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User: Nemyst

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Comments · 2,364

  1. Re:Even the National Weather Service fucked it up on "Mammoth Snow Storm" Underwhelms · · Score: 2

    If your business and your work was a chaotic system involving billions of mostly random variables, I'd question your organizational skills. Unfortunately, you can't ask nature to sort her shit out.

  2. Re:First Sale on Ubisoft Revokes Digital Keys For Games Purchased Via Unauthorised Retailers · · Score: 1

    If they're targeting key resellers, they aren't. The key resellers were the people covered by the first sale doctrine, whereas you as a consumer buy the key "second hand" from the reseller and therefore cannot claim any support under that doctrine.

  3. Re: That's a nice democracy you have there... on Omand Warns of "Ethically Worse" Spying If Unbreakable Encryption Is Allowed · · Score: 1

    It's the nice thing about American politics: equal opportunity corruption. Everyone gets their fair share!

  4. Re:In after somebody says don't run Windows. on Ask Slashdot: Best Anti-Virus Software In 2015? Free Or Paid? · · Score: 1

    What's next, are you going to start talking about how there's a worm hidden in everyone's ring 0? Look, as much fun as it is to fantasize about a super smartly designed virus which "tells windows not to report it" and "doesn't show up in the registry editor" (why a virus would have to write in the registry in the first place is beyond me), they're unlikely to be on your computer. All those botnets you keep hearing about? They're far, far more likely to be built off CatPicturesScreensaver.exe than from some crazily smart drive-by which is completely undetectable and doesn't do anything... until the doomsday comes.

    This isn't to say that "visual cues" and "checking stuff" aren't ridiculous, but you're also not a character in a Bond movie.

  5. Re:Really Neat on Scientists Slow the Speed of Light · · Score: 2

    Wait. They're slowing the group velocity, which isn't what most people think of when they read "velocity".

    Group velocity is the speed at which the signal carried by a photon propagates. Essentially, if you look at a moving sine wave, group velocity is the speed at which it's moving. We already know that this velocity can be altered and can even be faster than c. This is different from signal velocity, which is the speed at which the individual photons carrying the signal propagate. Each photon is also a wave thanks to particle-wave duality, so the wave you're analyzing when you look at photons is the wave embodied by every photon you catch. You can't have faster than light communication even if group velocity is higher than c because the signal is still only going at c. The little packets carrying the wave travel slower than the wave's oscillation, essentially.

    Altering group velocity is neat and cool, especially doing so in a vacuum, but it's not what a lot of people here believe.

  6. Re:Religious reasons? on Should Disney Require Its Employees To Be Vaccinated? · · Score: 1

    Quite frankly I don't see why religion would be held to a different standard from any other reason people can think of to not get vaccinated. If someone doesn't want to be vaccinated for ideological reasons (say, Big Pharma conspiracy theorist) or because their religion says no, they should be treated the same way: as a potential danger to others. If it means Disney wants to fire them, well, they should be able to, for both of them. To do otherwise would be discrimination!

  7. Re:I want silent vehicles on Fake Engine Noise Is the Auto Industry's Dirty Little Secret · · Score: 1

    Which means you'll have variable sound levels for 15-30 years as old cars aren't upgraded to the less noisy sound requirements. Thanks, but no thanks.

  8. Re:So what was the result?? on Science By Democracy Doesn't Work · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If you remove significantly from the second question, then it loses all meaning. Humans could contribute 0.000001% and the answer would still be "yes", but they'd consider it not to be a problem because it's so small.

  9. Re:Lower Level != "Complex" on Justified: Visual Basic Over Python For an Intro To Programming · · Score: 2

    You want them to learn the abstract concepts of programming. With C, you quickly get bogged down in memory management, notions like pointers, the complete lack of object-oriented programming, awkward functions and weird workarounds like variadic functions. You can learn that stuff after you've understood what a loop is and how variables work.

  10. Re:C# on Justified: Visual Basic Over Python For an Intro To Programming · · Score: 1

    You can also now use C# to build for Android with Xamarin, which is a platform I find very attractive for learning. You have clearer boundaries, better structure and a much cleaner API than what fully-fledged OS's provide.

  11. Re:Javascript on Justified: Visual Basic Over Python For an Intro To Programming · · Score: 1

    I dislike Javascript as an intro course because it's not strict enough. It's better, I find, to start with a stricter language and remove constraints once you're familiar with them. Otherwise, you'll get used to the language doing magic typecasting and to building objects haphazardly, and when you get to a language which requires class definitions and has strong(er) typing, you'll be confused and have to relearn everything. When you do it the other way around, you'll have a tendency to be more structured and to rely less on the language figuring out what you wanted to do.

