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User: Improv

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Comments · 1,594

  1. Re:Ken Ham issues statement on Confirmed: Earth's Oldest Rock In Australia · · Score: 1

    How do you think these dating methods came to be devised and then trusted by the scientific community?

  2. Maybe they could delay them more? on Gnome 3.12 Delayed To Sync With Wayland Release · · Score: 1

    Say, forever? MATE with Xorg is much more suitable than either Gnome or Wayland.

  3. Re:I'm sorry I'm an idiot on Gnome 3.12 Delayed To Sync With Wayland Release · · Score: 1

    It is in fact an intended replacement for X11. It'd be hard to talk about the differences in much detail if you're not particularly technical.

  4. All the cyberlibertarian rage... wrong questions.. on California Regulator Seeks To Shut Down 'Learn To Code' Bootcamps · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So, what does compliance involve? That's the first question we should be asking.

    If your local libertarian hot dog stand guy rages at you about maybe being shut down because the health department is on his back, instead of saying "fuck guvment", maybe you should figure out if it's something as simple as them having hygiene standards for how he cooks, and some small fee for a license. I mean, maybe there is something unreasonable or crazy, and there are some industries that corrupt government and do rent-seeking in order to limit competition, but these details matter.

  5. Re:So this is the thing killing portability on Kernel DBus Now Boots With Systemd On Fedora · · Score: 1

    Then we should turn away from GNOME3. Because they're taking compatibility lightly. Because they're wrongheaded. We should make sure that no distros ship GNOME3 or systemd as default. Sure, they're not serfs, they're just people promoting an inferiour solution that damages Unix.

  6. So this is the thing killing portability on Kernel DBus Now Boots With Systemd On Fedora · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The corruption of GNOME and other opensource projects by tying it specifically to Linux comes with this; it represents giving up on being cross-platform, giving up on the BSDs and other Unices, and giving up on openness. No thanks.

  7. Good start, now.... on Ask Slashdot: DIY Computational Neuroscience? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Good start, now go do some formal study and get a degree. There's too great a risk, with self-taught people, for them to only expose themselves to the ideas that are appealing to them. Academic fields recognise this; you're not going to be ready to contribute to the cutting edge unless you put your ideas in the field up for reshaping by people who know more than you do, and that's a good thing.

  8. Re:It's only a proposed contract... on Code.org Wants Participating Students' Data For 7 Years · · Score: 2

    If we think we might object to provisions we wouldn't like in the final contract, we'd better start objecting now. The end effect of such protests can only be positive for us, particularly because we often lack a direct input into terms and in the end are left with a thumbs-up-or-down; making a fuss early gives us some of the only kind of leverage we really can get.

  9. If they contribute the least to global emissions now, their development should take the form where they remain contributing little to global emissions. Hopefully more advanced nations will be able to reduce their dependency on coal in the meantime.

  10. Ubuntu is suffering the same problems as GNOME on Ask Slashdot: Are We Witnessing the Decline of Ubuntu? · · Score: 2

    In the last few years, Ubuntu and GNOME stepped beyond the useful compromise Unix made between suitability for technical people and suitability for average people, and leaned towards the latter with generally no good reason. Sure, Ubuntu was pushing for an alternative to the X Window System, but so were the Wayland folk, supported by GNOME. The GNOME folk have been toying with the idea of making systemd a requirement for GNOME, making GNOME infeasible on other platforms.... because apparently your window manager should have a dependency on your init scripts? GNOME has removed all the options that make it usable in GNOME3, while at the same time embracing unreasonable defaults and suggesting the community write extensions to make it usable again? And so on.

    I suppose if we want everyone eventually running KDE on FreeBSD, we're well on our way there.

  11. Re:"Almost" is an interesting word on Intel Rolls Out Raspberry Pi Competitor · · Score: 1

    Imperfect doesn't mean worthless. If someone were to create a treatment that would cure almost all the people suffering from deafness, that'd be pretty great. Doesn't mean we should stop caring about the rest, of course.

