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User: Burstaholic

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  1. Sensational Headline! on Ask Slashdot: Why Are Scientists Constantly Surprised By What They Discover? · · Score: 1

    Have you ever read an article that was much more mundane or equivocal than the headline promised? Scientists rarely use sensational phrases like "scientifically impossible" to describe their work, and anyone who does is basically giving you the "headline version" of what was actually found.

  2. Re:Lost emails on Guccifer 2.0 Dumps a Bunch of Clinton Foundation Donor Data (engadget.com) · · Score: 1

    The main problem here is that none of the leaked documents are _from the Clinton Foundation_. If it is from a CF hack, the only folder they got was "Stuff from DNC and DCCC."

    The assertion in the article that CF donor lists are in the dump is false, just part of the red herring. There IS a donor list in the dump . . . from the DCCC.

  3. Re:Lost emails on Guccifer 2.0 Dumps a Bunch of Clinton Foundation Donor Data (engadget.com) · · Score: 1

    Why on earth would the Clinton's charitable foundation have be on the same network as the Democratic National Convention? Are . . . you suggesting they're like in the same office building or something? Like maybe some dentist's office in the same building also had their files ganked because it was all shared? That's just bizarre.

  4. Not from Clinton Foundation on Guccifer 2.0 Dumps a Bunch of Clinton Foundation Donor Data (engadget.com) · · Score: 1

    It's important to note the headline is a lie from the hacker: the "dump" is a collection of docs from the previous DNC hack and has nothing to do with the Clinton Foundation.

    The ploy clearly worked though - too many people stop at the headline.

    http://arstechnica.com/securit...

  5. Higgs truth! on There May Be A Fifth Force of Nature, Study Suggests (space.com) · · Score: 1

    Higgs Boson Truther ITT. Never thought I'd see the day.

  6. Windows 10 next please? on Microsoft Will Stop Spamming Android Users With Office Ads In The Notification Tray (betanews.com) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I had to uninstall the version of Office that came with Windows 10 to get rid of the 'Upgrade Office Today!' notifications. I upgraded to LibreOffice, of course.

  7. Re:How can there be? on No Such Thing As 'Unlimited' Data (wired.com) · · Score: 1

    This is more like charging for the lights in the restaurant. They were going to be on all day anyway, so it doesn't change the company's costs, but because you were there for an hour and fifteen minutes instead of the average forty-five minutes, you used thirty minutes "extra" of light and they're going to charge you for that.

  8. Pure Money - Look at the history on No Such Thing As 'Unlimited' Data (wired.com) · · Score: 1

    The issue is money. For a long time, broadband subscriber growth was massive - all companies had to do was sit and watch as their subscriber base (and profits with it) grew steadily without them lifting a finger. In recent years, the market has started to reach a saturation point and growth has greatly slowed. That's natural for a relatively young industry, but it doesn't look good on a balance sheet, so ISPs have gone looking for new ways to boost their profits back to the levels they're used to.

    The reason you paid for speed and not data in the past is that's the part that actually costs the ISP money - more speed requires more backhaul and other infrastructure to be built. Once that has been done, however, it doesn't matter how much or little data flows through that infrastructure - the cost of maintaining it doesn't change. Routers don't have moving parts that wear out when so many bits have gone through.

    The golden age of crazy broadband subscriber growth have passed, and ISPs are looking for other ways to boost their income. That's all this is about.

  9. Re:WIRED has it right on Hugos Refuse To Award Anyone Rather Than Submit To Fans' Votes · · Score: 1

    Since Correia and Torgensen between them have sold many more, that isn't a useful question. Almost none of their much larger number of fans heeded their call to arms, and I think that's very interesting.

    Personally, I love the 'Monster Hunter' series, but I thought the Puppy nomination block was a dick move, and would have voted against them if I'd been one of the voters. I think a lot of people had a similar opinion, and the votes show that.

    Sidenote: if the nomination system weren't so easily gamed, the story would be entirely different. It's completely reasonable to lead a campaign for recognition of a group you feel is underappreciated - it's the poor sportsmanship aspect here that bothers me.

  10. Re:Lovely summary. on Hugos Refuse To Award Anyone Rather Than Submit To Fans' Votes · · Score: 1

    If you weren't aware of Vox Day's personal outspoken advocacy for Men's Rights, you haven't been paying attention. Which I could hardly fault you for, as he's mainly a clownish sideshow.

