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  1. Re:As a 40 something programmer recently interview on Ask Slashdot: Will Older Programmers Always Have a Harder Time Getting a Job? · · Score: 1

    If you were really writing CGI apps in C and not using stuff like FastCGI then your apps would likely be slower than a FastCGI or modperl/modphp etc program due to the overheads of process creation.

    So yeah it does seem silly to use C, a slow to develop language combined with CGI, a slow way of running webapps. Worse of both worlds.

    How many pages per second and concurrent requests could your CGI C apps handle?

  2. Re:Antiseptic Mouthwash Raises Heart Attack Risk on Friendly Fungus Protects Our Mouths From Invaders · · Score: 1

    Funny. Years ago I thought I remember research that said the reverse. Can't find it though - Google seems crappier nowadays (you just get zillions of hits for the 2014 item).

    Even reduce premature births: http://www.dentistrytoday.com/...

    Generally periodontal disease seemed linked to higher heart disease: http://www.webmd.com/heart-dis...
    So maybe the particular mouthwash used was bad?

  3. Re:Huh? on Transhumanist Children's Book Argues, "Death Is Wrong" · · Score: 2

    "Death is wrong" is still stupid though. This is a nongeek/nerd article. Because any geek who knows his/her science knows what forever means AND thus logically won't want to live forever AND thus at a certain point Death is Right.

    0) I doubt people are psychologically able and stable enough to _enjoy_ a mere billion years of existence. A thousand years, ten thousand years, maybe. But a billion? Now guess how long is forever. So many can barely tolerate a single day of no Internet access ;).
    1) How many stars are going to last forever? What are you going to do when the last ones in your range die?
    2) I doubt you want to live so long that this becomes very personally relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    When I posted a comment on this sort of thing before, someone basically said we all know what living forever means, you don't have to tell us. But this whole "death is wrong" story is evidence that not all of us do.

    Lastly, "May you live forever" would be a pretty scary witchdoctor curse if it worked, maybe someone should write a sci-fi horror story... I'm a crap writer tho.

  4. Re: Don't they have to fly that thing around? on What If the Next Presidential Limo Was a Tesla? · · Score: 3, Informative

    Yeah pure battery won't work well. Hybrid+battery/capacitor would be better. Electric motor tech is fine for heavy stuff - diesel electric locomotives are really heavy.

    Depending on the engine/turbine you could even have multi-fuel support - gas, petrol diesel, vegetable oil. This gives you more options in crisis scenarios.

  5. Re:Similar to most studies on All Else Being Equal: Disputing Claims of a Gender Pay Gap In Tech · · Score: 2

    There's definitely a pay gap for pro tennis. Women who can't beat male tennis players ranked around #100 earn far more than the male players.

    But more people will pay more to watch the women play than the rank 100 male tennis players play. Sexism? Gender inequality? Certainly. But vive la difference! :)

    I think women ten-pin bowlers are as good as the guys though, some maybe even better...

  6. Re:Egon's sexuality on Harold Ramis Dies At 69 · · Score: 1

    Winston Zeddemore: Ray. When someone asks you if you're a god, you say, "YES!"
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    Who's the dumb clown in that clip... The one who got them zapped with his spiel? Or the one that provided the punchline?

  7. Re:Guild Wars 1 on Ask Slashdot: What Games Are You Playing? · · Score: 1

    The prophecies towns and cities are quite empty, but I find that many Eye of the North, Factions towns still have people. And nowadays they have the daily activities stuff which does help the players that are left gather together: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki...

    You can play with heroes too. Yes it's often fun to go with some random PUG (even if you fail) but sometimes you just want to try a custom team build. It's like having your own customizable army - and I actually like that part of GW1.

    GW2 can't be like GW1 - you can't have a noninstanced MMO with the same skills and mechanics of GW1. That said they didn't even seem to really try that much to the point that to me it seems like it's closer to WoW/SWTOR than GW1.

  8. Guild Wars 1 on Ask Slashdot: What Games Are You Playing? · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Yes - still playing the first one. I prefer the game mechanics - not so much of that skill tree and gear grind stuff you get in many other MMOs (including in a way Guild Wars 2).

    I find Guild vs Guild fun even when my team loses (as long as I don't make too many stupid mistakes :) ). Just don't take it so seriously like some - after all nobody is handing out huge prizes for winning anymore.

