Slashdot Mirror


User: Guido+von+Guido

Guido+von+Guido's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
509
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 509

  1. Re:Wrong. on Video Games As Propaganda · · Score: 2

    Bullcrap.

    Torture can net you verifiable truths. Period. There is a degree of torture where freedom for information is a good bargain, and a degree of torture where death for information is a good bargain.

    That should frame the philosophical debate on torture, but you have to be man enough to admit it does work first.

    You do realize that's how Stalin got people to confess for the show trials of the thirties, right?

  2. Re:Stupid. on Ask Slashdot: Protecting Tech Gear From Smash-and-Grab Theft? · · Score: 1

    Doubtful. Thieves are interested in obtaining things, not hanging around to damage your car. They would likely be more interested in looking for a different laptop to steal.

    An angry thief will damage your car. It doesn't take very long to break another window, slash a tire or put a long scratch down the side.

  3. Re:same as with everything else on Who Killed Videogames? · · Score: 1

    Ignoring the issue of whether or not piracy had anything to do with this or whether this is just a consequence of the rise of social media, what gives you the idea that this is "negative" adaptation? From the perspective of the gaming companies themselves, any innovation that makes money for them is positive and any innovation that doesn't make money for them is negative. If they're getting enough casual gamers to play their games, that can more than offset the loss of the traditional gaming crowd.

  4. Re:Launchy did it for me on Microsoft Killed the Start Menu Because No One Uses It · · Score: 1

    I tried organizing the start menu for a while. In addition to having to add new programs fairly frequently (weird little admin GUIs and various vendor software packages), I discovered that some of the programs that I updated would add their crap to the start menu every time I updated them. So I'd end up with two of everything. Finally, Symantec freaked out when I tried to move its folder. It just wasn't worth the trouble.

  5. Re:They can keep it! on Origins of Lager Found In Argentina · · Score: 2

    A beer with more than an ounce or two of black patent per gallon is going to taste astringent and burnt, somewhat like sucking on a bag of tea leaves. It certainly will not be flavorless. Also, there's no such thing as "light on malt." Beer can't be made without it, it's chemically impossible.

    Of course you can make a beer that's "light on malt." A pound of malt has enough enzymes for at least an equal weight of non-malted grains. For that matter, you could convert non-malted grains with a source of enzymes. For instance, chicha is traditionally made with non-malted corn, with the starch converted to sugar by the enzymes in saliva. No reason you couldn't do that with unmalted barley or wheat.

    Getting back to the original poster, though, there are definitely dark lagers available (e.g., dunkels, schwarzbiers and Baltic porters).

  6. Re:Some might argue on Linus Thinks Virtualization Is 'Evil' · · Score: 1

    It's not just fairly simple--it's mainstream. VMware does this, I think Xen does, IBM does, and even Microsoft does.

  7. Re:Way younger... on Moon Younger Than Previously Thought · · Score: 1

    I was raised in a Protestant household. I now lead a Protestant household (Baptist). I've been to several churches, camps, meetings, and various gatherings. I have never, ever met a preacher or other leader that believed the EarthSunMoonStars were 6000 years old. Now, I'm sure that these people exist and use religion as their reasoning, but there are nutjobs in every group. Saying that because of the occasional nutjob believes it, all or most must believe the same thing is no different that saying because the occasional Muslim wants to kill all humans then all Muslims want to kill all humans.

    HERE. Would it be fair for me to say that many NASA scientists are spies? Of course not. Then why is it fair for you to stereotype any other group based on a few nutjobs who mental illness is in no way related to whatever group you are using them to belittle?

    Unfortunately it looks like you need to have a talk with some of your co-religionists.

  8. Re:Pedestrians are green and can bleed red, too. on What's the Carbon Footprint of Bicycling? · · Score: 1

    I don't think he's overgeneralizing. I moved to Toronto from Madison a few years ago, and I think the cyclists are a little better behaved in Madison. Most cyclists have lights in Madison, too. As a pedestrian and a driver, I see cyclists misbehave all the time. They go the wrong way down one way streets, they drive without lights or even reflectors at night, they blow through stop lights and stop signs, they pass cars making right turns on the right, they change willy-nilly from the road to the sidewalk or from the road into a crosswalk, and so on. A biker going the wrong way down a one way street had a serious collision with a pedestrian a couple of weeks ago not too far from where I live.

    Drivers are worse than they were in Madison, though. Drivers here are very bad about rolling through stop signs or through stop lights to make a right turn on red, or just plain running them. When the light turns green and they're making a right turn, they'll gun it through the inersection even when people are starting to cross. I've nearly been hit twice by idiots making a u-turn while I was on the sidewalk. I live by the police station and I see people texting all the time within sight of it (which is illegal here, I should add). This year has been better, but last year we had a large number of pedestrian fatalities. The police have been talking about cracking down on cyclists, but they need to crack down on drivers as well.

  9. Re:garbage on Google Running 900,000 Servers · · Score: 1

    I am quite sure that not all of it is what we call "physical" servers.

    Google has a different model. Quila mentioned what their hardware is like; here is a slightly outdated Wikipedia article describing it. Google would prefer to avoid the overhead associated with running virtual machines. 10-20% overhead may not be a lot for an organization with smaller computing needs, but with Google that would mean adding another 90,000-180,000 servers. Their computing needs are way beyond what any individual server can do anyway.

    What they've been doing instead is writing their apps for clusters. When they need more performance, they just add nodes. When a node fails, it's only a minor nuisance as the load is carried by thousands of other nodes.

