I know that there's a big difference between "hey, i've got a cool idea" and actual scientific proof, but as is usually the case in such things there were a lot of precursors to this "once-heretical" idea gaining traction. Greg Bear's Darwin's Radio is one of the more famous SF examples (though certainly not the only, and quite possibly not even the first) of speculation that junk DNA could actually be useful for something. It came out in 1999, and although i don't know if he based his ideas on any research that was happening at the time it certainly wouldn't surprise me.
Re:Enough with the "democracy=freedom" tripe
on
The Network Is Hostile
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Some of the worst governments in the modern age were ones built on being "for the people." Let's start judging governments based on what they do, not their structure.
"Democracy is the worst form of government, except all those others that have been tried from time to time."
You're cherry-picking two cases of worst-case scenarios, one of which wasn't even really a democracy. (Stalin was appointed to power long before there were any "democratic" elections.) There have been plenty of monarchies that have done things just as bad.
That said, democracy is "least bad" when:
1: Everyone can vote
2: Everyone is educated
3: Most people _do_ vote
4: People feel like their vote actually matters
5: The government is responsive to the will of the voters
The sum combination of all those is that it is impossible to have a (successful) revolution (other than in the sense of voting out the current party) because in order to have enough people to violently overthrow the government, you'd already have enough people to vote someone else in.
Unfortunately many modern democracies screw up one or more of those. The US is screwing up almost all of them:
1: There continue to be many attempts to disenfranchise voters in many states through various means. Statistically the number of attempts at voter fraud are non-existent compared to the number of people whose legal votes are denied, but it makes better show to pretend otherwise.
2: The US tends to fail on both the systemic and systematic levels. As a society we're not providing enough support for the education system, and when it comes to elections allow ourselves to fall prey to the spectacle of network news soundbites and commercial advertising too easily, rather than really educating ourselves about the people and issues involved.
3: The US passes this one. Barely. On years with presidential elections. But barely passing on a technicality but only some of the time is rather damning with faint praise.
4 & 5: These two are rather tied up together, and contribute greatly to the issues with #3. A first past the goalposts election system almost inevitable leads to a two party system, in which the voters grudgingly and unenthusiastically vote for the (perceived) lesser of two evils and in which the winner feels only a vague sense of responsibility to those who elected them. (If you piss off your constituents what are they going to do? Vote for the greater evil instead of the lesser one? Not likely!)
Possibly because he is (at least one of) the cow spammers, and people felt like punishing him for it? (Though it looks like it's been modded back up since then.)
Apparently my post was too long and you didn't read it. I never complained about posts being off topic. Some of the most interesting things i've seen on Slashdot have been off the topic of the article. The OP's comment got a negative response not because it was off topic (it was actually very on topic) but because it added no information content to the conversation. It was literally the null set. And it should be noted that i was not one of the people making the original complaints, i was just explaining to the OP why other people complained.
The fact that he complained about getting a negative response led to a bunch of off topic conversation about why he got a negative response, parts of which have been entertaining. So it was not the fact that he made a zero information post that led to the conversation we are having, it is that people criticized him for that post and then he complained about the criticism, and then people explained the reasons for that criticism. So if you wish to argue that the ends justify the means you shouldn't complain about people complaining, because complaining just generates more grist for the mill. (Of course that means you should complain, just to generate more grist for the mill. Complainception!)
TL;DR: I agree with you that off-topic is a silly complaint, so there is no point in debating it because we already agree. Next time read more carefully before assuming people said something that they didn't. Welcome to the internet.
No one is policing all comments on Slashdot, but all comments are policed by someone, that's how the system is supposed to work. (If you didn't think people were going to be reading what you said and having opinions about it then why did you even post?)
Your first mistake was making a comment that added zero to the conversation. If a small percentage of the population is suffering from a problem then people posting "i don't have the problem" adds no useful information. The only case such a statement would be useful were if it was a poll and we were trying to gather statistical data. It is not a poll, and we don't want hundreds of people posting saying nothing more than "i don't have the problem."
