Slashdot Mirror


User: exploder

exploder's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
442
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 442

  1. Re:Why? on Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu Lockdown Options? · · Score: 1

    Could it be the submitter works for an institution of higher education rather than a vocational school? Maybe they're trying to educate students rather than (or at least on the way to) shoving them into the workforce?

  2. Re:Easy solution on Tech Site Sues Ex-Employee, Claiming Rights To His Twitter Account · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Sounds easy and cute, but if the court rules that the twitter account in fact did belong to Phonedog, and in fact was worth $2.50 per follower, could the guy be sued for deliberately wrecking the value of the account?

    IANAL, but I'd be interested to hear a lawyer's comments: if you're in possession of some asset and are sued for ownership, and you subsequently and intentionally ruin the value of that asset, won't the court take a pretty dim view?

  3. Re:It's change for the sake of change on Ask Slashdot: Unity/Gnome 3/Win8/iOS — Do We Really Hate All New GUIs? · · Score: 1

    no, silly! It's change for the sake of requiring the purchase of new hardware to run the new GUIs!

    Close. The idea is to have the same interface on every device you buy.

    In the case of Unity, yeah. But I think a lot of, maybe most, GUI overhauls are just for the sake of change. Specifically for the sake of visible change, to justify the purchase of the latest version of some very expensive product (e.g. MS Office with the ribbons). In the case where it's a genuine improvement, I don't think so many people reject a new GUI (there will be a few of the getoffmylawn types, no matter what).

    For instance, Windows 95's GUI was a legitimate and massive improvement over 3.1. While many of us were nervous about making Windows into THE OS instead of subordinate to DOS, I don't recall anyone at all clamoring for a return to the 3.1 interface.

    It's a shame I have to think back that far for an example of a GUI overhaul that was unquestionably for the better. I've never used Macs, though, and I suspect there may be some more recent examples in that world.

  4. Re:Okay on Fine Structure Constant May Not Be So Constant · · Score: 1

    I don't think I misunderstood. If the student got an answer 10% off from the "accepted value" (wanna bet he means 9.8m/s^2?), then it's irrelevant that in fact the value is not constant--there is a far bigger error lurking somewhere.

  5. Re:Okay on Fine Structure Constant May Not Be So Constant · · Score: 1

    It doesn't vary 10% by location, not at any location from which I'd believe he conducted his experiment, that is.

  6. Re:What is a chalkboard? on Why Fingernails On a Chalkboard Sound Painful · · Score: 1

    In mathematics departments (in the US, that I know of), there is not a trend toward whiteboards. We like chalk, and are constantly at odds with our IT people who complain about dust in the computers.

    We never asked for the computers, either.

  7. Re:Taught? on Why Fingernails On a Chalkboard Sound Painful · · Score: 1

    This. One time a skunk sprayed underneath the cabin my family was staying in. It was in the middle of the night, and woke all of us up. We searched the whole place, afraid an appliance was burning out or something It was an awful chemical plastic burning smell that was nothing like the "skunky" whiff you get passing one on the road.

  8. Re:good or bad? on New Vaccine Halves Malaria Risk · · Score: 1

    Good or bad that babies (somewhere else, conveniently) are dying? Is that the question? Fuck you.

    (I wish I thought this guy was a troll.)

  9. Re:Rock Band? on Ask They Might Be Giants About Almost 30 Years of Music · · Score: 1

    It's not a lack of good songs, but rather a lack of good accordion, tuba, and glockenspiel controllers.

  10. Re:Simple Solution on Global Internet Governance Fight Looms · · Score: 1

    Give each country its own DNS. Then create a simple, automated, neutral central hub that connects all those servers together.

    That way, they can all play their own little games, and who the hell cares? The free and open parts of the network will still win out in the long run.

    Riiiiight, that should be real simple, both technically and politically.

  11. Re:What is the point on MIT's $1,000 House Challenge Yields Results · · Score: 1

    Yeah, that pinwheel design is great--scales nicely from 7 to 200 bedrooms, short paths from the beds to the dining hall, and you can get a tremendous number of positive thoughts just by sticking a platinum statute beside the main stairway.

  12. Re:Private Cameras...faking evidence? on Atlanta's Growing Video Surveillance System · · Score: 1

    Ouch, in calling out someone's ignorance I revealed my own. Thanks for the heads up. But my point stands, mutatis mutandis (clearly I learned that term studying math, not law!).