    I still think the best languages for starting out are Java, C# or Python, probably in that order (if Microsoft's open source thing pans out, I'd place C# above Java).

  12. Re:my vote: on Justified: Visual Basic Over Python For an Intro To Programming · · Score: 1

    My problems at this point with Java are A) it evolves very, very slowly and B) Oracle. I was far more confident in the language before Oracle took it over.

  13. Re:Emoticons work. on Why Some Teams Are Smarter Than Others · · Score: 2

    Never let Linus near Unicode glyphs. The emoticons he'd produce would probably cause a rift in the space-time continuum.

    Fortunately, Slashdot doesn't support Unicode, so we're safe.

  14. Re:in case you're wondering on The Free Educational Software GCompris Comes To Android · · Score: 1

    First time I hear about it as well and surprise surprise, it's another open source project with a terrible name! Every single time, they think they're clever, but just end up being inane.

  15. Once on FCC May Permit Robocalls To Cell Phones -- If They Are Calling a Wrong Number · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I have no issue with them being able to call me without legal repercussions... once. After that, it's their job to update their robocall lists. I've informed them that they no longer have the correct number. Any further "mistakes" should be fully punishable.

  16. Re:This was done so Republicans can criticize it.. on Eric Holder Severely Limits Civil Forfeiture · · Score: 1

    Sure did, which is why it's going to be funny to watch them try to criticize Obama for implementing it. Remember, this is the Republicans we're talking about here.

  17. Re:Waiting for Republicans to come in and defend t on Eric Holder Severely Limits Civil Forfeiture · · Score: 1

    You make it sound like the French were late to the party.

  18. Re:Waffle much? on AMD Catalyst Is the Broken Wheel For Linux Gaming · · Score: 1

    Did you read to the end of the sentence? OpenGL on Windows has always been a low priority thing, and since AMD's been struggling to make passable drivers it's completely unsurprising that they'd focus even less on that.

  19. Re:Control of RF on Google To Test Build-It-Yourself Ara Smartphones In Puerto Rico · · Score: 1

    It's unlikely that you'd be able to slot in more than one cell module, and that's really the only way you could misuse RF networks.

  20. Re:Dizziness on Ars: Samsung Gear VR Is Today's Best Virtual Reality · · Score: 2

    The DK2 also uses a low-persistence OLED screen running at 75Hz. This is a far cry from a run-of-the-mill phone's 60Hz screen. This significantly reduces motion blur, which can also help with dizziness.

  21. Re:By Google, for Google on HTTP/2 - the IETF Is Phoning It In · · Score: 1

    If SPDY is indeed focused on single-server sources like Google, then I'd say the opposite: SPDY is very relevant to the overwhelming majority of internet users. The vast majority of traffic is done on a select few sites such as Google, YouTube and Netflix. All of them benefit from that new protocol.

    It won't necessarily help small websites and hosts, but let's not forget that a protocol isn't strictly about them.

  22. Re:MI5 Chief Seeks New Powers? on MI5 Chief Seeks New Powers After Paris Magazine Attack · · Score: 1

    It's LePen, what did you expect? The thing you have to fear isn't LePen, it's whether these fucking idiotic jihadists will give LePen more votes. The last thing you want is for extremist right-wing parties to gain power in Europe, because that'll end in bloodbath.

  23. Re:Better Onion article on Publications Divided On Self-Censorship After Terrorist Attack · · Score: 1

    Unless it's a child porn cartoon, apparently.

  24. Re:I probably would upgrade if I could, but... on Is Kitkat Killing Lollipop Uptake? · · Score: 1

    The Galaxy Nexus was an aberration because of Samsung's poor choice to use a TI OMAP processor, which are terrible and not well supported. You'll note no mid/high end smartphone uses those anymore. My Nexus 4 has had an update to 5.0 despite previous indicators pointing to it falling out of support.

    Not saying it doesn't suck, but there's at least a somewhat coherent explanation behind it.

  25. Re:Those who ignore history... on What's Wrong With the Manhattan Project National Park · · Score: 2

    Even if a city or two is eventually hit by a terrorist nuclear weapon (likely), it's NOTHING like was was being nearly expected at the time.

    I have to say, you really think that would happen? Considering the most successful attack done by terrorists so far still had many things go wrong, I just don't see that sort of group being able to pull off a nuclear detonation, nevermind that ground-level nukes are extremely limited in yield and impact versus airborne ones. Plus, if terrorists manage to trigger one, the only chance they'll have at a second one is within the few days after, because the entire planet is going to mobilize to get their sorry asses to Allah or whoever else is the extremist religion of choice at that time.