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  1. Of course, all of the Luddites will just spend the next 50 years saying it's a hoax.

    And all the high-school text books updated to match, once all the crops start to fail... (Sigh. That movie was better than I thought it would be, but not as good as I hoped it would be.)

  2. Re:Insensitive clod on UK Hotel Adds Hefty Charge For Bad Reviews Online · · Score: 1

    Dude, seriously, stop smoking - it's bad for you.

  3. Sure but... on Launching 2015: a New Certificate Authority To Encrypt the Entire Web · · Score: 1

    ...do we really need to encrypt the entire web? (It's like TV stations boasting that they broadcast the News in high-def. Seriously, it's the News.) Do I (should we) care if the traffic to/from many (most?) sites is encrypted? No.

    What I'd rather have is sites not requiring a fuck-ton of Javascript, usually from other sites, to display anything or to work / navigate in even the simplest fashion. Content sites that use Javascript to display article text is particularly annoying.

    Just my $.02.

  4. On the other hand. on Major Brain Pathway Rediscovered After Century-old Confusion, Controversy · · Score: 5, Funny

    You'd think that we'd have found all the parts of the human body by now ...

    This is /. so I'm sure many of us have yet undiscovered parts of the human body...

  5. Re:There's not a lot to say, this is scummy on Uber Threatens To Do 'Opposition Research' On Journalists · · Score: 1

    And what I'm saying is that it IS a bad company. And the press pointing that out doesn't make them bad.

    Sure, but it's probably cheaper/easier for a company to try and discredit and/or dox a reporter critical of them than to actually address any issues/problems reported.

    And, remember, that in the US of A, corporations aren't just people too, they're better people, with more rights, but less responsibilities than us ordinary people. Who are we to criticize them?

  6. Re:Better go kick WSUS into a sync... on Microsoft Releases Out-of-Band Security Patch For Windows · · Score: 1, Funny

    I still would not want to be the guy who followed policy and got his internal network completely infested.

    Ya, but you've already got Windows systems on your network ... :-)

  7. Seriously? on NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet Android Lollipop Update Performance Explored · · Score: 1

    SHIELD needs their own tablet?

  8. Re:Given how most spend their time in college... on Coding Bootcamps Presented As "College Alternative" · · Score: 4, Funny

    I don't think I could honestly trust in the abilities of any programmer who hasn't had a serious discrete math class, without that being matched by years of actively failing at good design and learning the more fundamental pitfalls and ways around them the hard way.

    Settle down, they're talking about creating "Web Developers" not programmers. :-)

  9. Re:How do I refill it? on Toyota Names Upcoming Hydrogen Fuel Cell Car · · Score: 1

    You won't be able to generate or store hydrogen at your house.

    Says who? I've got a couple of test tubes, water and electricity... :-)

  10. Important question. on A Worm's Mind In a Lego Body · · Score: 2

    The important question is does it scale?

    No. The important question is does it run Linux? It's a given that it runs NetBSD - sure, my toaster does.

  11. Re:Wrong approach on Open Source Self-Healing Software For Virtual Machines · · Score: 2

    I just don't think you'll find many in the younger crowd of coders to be humble enough to think that 1) their code could be buggy, or 2) that something/someone else could fix it. The only people I run into that talk about hard and true reliable coding as a standard are over 45 years old. All the young bucks think its impossible.

    I think it's a matter of experience and maturity. I'm 51 and have been a (mostly) Unix system programmer and admin since while in college. I've worked on all sorts of systems from Linux/Windows PCs to a Cray 2 and YMP and I'm used to having to account for the unexpected. I try to teach the young padawans on my team to think about what could possibly go wrong, and discuss this more with others as the importance of something rises, and to expect the unexpected. An example I offer is an error message I once got from Tcsh way back - "Assertion botch: This can't happen!" Obviously this is balanced against how critical the code/usage is and the famous "cheap, fast, good - pick two" triangle along with the practical aspects of customer/contract needs and requirements. I also stress trying to understand *why* something works, or needs to work, the way it does, not just *how*.

    The most important thing seems to be curiosity and a desire to (really) learn and understand how to solve problems, not just solving them. Find the right youngster, give them support and the right environment and some time to learn. Of course, the really hard part is finding the right person.

    Give a man a compiler and he'll generate code; teach him to write a compiler and he'll get hooked on caffeine, go crazy, quit and spend his remaining days curled up in a ball sobbing and muttering about Yacc and Lex - or something like that...

  12. Re:Ehhh Meh on US DOE Sets Sights On 300 Petaflop Supercomputer · · Score: 2

    ...also there is the inertia of so many scientists and engineers...

    Sounds like words of a youngster who doesn't know that newer isn't always better.

  13. Re:Ehhh Meh on US DOE Sets Sights On 300 Petaflop Supercomputer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The number of floating point operations (FLOPS) performed by a next-generation game console outranks early days supercomputers like the Cray.

    Sure, but do they have the system capability / bandwidth to actually do anything with those numbers and is their raw speed offset by not being vector processors like the Cray 2 (process an entire array of data in 1 instruction)? I'm not a hardware geek, but was an administrator for the Cray 2 at the NASA Langley Research Center back in the mid 1980s and, among other things, wrote a proof-of-concept program in C to perform Fast Fourier transforms on wind tunnel data in near real time - probably would have been faster had I been a FORTRAN geek - and the system could pump through quite a bit of data - at least for the 80s.

