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  1. Re:We ALL need to leave. on How Edward Snowden's Actions Have Impacted Defense Contractors · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That's it really... where would we go? Slashdot isn't the site it's the community. There has been OSS work on federated search, and federated social networking, but a federated discussion site with a decent moderation system would be nice right about now. Is it even a solvable problem?

  2. Re:The best part about Slashdot... on How Edward Snowden's Actions Have Impacted Defense Contractors · · Score: 2

    The question : what can replace it if/when this is required? This episode is making me wish I'd been keeping up with the federated technologies people have been experimenting with - a federated nerd community that somehow included moderation wouldn't make me cry. It's strange but I've actually returned to IRC after 15 years - the dev communities I'm interested in have channels on FreeNode, and it's one of the only other truly nerd-friendly hangouts left.

  3. Re:Is the source code included? on North Korea's Home-Grown Operating System Mimics OS X · · Score: 1

    I think someone suddenly got Dear Leaders attention when they mentioned "walled garden". If he'd been paying attention from the beginning he'd know it applies more to iThings, but...

  4. Re:The Schutzstaffel on Britain's GCHQ Attacked Anonymous Supporters With DDoS · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...and we all know the vastly less powerful are equally morally culpable. That's why bombing illiterate goat herding religious nuts is also universally accepted as the epitome of Great Justice. Just replace "angry citizen" in this analogy... how could anyone fail to see?

  5. Re:HI! on John Carmack Left id Software Because He Couldn't Do VR Work There · · Score: 1

    I guess there are pluses and minuses to the technology they're using. They get no pixelated "screen door" effect, but can do less about the persistent image problem. I read something about tricks with narrowing of colour pulses, and some other things they could attempt. I'm not sure if they've even demoed the VR overlay yet, so perhaps they're still hashing it out.

  6. Re:HI! on John Carmack Left id Software Because He Couldn't Do VR Work There · · Score: 1

    The specs are pretty decent and probably exceed your expectations.

  7. Re:HI! on John Carmack Left id Software Because He Couldn't Do VR Work There · · Score: 2

    The castAR glasses also have an overlay which make use of the projector for more traditional VR.

  8. Re:HI! on John Carmack Left id Software Because He Couldn't Do VR Work There · · Score: 1

    OK. It's even semi-relevant. Jeri Ellsworth is about to release a 3D VR/AR project that I think is WAY more exciting than Oculus, and it's completely novel (or at least I haven't seen anything like it). The glasses project an image out onto the world so 3D objects are "in" the real world - the beginnings of a holodeck-like technology. It's called castAR... check it out on YouTube, but you can tell from peoples impressions it's a genuinely fresh experience, not just 3D done over with new tech.

  9. Re:By reef... on Australia OKs Dumping Dredge Waste In Barrier Reef · · Score: 1

    OK, so I should be worried about the mercury and not the lead, cadmium etc... Got it.

  10. Re:Patrons on Who's Writing Linux These Days? · · Score: 1

    Doh... premise of the COMMENTS

  11. Re:Patrons on Who's Writing Linux These Days? · · Score: 2

    Mod up... Part of what is so refreshing about F/OSS is that it's self directed by passionate people. There's something obviously wrong with the premise of the article. If patrons are the real source of vitality in Linux and F/OSS why are the most successful distros clustered around Debian and not Redhat?

  12. Re:Patrons on Who's Writing Linux These Days? · · Score: 3, Informative

    Apparently "glacial" development was still good enough to steal market share from the commercial Unix vendors.

  13. Re:By reef... on Australia OKs Dumping Dredge Waste In Barrier Reef · · Score: 1

    There's mercury. From the paper: "4) Lead, Manganese, Mercury and Cadmium All four of these elements were higher in the Gladstone mud crab hepatopanceas tissues compared to the reference site. Indicating that Gladstone crabs were exposed to a higher total body burden of metals/metalloids."

  14. Re:By reef... on Australia OKs Dumping Dredge Waste In Barrier Reef · · Score: 1

    ack! JCU is a world leader... not my friend (in case the language was ambiguous).