    Nowadays there's even a group starting Fort Aspenwood matches at about 10pm EST. But not enough players for round the clock nonstop matches so it's far from a full blown revival.

    But who knows - the game is still decent for an 8 year old game, so more old players might come back and maybe a few new players join too.

    Maybe there might be more players if Anet sold a more affordable and sane PvP package with full PvP unlock (e.g. you get to play all the PvP matches/missions, no need to grind faction to unlock skills, weapon modifiers etc).
    compare: http://www.guildwars.com/produ...
    with this:http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/PvP_Access_Kit
    https://secure.ncsoft.com/cgi-...
    https://secure.ncsoft.com/cgi-...
    So getting everything unlocked for PvP will either cost you a fair bit of $$$ or a lot of time.

    Or you could go instead play games like TF2 where you only need to spend money for silly hats ;).

  9. Re:Why is no one talking about this being a donati on Kicktaxing: The Crazy Complexity of Paying Tax Correctly On Crowdfunding · · Score: 1

    What if you take the money and assuming you succeed you make the resulting product available to the whole world for the same price (could be zero or more) - donors don't get any preferential treatment.

    You may get a lower amount of donations but how much less tax would you pay and how much less work would that involve?

  10. Re: A looping simulation, apparently on Mathematician: Is Our Universe a Simulation? · · Score: 1

    Fiction? So you don't experience the "I am" phenomena? I know that I definitely experience it. And more than a few others claim they do as well.

    Note: I'm not talking about free-will. I talking about consciousness.

    I don't see how the existence of a time delay between an event and my awareness of it indicates that I am not conscious. Especially if I am conscious of the fact that I am conscious.

    If you are actually self-aware but your own awareness of your own awareness isn't enough to prove to yourself that you have self-awareness then it's going to be hard to find any proof that will ever be enough to prove anything about anything to you.

    To me that's the only thing I know for sure (and even then it's a very tiny knowledge - I don't know why or how or what exactly it is). The rest of what I know, actually requires some faith.

  11. Re: A looping simulation, apparently on Mathematician: Is Our Universe a Simulation? · · Score: 0

    The "I am" is the main peculiar thing- Consciousness. if you just based it on current known math (and science that I'm aware of), there is no obvious reason why there would be this consciousness phenomenon, which at least I experience (I have faith[1] that many other people experience it but I have no hard evidence that they do). Is it emergent? Why? How? And how do we tell between a genuine one and one that's just simulated - or will consciousness magically emerge in all such simulations?

    If you use the "Occam's Razor", why would there be need of this consciousness thing? We could be machines behaving like conscious creatures but not have consciousness. There's no need for it right? Or is there?

    As for the simulation thing. It's why I think it's silly for people to be so sure there is no Creator of this universe. It's as silly as entities in a fancy computer game claiming that there is no Creator just because the internal rules of the computer game don't require the existence of one.. But yes you could reasonably claim that based on what you know of this universe's rules and information you _believe_ there is no Creator. But being _sure_ there isn't is a different thing.

    Heck for all we know those Creationists might be right in a way and this particular universe instance could really have been created 6000 years ago ;). After all if those astrophysicists start a 13 billion year old universe simulation 5 minutes ago - is their universe simulation 5 minutes old or 13 billion years old?
    But what if you run it at a slower/faster subjective time, stop, change things and restart it etc. How old is it then?

    [1] Yeah I have faith you have an "imaginary friend" that you call "me", but I don't have hard evidence of it other than I experience the same thing and I don't think I'm that special. Even if one day scientists wire you up and turn stuff on and off it'll still be hard to prove things 100% - since they might just be turning off the ability to write to persistent memory the experience of consciousness and not the consciousness itself. You might actually still be conscious while you are asleep or under anesthesia, it could be just that you can't do much "read" or "write" from/to "main memory" - you might still experience stuff from your senses...

  12. Re:How stupid on How To Hack Subway Fares Using Fare Arbitrage · · Score: 1

    Most shopping malls and commercial buildings don't charge you to use their elevators and escalators. They make their $$$$ elsewhere.

    So I'm thinking that at least in some places public transportation should be free, and there shouldn't be an assumption that users have to be charged for it.

    It actually costs a fair bit of money and other resources to charge. Imagine if a subway system didn't need ticket booths, turnstiles, etc and people to check that people pay. So how much more would it cost to run it for "free" if you can phase out all of that? How much more subsidy would you need? Or would it even turn out to be cheaper?