The initial responses were intended to inform you, and anyone else who had the same idea, that it was not a productive path for the conversation to take. Saying that you got the error and specifying any differences from a "normal" update is productive. Speculating on causes of the error is productive. Lambasting Microsoft for the choice to make updates mandatory is... well, entertaining at least. Saying "i have no information to provide because nothing happened" is not productive.
Your second mistake was completely failing to get the point when that was pointed out to you. This made some people think that you were a shill, a troll, or a fool. Some of those people responded with hostility because they dislike shills and trolls and like tormenting fools.
If you still honestly don't get the problem we can delve into a discussion of information theory and further analyze how your initial statement added nothing of value. If you're a shill or a troll, well played.
A quick search seems to indicate that SyFy is hyping five new shows for their upcoming season. The Expanse is being promoted as "one of the biggest TV deals ever". I doubt it's in the same league as Game of Thrones, which gets $6 million an episode, but let's highball it and go $5 million an episode. Let's then presume that the others cost less, and the average for all 5 shows is $2.5 million an episodes. The norm these days is 10 episodes a season, and let's presume these shows are reasonable well spread out over the year, so people will actually be willing to keep a subscription going full time.
That puts the total production costs at $125 million a year. Which means if they charged $10 a month they'd need to get just over a million viewers to cover production costs. According to current ratings they have 1.28 million viewers, so if they could get everyone to switch over it would be feasible. (And people who didn't switch over would continue to supply revenue through whatever the current system is.) I'm not sure what the overhead is, including rebroadcasting costs for older shows, so it might be more reasonable to bump that up to $15 a month. On the other hand that's not counting any other sources of income they have.
So if the new shows are actually everything they're claiming it seems an entirely reasonable price.
How are Hulu and Netflix doing? Even better, how is HBO doing now that they've made HBO Go available without a cable subscription?
I'm currently paying for both Hulu and Netflix (and also Crunchyroll) and i'm thinking of picking up HBO Go. I have no problem paying for the content i want, it's the hassle of dealing with the cable company plus paying for a lot of crap that i don't want that's the problem.
My big gripe at the moment is SyFy. For the first time since they changed their name to something that sounds like a venereal disease they're producing content that i'm actually interested in. But i can't watch it because even though they're posting it to Hulu they're requiring that you have a cable subscription to view it. I don't know if this is stupidity on their part or some kind of legal tangle they just can't free themselves from, but i _want_ to watch their stuff and i'm willing to pay them, either directly or indirectly, but they just won't let me.
But you're missing the point, instead of trying to bribe scientists into "proving" that sugary drinks are okay, which is terrible, they should be putting forth the stuff that is at least marginally healthier as an alternative. It shouldn't be Coca-Cola's job to convince you to consume the healthiest thing available, it should be Coca-Cola's job to convince you to drink their brand of whatever it is you want to drink. If you're concerned about the sugar in Coke they should want to convince you to drink Diet Coke, and if you're scared about both real sugar and artificial sweeteners they should want to convince you to drink Dasani. Their job should not be to convince scientists to lie to you.
This is stupid not just because they're trying to influence science with money, but because they've got a perfectly reasonable alternative path. Coca-Cola has _two_ popular zero calorie drinks in its main product line, and who knows how many others in all the various other product lines they've accumulated over the years.
Instead of trying to pervert the science, advertise your calorie free drinks! Something along the lines of "we believe in your right to chose your own drinks, be we encourage you to try Diet Coke or Coke Zero to improve your health!" (Clearly i wasn't cut out to be a marketing guy, but you get the idea.)
And yes, i know there is plenty of research showing that diet drinks are not a panacea of health, but i still think they're better than consuming an equal amount of the sugary equivalent.
The general idea is still sound. The problem is that the calorie/kilocalorie values are based on a very average and idealized man (at least i'm guessing at least that the original studies were made on men) and the supposed calorie requirements are only _slightly_ more tailored on an individual basis, treating everyone of the same weight, gender, age, and activity level the same.
If you consume less food calories than you burn, as measured by the way your body processes that food, you will lose weight. Unfortunately some people will achieve that effect without even trying while for others it will be a miserable, grueling experience requiring more willpower than is usually feasible.
Of course to be fair, those people are already taking public transportation and are already not contributing to the traffic problem in question. If they switch to robocabs it won't make any difference.
