Slashdot Mirror


User: sbates

sbates's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
19
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 19

  1. Re:Factory on What Did Google Earth Spot In the Chinese Desert? · · Score: 1

    Slashdot incorrectly posted my reply above as a sibling to AK Marc's post, rather than a reply to it.

  2. Re:Factory on What Did Google Earth Spot In the Chinese Desert? · · Score: 1

    Parent isn't interesting, it's a string of invalid arguments.

    1. "Single payer health care is cheaper and better than what the US has now." Anybody from Canada (and I am) can attest that this is not an absolute truth by any means. Cheaper access to specialists results in sitting on waiting lists for months before essential treatment, because (a) the doctors have moved to more profitable countries; and (b) the state sets limits on the number and qualifications of doctors.

    2. "And so many programs like Head Start saves more money...results in a smaller government." This likely refers to the oversight of a product or service, but Obama already addressed this: he could cut the cost of meat by half, if only he fired all the meat inspectors. That any program would be cheaper is debatable, as history has repeatedly seen presidents and leaders of countries around the world promising something would be cheaper, more successful, and result in smaller government. Yet the ideals of one man/woman cannot force all to agree, nor would agreement across all civil servants even result in common principles. Smaller government is unattainable simply by the imposition of different services.

    3. "There is apparently no such thing as a libertarian that believes in responsibility" is simply a strawman, and a bad one. Calling yourself a lower-case L libertarian and making such a statement is awkward at best, but generalizations like this are no more effective than those of the rest of the political world.

  3. Re:That's the police for you on Ten Cops Can't Recover Police Chief's Son's iPhone · · Score: 1

    Imagine the law enforcement resources that would be freed up and made available for real crimes (i.e. those with a victim) if we never prosecuted anything that happens among consenting adults. I bet a lot more thieves, rapists, and murderers would be behind bars.

    I can't honestly believe this was considered insightful. Holy unsubstantiated argument, batman. You remind me of the Republicans when they argued government inflated the cost of healthcare. Obama's reply was that "we could reduce the price of meat substantially tomorrow. All we have to do is get rid of the food inspectors." I can only imagine all the ways in which your logical fallacy can be dissected.

  4. Re:Model fits the data [Re:Vindication] on 'Gaia' Scientist Admits Mispredicting Rate of Climate Change · · Score: 1

    Unfortunately there's no such thing as a "climate scientist" within whose mind the vast set of data is held and considered. Climate science is a consortium of many different disciplines, including biologists, to arrive at the word you used above: consensus. No one discipline dominates the field, it's a cooperative effort to arrive at something everyone can agree on (based on the available evidence of course).

    So while Lovelock may be a loud voice in a sea of loud voices, his biology background is--popularizing aside--a perfectly valid field in which to contribute to climate science.

  5. Surprising? on Wikileaks and Anonymous Join Forces Against US Intelligence Community · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's only surprising if you believe Hollywood hype. The halls of the White House are not bristling with people hell-bent on preventing the next disaster. Life is extraordinarily mundane. The majority of the people in government are moving pages and pages of some of the most sleep-inducing content available. I'm far more apt to believe Tom Clancy's novels depicting CIA, FBI etc getting their intelligence from CNN.

  6. Re:Google admitting problem and trying to fix it on Google Launches Style Guide For Android Developers · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Fragmentation refers to modifications of product lines such that they are no longer compatible, interoperable, or familiar. You are merely referring to thematic differentiation across the product line. Android remains compatible from a developer standpoint, interoperable as they all run the same fundamental OS, and as such they are also familiar to most users of an Android product.

    People often use words that cross gray areas to draw emphasis to their point but in this case they are wrong. Android lacks complete UI consistency across all of its products, but that's called differentiation. All of the fundamental elements of the Android experience are still consistent.