    Maybe that's not viable for poor places. But I'm thinking richer cities and countries should be make enough money from other things- like land taxes.

  13. Re:He's winning b/c he gets the right answers on Audience Jeers Contestant Who Uses Game Theory To Win At 'Jeopardy' · · Score: 1

    Not saying Jeopardy should change their rules to prohibit this particular thing. But the attitude that it's all the rulemakers fault is wrong.

    Some sociopaths (companies and people) do/did a lot of arguably bad things just because the written rules allow/allowed them to. Are you going to blame just the rule makers?

    Sure they could add a zillion other rules too to prohibit stuff that hasn't been done yet and make the rulebook too big. Or write "default deny" rules to restrict behavior to only a "allowed behaviors" so much so that fewer participants and viewers are interested.

    There are a lot of unwritten rules in games (and society). If you're a person who is well aware there are zillions of unwritten rules in daily life you'll know there are unwritten rules in many games involving humans too.

    And it's not all black or white. Certain things might be fine if done just once in a while. Just nobody has sat down to decide the exact line where it becomes unacceptable, and maybe nobody has needed to yet.

    Often written rules get added when someone has been too much of an asshole. And then rules alone become not enough and you need to resort to 3rd parties like judges.

    Regarding your "bard" exploit example- part of the blame goes to the players who exploited it. Since the game might otherwise still be playable and fun for a long time for everyone if a bunch didn't "collectively piss into the pool" just because they could, especially so if they knew the long term consequences. What if it's a free game and so not so well maintained? You could all have an agreement to not abuse it so the game remains playable for more people, or have more players leave and the remaining players spend hours just doing the same thing, abusing the exploit but not having a great advantage over the other players (who do the same thing after all), while getting an arguably less entertaining game experience.

    As it has been said: "The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."

  14. Re:The Slashdot beta isn't annoying. It's shit. on Windows 8.1 Passes Windows Vista In Market Share · · Score: 1

    And real slashdotters aren't the same target audience those websites serve.

    For example here's why the Beta sucks for "real slashdotters"- it hides user IDs. Real slashdot nerds are not afraid of numbers, we're not afraid of extra info, in fact we often thrive on extra info. I've noticed enough imposters around on Slashdot so we need those numbers to more easily tell them apart. Beta also hides times and dates, and other stuff.

    We're slashdotters. What's useless noise to normal people might be location coordinates being transmitted at 1200 baud 7O1 Bell 202 to us. If they trying to turn Slashdot into a tech site for people who can't handle extra info, I might as well go to other websites that do it much better.

    So every time Slashdot shows me the beta version, I just go do something else. If it stays the same crappy Beta I will just have to go away for longer. I might end up more productive ;).

  15. Re:Go after the real thieves lol on Press Used To Print Millions of US Banknotes Seized In Quebec · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's still printing money.

    My left hand borrows money from the future and passes them to my right hand which gives you cash. What does that really look like to the rest of the world in practice?

    Or how about this, I lend 9 trillion dollars "from the future" to my friends at below market interest rates. My friends make a few millions or even billions with it and pay me back in full (can't be that hard - it's below market rates after all). So how's that not printing money? It may not be printing trillions but it's printing millions or billions.

  16. Re:A Button For Humans To Press on When Cars Go Driverless, What Happens To the Honking? · · Score: 1

    Yep. Maybe even the blind can drive in such countries? Just add some soft bumpers that beep on collision.

    OK maybe not- I think the cyclists might not be happy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

  17. Re: Using encryption is the better option on Where Old Hard Disks (with Digital Secrets) Go To Die · · Score: 1

    But will it blend?

    Seriously though I was wondering why they were using so many different ways to destroy stuff when they could just use the same method to destroy most of them: very high temperatures.

    You're not going to recover much from a hard drive that's been in a pool of molten "lava" for a mere 10 seconds.

    If you insulate it well it shouldn't take that much power to maintain a pool of lava. Even easier if the site happens to be next to a volcano ;).

    Of course you better have many security cameras just in case people try to dispose of people that way.

  18. Re:Hmm.. on 30 Minutes Inside Valve's Prototype Virtual Reality Headset · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Someone should also come out with an app/UI that allowed people to have as many and as large virtual displays as they want, and manage them easily (gestures or hotkeys or whatever).

