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User: rve

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  1. Re:Java used to be secure and sandboxed on Security Expert Says Java Vulnerability Could Take Years To Fix, Despite Patch · · Score: 1

    you have a four-digit id! awesome! :-)

    It just means I'm old, which isn't all that awesome. Now get off my lawn.

  2. Well Hurray for Mud! on Rare Earth Elements Found In Jamaican Mud · · Score: 1

    The place I live has an abundance of mud. The mud here is heavy and pitch black, and absolutely everywhere some 9 months of the year. It would probably be good for growing food if temperatures ever rose over 65 degrees. If only it were as useful as that rare Jamaican mud, this place would be rich.

  3. Re:Java used to be secure and sandboxed on Security Expert Says Java Vulnerability Could Take Years To Fix, Despite Patch · · Score: 2

    The troll. You are feeding it.

    It's a good one, better than most. Clever use of a series of real technical terms taken out of context and having nothing to do with the issue or Java or each other, and to finish it off, some truly awful advice

  4. Re:42 on Ask Slashdot: What Practices Impede Developers' Productivity? · · Score: 1

    That, and free booze.

  5. Re:The rest of the world calls them on What 'Negative Temperature' Really Means · · Score: 1

    footpaths

    Spritsmus!

  6. Re:Actually watched Al Jazeera English? on Al Jazeera Gets a US Voice · · Score: 1

    now, if they want to be taken seriously, the 2 stations have to be reporting the SAME info, verifyably.

    Why? What would be the point of having different language versions if the stories aren't localized too? Should CNN Turk just report a Turkish translation of a story about a US senator's gaffe or a football game in Detroit? Your suggestion doesn't make sense.

  7. Re:Actually watched Al Jazeera English? on Al Jazeera Gets a US Voice · · Score: 1

    As someone who's actually watched Al Jazeera English, I'd just recommend that people watch it before they judge it, rather than just assuming it's the "Al Qaeda network". It's not.

    I've watched Al Jazeera English occasionally. It mostly reminds me of BBC World, even down to the UK accents. Sure, it seems biased, but no more so than CNN or BBC World. The bias is just from a different pov than western viewers expect. An Arabic channel isn't an Al Qaida network by default any more than an English channel has to be the Tea Party channel. It seems rather liberal by Arabic standards.

  8. Re:Remember Remember on The U.S. Careens Over the Fiscal Cliff, Reaching Only Half of a Deal · · Score: 1

    There are those that "signed" the no new tax vow, which is backed by large money if you break it.

    But if you dont, you get that money.

    In the rest of the developed world, if a representative is caught taking money in exchange for political favors, he'll likely go to jail, and certainly lose his job. They don't use the 'lobby' euphemism, and just call it corruption. The person caught offering the bribe likewise.

  9. Well, I lol'd on NASA: Curiosity Has Found Plastic On Mars · · Score: 1

    Why so angry? It's a good joke, you should laugh. It's probably made by a /. reader.

  10. Re:Congratulating yourself? You should be sorry! on Silicon Valley's Dirty Little Secret: Age Bias · · Score: 1

    And why is having robots do the grunt work bad?

    Actually, I didn't call it good or bad, but now that you mention it: you pay for it with structurally high unemployment, especially in the lower skilled segment of the work force.

    Even if they do get decent benefits, work isn't just about the money. Once you're prematurely out of the work force for too long, your world shrinks and so so your chances of getting back in.

    Why not automate the hell out of everything and give everyone a twenty hour work week and ten weeks of vacation each year.?

    More time off means more recreational activities, more holidays, economic boom for all the service sectors. Lower stress means reduced health care costs and probably just an all round happier society.

      The average hunter-gatherer worked about five or ten hours a week to survive. With all our advances, it now takes 60 hours a week? That's bullshit.

    I don't know where you got those figures, but the average hunter gatherer had a very low standard of living. Half his children died in infancy, he had no health care, in the winter he was cold, in the summer he was hot, he frequently starved. These days we still have such hunter gatherers in our society. They're called hobo's, and for lack of wild fruits and small game, their hunting ground is the dumpster. You could say they don't work many hours a week, but I'm doubtful that many of them consider it a very relaxing lifestyle.

  11. Re:Congratulating yourself? You should be sorry! on Silicon Valley's Dirty Little Secret: Age Bias · · Score: 1

    Funny how in many other countries, people start with 5 weeks of paid vacation and 35 hour weeks, and still have higher productivity than here in the USA.

    Europeans keep bringing this factoid up. This does not mean Europeans work harder or get more stuff done at the office. All this means is that because the welfarfe system and high taxes in Europe make unskilled work so much more expensive than in the US or Asia, a larger percentage of the GDP is produced by robots and computers.

  12. Re:So why only ask the men? on Dutch Cold Case Murder Solved After 8000 People Gave Their DNA · · Score: 1

    They looked at the Y chromosome first, which is identical (barring random mutations) between men who share the same male ancestor, because women don't have a Y chromosome, so it does not get recombined in the offspring.

  13. Does not apply here on Dutch Cold Case Murder Solved After 8000 People Gave Their DNA · · Score: 1

    I find this method seriously scary due to the probability of a false positive. I mean, suppose you have a system that only fails once in a million times and the killer has already left the country. You ask the two million people in the metropolitan area to submit DNA. You get on average two matches. One doesn't have an alibi. You take him to trial and tell the jury that he not only doesn't have an alibi, he had a 1 in a million DNA match. It sounds pretty convincing. It is very possible the jury won't have the understanding of statistics to ask "was this a sweep or did you only test a couple of likely suspects?" Nor is it likely that the information will be volunteered by the court.

    The one in a million false positives would apply if you took a million random, independent samples, it does not apply in this case.