Although in an ideal world that is at least some subset of people who are okay with public transportation in theory but don't currently find it practical. Personally i'd like to get a personal automated auto as soon as they're available, i'm not quite as enthusiastic about the robocab idea though.
Actually i did miss it. The large green button is actually a deterrent in this case. It's such an eye-searing shade that my eyes keep automatically trying to skip over it to save themselves. (I also didn't notice it on the first page because it was below the bottom edge of the window, but it also shows up in all its painful glory on the donation page you get redirected to after hitting download.)
Addendum: there is apparently no longer any local help. Going to Help->LibreOffice Help opens up a browser window to the online documentation. Searching for help on the internet is fine in general, but the search results in this site seem very cluttered and it seems far less convenient than the offline help present in OO 3.4.1. Not to mention the fact that i frequently have to use VPN software at work that disables my regular internet.
Button icons were huge at first, but i figured out how to fix that.
I don't really like the sidebar thing. Minimizing it is easy, but then there's a very dark, very obvious, poorly aligned button on the right side. Preferably i'd like to remove it entirely, but getting the color toned down might be an acceptable alternative.
They still have the messed up column and row header colors. Back in 2.1 the headers were a nice solid dark grey. Then sometime between then and 3.4 they added shading. The "inner" half of the headers is dark grey and the outer half is light grey. I find it visually distracting, and since the line runs right down the center it sometimes makes it a little hard to read the letters/numbers. I'm sure it doesn't bother most people at all, but i don't really see what the supposed benefit is and i wish there was a way to turn it off.
Alternatively, go to your local supermarket and you will find a shelf full of various kinds of energy bars, most of them for $1 each. The ones i get range from 180 calories to 250 calories. Which means that depending on which you select you could get 2000 calories anywhere from $11.11 to $8. It doesn't sound like an ideal diet to me, but i think eating 8-11 energy bars every day, presumably of a variety of flavors, would beat subsisting entirely on a single liquid formula, regardless of whether it was the slightly more expensive Soylent or the slightly cheaper Ensure.
Also, i find it amusing to be having a discussion about the virtues, or lack thereof, of Ensure and liquid Soylent with someone going by the handle "drinkypoo":)
The walls and roof provide important environmental protection for the more modern (and thus more delicate) technology we also use. (They also provide a rudimentary defense against theft and sabotage.) The clothes are admittedly entirely optional (from a technical perspective.)
He was Dracula
He was a Bond Villain.
He was Sherlock _and_ Mycroft Holmes.
He was Death.
He was Lucifer.
He was Count Dooku.
He was Saruman.
He was Lord Summerisle.
He recorded a heavy metal concept album about Charlemagne.
He hunted Nazis during WWII.
He was part of a secret agent unit called The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.
When told be Peter Jackson to imagine how a man being stabbed in the back sounds, he told him he didn't have to imagine it.
He's fluent in English, Italian, French, German, and Spanish; "moderately proficient" in Swedish, Russian, and Greek; and "conversational" in Mandarin.Chinese.
I wonder if it would have helped if he'd had a friend. The 501st has a rule "never troop alone", which they came up with after observing that under identical circumstances many people will think one stormtrooper is a little scary but two (or more) stormtroopers are awesome.
Since Google has started disabling the old version of Maps i have seen people suggest Yahoo Maps as a good choice to move to for those who thing the new Google Maps is too slow and painful. That probably wouldn't add enough new users for them to justify keeping it, but it's still a little sad for anyone who just recently decided that Yahoo was the right place to move to for maps.
(I didn't go that route myself because i dislike having the entire browser window covered with the map, so i'm thinking of moving to Bing instead.)
Slashdot Mirror
I know that there's a big difference between "hey, i've got a cool idea" and actual scientific proof, but as is usually the case in such things there were a lot of precursors to this "once-heretical" idea gaining traction. Greg Bear's Darwin's Radio is one of the more famous SF examples (though certainly not the only, and quite possibly not even the first) of speculation that junk DNA could actually be useful for something. It came out in 1999, and although i don't know if he based his ideas on any research that was happening at the time it certainly wouldn't surprise me.