  10. Re:Project management on Former Google CIO Suggests 'Do Dumb Things' · · Score: 1

    BAD project management gets in the way... a project manager is suppose to get obstacles out of the way of the talent and provide resources where needed... not crack the whip because they are idiots.

    Another thing that kills project is bad management. A good project manager can't be effective if bad management gets in the way.

  11. Re:He will shortly find himself in court... on 16-Year-Old Discovers Potential Treatment For Cystic Fibrosis · · Score: 2

    Pharmaceutical companies don't make a lot of money.

    I'm not sure why people think that. I suspect they confuse revenues with profit.

    That's actually not true. The pharmaceutical industry makes a lot of profit. For instance, a little googling shows that according to Fortune they were the third most profitable industry in both 2008

    and 2009. If you keep going back you'll find that they've been quite profitable for a long time.

  12. Re:Collective Bargaining on 16-Year-Old Discovers Potential Treatment For Cystic Fibrosis · · Score: 1

    Oh, so you shift the burden of payment to countries that don't do this. I love paying for Canadian health care here in the US!

    The obvious answer to this would be to have the US government bargain with pharmaceutical companies. Problem solved!

  13. Re:WTH is SU? on New Chili Is World's Hottest · · Score: 1

    What are the units they are measuring by... SU? I can't find this unit anywhere online. Until I get an answer, I will just assume it stands for 'Successful Ulcers'

    Scoville unit.

  14. Re:Who gives a damn. on Rock, Paper, Shotgun Call For Worldwide Game Release Dates · · Score: 1

    Indeed. There are people dying from malnutrition, war and persecution by their own government. And these selfish little shits are complaining about having to wait a day or three to play a computer game. FFS!

    By that logic, what the hell are you doing posting anything on Slashdot? FFS!

  15. Re:Impact on work performance? on Cocaine Found At Kennedy Space Center · · Score: 1

    You realize Holmes is a fictional character, right?

    Which is true, but his use of recreational drugs wasn't out of line with the times.

  16. Re:Overpriced trains are madness on Mideast Turmoil and the Push For Clean Energy · · Score: 1

    You do realise the trucking industry in the U.S. is subsidised by a mostly free interstate highway system?

    Everybody knows roads and bridges build and maintain themselves.

  17. Re:So much for build quality... on New MacBook Pro Teardown Reveals 'Shoddy Assembly' · · Score: 1

    i think you might wanna look at some thinkpads. i've found them to be really high quality and devoid of logos except 'thinkpad' (which i think is awesome) and a small 'lenovo'.

    I've used a lot of thinkpads over the years, and long before Lenovo took over the quality was pretty mixed. It seemed that they alternated between good/great and terrible. I had one about three years ago which overheated horribly, and the wireless flaked out every time I unplugged it. I had another where the hinges attached to the screen just worked their way free from the body from opening and closing it once a day. The current one (a few years old now) is decent.

  18. Re:Great book on LotR Rewritten From a Mordor Perspective · · Score: 5, Informative

    Shakespear was published under a regime of perpetual copyright.

    Which is why Hamlet and King Lear, among other plays, are thought to be reworkings of older plays.

    At the time England didn't have copyright laws. They did have the Stationer's Company, which was the printers' guild. In theory once a printer entered a work into the Stationer's Company Register, other printers weren't able to print a copy of that work. In practice, this wasn't well enforced, and publishers often printed works registered to other printers. The first actual copyright law didn't come until the 18th century.

  19. Re:I have to applaud the ACLU... on Employer Demands Facebook Login From Job Applicants · · Score: 1
  20. Re:Göbekli Tepe on Giant Archaeological Trove Found Via Google Earth · · Score: 1

    I think you're missing the point of the article. It's not the age of the finding, but how they did it. As it says in the article, "it's impossible to know whether we have found a Bedouin structure that was made 150 years ago, or 10,000 years ago" without actually going there.

  21. Re:IPv7 on After IPv4, How Will the Internet Function? · · Score: 1

    In the real world ( read as 'unix world' ) odd numbers are always "experimental" .. There is a 5 .. but it was never meant for mass consumption

    Which is why OSPFv3 is used with IPv6.

  22. Re:Stupid on Senate Repeals 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Let me change one word in your first sentence (in italics):

    This has got to be one of the stupidest moves they could make. Make and repeal all the laws you want, but there's no getting around the fact that there are some people that just hate blacks.

    Which was very true when the army was first integrated, and it's still true today. Many of those people were in the army then, and some of them still are.

    The army survived integration, though, and it's fine. It'll survive the end of Don't Ask Don't Tell, and it'll still be fine

  23. Re:Some Questions on EPA Knowingly Allowed Pesticide That Kills Bees · · Score: 1

    Before you go all tinfoil-hat on us...

    Too late.

  24. Re:So... on A Lost Civilization Beneath the Persian Gulf? · · Score: 4, Informative

    The oldest languages around the Persian Gulf are Semitic, so it's unlikely the forerunners of the Indo-Europeans lived in the hypothetical valley now sitting under the waves.

    The Sumerians, the Hurrians and the Elamites want to have a word with you. (None of their languages were remotely Indo-European, but they weren't Semitic, either.)

  25. Re:Really? on Which Language To Learn? · · Score: 1

    There's a curious contrast between your username [dreamchaser] and the sentiment in your post.

    I'm obviously not the OP, but sometimes you need a day job in order to chase your dreams.