  7. Re:Question on Technical Glitch Lets Reporters Eavesdrop On Obama, Sarkozy · · Score: 1

    Not exactly made up. From whitehouse.gov: "The Executive Branch conducts diplomacy with other nations, and the President has the power to negotiate and sign treaties, which also must be ratified by two-thirds of the Senate." No other official is the primary diplomat, though Clinton may right now appear so she is merely a proxy for the president.

  8. This guy slaughtered almost 100 people... on The Oslo Massacre and Violent Video Games: the Facts · · Score: 1

    ...and you are going to take his word that he's not addicted to video games? Should we trust anything else in the manifesto? You think he's a pretty insightful guy? Has he somehow demonstrated a level of intelligence to which we should all pay attention? Would I be somehow enlightened by reading it?

    Seriously, people. So many of you talk about sheeple, then you turn around and grasp at _anything_.

  9. Re:Is it really that hard? on In Robot Soccer, US Team RoMeLa Dominates Robocup 2011 · · Score: 1

    You have to think about what you do when you walk. It's very rare that any two of your steps are precisely the same. You are constantly adjusting the length of the stride, the roll of the foot, the vertical position of your toes, the angle at which your knees bend, etc. You don't think about it consciously, but if you tried you might find you have a hard time walking smoothly :)

    Like Smauler says, we have not only awareness of these parts independently but also in relation to each other and to the ground. It's very difficult to make those kinds of connections in software. If you disagree you are always welcome to challenge the robotics experts at, for example, MIT.

  10. Runs only on big hardware on CA Sues Over DB2 Migration Tool · · Score: 2, Informative

    From the ca site (http://www.ca.com/us/products/overview.aspx?id={40FB2A1D-9B09-429E-9D52-123477B87E97}):

    It is a high-performance, multi-user relational database management system based on z/OS and VSE host platforms.

    Unfortunately, although clients can access it from any platform, it's not available for anything else.

  11. Re:Do not attribute to malice ... on Internet Explorer 9 Caught Cheating In SunSpider · · Score: 1

    The second example--a general optimization of the engine that over-optimizes a corner case--is very difficult to pull off in these engines. When you consider that the over-optimization only occurs when the source is aligned a certain way things become very suspicious, because the engine isn't running against the source but an abstract representation of the code.

    In today's engines there are also routines to strip out unnecessary and unreachable code, which is relevant because the code snippets added by the tester were extraneous and (slashdotted, so going from memory) unreachable. This means the bytecode would either have been generated and stripped or not generated at all.

    Then consider that these engines are not actually running the bytecode but machine-optimizing it. So now you have a case where:

    1. Extraneous and unreachable code is added
    2. Extraneous and unreachable code is removed by the compiler to bytecode
    3. The bytecode is further optimized to machine code
    4. The code is executed

    Step 4 is where the optimization is lost. This is why it's extremely unlikely that someone checked in code to attempt to optimize the engine which resulted in an over-optimization of the corner case.

  12. Re:The British Way... on UK Twitter Users Declare 'I'm Spartacus' · · Score: 1

    I can't believe I'm about to say this, but Timothy makes an excellent point about who we . Here's what Mr. Chambers originally said:

    "Robin Hood Airport is closed. You've got a week... otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!"

    Here's what Mr. Compton said:

    "Can someone please stone Yasmin Alibhai-Brown to death? I shan't tell Amnesty if you don't. It would be a blessing, really."

    Neither one has the ring of a joke, neither one is in good taste, but the former is defended while the latter is fodder for criticism. Now, back to your comment:

    The judge's ruling was based on the idea that an "ordinary person" would not recognize the joke, take it seriously, and be terrified. The point of this campaign is to demonstrate that that's nonsense.

    If a complete stranger (and Paul Chambers is a complete stranger for 99.999% of the world) posted the bomb threat on Twitter and you were inside the airport you would probably want to know whether it's a real threat. It doesn't matter what the medium is: Twitter could simply be part of a new MO for a modern brand of terrorist.