    Then you won't need multiple large physical monitors.

    Future versions might have cameras or special optics so that you can do augmented reality or just fade in and out of full virtual reality.

    Maybe Microsoft will get off their "Metro" butts and do something about it. Same goes for GNOME, KDE etc.

  19. Re:Cloud on Microsoft Joins Open Compute Project, Will Share Server Designs · · Score: 1

    It benefits them?

    Most of these companies don't make much money from the server hardware. And they'd benefit more from better server hardware. So it's better for them to share info so that server hardware improves as fast as possible.

    Microsoft might have joined the party late because they had some concerns over whether potential customers might build their own hardware, datacenters and thus not use Microsoft's Azure stuff. But given that OpenComputer is already out there with decent designs, I doubt them staying out will make a difference for those cases.

  20. Re:It'll be fun to watch. on OneDrive Is Microsoft's Rebranded Name For SkyDrive · · Score: 1

    They should appeal. The courts shouldn't allow BSkyB to have a monopoly over using the word "Sky" anymore than they should allow Microsoft to have a monopoly over the word "Windows" ;). (Or some idiot company and the word "Candy"). There's not big confusion when the word Sky is used together with another word- SkyDrive.

    So:
    Microsoft Windows, yes.
    Candy Crush, yes.
    BSkyB yes.
    SkyOne yes.

  21. Re:Voice assistant on Google Buys UK AI Startup Deep Mind · · Score: 1

    I'd rather human augmentation than voice assistants.

    You may still need some sort of AI stuff to do that, but the focus is different. One path focuses on augmenting humans, allowing them to more directly be superhuman. The other path has humans requesting stuff from smarter and smarter AIs.

    If it were up to me, it'll be more about thought macros and more:
    http://hardware.slashdot.org/c...
    http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

  22. Re:"First?" on CES 2014: Stefan Lindsay Demonstrates the gTar (Video) · · Score: 1

    From a technological and "ease of use" point of view I don't find the gtar that interesting or impressive. We've long had musical keyboards or similar instruments that lit the notes you were supposed to play.

    Real easy would be an instrument which does something like what the "Jam Session" software did more than 20 years ago, but do it better (given 20 years of tech and knowledge advancements). e.g. a guitar/piano/instrument that played the "right" notes no matter what - e.g. by default it would play the nearest note matching the chord you are supposed to be in (or the chord you "roughly" selected). It could allow you to play the "off/wrong" notes if you were holding down a special key/pedal. And allow you to hold down other keys/pedals to switch to various modes to play musical ornaments, embellishments, riffs, licks starting from or based on the note(s) you selected. A guitar like that would truly be "The First Guitar That Anybody Can Play," especially if you add a brain computer interface for paraplegics ;).

    The sort of I product I describe shouldn't be that remarkable given that Jam Session and Instant Music were around in the 1980s, and electronic instruments have been around for even longer.

    But ideas are easy, implementation is hard. Feel free to implement this idea, don't patent troll it. I want more cool stuff in this world and faster (I'm getting old and real cool stuff appearing per year doesn't seem high enough to me). The gtar? Meh boring.

  23. Re:This stuff is so stupid (and so is Forbes) on Candy Crush Maker King.com Has Trademarked 'Candy' For Games · · Score: 1

    Is .lan reserved yet? .local wasn't even reserved (despite people using it) when I proposed .here years ago. And now though .local is reserved (as of last year) it has a slightly different usage in practice from what I proposed so .here could still be useful.

    Compare:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
    vs
    http://tools.ietf.org/html/dra...

  24. Re:Certainly the government can make sure it's saf on Regulations Could Delay or Prevent Space Tourism · · Score: 2

    Yeah the day I consider it safe is the day people stop clapping their hands just because the spacecraft takes off without blowing up on the launchpad.

    After that it becomes a mature tech when commercial passengers start complaining about the in-flight options and other petty stuff. ;)

  25. Re:Planned intimidation tactic on AMC Theaters Allegedly Calls FBI to Interrogate a Google Glass Wearer · · Score: 1

    By then people might be watching "movies" on some advanced version of the "oculus rift".

    The perceived screen could be as big as most will ever want it.

    2D movie, 3D movie, or dynamic 3D world (passive/active observer) , or game or something else.

    And how many would want some crappy cam?