Some of the worst governments in the modern age were ones built on being "for the people." Let's start judging governments based on what they do, not their structure.
"Democracy is the worst form of government, except all those others that have been tried from time to time."
You're cherry-picking two cases of worst-case scenarios, one of which wasn't even really a democracy. (Stalin was appointed to power long before there were any "democratic" elections.) There have been plenty of monarchies that have done things just as bad.
That said, democracy is "least bad" when:
1: Everyone can vote
2: Everyone is educated
3: Most people _do_ vote
4: People feel like their vote actually matters
5: The government is responsive to the will of the voters
The sum combination of all those is that it is impossible to have a (successful) revolution (other than in the sense of voting out the current party) because in order to have enough people to violently overthrow the government, you'd already have enough people to vote someone else in.
Unfortunately many modern democracies screw up one or more of those. The US is screwing up almost all of them:
1: There continue to be many attempts to disenfranchise voters in many states through various means. Statistically the number of attempts at voter fraud are non-existent compared to the number of people whose legal votes are denied, but it makes better show to pretend otherwise.
2: The US tends to fail on both the systemic and systematic levels. As a society we're not providing enough support for the education system, and when it comes to elections allow ourselves to fall prey to the spectacle of network news soundbites and commercial advertising too easily, rather than really educating ourselves about the people and issues involved.
3: The US passes this one. Barely. On years with presidential elections. But barely passing on a technicality but only some of the time is rather damning with faint praise.
4 & 5: These two are rather tied up together, and contribute greatly to the issues with #3. A first past the goalposts election system almost inevitable leads to a two party system, in which the voters grudgingly and unenthusiastically vote for the (perceived) lesser of two evils and in which the winner feels only a vague sense of responsibility to those who elected them. (If you piss off your constituents what are they going to do? Vote for the greater evil instead of the lesser one? Not likely!)
Possibly because he is (at least one of) the cow spammers, and people felt like punishing him for it? (Though it looks like it's been modded back up since then.)
http://news.slashdot.org/comme...
Apparently my post was too long and you didn't read it. I never complained about posts being off topic. Some of the most interesting things i've seen on Slashdot have been off the topic of the article. The OP's comment got a negative response not because it was off topic (it was actually very on topic) but because it added no information content to the conversation. It was literally the null set. And it should be noted that i was not one of the people making the original complaints, i was just explaining to the OP why other people complained.
The fact that he complained about getting a negative response led to a bunch of off topic conversation about why he got a negative response, parts of which have been entertaining. So it was not the fact that he made a zero information post that led to the conversation we are having, it is that people criticized him for that post and then he complained about the criticism, and then people explained the reasons for that criticism. So if you wish to argue that the ends justify the means you shouldn't complain about people complaining, because complaining just generates more grist for the mill. (Of course that means you should complain, just to generate more grist for the mill. Complainception!)
TL;DR: I agree with you that off-topic is a silly complaint, so there is no point in debating it because we already agree. Next time read more carefully before assuming people said something that they didn't. Welcome to the internet.
That old quip needs a little reworking:
"We're from the Corporation and we're here to help."
Uh, i'm not a big fan of (either) Bush, but this is the first i've heard of anything like that. Care to elaborate?
No one is policing all comments on Slashdot, but all comments are policed by someone, that's how the system is supposed to work. (If you didn't think people were going to be reading what you said and having opinions about it then why did you even post?)
Your first mistake was making a comment that added zero to the conversation. If a small percentage of the population is suffering from a problem then people posting "i don't have the problem" adds no useful information. The only case such a statement would be useful were if it was a poll and we were trying to gather statistical data. It is not a poll, and we don't want hundreds of people posting saying nothing more than "i don't have the problem."
The initial responses were intended to inform you, and anyone else who had the same idea, that it was not a productive path for the conversation to take. Saying that you got the error and specifying any differences from a "normal" update is productive. Speculating on causes of the error is productive. Lambasting Microsoft for the choice to make updates mandatory is... well, entertaining at least. Saying "i have no information to provide because nothing happened" is not productive.
