Slashdot Mirror


User: arctus

arctus's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
46
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 46

  1. Where's that guy from the Google Bus thread... on Your 60-Hour Work Week Is Not a Badge of Honor · · Score: 1

    Who told me that until I work a 70+ hour week I'm not even trying...

    This is definitely a problem, this is the D measuring contest of the IT world.

    If anyone ever says this to me in real life I'm going to laugh them out of the room...

    I "work" around 44 hours a week, I do about 20 hours of actual work, browse Reddit/Imgur/Hackernews/Slashdot the rest of the time...and I make 60K.

    I am fine with this, I am never joining this D measuring contest in IT, so I hope you all die from work exhaustion soon....

  2. Really? "Think" is the word we use here? on Majority of Young American Adults Think Astrology Is a Science · · Score: 1

    Majority of Young American Adults Think Astrology Is a Science

    Majority of Americans Think Angels are real

    Majority of Americans Think Evolution is a ploy by the Devil

    Majority of Americans Think the NSA is a benevolent organization

    Majority of Americans Don't Actually "Think"...

  3. So... on North Korean Business Park Getting Internet Access · · Score: 1

    What do you do at the office if you can't procrastinate for 8 hours using partially open internet access?

  4. Re:Is there really this much market share? on Amazon's Double-Helix Acquisition Hints At Gaming Console · · Score: 1

    I think you're absolutely right, ease of use is especially huge. It's more likely to me that consoles evolve into PCs than PCs evolve (or devolve depending on your perspective) into consoles....just based on the apparent flow of the physical universe.

  5. Is there really this much market share? on Amazon's Double-Helix Acquisition Hints At Gaming Console · · Score: 1

    From my understanding, even with Nintendo and Microsoft selling less consoles, any open market share is being cornered by the pending Steam OS console and a flourishing PS4. This new Amazon based Android console wouldn't seem viable in the same market space. Android gaming is niche' to the say the least. Do you really need 4+ fully fledged consoles each with around 8% exclusive software titles (90% for Nintendo) plus the usual casual fair like Android/iOS games on smartphones and an ever present PC MasterRace? I don't think the market will take this kind of fragmentation. Fanboys aside, the platform that offers the best commodity services (3rd party apps, software store, online service) in addition to the greatest number of quality software titles, at the lowest cost of ownership/cost of entry should hold the most market share ( cough* PS3/4 cough*). And that doesn't seem to be the mentality of these new comer consoles that seem to be targeting Nintendo style niche marketing. So my question is, will Nintendo pull a Sega?

  6. Re:It might be an unpopular opinion... on Ask Slashdot: What Does Edward Snowden Deserve? · · Score: 1

    There's also the slight difference in that civil rights protesters are recognized and rewarded by the government one day a year (MLK Day)....

    The current government will never recognize or reward anyone for a Snowden-esqe whistleblowing.

    The most will get out of this is a remember, remember the 5th of November kinda day.

  7. Re:So I was sitting behind a Gbus/Fbus on 85 today on Protesters Show Up At the Doorstep of Google Self-driving Car Engineer · · Score: 1

    Yes drag me into a semantic argument based on my word choices...

    Would you prefer mind breaking? The point is, those perks are subsidized services for employees so they can lure you in, work you numb, then discard you in a few years for the next set of naive drones.

    If working a 100 hour week makes you feel entitled to create, "son you don't know what real work is" posts, great, but I'm not impressed. I do have perspective, I have worked hard manual labor jobs...which is why I have a Masters in CS so I can sit in a cozy office and read posts complaining about exclusive employee perk systems...

    You act like having an office job is a privilege, any idiot can slide into a cubicle these days, if you're stuck hanging dry wall that's your life choices that led you there and I could really give a damn.

  8. Re:So I was sitting behind a Gbus/Fbus on 85 today on Protesters Show Up At the Doorstep of Google Self-driving Car Engineer · · Score: 1

    One question...why? If I worked at Google I wouldn't want you on my bus. Google is a big machine. As someone who also works for a big machine, I'm only here for the perks and I have no interest in sharing with outsiders. You want my perks? Come break your back with me and work 60 hours a week...then the bus rides, free food, nap pods, etc. will seem less like privileges and more like justifications for your insanity...

  9. Re:When God speaks to Dawkins on New Documentary Chronicles Road Tripping Scientists Promoting Reason · · Score: 1

    No I believe the idea of God exists, and as it exists, at least, as people explain God to me and as far as I understand God as a concept using the Christian Bible, I reject any attribute of benevolence, I don't see it. So my comment is a little paradoxical. Maybe I didn't explain it well, basically its like, why would I believe in such a seemingly childish god? I am not against believing in things that lack current scientific validation, but the christian god is certainly not one of those things.

