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User: Bruce+Perens

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Comments · 7,506

  1. Re:Gosh, is the Slashdot audience really that cree on Richard Stallman Falls Ill At Conference · · Score: 1

    I was also offended by the New Yorker cover, and I think Richard was too.

    Nobody should be surprised that there was much that is negative about Steve. I do oppose Apple's way of business, which is high on DRM and control of the user. Were I writing the same piece, I think I could have said it better than Richard.

    I think the saddest part is that Dennis Ritchie, who really invented the stuff of our modern world, died around the same time and in comparison to Steve, was unlamented.

  2. Re:Gosh, is the Slashdot audience really that cree on Richard Stallman Falls Ill At Conference · · Score: 4, Informative
    Of course I worked with Steve for 12 years, and despite his reputation he was always nice to me - even the time I put him on the spot about something in front of the entire Pixar staff.

    So, I was offended by those comments, too.

  3. Re:Putting his money where his mouth is on Richard Stallman Falls Ill At Conference · · Score: 3, Funny

    I don't think adultery is directly illegal anywhere.

    See Article 134 of the United States Military Code of Justice. Military officers are still tried and prosecuted for adultery - there have been cases in the last few years.

  4. Gosh, is the Slashdot audience really that creepy? on Richard Stallman Falls Ill At Conference · · Score: 5, Informative
    Whether you agree with him or not, I think that everyone can acknowledge that RMS has devoted his entire life to something that has done many people very much good.

    So, (and this is not the first time) it never ceases to amaze me that the response of some contingent of the Slashdot audience is to dig through his blog and use the worst two comments you can find to smear dirt upon him. He's a libertarian, and yes, if you take Libertarainism to its logical extreme, you might indeed believe that anything that doesn't hurt someone else should be legal. Nobody is accusing him of performing these acts, only of believing that freedom really means all possible freedom.

    Like RMS, I'm getting old, and travel a lot to do talks. If I fall ill or get hit by a car, I hope you turkeys never find out.

  5. Prices are already insane there on Aussie Parliamentary Inquiry Into Software Pricing Announced · · Score: 1

    There seems to be a duty on "luxury" items or something. An inflatable camping mattress that would have been less than USD$30 was AUD$130, and other prices in the camping store were similarly crazy. If you're outfitting as a camper there, you can probably save by flying to the U.S. to buy your stuff.

  6. Re:Why? on Apache OpenOffice Lagging Behind LibreOffice In Features · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's embarrassing that the Apache foundation got involved in such an obvious act of vandalism.

    I think so too.

  7. Re:Wait a minute on Is Siri Smarter Than Google? · · Score: 2

    We know that Google already has mature speech-to-text software, it's on every Android device (and lots of other places, I guess). It doesn't seem to me that they would have a problem catching up with the expert system provided by Siri or Wolfram Research.

  8. Re:Wait a minute on Is Siri Smarter Than Google? · · Score: 4, Informative

    The difference is Siri gives you the answer to your question if it can. Regular search gives you a list of web pages that may or may not have any relevance.

    You're not keeping up. Go on google and type "UA 647". You will see the flight status, properly formatted, right at the top. There are a significant number of questions that are answered this way, and it will only increase.

  9. Re:Wait a minute on Is Siri Smarter Than Google? · · Score: 4, Informative

    Right. As you and the other two have reminded me, this should have been "The search engine companies can't put their ads in there without paying Apple". And you can imagine that any constraints and regulation that are put on Google will make their way to Apple eventually. Will this protect the users? Absolutely not. Nothing can protect Apple users, because the problem is protecting them from themselves.

  10. Wait a minute on Is Siri Smarter Than Google? · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Forget about leveraging the cloud, AI, all of the wonder of Siri that nobody else has (or some portion of myopic Apple users think nobody else has). Asking Siri something and search by typing a field in a bar are both... search. What looks different is that Siri can take advantage of the semantic web and similar things to read the result to you, and come close to actually understanding what it's doing. But text search can have all of that understanding too.

    Somewhere behind Siri are search engines, and will remain search engines.

    The only thing that's unique about Siri is that the search engine companies can't put their ads in there.

  11. A really easy solution on Will Write Code, Won't Sign NDA · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I operate a consulting firm and work with large companies and governments. I always ask for a bilateral NDA. That way, both parties are bound to the same terms, and both have to respect each others secrets. Having a company bound to respect my secrets seems a bit more fair. And no company puts onerous terms in an agreement that it has to honor. I think once a company had a little trouble with this, but I asked why and addressed the issue in the NDA text. Everyone else has treated it as routine.

