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User: Livius

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Comments · 2,750

  1. Re:Tool complexity leads to learning the tool on Getting Back To Coding · · Score: 1

    The idea that something only runs in the IDE and otherwise no one knows how it works is just nonsense.

    However, the idea that 'something only runs in the IDE and otherwise some people don't know how it works' is depressingly common.

  2. "Should I bother speaking up...?"

    If you are asking that question you have really misunderstood the point of elections.

  3. Re:ERP system from *Oracle* on Ask Slashdot: When Is It Better To Modify the ERP vs. Interfacing It? · · Score: 1

    I've heard "No one ever got fired for choosing IBM."

    I've never heard "No one ever got fired for choosing Oracle."

    For good reason.

  4. Re:ERP system from *Oracle* on Ask Slashdot: When Is It Better To Modify the ERP vs. Interfacing It? · · Score: 1

    I don't think you can hide the fact that it came from Oracle, so it's already too late.

  5. Re:Strange? on More Quantum Strangeness: Particles Separated From Their Properties · · Score: 1

    I continue to find quantum weirdness very cool and very weird, but I find too often that it's acquired a quasi-celebrity status and people stop thinking as soon as they hear 'quantum'. Quantum weirdness is not the only way for things to be cool and/or weird.

    None of the experiments with photons, for example, demonstrate quantum weirdness - they all demonstrate special relativity weirdness, which is completely different. (Remember that the photon, in its own frame of reference, always travels zero distance in zero time.)

    The fact that particles not moving at the speed of light have similar weirdness is a whole other kind of weirdness. And it's cool.

  6. Re:Lack of ability to challenge bad debt on 35% of American Adults Have Debt 'In Collections' · · Score: 2

    You're forgetting...

    The people who (claim) you owe money to are their customers. You are not. They're in the business of getting your money - there is nothing else they care about.

  7. Re:Stability on Nightfall: Can Kalgash Exist? · · Score: 1

    It didn't have to be in that orbit the whole time life was evolving, just the time it took the culture to adapt to it and maybe some evolutionary adaptation of their psychology.

    The archaeological evidence of the cyclic fall of civilization only went back a few tens of thousands of years.

  8. Stability on Nightfall: Can Kalgash Exist? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Asimov's story only assumes that the suns' and planets' orbits are in that configuration for a few tens or maybe hundreds of thousands of years, not that they are stable for what astronomers would call the long term.

  9. Re:Foreshadowing? on The NSA's New Partner In Spying: Saudi Arabia's Brutal State Police · · Score: 2

    If you think freedom is just about insults, you have completely taken it for granted. Which is probably why you haven't noticed now that's gone.

  10. I'm shocked! on The NSA's New Partner In Spying: Saudi Arabia's Brutal State Police · · Score: 1

    ...that this hasn't come up sooner.

    I guess the NSA has given up on trying to be subtle.

  11. Re:Foreshadowing? on The NSA's New Partner In Spying: Saudi Arabia's Brutal State Police · · Score: 1

    When it's already started 'foreshadowing' is not the right word any more.

  12. Re:Speaking of McCarthyism... on The Secret Government Rulebook For Labeling You a Terrorist · · Score: 3, Insightful

    the quicker we will have those Congressional Hearings

    Unless, of course, you don't.

  13. Re:Use of drugs on World Health Organization Calls For Decriminalization of Drug Use · · Score: 1

    Drug use exists in other countries.

  14. Use of drugs on World Health Organization Calls For Decriminalization of Drug Use · · Score: 1

    The use of drugs is not exactly confined in its impact to the immediate use, which is the theory behind why it was a crime in the first place. But the other bad effects can be made illegal separately. A lot of them already are, in the form of some variation of practising pharmacy without a licence. And if a huge pharmaceutical company creates a drug that has virtually no value other than to create addictions (and deducts all the research and marketing expenses on its taxes), then someone should be going to jail.

    You can still say drugs are bad, which they are in many cases, but 'bad' does not necessarily mean something the criminal justice system should address. On top of which, a lot of the time it comes down to tastes in substance abuse. Alcohol is bad for all the same reasons, and compared to some drugs is worse.

  15. They're different? on Math, Programming, and Language Learning · · Score: 1

    Well, of course maths, programming, and natural languages are different, but all of them involve a symbolic language that models something and expresses that model. Kun seems to be focusing just on the differing degrees of precision these symbolic languages employ.

    People tend to think of natural language as only a medium of communication, but it is also the way the human mind models whatever it perceives or imagines, and despite the fact we do that mostly instinctively, it is by far the hardest thing about language.

    Programming is not math, it is language - a programming language is a language which defines, describes, and expresses an algorithm. Useful programs are frequently express something mathematical, but that is a function of the application, not programming itself.

    Maths is just a whole lot of symbolic language. Learning maths is language learning, but it is also learning to describe things with precision and clarity and algorithmically. Some natural language learning is like that (e.g. advanced Latin grammar) and some is not (e.g. introductory conversational courses).

  16. Re:Nuke from orbit. on FTC To Trap Robocallers With Open Source Software · · Score: 1

    I suggest beta testing on politicians.

  17. Re:Really? on FTC To Trap Robocallers With Open Source Software · · Score: 1

    Does 'zap' mean stopping them? Maybe they're actually trying to help Rachel.

  18. Re:Not Quite the Same on The New Science of Evolutionary Forecasting · · Score: 1

    Evolution will favour adaptation. In some cases, there may only be one straighforward path to an adaptive solution, but there will sometimes be surprises.

  19. Re:Excitig news or depressing? The latter ... on New Treatment Stops Type II Diabetes · · Score: 1

    Type 2 diabetes is 90% (or so) self-inflicted. Do you deny a remedy to the 10% innocent victims because of the weakness of character of the 90%?

  20. Give Rogers credit on Canadian ISP On Disclosing Subscriber Info: Come Back With a Warrant · · Score: 1

    I have to applaud Rogers for doing the right thing.

    This may even be a first for them, seeing as they are one of the most evil corporations ever created.

  21. Re:Or maybe it works the other way arround on Biofeedback Games and The Placebo Effect · · Score: 2

    It sounds like highly subjective inferences are unreliable and indistinguishable from background randomness.

    Which has nothing to do with the placebo effect.

  22. Re:This is sexist on ChickTech Brings Hundreds of Young Women To Open Source · · Score: 1

    Those aren't "prejudices and preconceptions" any more.

    Maybe they're just your prejudices and preconceptions.

  23. Re:This is sexist on ChickTech Brings Hundreds of Young Women To Open Source · · Score: 1

    When there's a statistically significant imbalance between the sexes, sometimes it's because of discrimination, and sometimes it's because there are actual statistically significant difference physical and psychological difference between men and women,.

    They could distinguish between the two, of course, but that would require thinking.

  24. Timing on Is the Software Renaissance Ending? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Well, once the current dark age of bloated web pages with delusions of grandeur masquerading as 'apps' is over, the renaissance can start, and then we'll talk about it ending.

  25. Re:A shift in economic metrics on Ask Slashdot: Future-Proof Jobs? · · Score: 1

    we have invested in and achieved so much in terms of automation, ai, etc, and yet we refuse to distribute the high efficiency benefits of these things to the very masses who brought them about

    The problem is that the 'masses' are not the same as the original investors.

    Society needs the 'masses' to get some of the wealth *despite* not having actually directly earned it themselves.