  10. Re:save us from *all* pseudo-science on New Documentary Chronicles Road Tripping Scientists Promoting Reason · · Score: 1

    The christian belief on "why there is stuff" has perhaps been well explained-- there is an eternal unchanging God who always was and always will be who willed everything into existence (I have no particular belief concerning the "how"-- a big bang works well enough, though).

    I really hate that God always was and just tells us that is his explanation...just like I hate almost everything to do with Christianity. Atheism may have its concessions, but its still backed more by science than any religion. And anyone that doesn't gloss over the Christian God and make tons of excuses for Him would admit what a inconsistent wreck of a being it is. I was a Christian too, and I know how this is done. But then one day I get fed up with trying to bend reality for an alleged being that doesn't interact or communicate or appear to exist in any way.

  11. Re:When God speaks to Dawkins on New Documentary Chronicles Road Tripping Scientists Promoting Reason · · Score: 1

    Dawkins was raised as a Christian.

    As someone also raised as a Christian, there's no way I would go back, even if God personally asked me back...

    So far this thread is about the rational side of rejecting religion, but this is a more qualitative, personal approach. So personally, there's no alleged qualities of the Christian God that I find benevolent. He's a genocidal, manipulative, needy, self-ish being reminiscent of a psychotic girlfriend and I would suffer any fate to avoid it/him/her. Thankfully this makes sense, these are human traits and God is a human product, albeit a very dark, destructive one.

  12. Re:Hate comes in many forms on New Documentary Chronicles Road Tripping Scientists Promoting Reason · · Score: 1

    That is, why exactly hasn't religion gone away after all this time?

    Because it's a meme with a lot of selective advantages. None of which have to do with it being true.

    Personally, I choose to keep a more open mind to possible explanations of reality than Dawkins and (insert religious fundamentalist figurehead here) choose to.

    Do you think anyone would have come up with wave particle duality if scientists weren't open minded? We're willing to consider anything, if there's evidence. If there's no evidence, then why waste your time?

    It also solves death, provides an easy solution to meaning etc. If you look at historical religions as far back as history goes, all religions arise for exactly the same reasons. A reductionist explanation would be that all religion arises in response to an unknown i.e. we don't know if it'll rain, let's pray to the rain gods. We don't know what makes lighting, it must be a god, lets name him Thor. We don't know what happens when we die, lets pray to Ra and rap our bodies in linens hoping they re-animate after death. You could go on and on. Anything that lies outside or has lied outside of humanities direct control has been/or will be a god.

  13. Re:Hate comes in many forms on New Documentary Chronicles Road Tripping Scientists Promoting Reason · · Score: 1

    Personally, I choose to keep a more open mind to possible explanations of reality than Dawkins and (insert religious fundamentalist figurehead here) choose to.

    I think Dawkin's lack of openness is somewhat intentional. It's like pushing back on years and years of unyielding, narrow minded religious culture. This is what the atheist side of being a bigot looks like. Honestly, I am also more open minded than the whole Dawkins parade lets on, but it feels amazing to have someone pushing back on the religious community with equal levels of unyielding stubbornness. They brought it on themselves, its a very reactionary movement especially if you look at communities like reddit.com/r/atheism. It's more than just being rational with your beliefs, there's a need to go a step beyond if you've been the victim of religious oppression like most have. I think in the end it will level out once we get several generation beyond the Millennials.

  14. An isolated problem on The Average Movie Theater Has Hundreds of Screens · · Score: 1

    I encountered this problem more in cheaper theaters when I lived in a more impoverished area in a smaller sized town. It was mostly teenagers that had nothing better to do than sit in the back of a sparsely populated theater and troll its occupants by talking and laughing obnoxiously. It had nothing to do with the technology. I won't comment that these teenagers are normally of a specific minority or on the details of they the said area was impoverished for the sake of political correctness or that this so called "problem" is really a by-product of something much larger and really shouldn't be treated as a separate issue. But in summary, I live on a white side of town with expensive theaters with nice bars (the kind that serve drinks) and dine in areas and this problem doesn't exist. If someone's on their phone, I certainly don't notice and no one would pay the prices my theater charges to sit and chat in the middle of the movies.

  15. Re: network ignorance on U.S. Army Block Access To The Guardian's Website Over NSA Leaks · · Score: 1

    Sounds like you're in the service and chugging the koolaide...remember Snowden was pretty devout as well. Please report back to /. first when your decide to go rogue.

  16. Re:Just wait for the news media to pick this up. on Growing Consensus: The Higgs Boson Exists · · Score: 1

    That's already in the news media, along with other lies.

  17. Religion just is.... on Dr. Robert Bakker Answers Your Questions About Science and Religion · · Score: 1

    Religion does whatever it wants. People wanted to advance humanity and still maintain whatever beliefs they had, so they did. That's all there is to it.

    If you want to understand where dinosaurs come from (or went), just make some crap up. You already have the end in mind, God has to be right. So find some random verse that mentions some random creature like a Leviathan and BOOM, dinosaurs and God. Solved.