Your second mistake was completely failing to get the point when that was pointed out to you. This made some people think that you were a shill, a troll, or a fool. Some of those people responded with hostility because they dislike shills and trolls and like tormenting fools.
If you still honestly don't get the problem we can delve into a discussion of information theory and further analyze how your initial statement added nothing of value. If you're a shill or a troll, well played.
A quick search seems to indicate that SyFy is hyping five new shows for their upcoming season. The Expanse is being promoted as "one of the biggest TV deals ever". I doubt it's in the same league as Game of Thrones, which gets $6 million an episode, but let's highball it and go $5 million an episode. Let's then presume that the others cost less, and the average for all 5 shows is $2.5 million an episodes. The norm these days is 10 episodes a season, and let's presume these shows are reasonable well spread out over the year, so people will actually be willing to keep a subscription going full time.
That puts the total production costs at $125 million a year. Which means if they charged $10 a month they'd need to get just over a million viewers to cover production costs. According to current ratings they have 1.28 million viewers, so if they could get everyone to switch over it would be feasible. (And people who didn't switch over would continue to supply revenue through whatever the current system is.) I'm not sure what the overhead is, including rebroadcasting costs for older shows, so it might be more reasonable to bump that up to $15 a month. On the other hand that's not counting any other sources of income they have.
So if the new shows are actually everything they're claiming it seems an entirely reasonable price.
How are Hulu and Netflix doing? Even better, how is HBO doing now that they've made HBO Go available without a cable subscription?
I'm currently paying for both Hulu and Netflix (and also Crunchyroll) and i'm thinking of picking up HBO Go. I have no problem paying for the content i want, it's the hassle of dealing with the cable company plus paying for a lot of crap that i don't want that's the problem.
My big gripe at the moment is SyFy. For the first time since they changed their name to something that sounds like a venereal disease they're producing content that i'm actually interested in. But i can't watch it because even though they're posting it to Hulu they're requiring that you have a cable subscription to view it. I don't know if this is stupidity on their part or some kind of legal tangle they just can't free themselves from, but i _want_ to watch their stuff and i'm willing to pay them, either directly or indirectly, but they just won't let me.
How would it affect them one iota if everyone switched from Coke to Diet Coke or Coke Zero?
Sure there is! There's also Dasani!
But you're missing the point, instead of trying to bribe scientists into "proving" that sugary drinks are okay, which is terrible, they should be putting forth the stuff that is at least marginally healthier as an alternative. It shouldn't be Coca-Cola's job to convince you to consume the healthiest thing available, it should be Coca-Cola's job to convince you to drink their brand of whatever it is you want to drink. If you're concerned about the sugar in Coke they should want to convince you to drink Diet Coke, and if you're scared about both real sugar and artificial sweeteners they should want to convince you to drink Dasani. Their job should not be to convince scientists to lie to you.
This is stupid not just because they're trying to influence science with money, but because they've got a perfectly reasonable alternative path. Coca-Cola has _two_ popular zero calorie drinks in its main product line, and who knows how many others in all the various other product lines they've accumulated over the years.
Instead of trying to pervert the science, advertise your calorie free drinks! Something along the lines of "we believe in your right to chose your own drinks, be we encourage you to try Diet Coke or Coke Zero to improve your health!" (Clearly i wasn't cut out to be a marketing guy, but you get the idea.)
And yes, i know there is plenty of research showing that diet drinks are not a panacea of health, but i still think they're better than consuming an equal amount of the sugary equivalent.
The general idea is still sound. The problem is that the calorie/kilocalorie values are based on a very average and idealized man (at least i'm guessing at least that the original studies were made on men) and the supposed calorie requirements are only _slightly_ more tailored on an individual basis, treating everyone of the same weight, gender, age, and activity level the same.
If you consume less food calories than you burn, as measured by the way your body processes that food, you will lose weight. Unfortunately some people will achieve that effect without even trying while for others it will be a miserable, grueling experience requiring more willpower than is usually feasible.
Of course to be fair, those people are already taking public transportation and are already not contributing to the traffic problem in question. If they switch to robocabs it won't make any difference.