    And the Cray 2 was way prettier than a PS3/4 or Xbox, though the Fluorinert immersion used for cooling is a bit cumbersome and expensive :-)

  14. Re:KPH on Japanese Maglev Train Hits 500kph · · Score: 2

    Kamikazes Per Hour?

    Kardashians Per Hour - (the official business model units of E! Entertainment Television)

  15. Re:Private Links != Paid Priority on Comcast Kisses-Up To Obama, Publicly Agrees On Net Neutrality · · Score: 1

    with anyone using Netflix's traditional cheap-ass bandwidth provider, Cogent. You can make a reasonable argument that Netflix is unique and should be given a pass on paying for transit because of customers of the ISP wanting that data But from the ISP's perspective ...

    So, apparently, your complaint is that because NetFlix doesn't pay enough initially, by using Cogent, they should have to pay more to someone else? How much should NetFlix pay to Cogent to avoid having to pay a toll to Comcast/Verizon/etc... for fair access to those networks over and above the peering agreement and fees Cogent has with those other networks? How much money / profit *should* the last-mile ISPs be guaranteed, over and above the fees it collects from those last-mile users?

  16. Re:Window Dressing. on Comcast Kisses-Up To Obama, Publicly Agrees On Net Neutrality · · Score: 2

    When President Lawnchair ...

    You do know that President Deer in the Headlights wasn't any better. :-)

  17. New efficiencies. on New Trial Brings Skype to (Some) Browsers · · Score: 0

    Rather than using the existing WebRTC standard, though..., Microsoft has ...

    So they're simply skipping their traditional embrace, extend, extinguish process. Efficient.

  18. Please wait here. on Japanese Maglev Train Hits 500kph · · Score: 4, Funny

    Japan has now put 100 passengers on a Maglev train doing over 500kph.

    Were they volunteers?

  19. Don't worry ... on The Strangeness of the Mars One Project · · Score: 1

    ... I'm sure any problems Mars One finds will be fixed in the next release.

  20. Re:Ethics on Website Peeps Into 73,000 Unsecured Security Cameras Via Default Passwords · · Score: 4, Informative

    I know you are joking, but the line was plagiarized/borrowed. The original line was "life, liberty, and the pursuit of property". But It wasn't simply about the right to accumulate a bunch of luxuries; in context, it was referring to the pursuit of things that are somehow relevant to a satisfying and productive life. So it would be the right to pursue home ownership for your family, maybe fields for farming, and for many ./ers, it would be the right to accumulate gadgets, for the musically inclined, the right to procure instruments, etc. It doesn't take much of a stretch to go from this sort of enlightened satisfaction, to calling it merely "happiness" for simplicity.

    Take it from someone who, at 51, is debt-free, has a net-worth of almost $2M, but lost his wife in 2006 after 20 years together, "property" does not make "happiness". Though having "things" might make your pursuit of satisfaction and/or productivity (whatever that means to you) easier, property is a means to an end. Happiness is something you realize from within and, possibly, experience with someone else.

    Even after 20 years together, Sue and I held hands where ever we went - I miss that and nothing else I have can, or could ever, compensate for losing her. Remember Sue...

    The line is better written as, "the pursuit of happiness."

  21. Famous last words... on Mathematical Proof That the Universe Could Come From Nothing · · Score: 1

    The question is: does the Wheeler-DeWitt equation allow this? "We prove that once a small true vacuum bubble is created, it has the chance to expand exponentially," say the researchers.

    ...and then our Universe is displaced by an entirely new one.

    And then there's this from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

    There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

    There is another theory, which states that this has already happened.[

  22. Re:Ethics on Website Peeps Into 73,000 Unsecured Security Cameras Via Default Passwords · · Score: 3, Informative

    When and why did being an idiot become a right?

    It's right there in the Declaration of Independence (for people in the US anyway) -- "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" -- and ignorance is bliss (or so I've heard...)

  23. Re:Don't we already do that? on Study Shows Direct Brain Interface Between Humans · · Score: 4, Funny

    Think "orgasm"

    Sure, but, like in the movie Firefox you must think in Russian ...

  24. Re:America is a RINO on Marijuana Legalized In Oregon, Alaska, and Washington DC · · Score: 1

    Perhaps that was a vote of no confidence.

    That's the elephant in the room. Is the poor turnout true voter apathy as you imagine or is the apathy for a process perceived to make no difference.

    One article I read speculated that poor Hispanic turnout was because they're angry with Obama for not pushing harder for Immigration Reform. Personally, I think that not voting because of something that would be stupid, as you're just giving the other side more opportunity to make things worse...

    Who knows all the real reasons. Perhaps the parent post was correct: voters are retarded.

  25. Re:America is a RINO on Marijuana Legalized In Oregon, Alaska, and Washington DC · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The system just doesn't really allow a message of "fuck BOTH of them"

    It does. It's just that voters are retarded.

    And apathetic. There were only about 15 people at my polling place yesterday when I voted and I, at 51, was the youngest there. The rest were probably like my mother, voting Republican because they despise Obama and the Affordable Care Act, while enjoying their Medicare - which, ironically, I pay for - or their Tricare. Or, also like my mother, don't want to pay taxes anymore, even though those taxes pay for infrastructure (road) repairs, the Police and Fire departments, etc... (sigh)

    Democrats failed to inspire their base to give a fuck.