "g/<regular expression>/p".

  7. Re:Strange names on Researchers Expanding Diff, Grep Unix Tools · · Score: 1

    "Catenate" is actually a word and means the same thing as "concatenate". Unfortunately, 1 - epsilon of people associate "cat" with F. domesticus, so "cat" was a really lousy choice.

  8. Re:Strange names on Researchers Expanding Diff, Grep Unix Tools · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Alas, history and lots of shell scripts have probably made existing command names unchangeable. History in this case goes back to the time people got RSI from ASR-33 Teletypes and didn't want to have to type very much, and names that make sense only if you know other programs (in ed, "g//p" prints all lines containing the specified regular expression, hence the name "grep").

    That said, we programmers are users of programming languages as much as Joe Sixpack is a user of the desktop, and surely we deserve good design as much as they do, so we can get things done rather than taking perverse pride in mastering needlessly ghastly syntax.

  9. I'll be happy to... on Should Composting Be Mandatory In US Cities? · · Score: 1

    ..if the government will pay me $30/hour or so to do it.

  10. Re:so let me get this straight... on MS To Build Antivirus Into Win8: Boon Or Monopoly? · · Score: -1, Troll

    Um, if their OS were secure, why would they need antivirus software?

  11. Re:Not really that surprising on No Windows 8 Plot To Lock Out Linux · · Score: 2

    "What's the point in locking yourself in if there isn't anything special about the hardware in the first place?"

    Don't you remember Microsoft's campaign against "naked PCs" (i.e. computers sold without an operating system)? I'm sure that we'll see a similar campaign for OEM systems and motherboards set up to preclude installing a non-MS operating system.

  12. Re:Not just the apps on Dennis Ritchie, Creator of C Programming Language, Passed Away · · Score: 2

    Even if that were the case, it doesn't mean the compiled program will exhibit the same behavior:

    #include

    int
    main(int argc, char **argv)
    {
            assert(sizeof('a') == sizeof(int));
            return 0;
    }

  13. Re:Not just the apps on Dennis Ritchie, Creator of C Programming Language, Passed Away · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yes, but you can't blame dmr for that.

  14. Re:I don't understand... more configurable setting on GNOME 3.2 Released · · Score: 1

    I'd suggest reading the interview with Jon McCann, who heads up GNOME3 development and who brought us the "user configuration is bad, because the user will do evil things" gnome-screensaver. Note particularly the following:

    "And I think there is a lot of value to have that experience you show the world to be consistent. In GNOME2 we didn't do that particularly well because everyone's desktop was different."

  15. Waiting for the song... on High School Student Launches a Trash Bag Aircraft · · Score: 1

    Neunundneunzig Muellbeutel?

  16. Re:Corporate Welfare.. on Laptops In the Classroom Don't Increase Grades · · Score: 1

    Don't forget it's also a way to get someone else to do the work of indoctrinating the next generation into Windows.

  17. Re:Or Apple on HP's Shift On PCs Could Boost Acer, Dell and Lenovo · · Score: 1

    I recommend Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Pay particular attention to the part where Mycroft is taught the difference between "funny" and "funny only once".

  18. Re:Sad day for WebOS on HP Spinning Off WebOS and Exiting Hardware Business · · Score: 1

    Yeah... It looks like I will end up going with Android for my next phone, even though its UI stinks on liquid helium compared with webOS's. OTOH, someday I may be able to buy a refrigerator that's easier to use than my phone. Great work, HP--and given that they're going for those niche markets, I presume they won't be open sourcing webOS either, which would be the one thing they could do to redeem themselves.

  19. Re:Slightly OT... I apologize... on C++ 2011 and the Return of Native Code · · Score: 1

    There probably will be a dead tree book--but I seriously doubt that you will be able to physically hold it in your hands for a significant interval unless you're a world-class bodybuilder. Note that the special edition of The C++ Programming Language is over 1,000 pages, and it's over a decade old!

  20. Re:Why MSWIndows? Why not Apple TV with a USB tune on Can Google Fix the Cable Box? · · Score: 1

    "Open" in "Open Cable" essentially means "open to more companies than just the two that dominated set top boxes when the standard was developed" (Scientific Atlanta and one other, I think Motorola); it has nothing to do with openness in the sense we understand it, alas.

  21. Downright Nixonian... or totalitarian? on Interview With GNOME 3 Designer Jon McCann · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Unfortunately on the internet - and in free software in particular - we have a lot of people whose voices aren't heard very loudly, and we have to take their needs into accounts as well as those who are vocal."

    Go ahead and call them the "Silent Majority". You know you want to.

    What really surprised me, though, was how he just came out and said you don't want to make it too easy to figure out how to change things, and that letting the user customize things is undesirable..."And I think there is a lot of value to have that experience you show the world to be consistent. In GNOME2 we didn't do that particularly well because everyone's desktop was different." I think that GNOME3 really carries through the premise of gnome-screensaver, another result of Mr. McCann's work--in it, the user is the enemy, and can't be trusted not to do something evil if you let him configure things, (Kind of like the justification for DRM, come to think of it.)

  22. Re:Sigh on Online Social Security Statement In Limbo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It will collapse when the young finally revolt over being taxed the amounts needed to keep the elderly living in the style to which they've become accustomed.

  23. Of course, you know what will happen... on Could PSTN Go Away By 2018? · · Score: 2

    Some Congresscritter will come up with the idea of making everyone with cell phones, VoIP, and broadband connections pay even more to subsidize the dwindling number of PSTN users.

  24. Re:PC manufacturers and affiliate marketers on Chrome Hits 20% Share As IE Continues Slide · · Score: 3, Funny

    Isn't it more accurate to say they get screwed over if they don't install Windows on every computer they sell?

  25. Re:Is this worthy of Slashdot? on Apple Store Employee Attempts To Form Union · · Score: 4, Informative

    Employer-subsidized health insurance is a result of having to get arond WWII wage controls (see http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/22/is-employer-based-health-insurance-worth-saving/ for info). Unfortunately, it continued after the war, and the result is that people who lose their jobs lose their insurance (that being the majority of the "N milliion uninsured" figure that is bandied about).