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User: jdeisenberg

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  1. Pronunciation on Ask Slashdot: What's The Worst IT-Related Joke You've Ever Heard? · · Score: 2

    Niklaus Wirth is the inventor of the Pascal programming language. His surname is pronounced "veert" in Europe and "worth" in the United States. In Europe he's called by name; in America he's called by value.

  2. The ultimate test for such a robot... on Panasonic Invests $60 Million In World's First Laundry-Folding Robot (telegraph.co.uk) · · Score: 1

    Folding fitted sheets.

  3. It can't be done without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress. If one were to get the consent of the California legislature (the state involved) and the Congress, it would be possible. The probability would be extremely small, but it would absolutely be possible.

  4. Re:This JVM stuff is BS on Kotlin 1.0 Released · · Score: 5, Informative

    Possible candidate for a counterexample: Clojure (https://clojure.org/). It runs on the JVM, but, as it is a dialect of Lisp, I would not consider it "just syntactic sugar on top of Java"

  5. Re:Too late on SourceForge Eliminates DevShare Program (sourceforge.net) · · Score: 1

    I'm happy to hear this, as SourceForge has, of late, been pretty much a cesspool of malware. I hope you are able to fix things in a relatively timely manner, as I'd like to be able to recommend FileZilla, jEdit, and PortableApps (all of which are SourceForge downloads) to my students once again.

  6. Re:Who is to say that this "list" is legit at all? on Anonymous Begins Publishing Ku Klux Klan Member Details Online · · Score: 4, Informative

    a) It's Robert Byrd. b) If you look at his voting record from 1968 onwards, you'll see that he was hardly voting the Klan agenda: He voted in support of the Civil Rights Act of 1968. In 2003-2004 he had a 100% "pro" voting record from the NAACP, and in 2005 proposed additional funding for the Martin Luther King Jr Memorial.

  7. Re:Gun-free zone? on 10 Confirmed Dead In Shooting at Oregon's Umpqua Community College · · Score: 4, Insightful

    When will people understand that only law-abiding people pay any attention to laws? And that is precisely why having "Speed Limit 30" in residential areas is a total waste of money. When will they grasp the concept that abeling something with a speed limit doesn't magically do ANYTHING? People will still drive through your neighborhood at 90 miles per hour no matter how many signs are posted.

  8. On the Theoretical Plausibility of Dividng By Zero on Ask Slashdot: What's the Harm In a Default Setting For Div By Zero? · · Score: 1

    I remember reading this article years ago in Datamation. http://www.retroarchive.org/cp... Long-winded and filled with marvelously specious arguments.

  9. My experiences with SourceForge on SourceForge and GIMP [Updated] · · Score: 5, Informative
    1) I recommended an open source screencast recorder for Windows to a co-worker. She downloaded it from SourceForge, it loaded adware on her system and made her system pretty much unusable. It cost her quite a bit to have her system restored (she wanted to have it done professionally to make sure it was done right). The next time I recommended some other open source software, her response was "No, I don't want to go to that time and expense again. I don't trust anything Open Source any more." Thanks, SourceForge!

    2) I call bullshit on SourceForge's assertion that their adware only comes with projects that aren't actively maintained. There have been a lot of complaints about FileZilla downloads (see, for example, https://forum.filezilla-projec...), and it is definitely a very active project.

  10. Re:Remember REAMDE on First 26 Pages of Neal Stephenson's New Novel "Seveneves" Online · · Score: 2

    That seems a bit harsh. I could have done without all the geographic exposition towards the end of REAMDE, but when the pace was fast, it was a great read. Anathem was wonderful also. The first pages of this latest one has me very much wanting to buy it.

  11. Re:Another language that has a fatal flaw on Nim Programming Language Gaining Traction · · Score: 4, Informative

    Here's the direct link to the section of the manual, for those who, like me, couldn't believe this: http://nim-lang.org/manual.htm... (see the section titled "Strong spaces") You have to explicitly say you want this experimental parser directive, but it's still a horrible anti-feature, as far as I'm concerned.

  12. Re:Never used recursion on AP Test's Recursion Examples: An Exercise In Awkwardness · · Score: 1

    Yes, I find recursion useful when I have to climb through the DOM for an XML or HTML document.