  11. Re:WIRED has it right on Hugos Refuse To Award Anyone Rather Than Submit To Fans' Votes · · Score: 1

    A significant part of the justification here was that many of the conservative authors involved have larger (even much larger) sales numbers than many Hugo stars (Scalzi being the most cited), and therefore they felt there was a conspiracy against them, such that the awards did not truly reflect the "best" authors (judged in part by sales), but rather the most ideologically progressive authors.

    Part of this was an attempt to use their larger fan base to change that equation, which clearly failed. You may say, "Scalzi's minions followed his lead and defeated us!" but that only makes sense if Scalzi has more loyal fans than the other authors combined. By sales, he doesn't. It's not even close.

    This means that many works by popular authors were passed over by their own fans in favor of 'No Award.' The only rationale I see for this is resentment over the gaming of the nomination process. I don't think the Puppies anticipated the size of the backlash from that perception of poor sportsmanship, and it cost them a lot.

    At the very least, the cry of "It's time we conservatives got some recognition!" was nowhere near as compelling as "Don't let these guys break the system for everyone!"

  12. Re:Actually, the truth is somewhat different. on Hugos Refuse To Award Anyone Rather Than Submit To Fans' Votes · · Score: 1

    Except you're talking about the vote results to refute a point about the nomination results. Gotta keep 'em straight.

  13. Re:Lovely summary. on Hugos Refuse To Award Anyone Rather Than Submit To Fans' Votes · · Score: 1

    "MRAs literally had absolutely nothing to do with this" - except for being largely led by a prominent MRA.

    It's probably a coincidence.

  14. Hugo Voters Refuse . . . on Hugos Refuse To Award Anyone Rather Than Submit To Fans' Votes · · Score: 1

    I think just adding the word 'Voters' fixes a lot of the issues with this terrible headline, and shows why it's terrible. The voters refused to submit to the votes!

    Of course the correct statement is, even more clearly, "Hugo Fan Voters Refuse To Award Anyone Rather Than Submit To Fans' Nominations," which points up how ridiculous the whole thing is.

  15. Re:Profit??? on GitLab Acquires Gitorious · · Score: 1

    You mean, "profit" as opposed to "income?" On-premise customers pay them for on-premise installations and service, that's pretty straightforward. As far as 'profit,' you'd have to actually see their balance sheet, but their expenses probably aren't that high with a small team and a few servers.

  16. Re:Management speak, blah blah on GitLab Acquires Gitorious · · Score: 1

    Have you seen the price though? *shudder*

    GitLab is about 1/10th, for my company at least.

  17. Re:Profit??? on GitLab Acquires Gitorious · · Score: 1

    You . . . didn't even read the blurb, I guess? You should really do that before complaining.

    "Due to decreased income from on-premises customers . . ."

  18. Re:Misery loves company on GitLab Acquires Gitorious · · Score: 1

    You mean, one failing as a competitor does it better and takes off like a rocket. My job uses GitLab on-premise and it's excellent. Also, Gitorious' UI has always been annoying and hard to use.

  19. Re:I fail to see the benefit on Java Vs. Node.js: Epic Battle For Dev Mindshare · · Score: 1

    Heh. I work on a mapping application that needs to query a Postgres GIS database and simultaneously query SQL Server for customer information constantly. Node.js is a _huge_ help in this scenario.

  20. Node.js wins most of these, actually on Java Vs. Node.js: Epic Battle For Dev Mindshare · · Score: 1

    I've never really worked with Java, but I wanted to give my perspective as a Node developer.

    Better IDEs:
    WebStorm, by the same people who make IntelliJ, is a fantastic IDE, so I'm not sure how this is a negative, except in numbers (3-1). If you're running WebStorm, you have excellent debugging as well. Between WebStorm and Chrome I can debug my Node-based webapps very well.

    Libraries:
    This is a big one. NPM has a huge collection of libraries for almost anything you can imagine, all easily accessible through the npm client tool. Good package management with NPM makes bringing in and maintaining dependencies easy and painless, while the Java world as far as I know lacks any such thing, making this a much more difficult process.

    Threads:
    Node.js uses threaded, non-blocking I/O, so most of your trouble is already handled. As far as threading your own code, you've got me there - the Node community has solutions for parallelization, but they're still a bit clumsy.

  21. Re:Slashdot comments indicative of the problem on Anita Sarkeesian, Creator of "Tropes vs. Women," Driven From Home By Trolls · · Score: 1

    If quibbles about the definition of 'gamer' are all you've got, that's pretty weak.