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User: David+Gerard

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Comments · 2,952

  1. Re:Just say NO to citations. on Wikipedia Rolls Out Mobile Editing For All Users · · Score: 1

    You need to start a competitor that doesn't require citations. I realise it'll have to start small, but given your obviously correct ideas its superiority will shine through.

  2. Re:markup should remain on Wikipedia Rolls Out Mobile Editing For All Users · · Score: 1

    Wikitext is the most awful thing ever. It is barely computable. It provably can't be put into EBNF. Large chunks of it are literally defined as "whatever the PCRE lib in PHP happens to do". It is so horrible it has literally delayed a proper visual editor for Wikipedia by several years. We now have a visual editor that barely works after a huge amount of money and resources have been poured in. The only reason it hasn't been thrown away is that we have ten billion words of legacy content that has to keep working.

    tl;dr a markup language is a nice idea, but MediaWiki wikitext is quite possibly the worst possible example and oh if only we could set it on fucking fire.

  3. Re:Good luck .. on Nokia: Microsoft Must Evolve To Make Windows Phone a Success · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I know a pile of people with Windows phones. They really like them lots and find the interface marvellous.

    Every one of them says the big problem is ... no bloody apps.

  4. Re:Marketing keeps it there on The Book That Is Making All Movies the Same · · Score: 1
  5. Marketing keeps it there on The Book That Is Making All Movies the Same · · Score: 3, Funny

    This is the method, but it's the sheer horror of marketing the stuff that makes it the bible.

    “The closer you get to (or the farther you get from) your thirtieth birthday, the more likely you are to develop things like taste and discernment, which render you such an exhausting proposition in terms of selling a movie that, well, you might as well have a vagina.”

  6. Re:So learn German on The H Shuts Down · · Score: 1

    See, you shoulda got Andrew writing for you. Just imagine the page hit counts!

  7. Re:So learn German on The H Shuts Down · · Score: 1

    Sort of. I've been researching stuff recently in the tech press, and was surprised how different the "same" story could be in Heise and The H.

  8. Re:Seriously? on Microsoft Is Sitting On Six Million Unsold Surface Tablets · · Score: 2

    And tablets. Microsoft's been pushing shitty tablet computers for twenty years. Surface is them finally giving up and making them themselves, but it's not like they're new to the field.

    Bill was right: tablet computers are the future! I bet he was pleased when Apple finally got them right.

  9. Re:How can that be? on Microsoft Is Sitting On Six Million Unsold Surface Tablets · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Same problem as Windows Phone. I know a few people with Windows phones and they love them ... the only thing they lament is the utter lack of apps.

    Unfortunately, it seems that "Microsoft" and "Windows" are tainted brands. No-one wants to spend personal money to be reminded of Monday morning 9am at work.

  10. Re:Nice graph on Radiohead's Thom Yorke Pulls Albums From Spotify In Protest of Low Royalties · · Score: 1

    How many records can you say that you in fact love deeply that you've played a total of four times?

  11. Re:Nice graph on Radiohead's Thom Yorke Pulls Albums From Spotify In Protest of Low Royalties · · Score: 1

    That's evading the question. I'm seeking solid numbers (having trouble finding current ones on radio performance royalties), but as far as I can tell Spotify and Pandora pay slightly better per listener-play than the radios they substitute for.

  12. Re:put it in perspective on Radiohead's Thom Yorke Pulls Albums From Spotify In Protest of Low Royalties · · Score: 1

    This is a number the Spotify/Pandora whiners will never give you. They keep fraudulently comparing it to sales.

  13. This is meaningless on Edward Snowden Nominated For Nobel Peace Prize · · Score: 5, Informative

    Literally thousands of people are nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize every year. Nominating just means someone has sent in a letter suggesting them. Nomination is not in any way noteworthy.

  14. Flat structures never, ever happen on Former Valve Hardware Designer Recounts Management Difficulties · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The standard text is The Tyranny Of Structurelessness by Jo Freeman.

    tl;dr: if a visible hierarchy isn't allowed, an invisible one will form and bite you in the ass.

  15. Advertorial on Ask Slashdot: Preventing Snowden-Style Security Breaches? · · Score: 1

    That's not an "ask Slashdot", that's internal advertising for your article.

    The meat of which is advertorial for people paying you to mention them.

    Fucking grow a spine.

  16. Re:phewww on Red Hat Confirms GNOME Classic Mode For RHEL 7 · · Score: 1

    This is why it's interesting that the people who pay the bills are finally calling "bullshit" on the devs' idiot ideas. Red Hat largely didn't care because their market is basically command-line; but GNOME 3 sucked hard enough that their paying customers were displeased.

  17. Re:Isn't unwillingless to learn a big problem? on Red Hat Confirms GNOME Classic Mode For RHEL 7 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If it is possible for a new desktop to be better than its predecessor, then it is possible for it to be worse.

    The users largely hate GNOME 3. Therefore, it has failed user acceptance testing. It is worse than its predecessor.

    In this case, it's Red Hat - who pay many of the remaining GNOME devs - saying "dunno what you're here for, but we're here to serve our users." It's nice someone is.

  18. Re:Strange on Yahoo Board Approves a $1.1B Pricetag For Tumblr · · Score: 4, Funny

    "We've received your test reports. Your drug intake is well below industry standards. Here's some techno CDs, remedy this immediately."

  19. Pseudoscience in Louisiana on Repeal of Louisiana Science Education Act Rejected · · Score: 4, Informative

    Pseudoscience is everywhere in Louisiana - a report from the ground.

  20. Re:Not unique to open source on Ask Slashdot: How Do You Assess the Status of an Open Source Project? · · Score: 3, Informative

    Sort of. In practice, taking on an unmaintained library yourself (whether as a public project or just internally) means taking on unknown amounts of technical debt. ("Legacy code" can IMO usefully be approximated to "code dumped on you with unknown technical debt involved".) It might be lovely, it might be a goddamned nightmare.

  21. It's not "Forbes", it's "some blogger" on How To Build a $30M Startup Without Spending Any of Your Money · · Score: 1

    Any URL that starts forbes.com/sites/ is an unedited blog by some bozo - it's not journalistic content produced by Forbes. It can be any old shit, and usually is.

  22. Re:seriously? on Wikipedia Moved To MariaDB 5.5 · · Score: 1
  23. Re:seriously? on Wikipedia Moved To MariaDB 5.5 · · Score: 2
  24. Fundraiser on Margaret Thatcher Dies At 87 · · Score: 5, Funny

    The Conservative Party could fund itself forever by installing a pay toilet on her grave.

  25. The French article had ZERO hits ... until now on French Intelligence Agency Forces Removal of Wikipedia Entry · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Let me show you something: page view statistics from the last 90 days.

    The article had ZERO hits for months ... until yesterday.