  12. Re:Royalty free? on Apple Offers Nano-SIM Design Royalty-Free · · Score: 1
    It seems to be mostly contact, it really does look like a SIM to me. The little bump in the middle might be a discrete component. The die is probably the middle of the sandwich, not visible in the photo.

    We're going to need a vacumm pick-up tool to put these in.

  13. Re:Just an excuse. on Red Wine and the Secret of Superconductivity · · Score: 1

    Watch out for those lead car radiators.

  14. Re:Vaccinate early and often, and breast-feed on Early Exposure To Germs Has Lasting Benefits · · Score: 1
    You haven't established that they have to be soil bacteria. There's probably no harm in introducing antigens of things that can't eat you until you're dead. But does that mean that exposure to antigens of infectious soil bacteria like listeria won't do?

    Also, I am dubious that our society is keeping its kids and their food so clean and so completely avoiding raw vegetables, which are reservoirs of soil bacteria, that children aren't being exposed to them once they can handle solid food.

  15. Re:Of course it is on Early Exposure To Germs Has Lasting Benefits · · Score: 2

    Is it not also likely that the act of eating meat contributed to this strength?

    Eating meat is great for you given all of the other parameters that obtained before about 1700. But more for versatility of the ecological niche you could fit yourself into than any other reason.

  16. Re:Of course it is on Early Exposure To Germs Has Lasting Benefits · · Score: 1

    Overall, a great deal of not surviving to reproduce, or not appearing fit to reproduce when the time came.

  17. Re:This explains it on Early Exposure To Germs Has Lasting Benefits · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Actually, what kills 1 out of 2 kids every generation makes you stronger. That's how evolution works. But it doesn't mean we want it.

  18. Vaccinate early and often, and breast-feed on Early Exposure To Germs Has Lasting Benefits · · Score: 1
    If this is true (it'll take time for other experiments, etc.), what it says is vaccinate early, and make sure that a wide and varying range of valid human disease antigens are presented.

    And breast-feed, which we already knew. Some immune components are transferred with that milk.

    What it doesn't say is give up on sanitation, homogenization, etc. The other side of that would be a high infant mortality. We don't really want to be putting intense evolutionary selection pressure on our own kids.

  19. You won't hear this one on The Sounds of Tech Past · · Score: 1

    The in-band long-distance telephone routing signal.

  20. Re:There's this little problem with Ender's Game on Teacher Suspended For Reading Ender's Game To Students · · Score: 1
    I don't think the problem age borderline extends to 14-year-olds either. But it has been interesting/disquieting to see the trade-paperback-size version of Ender's Game with the kid in zero-G on the cover in children's sections of bookstores. It seems to me to be marketed to younger children than 14.

    It's also disquieting to converse here on Slashdot with people who think it's OK for young kids to use GTA If they are real.

  21. Re:There's this little problem with Ender's Game on Teacher Suspended For Reading Ender's Game To Students · · Score: 1

    Actually, I don't want to elaborate too much. It's about my kid, not a scientific subject. However, the game being played wasn't one of the zero-sum things you're referring to.

  22. Re:There's this little problem with Ender's Game on Teacher Suspended For Reading Ender's Game To Students · · Score: 1

    Obviously, it's not a scientific study. But I don't really want to know those folks who let extremely young children play GTA.

  23. Re:There's this little problem with Ender's Game on Teacher Suspended For Reading Ender's Game To Students · · Score: 1

    Sounds like a good way to deal with a bully.

    Hm. Maybe we should teach them perspective instead.

  24. Re:There's this little problem with Ender's Game on Teacher Suspended For Reading Ender's Game To Students · · Score: 1

    Why exactly should he be punished? What he did was in self defence, had he not done so, he would have most likely either been crippled or killed in both fights.

    Well, it's a contrived fictional situation. My child has taken a class in how to physically defend himself from an adult. This included kicking a guy in a padded suit. If he was really in a fight with an adult, regardless of the merit, I'd get him some counseling.

  25. Re:There's this little problem with Ender's Game on Teacher Suspended For Reading Ender's Game To Students · · Score: 1

    a gentile soul

    Hm. Is that a Freudian slip, or just a typo...