  12. Disallow apps that can't be scripted? on Time For a Hobbyist Smartphone? · · Score: 2

    Sorry to be the pedant, but that "disallow apps that can't be scripted" line seems kneejerk and fairly stupid. Scriptability is not a yes/no thing, it's a measure for how good an API is. If you just want apps that are minimally scripted, I'm sure you could make a platform where every app accepts a hello() message, and does a popup with that, but that doesn't get you close to being able to do neat things.

    I suspect what we'd really like is more choice in programming languages on the phone and a cleaner split between UI and API.

    I wonder how many people would write apps for such a device for free. I might, and the opensource community might too, but is that enough?

  13. Re:Why? on Intel, Red Hat Working On Enabling Wayland Support In GNOME · · Score: 1

    Ahh, so nothing that's actually important.

  14. Re:Why? on Intel, Red Hat Working On Enabling Wayland Support In GNOME · · Score: 1

    Why are composited desktops important?

  15. Re:What fud on All-in-Ones Finally Grow Up, With Fast Graphics, SSDs, and CPUs · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Exactly right. When I started my current job, I had an iMac sitting on my desk; I was initially skeptical, but as soon as I saw the machine specs (as I was installing Linux onto it), I fell in love; it's a very nice machine, and my workplace had spiced it up further by putting a lot more RAM and disk into it. It's one of the most pleasant desktops I've ever worked with (and the resolution is amazing).

  16. Going blind on Things That Scare the Bejeezus Out of Programmers · · Score: 1

    Losing my sight would be a very harsh blow.

  17. Re: 3 months for $5000? on FBI Paid Informant Inside WikiLeaks · · Score: 1

    It is not your place to speak for slices of the American people with such a light constraint. Whether I agree with you or not on the "enemies bit" is immaterial; we're a nation with a great variety of opinions and perspectives, some of which paid attention in history and some which did not but without that factor determining people having your politics.

    The style of your rhetoric is reckless. If you're prone to such drama and sweeping statements, it doesn't suggest your arguments are well-formed.

  18. Re:It's no longer your problem on Ask Slashdot: What To Do When Another Dev Steals Your Work and Adds Their Name? · · Score: 2

    Ownership and authorship are not the same thing. He was the author of the work regardless of whom he wrote it for. Others are not entitled to claim authorship, even if they can claim ownership.

  19. Re:Bad Google on Google Drops XMPP Support · · Score: 0, Troll

    Often if you're "causing offense", you're talking with a thin-skinned person who wields their pain and/or nuttiness as a mallet to shove others around.

  20. Re:Bad Google on Google Drops XMPP Support · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    You have the right to decide that you should be able to control how others speak; that their mouth is put on the earth for your comfort and not for their expression. You have the right to decide to nag people who have no ill will towards you into talking in ways that you like. You have the right to conflate past oppressors with modern folk who have no such intent, and to try to control the latter.

    Doesn't make it cool.

  21. I hope the voters... on Paul's Call To Abolish the TSA, One Year Later · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    I hope the voters abolish Ron and Rand() Paul at their next opportunity.

  22. Re:Get over it. on Ask Slashdot: How To Handle a Colleague's Sloppy Work? · · Score: 1

    +1

  23. Nice handwave at the end there on The Coming War Against Personal Photography and Video · · Score: 2

    Article amounts to trolling, but it goes all conspiracy theory at the end. "if you know where to look" indeed. Suuuuure, I'll keep all that under my hat.

    Grade: D+
    Try harder next time.

  24. If so, so what? on Was Google's Motorola Mobility Acquisition a Mistake? · · Score: 1

    If you're buying a company because you expect it to win big in IP lawsuits, you're doing a bad thing.

  25. Maybe good advice, but... on Dropcam CEO's Beef With Brogramming and Free Dinners · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Having had a company for 4 years might not be enough to qualify for giving advice people should listen to.