    First of all, this wasn't a 'DNA profile' they took (this was tried a decade ago and had no result), but a Y-chromosome match, intended to find male relatives of the killer. If matches were to be found, further circumstantial evidence would then be used to narrow the search down, and finally a full DNA profile would be taken to positively identify the killer.

    There was circumstantial evidence that the killer was someone the victim knew, and probably lived within cycling distance of the crime scene. They didn't randomly test millions of people, but planned to test 8000 men who were between age 15 and 60 at the time, and lived within a roughly 2 mile radius of this rural village.

  14. Good riddance to those monsters on Climate Change Could Drive Coffee To Extinction By 2080 · · Score: 1

    OTOH species that live in really cold climates (like polar bears) will go extinct because there won't be any really cold places left.
    (And polar bears are not as useful to man as coffee)

    And nothing of value was lost that day. I hate polar bears, those ugly, blood thirsty monsters. After what they've done, I don't expect anyone will miss them. Good riddance.

    After the incident, I can't believe there are still some polar bear sympathizers around. Sickening.

  15. Diminishing returns on What's the Shelf Life of a Programmer? · · Score: 1

    Like with so many things, there are definite signs of diminishing returns when it comes to experience, especially in IT, as the more experience you have, the more of it will probably be in long forgotten and obsolete technologies.

    In my experience, the sweet spot seems to be around 10 to 15 years.

  16. Re:Finally explains it on Empathy Represses Analytic Thought, and Vice Versa · · Score: 1

    They'll need someone to teach them spelling and punctuation too, and some social skills, as their dad obviously won't be much help there.

  17. Re:Falsified Logs! on Dutch DigiNotar Servers Were Fully Hacked · · Score: 3, Informative

    quick and dirty: cron jobs that wipe the history file every minute.

    I thought of that in about 5 seconds.

    The more canonical solution is rm ~/.bash_history && ln -s /dev/null ~/.bash_history

  18. Re:Finally explains it on Empathy Represses Analytic Thought, and Vice Versa · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "Raised" you say. When I drop my kids off at daycare, the little girls my son's age come to check out his baby sister. The little boys are too busy playing and couldn't care less. At that age (barely verbal) kids just do what comes naturally, and not really what society expects of them.

    Mind you, this doesn't mean the GP isn't full of manure. Girl's lack of aptitude in math compared to boys is a matter of culture, not nature. It's not constant over different cultures or in the same culture over time.

  19. Re:Australia on To Encourage Biking, Lose the Helmets · · Score: 1

    Holland has probably the highest rate of regular cycling, probably the lowest rate of helmet wearing, and probably the lowest cycle accident rate.

    I suspect cycling is safe in Holland because most car drivers are also cyclists at another time of day or another point in their life, and their kids probably cycle to school (most children do). As a result there is not so much an "us" vs "them" mentality between cyclists and car drivers, so you don't have as many bloated lazy jerks in their massive urban assault vehicles just searching for an opportunity to kill or maim a cyclist and getting away with it.

  20. Re:I'd do it. on Dutch Police Ask 8000+ Citizens To Provide Their DNA · · Score: 3, Informative

    Even so, I sincerely doubt that this will lead to the perpetrator, for obvious reasons.

    They're not doing this assuming the killer will volunteer; they're looking for his relatives - something that was apparently not possible 20 years ago, when they also did a DNA screening. Everyone has a creepy cousin somewhere, right? Most guys will probably volunteer. Everyone in that town wants the crime to be finally solved.

  21. Re:Superficially Bizarre on Birthplace of Indoeuropean Languages Found · · Score: 1

    It happens all the time. Malayo-Polynesian languages (about 400 million speakers world wide) originated on Taiwan, now a Chinese (Cantonese) speaking island.

  22. Re:But can he sing? on Man With World's Deepest Voice Can Hit Infrasonic Notes · · Score: 4, Informative

    One of these days and just from curiosity, I'll try to rip the sound from the YouTube videos, pass it through a FFT and see what it'll show.

    Probably futile, due to lossy compression algorithms filtering out frequencies that statistically most people can't hear

  23. Re:Oh, FFS on How Long Do You Want To Live? · · Score: 1

    Exactly. I'm 58 and have managed to get/stay more physically fit than most people I know in their 30s. I do so because I don't want my later years to be unbearable.

    I hope that works. You don't know how many of the old wrecks you see stayed physically fit all their lives, and old age still caught up with them. My dad cycled over 100 miles a week until damage to his joints made that impossible.

  24. Re:Cue the loonies on Arctic Sea Ice Hits Record Low Extent · · Score: 1

    Hey, just because I'm a barely-informed loonie doesn't mean policy shouldn't be based on my opinion!

  25. I hate ice ages on A Modest Proposal For Sequestration of CO2 In the Antarctic · · Score: 1

    KENT
    Our top story, the population of parasitic tree lizards has exploded, and local citizens couldn't be happier! It seems the rapacious reptiles have developed a taste for the common pigeon, also known as the 'feathered rat', or the 'gutter bird'. For the first time, citizens need not fear harassment by flocks of chattering disease-bags.

    Later, Bart receives an award from Mayor Quimby outside the town hall. Several lizards slink past.

    QUIMBY
    For decimating our pigeon population, and making Springfield a less oppressive place to while away our worthless lives, I present you with this scented candle.

    Skinner talks to Lisa.

    SKINNER
    Well, I was wrong. The lizards are a godsend.

    LISA
    But isn't that a bit short-sighted? What happens when we're overrun by lizards?

    SKINNER
    No problem. We simply unleash wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the lizards.

    LISA
    But aren't the snakes even worse?

    SKINNER
    Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat.

    LISA
    But then we're stuck with gorillas!

    SKINNER
    No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.

    Messing with the environment because we messed with the environment before, what could possibly go wrong?