    If religious minded people ever started with the premise, "maybe I'm wrong about god", how different would everything look from a religious perspective?
    Think of all the ridiculous theories like Young Earth that would instantly vanish.

    Religion always starts with an unfounded premise and builds on that premise (God exists). Science starts from nothing and works its way to a logical, empirical truth. They're only reconcilable in the way some religious people just take from Science whatever they please and discard the rest, creating these ugly Frankenstein-like theories that mesh science and religion in a desperate, pathetic attempt to reconcile God and the observable reality.

  18. Re:The biggest problem on Dr. Robert Bakker Answers Your Questions About Science and Religion · · Score: 1

    I mean, how many religious scientists use methods to determine their belief? None.

    I'm not sure I understand this statement, there are plenty of religious scientists that try to validate their faith based on scientific principles, they're just a joke.

    To me that's the real problem, religious minded people who start with a premise they want to be true and then pasting together evidence until they feel comfortable.
    This makes entirely no sense from a scientific perspective. How can use scientific principles to help validate something that you have no concrete evidence to even hint at its existence. The only evidence they have is the inability to disprove, once and for all, the existence of a supreme being.

    You have to hand it to the religious though, if wanting something to be true could will it in to existence, they could create a god.

  19. Seems pointless to pay off Google when that info could easily be yanked in to Federal jurisdiction.

    If I could know that my info was 100% private I would pay the price, but that just doesn't seem realistic at all.

    As long as the info exists period, someone will use it if the need arises IMHO.

  20. The MS Office Paradox on OpenOffice: Worth $21 Million Per Day, If It Were Microsoft Office · · Score: 1

    In college, I bought Office 2007 for $10 through our subsidy program. I could have easily gotten by with Open Office, but at that price, why?
    At work, I have Office 2010 on all my devices. I rarely use any specific MS Office feature, but my corporation provides it, so why not use it?

    So lets say 10 years from now when all my MS Office DVDs are antiquated, I start my own business.
    I'm no longer in school or part of a corporation and I need the variety of rich formatting features MS Office provides since I am doing everything on my own.

    I would have to pay $150 for the software I previously always had access to, but never needed until now.

    All that to say, if the majority of people get MS from work or school at next to no cost, and the rest pirate.
    Why can't Microsoft lower individual purchasing costs when they're obviously making most of their money from massive enterprise purchases of MS Office.

    Do they just like seeing my face when my parents tell me they once again purchases a full priced
    copy of MS Office so they can type up store lists in Word and create the occasion budget in Excel?

    I mean that's all it is right? It's a gimmick, no one in their right mind goes out and buys MS Office Full Retail unless they're incredibly ignorant or senile.

    I literally feel like MS leaves the price super high just for the people dumb enough to pay it.

  21. Re:Have some shame on Aaron Swartz Commits Suicide · · Score: 1

    I think the point is that "networking" doesn't make one a prodigy or a flame (if we're keeping with the analogy).

    I mean great, so happy he ducked the system, but there's not shortage of talented people being destroyed by the education system that would have the exact same story if they were brave enough to simply step out of the lemming line...

    It isn't exactly the same scenario as someone who's freakishly brilliant getting a lot of fame and then one day melting down in a suicide. It's more like a Mark Zuckerberg scenario, a little bit of talent, a lot of "right place at the right time"...I mean networking.

  22. Compromise on Campaign To Remove Paper From Offices · · Score: 1

    I would settle for completely paperless processes involving external actors such as clients or customers.

    Its my observation that a lot of the organizations that require me to print something hold massive monopoly such as a loan company or service company. On a recent student loan consolidation app I had to wait 2 weeks for a paper application to be mailed to me only to find out later that the paper app was then scanned in to a computer...the entire process lasted 6-8 weeks thanks to snail mail and the result was an electronic application.

    My skill in importing signatures in to PDFs that I handily draw in MS Paint is pretty good too...such a crying shame.

  23. Re:Suggest apps to try this with? on Using Magnets To Interact With Your Tablet · · Score: 1

    Make them too large to swallow I guess /buckyballs

  24. Re:How about... on Disney to Acquire Lucasfilm, Star Wars Episode 7 Due In 2015 · · Score: 1

    I concur sir, I concur.

  25. How about... on Disney to Acquire Lucasfilm, Star Wars Episode 7 Due In 2015 · · Score: 2

    a re-imagining of the first three episodes (most recently made movies) that still haunt my every thought of a galaxy far away...

    As disturbing as it is to think what could happen to the franchise, its far less disturbing knowing that jaded old Mr. Lucas wont be behind it. Episodes I-III were a mockery of film making and I really have to agree with Plinkett .

    Thinking about it, I'm not even sure who I would trust to continue or re-imagine the series...maybe Peter Jackson?