    In summary:

    • No indication of a joke
    • Posted on what amounts to a popular public forum
    • Threatens death for potentially hundreds of people

    That's not even considering the possibility that Paul really was setting up a secret plot to bomb the airport and the evidence simply hasn't been discovered and his friends simply didn't know. That would be rather embarrassing for these kinds of "I'm Spartacus" campaigns..

  13. Re:Less protection for free speech? on In Canada, Criminal Libel Charges Laid For Criticizing Police · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I believe the individual was referring to such bodies as the Alberta Human Rights Commission. These bodies have the ability to prosecute an individual for speech outside of the normal judiciary and without any of the normal protections you might expect from a judiciary. In that sense free speech takes a hard hit, especially when you have to wonder what solution the AHRC (and others like it) provide that the courts could not.

  14. Re:US abuse on WikiLeaks Publishes Afghan War Secrets · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What a lot of people don't know is that a Soviet submarine captain actually gave an order to launch a nuclear missile during the Cuban Missile Crisis, but his second in command refused to do so.

  15. Re:US abuse on WikiLeaks Publishes Afghan War Secrets · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Not recently, and there have been a push to make the world a non-corrupt and peaceful place.

    Precious few, if any, governments have these goals at the top of their list or anywhere in their list -- ignore the rhetoric and watch what they do. Corruption is the nature of nearly all governments simply because it's how business is done. You'd be amazed at how much of your priviledge of owning a computer and having electricity is the result of bribes and blatantly unethical behavior. Nor is peace their goal. The only goal is economic stability. Whether that means a non-combatant posture today or a brutal attack on certain citizens the next, the goal is only stability for the economy and outside investment.

    There is many countries that haven't had war in many many years now. It was different in the pre-modern times.

    Besides, the issue is the hypocrisy and hiding it from the public. US has done over and over again the exact same things that they accuse the current terrorists and countries that support them doing.

    I agree the US is guilty of the same atrocities they accuse terrorists of committing, but so are many countries. Your memory may be short, but history is quite long, and just because a few years have gone by without major war reporting doesn't mean they're suddenly pure and will never use weapons again.

    So let's not be naive about anything here. Much of the criticism against the US is deserved, but it is not the only deserving country.

  16. Re:US abuse on WikiLeaks Publishes Afghan War Secrets · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Scale is relative. The British and Roman empires were waging at least as many as we are, and were just as ruthless. Granted, that shows you where we're headed, but your statement is still wrong.

  17. Twitter on WordPress Creator GPL Says WP Template Must Be GPL'd · · Score: 5, Funny

    Matt has gone so far as to post this on Twitter

    Offenders are really gonna get it now. This guy means business.

  18. Re:Didn't recognize exactly how slow Firefox is..w on Firefox 4.0 Beta Candidate Available · · Score: 1

    I work for a Fortune 50 that sells a product many would describe as slow and bloated. The former is true because of the latter, and the latter is true because of demand. When the product was younger it was sleek and fast. As a product tacks on features it necessarily becomes slower to accommodate them. There are possibly exceptions to that rule, but not many. Browsers are not an exception.

    Either the software initializes the subsystem to support a feature at startup, or (as they usually try to do) it's initialized in the background. Unfortunately someone will come up with a killer use for that feature (either internally or externally) that requires support during startup. Invariably that means startup is slower. Tack on intricate and complex dependencies, eventually everything gets initialized at startup. Not to mention that once you ship a product, those APIs are officially supported, no matter how well they were thought out or how early they were introduced.

    The perceived result is bloatware, yet there's nothing in the product except features that were demanded by the users. Firefox certainly isn't perfect, and I'm sure the developers would love to rewrite portions of the product, but most of those rewrites will gain maintainability rather than performance. Performance is usually something you squeeze out of what's already there, and both Chrome and Mozilla engineers are very capable at spotting opportunities.

  19. Re:Intel says "Buy Nvidia" on Intel, NVIDIA Take Shots At CPU vs. GPU Performance · · Score: 1

    Just a helpful tip: the next time you're tempted to add a comma, don't. It'll vastly improve the readability of your otherwise competent writing.