  13. Re:Private Cameras...faking evidence? on Atlanta's Growing Video Surveillance System · · Score: 1

    This is the dumbest thing I've read on Slashdot all day. Making a false statement is a crime. Slander and libel are crimes. Perjury is a crime. There are all sorts of crimes you can commit basically by lying, and nobody (most relevantly, the court) gives a rat's ass whether you own the means of communicating the lie.

  14. Re:Camera Vandalism? on Atlanta's Growing Video Surveillance System · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm sure your envisioned "open-source target acquisition system" can distinguish between the reflection from a surveillance camera lens and the reflection from my eyeglasses, right?

  15. Re:Education Inflation Unsustainable on Stanford AI Class 'Beta' For Commercial Launch? · · Score: 1

    Do you think we'll have enough of that stuff in 10 years that it'll be natural and productive to "hang out" with your virtual cohort the same way traditional on-campus cohorts do today? Personally I think 10 years is very optimistic.

  16. Also good for interrogation? on Paralyzed Patients Control Robot With Brain Waves · · Score: 1

    It might make a pretty good lie detector.

  17. Re:Yeah thanks..... on BMW Working On Laser Headlamps · · Score: 1

    That's still on the order of a million gallons of gas saved each day in the US.

  18. Re:Ah wonderful on BMW Working On Laser Headlamps · · Score: 1

    ~125cm from ground to highest spot

    My CRX is 127cm (I just looked it up), and I assure you that's quite low.

  19. Re:Education Inflation Unsustainable on Stanford AI Class 'Beta' For Commercial Launch? · · Score: 2

    Not likely. You can improve the in-"class" experience, but it's the outside-class socializing and BSing with like-minded people that makes the on-campus experience so much richer. What gap do you predict will have closed in 10 years so that this is no longer true?

  20. Re:buzzword buzzword filtersucks buzzword buzzword on Stanford AI Class 'Beta' For Commercial Launch? · · Score: 1

    Crap, should've read the preview, and/or not used angle brackets. Above post should read:

    By feedback, I don't mean an accurate assessment of the quality of the work (which is also [ideally] a function of grading). I mean specific feedback like I write on my upper-division students' papers, e.g. "you were doing well up to this point, but then you made [wrong assumption] which gave you [bad result]. Here's an example of why [wrong assumption] is not valid." This is the kind of feedback my lower-division students, whose homework is submitted and graded online, do not receive, and which I assume 130,000 AI students will likewise not receive.

  21. Re:buzzword buzzword filtersucks buzzword buzzword on Stanford AI Class 'Beta' For Commercial Launch? · · Score: 1

    By feedback, I don't mean an accurate assessment of the quality of the work (which is also [ideally] a function of grading). I mean specific feedback like I write on my upper-division students' papers, e.g. "you were doing well up to this point, but then you made which gave you . Here's an example of why is not valid." This is the kind of feedback my lower-division students, whose homework is submitted and graded online, do not receive, and which I assume 130,000 AI students will likewise not receive.

  22. Re:buzzword buzzword filtersucks buzzword buzzword on Stanford AI Class 'Beta' For Commercial Launch? · · Score: 1

    Automate the hell out of it so they can have 130,000 students paying tuition (eventually) for a class taught by one (or a few) faculty. Of course, automated grading does not give very meaningful feedback, but maybe if they had some really great AI doing it. Hmm...maybe that could be the class project? Quick, somebody call Ray Kurzweil!

  23. Re:Discovered within hours of its explosion? on See a Supernova From Your Backyard · · Score: 2

    There's not some cosmic clock that marks a simultaneous "now" for every point in the universe, such that the light from that supernova actually traveled for 21 million years to reach us. Simultaneity doesn't exist, independent of reference frame. In our reference frame, the supernova exploding and the light reaching us are simultaneous events. If you don't believe it, pick up a physics book--even a very watered-down pop physics book from Barnes & Noble will set you straight on this issue.

  24. Re:"Just" 27 light years away on Baby Red Dwarf Found Just 27 Light Years Away · · Score: 4, Informative

    Well, as long as we're being pedantic...let's say we never figure out how to break or dodge the light speed limit, but we do learn how to travel at 0.9c. Now this one is 30 years away (or 60 or so if you want to count acceleration at launch and landing, which I'm sure you do). And your average Milky Way star that's say 50,000 lightyears away is now...gosh, it's actually a whole hell of a lot more unreachable.

  25. Re:Dates get confusing on Ask Slashdot: Could We Deal With the End of Time Zones? · · Score: 2

    This single reason is more than enough to dismiss the idea.