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User: Livius

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Comments · 2,750

  1. Re:Learning is great on Australia Makes Asian Language Learning a Priority · · Score: 1

    It's called courtesy.

    Most cultures value it.

  2. Re:Exactly Backwards on Australia Makes Asian Language Learning a Priority · · Score: 1

    We make compilers that understand programming languages all the time.

    After 60 or 70 years of effort, the most advanced computers have at best a very crude understanding of any human language.

    Maybe the level of difficulty is not the same.

  3. Re:Exactly Backwards on Australia Makes Asian Language Learning a Priority · · Score: 1

    The Australians already speak English. And they spell it properly too.

  4. Re:rather have money on Do Developers Need Free Perks To Thrive? · · Score: 1

    The larger pay cheque is better, but it's also more abstract. Little perks that you can hold in your hand on a daily basis will have a much bigger impact on morale, and at a fraction of the cost of meaningful salary differences.

    The perks make a statement about the employer's attitude towards employees at a more tangible level than money. Plus whether or not there is the spare petty cash to pay for them is a (very crude) indicator of the company's financial health.

  5. Re:Next.... on Viruses In Mucus Protect From Infection · · Score: 1

    Thankfully the key to success will be leaving the mucus in place rather than messing with it.

  6. Re:Blowing your nose when sick on Viruses In Mucus Protect From Infection · · Score: 1

    I suspect the infecting agent is messing with our metabolism, causing us to make a super-watery mucus that is less effective and an inconvenience that the body has to get rid of.

  7. Don't be silly.

    It only becomes a new machine when you sharpen it.

  8. Re:Computers becoming *new machines* not unique... on Judges Debate Patents and If New Software Makes a Computer a "New Machine" · · Score: 1

    The human brain changes the same way, at a rate of probably thousands of time a second.

    If that mattered, think how it would affect things like acceptance of a contract or even criminal intent.

  9. Lizards on a Space Capsule on Mice, Newts Retrieved After a Month Orbiting Earth At 345 Miles Up · · Score: 2

    Enough is enough! I have had it with these m____________ lizards on this m____________ space capsule!

  10. Re:FTFY on Canadian Cellphone Users May Get Justice Over Phantom Charges · · Score: 1

    No, no, it's "by", as in, paid "by some people".

    A law firm buying someone something - you crack me up!

  11. Re:Really? on Review: Star Trek: Into Darkness · · Score: 1

    Although not played up in the show, Uhura had an extremely important position, would have had one of the highest security clearances of the whole crew, and was in as much life-threatening danger as anyone else on the ship (not counting crewmen in red shirts killed for dramatic effect).

    I think the 2009 movie tried to over-compensate for what now seems to be unbearably sexist situation, but which was a progressive role for the time. That creates imbalance but changes nothing about the realities of the 1960s.

  12. Re:not a fan on Review: Star Trek: Into Darkness · · Score: 2

    Pretty colours and 'snappy' writing are not themselves bad, the bad part is when they are used instead of rather than in addition to actual storytelling.

    The last Star Trek movie did not have any interesting conflict driving the plot, it was bad guy who was essentially mentally ill and in possession of advanced technology. Not a lot of complex decision-making involved, and the resolution was a time travel deus ex machina.

  13. Re:Your experience is contrary to mine on Ask Slashdot: Dealing With a Fear of Technological Change? · · Score: 1

    In general, people do tend to resist change.

    But not always. I think he was referring to fads, where people irrationally embrace change because, well, not for any reason really.

    And a trend I have noticed is an inverse relationship between the depth of change and the enthusiasm. I remember someone excitedly showing me a tablet or laptop or something - I forget what now - and me politely explaining that, having programmed computers for 30 years, I had seen a computer before. I literally could not figure out what was special and unique about the device.

    So I see a lot of co-workers obsessing about different models of phones, which have only the most superficial differences between them, with the basic concepts well-established for years. An actual fundamental change would undoubtedly spark passionate resistance.

  14. Fantasy sales pitch on Why We Should Build a Supercomputer Replica of the Human Brain · · Score: 1

    Perhaps he is deliberately overstating the case.

    Clearly contemporary science and technology are not ready to simulate a human brain, but perhaps getting people excited about a grandiose albeit unrealistic goal will facilitate some more reasonable project that will stand a chance of increasing our knowledge of the brain.

    Having no goal would not help science either.

  15. Re:And who's brain will it model? on Why We Should Build a Supercomputer Replica of the Human Brain · · Score: 4, Funny

    And naturally a petulant pestilent child is that much worse.

  16. Re:Don't Worry! America is STILL the "Good Guys" on US Government Monitoring Associated Press Phone Records · · Score: 1

    I would mod this 'Funny', but there are so many people who actually believe nonsense like this that I can't be sure.

  17. Re: Very un-PC on IRS Admits Targeting Conservative Groups During 2012 Election · · Score: 1

    Not everyone, but a lot of people - racist and reverse racist alike - had opinions that were race-based.

  18. Re:If your group is on IRS Admits Targeting Conservative Groups During 2012 Election · · Score: 1

    The Tea Party has its extremists.

    Making it exactly the same as every other movement ever.

  19. Re:If your group is on IRS Admits Targeting Conservative Groups During 2012 Election · · Score: 0

    Wrong. Public sector unions are *entirely* political and have no other purpose.

  20. Re:LOL on CO2 Levels Reach 400ppm at Mauna Loa For First Time On Record · · Score: 1

    And we're not completely sure how many of the maybe-years are supposed to be included.

  21. Re:Does it matter if SOME are? on Are Some of North Korea's Long-Range Missiles Fakes? · · Score: 1

    World War I only took two bullets.

  22. Re:Psychiatry is not medicine on NIMH Distances Itself From DSM Categories, Shifts Funding To New Approaches · · Score: 1

    It doesn't have to be either/or. I think they've figured out there are plenty of both kinds of suckers to exploit.

  23. Re:DSM can be useful, but not useful enough to kee on NIMH Distances Itself From DSM Categories, Shifts Funding To New Approaches · · Score: 2

    Asperger's is an excellent example of this, where knowing something about the disorder, what symptoms go together, and what strategies are effective at managing it, is extremely useful. The 'diagnosis' is of enormous practical value.

    But it's not a disease in the sense of a specific diagnosis, nor are they even confident that it is a single disorder, and, at least at present, it certainly doesn't point towards a cure or anything beyond management of symptoms.

    So it's useful, but definitely not 'diagnosis' in the same sense that, for example, identifying Mycobacterium tuberculosis would diagnose tuberculosis.

  24. Ponce de León on The Body's "Fountain of Youth" Could Lie In the Brain · · Score: 1

    I know that the writer was just trying (unsuccessfully) to make a joke, but I suspect that investigating the hypothalamus with 16th-century technology and 16th-century medical theory would probably not have helped much.

  25. Unwarranted assumption on Bruce Schneier: Why Collecting More Data Doesn't Increase Safety · · Score: 1

    It was never about increasing safety. Loss of civil rights is a feature, not a bug.