  15. Re:By reef... on Australia OKs Dumping Dredge Waste In Barrier Reef · · Score: 1

    About 20 years ago it was noticed that many of these reefs were dying back. An important cause? Increased sediment discharge from those same rivers you were talking about... apparently clearing vegetation, runoff from cities and agriculture was doing the damage. My brother is a builder and it's law that he take great care about sediment control from his building sites, as is the case with many other sediment generating activities. This is not news in North Queensland. The prospect of lead, mercury, cadmium etc... in seafood isn't exciting either. Apparently trace elements in anaerobic sediments become bioavailable after they're dredged up then get concentrated up the food chain. This happened during the 80's a few hundred kilometres south in Gladstone and closed a fishery. (I've attached a paper documenting this elsewhere in this thread).

  16. Re:By reef... on Australia OKs Dumping Dredge Waste In Barrier Reef · · Score: 1

    Not REALLY concerned about crabs here... I should have spelt it out, but although copper is a real problem for sea life the bioavailable lead, cadmium, aluminium and arsenic isn't much good for seafood lovers like me. It wasn't just in the crabs either.

  17. Re:Sign the petition on Australia OKs Dumping Dredge Waste In Barrier Reef · · Score: 1

    You're an idiot. My brother is a builder, and must be ultra careful to control sediment flow from his building sites. This is because the reef was dying, studies were done, and it was realised increased sediment runoff from clearing, agriculture, cities etc... was killing the reef. We were much more careful about this kind of thing, but apparently these days that's all greeny bullsh*t, and we're back to carefree shovelling.

  18. Re:come one on Australia OKs Dumping Dredge Waste In Barrier Reef · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It might surprise you. Dredging like this basically closed the Gladstone mudcrab and barramundi fishery - the anerobic sediments contain trace elements which suddenly became bioavailable when exposed to oxygen. They were finding lesions on crab shells and fish from being exposed to copper, mercury, arsenic, aluminium, lead etc... I posted a link to a paper elsewhere in this thread.

  19. Re:By reef... on Australia OKs Dumping Dredge Waste In Barrier Reef · · Score: 4, Informative

    This paper is probably also relevant. It's about crabs from the commercial fishery near Gladstone developing holes in their shells. The conclusion was dredging was exposing anerobic sediments to oxygen releasing copper, arsenic and a bunch of other metals and compounds which had a detrimental effect on sea life.

  20. Re:By reef... on Australia OKs Dumping Dredge Waste In Barrier Reef · · Score: 4, Informative

    I've just been speaking to a friend of mine who studied marine biology at James Cook University (a world leader in this kind of thing) and is a bit of a fish nerd. There's a reason the reef only starts 30km offshore. Coral is evolved for low nutrient low sediment conditions. Milky water cuts the light, and extra nutrients encourage filimentous algae which basically take over and shade the coral. Even the seagrass beds are very fragile especially at the moment after the natural disasters (floods, cyclones etc...) we've been having lately - the Southern Dugong is almost extinct. This stuff is widely known and care is taken even down to the building site level etc... to control sediment runoff. Apparently at the micro scale we need to worry about this, but at the macro scale it's no worries mate.

  21. No, but... on Should Everybody Learn To Code? · · Score: 1

    ...many important concepts useful to logical and critical thought can be learned this way. I guess it's up to the educators to decide the best way to get students to grok these skills. Coding for codings sake? Wrong reason.

  22. Re:Ya pretty much on Ask Slashdot: An Open Source PC Music Studio? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...ahh yes... people with more time than money ie. the people where much of the new music and ideas actually come from.

  23. Re:Can't say I disagree. on FSF's Richard Stallman Calls LLVM a 'Terrible Setback' · · Score: 1

    Perhaps you honestly don't know. The Unix Wars, basically infighting between BSD derivatives, almost undermined Unix is a platform. Linux came in just in time to save the day... it was inferior in almost every way, but the GPL enforced cooperation so software actually worked between distros with little modification. It used to be common knowledge that the BSD licence encouraged a prisoners delema type situation... but apparently the new generation either disregard this, or never learned this in the first place.

  24. Re:Can't say I disagree. on FSF's Richard Stallman Calls LLVM a 'Terrible Setback' · · Score: 1

    Learn some history... BSD-derivative infighting almost undermined Unix as a platform. Linux came just in time to save our collective bacon - even though Linux was technically inferior the GPL enforced cooperation so software wasn't as difficult to get working between distros. This was obvious once, but apparently the new generation either forgot or never knew.

  25. Re:Sooo frustrating! on High School Students Develop Linux Imaging and Help Desk Software · · Score: 1

    Yeah, if you enabled everything there'd be potential for fun, but the features are there to pick 'n mix.