Although in an ideal world that is at least some subset of people who are okay with public transportation in theory but don't currently find it practical. Personally i'd like to get a personal automated auto as soon as they're available, i'm not quite as enthusiastic about the robocab idea though.
Actually i did miss it. The large green button is actually a deterrent in this case. It's such an eye-searing shade that my eyes keep automatically trying to skip over it to save themselves. (I also didn't notice it on the first page because it was below the bottom edge of the window, but it also shows up in all its painful glory on the donation page you get redirected to after hitting download.)
Thanks for pointing it out though!
Addendum: there is apparently no longer any local help. Going to Help->LibreOffice Help opens up a browser window to the online documentation. Searching for help on the internet is fine in general, but the search results in this site seem very cluttered and it seems far less convenient than the offline help present in OO 3.4.1. Not to mention the fact that i frequently have to use VPN software at work that disables my regular internet.
Button icons were huge at first, but i figured out how to fix that.
I don't really like the sidebar thing. Minimizing it is easy, but then there's a very dark, very obvious, poorly aligned button on the right side. Preferably i'd like to remove it entirely, but getting the color toned down might be an acceptable alternative.
They still have the messed up column and row header colors. Back in 2.1 the headers were a nice solid dark grey. Then sometime between then and 3.4 they added shading. The "inner" half of the headers is dark grey and the outer half is light grey. I find it visually distracting, and since the line runs right down the center it sometimes makes it a little hard to read the letters/numbers. I'm sure it doesn't bother most people at all, but i don't really see what the supposed benefit is and i wish there was a way to turn it off.
This same general topic was discussed last week: Sharp Announces Sales of DC Powered Air Conditioner, Other Products To Follow
$2.47 * 5 a day = $12.35 a day.
:)
Alternatively, go to your local supermarket and you will find a shelf full of various kinds of energy bars, most of them for $1 each. The ones i get range from 180 calories to 250 calories. Which means that depending on which you select you could get 2000 calories anywhere from $11.11 to $8. It doesn't sound like an ideal diet to me, but i think eating 8-11 energy bars every day, presumably of a variety of flavors, would beat subsisting entirely on a single liquid formula, regardless of whether it was the slightly more expensive Soylent or the slightly cheaper Ensure.
Also, i find it amusing to be having a discussion about the virtues, or lack thereof, of Ensure and liquid Soylent with someone going by the handle "drinkypoo"
The walls and roof provide important environmental protection for the more modern (and thus more delicate) technology we also use. (They also provide a rudimentary defense against theft and sabotage.) The clothes are admittedly entirely optional (from a technical perspective.)
Oh yeah? Well at my job we have walls and a roof! Also, we wear clothes.
I'm pretty sure the only thing that beats those in terms of age is only (officially) present at places that produce pornography.
And it's not like they have any affect on aerodynamics either. (At least not back when i played.)
But with that many extra pieces they will have to slow down time during launch to make sure the physics don't get wonky.
Sir Christopher Lee:
He was Dracula
He was a Bond Villain.
He was Sherlock _and_ Mycroft Holmes.
He was Death.
He was Lucifer.
He was Count Dooku.
He was Saruman.
He was Lord Summerisle.
He recorded a heavy metal concept album about Charlemagne.
He hunted Nazis during WWII.
He was part of a secret agent unit called The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.
When told be Peter Jackson to imagine how a man being stabbed in the back sounds, he told him he didn't have to imagine it.
He's fluent in English, Italian, French, German, and Spanish; "moderately proficient" in Swedish, Russian, and Greek; and "conversational" in Mandarin.Chinese.
Now, let's see Check Norris top that.
I wonder if it would have helped if he'd had a friend. The 501st has a rule "never troop alone", which they came up with after observing that under identical circumstances many people will think one stormtrooper is a little scary but two (or more) stormtroopers are awesome.
Since Google has started disabling the old version of Maps i have seen people suggest Yahoo Maps as a good choice to move to for those who thing the new Google Maps is too slow and painful. That probably wouldn't add enough new users for them to justify keeping it, but it's still a little sad for anyone who just recently decided that Yahoo was the right place to move to for maps.
(I didn't go that route myself because i dislike having the entire browser window covered with the map, so i'm thinking of moving to Bing instead.)