  13. Re:I have a dream ... on Facebook Brings React Native To Native Mobile Development · · Score: 1

    On what basis do you conclude that "phone home" code will be included, and that it will be difficult to remove? Does the current React.js include such code? If not, is there a reason to believe it would be included on the React native? As per TFA, Facebook did write it to benefit themselves, but that certainly doesn't mean it is useful only to them.

  14. Re:How many kids took those classes? on Education Chief Should Know About PLATO and the History of Online CS Education · · Score: 1

    During the '70s, it was mostly available for students at the University of Illinois. (I was the lead programmer for the Modern Hebrew project, and I know all of the first semester students used it. We even created a threaded notes system that let students write posts in Hebrew.) With quick response time, programmable fonts, and graphic display, it was well ahead of its time.

  15. Quick chi-squared test, FWIW on Debunking a Viral Internet Post About Breastfeeding Racism · · Score: 2

    Given the data (36 out of 47 found one photo inappropriate, 38 out of 54 found the other photo inappropriate), a chi-squared test without Yates's correction shows X2(1, N = 101) = 0.497, p = .481; thus, not significant. It would be nice if Mr. Haselton had posted a link to the raw data so we could look at it for ourselves. (Sorry for not using the Greek letter and superscript, but Slashdot didn't seem to like them.)

  16. Re:Finally getting this right. Maybe. on Bill Gates & Twitter Founders Put "Meatless" Meat To the Test · · Score: 1

    I have had some of the chicken strips, and they are quite good. (No, I do not work for Beyond Meat, nor do I have money invested with them.) Yes, it's far more expensive than chicken, but theoretically the price should come down with volume. It's a chicken and egg thing :) I'm also quite fond of the Tofurkey italian sausage; the texture is totally off, but the spices make it sufficiently flavorful to be enjoyable.

  17. Having been in Lima, Peru recently... on When Cars Go Driverless, What Happens To the Honking? · · Score: 1

    ...I'd say treating honking as a serious crime isn't working terribly well. At times, the horn became a nearly continuous background noise.

  18. "...strengths of certain languages" on "Clinical Trials" For Programming Languages? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And therein lies the problem of comparisons. An extreme case: a person writing a program that involves concurrency among hundreds of processes will probably be more productive in Erlang than in Perl, but a person writing a program that does massive amounts of text manipulation will be more productive in Perl than in Erlang, because of what the languages were designed for. It's somewhat like asking which is a better tool, a hammer or a screwdriver. A lot of it depends on what you're trying to build.

  19. Re:Try OpenSuSE! on Fedora 18 Installer: Counterintuitive and Confusing? · · Score: 2

    I used SuSE in the past and really liked it, but broke away from it when Novell/SuSE got in bed with Microsoft. I'm curious to what extent OpenSuSE and Microsoft are connected, if at all.

  20. Re:LiberTree on What Happened To Diaspora, the Facebook Killer? It's Complicated · · Score: 1

    ...and friendica.com, which is easy to install and works quite well.

  21. Re:Set things up? on Raspberry Pi For the Rest of Us · · Score: 1

    Exactly. Make a distribution that boots directly into Scratch or [[insert name of your favorite programming language IDE here]].

  22. Re:Walter M. Miller Jr. on Ask Slashdot: Most Underappreciated Sci-Fi Writer? · · Score: 1

    His short story "Dumb Waiter" is an excellent object lesson in "computers do what you tell them to do." Also, "Big Joe and the Nth Generation" hits that theme as well. Both stories are rather sexist (strong, heroic male protagonist; weak female character for him to play off against). But then again, that was pretty much the norm in the early 1950s.

  23. Re:Willing to bet.. on 12 Dead, 50 Injured at The Dark Knight Rises Showing In Colorado · · Score: 2

    I agree that training is absolutely essential. However, I'm not sure I buy your analogy entirely. Although it can be used to kill, the main purpose of a car is to transport people/things from point A to point B. Although it can be used to kill, the main purpose of alcohol is to make people feel good. The main purpose of a gun is to maim or kill. I am perfectly willing to concede that this may be a distinction without a difference.

  24. The Hacker's Diet on Book Review: Fitness For Geeks · · Score: 1

    I'm wondering how this compares to The Hacker's Diet, which I found to be quite good.

  25. Re:"Suspends"? on Santorum Suspends Presidential Campaign · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you end your campaign (quit), you can no longer raise funds. If you suspend the campaign, you can continue to bring in money to lower any debts your campaign might have. For more details, see this: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2012/04/why-santorum-merely-suspended-his-campaign/50982/