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User: somersault

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  1. Re:Anyone who thinks they can predict the future.. on IBM's Five Predictions For the Next Five Years · · Score: 1

    I'm not going to be the first to explain to a criminal that chopping off my body parts won't work. Admittedly here in the UK that's not very likely compared to some countries.

    Of course after a few big news stories about it, it will become fairly common knowledge that you need living body parts for it to work. I guess then we'll see a small boost in kidnapping as well as grand theft auto.

  2. Re:Bleeding Edge Aviation on Fatal Problems Continue To Plague F-22 Raptor · · Score: 2

    If they haven't collected enough data already, what makes you think extra flights will help?

    IMO they should be able to run enough extra tests without these things ever leaving the ground. If they require supersonic air flow to test the issue, there are always wind tunnels..

    At the very least if they fly these planes again, they need to give the pilots a different primary air supply until they have sorted out the intended system. Alternately as someone else suggested, they could have the backup supply auto-engage when a fault is detected. A remotely operated ejector seat might also be a good idea on these test flights (though obviously that's not viable for real missions :p ).

    I'm quite aware that there will be smarter and more qualified people working on this issue, so hopefully nobody will give the usual "why do nerds think they know better than experts?" speech.

  3. Re:So, when did subscriptions become traditional? on Star Wars: the Old Republic Launches · · Score: 1

    Tell that to people still playing GTA: San Andreas mods, Oblivion mods, etc.. not all content has to be generated professionally. Some game developers still seem to care more about fans enjoying the game than they do about sucking up all the money they can. Though it also has the benefit that people will definitely buy your next game simply because it's such great value for money if it has the support of an established modding community.

  4. Re:Bleeding Edge Aviation on Fatal Problems Continue To Plague F-22 Raptor · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They plan to use them for decades, but they haven't used them at all yet. As the summary says, they've only been used for test missions so far.

    The article says that there have been many cases of F22 pilots showing signs of hypoxia, and they grounded all craft earlier this year to run a study as to why. They didn't find or fix the problem, but started allowing people to fly them again. Now someone dies and they blame him rather than the faulty air supply. That's pretty damn low. I hope they keep all of these planes grounded now until the issue is resolved.

  5. Re:How does this benefit Google long-term? on Mozilla and Google Sign New Agreement For Default Search · · Score: 2

    They don't seem to be destructively-competitive douchebags like most companies. They compete, but in a positive manner. Whether that's all an act, or genuine, I suppose it doesn't really matter as long as they keep it up.

    I do remember some issue about them bundling their Bluetooth or GPS stack or something on Android, but that's about it. It seemed to me a silly thing to get upset about. I also think it was silly for MS to get into trouble for "bundling" IE with Windows. Why does nobody mind them bundling the Calculator app or Notepad and Wordpad? There are just some things that you expect to come along with an OS for it to be useful out of the box..

  6. Re:Google versus Apple on Google Working On Siri Competitor Majel · · Score: 1

    Whenever I've used Google's voice search (mostly with the Navigate app) it's done a great job of figuring out what I've said, so I think Google are already good there, and have plenty of data to draw on to help train their systems further, if they aren't already doing that.

  7. Re:Just because of speed? on Firefox 9 Released, JavaScript Performance Greatly Improved · · Score: 1

    Thanks, that sounds pretty cool.. I'm going to go take FF for a spin on Android - the built in browser apps' synch is buggy for me.

  8. Re:Google versus Apple on Google Working On Siri Competitor Majel · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Try typing things like "why", "where", "what", etc into Google and you will see from the autocompletions that normal people's "standard search engine queries" are exactly what people would ask voice recognition software.. what do you think they're asking? Geeks like us may understand search engines and google more frugally, but your average person puts in lots of redundant info and doesn't really realise what's going on. For example I typed in "piza places near" and one of the top results was "pizza places near my location", as if Google understands that..

    Even if Apple do better presentation (remains to be seen..), do you think their AI and search guys are anywhere near Google's in terms of knowledge and experience?

  9. Re:Anyone who thinks they can predict the future.. on IBM's Five Predictions For the Next Five Years · · Score: 2

    Do you want to be the guy trying to explain that to someone who is stupid enough to steal cars and dickish enough to chop off bodyparts? In movies that stuff always works, so why should they believe any different?

  10. Re:Well duh. on Superannuated Scientists Still Productive · · Score: 2

    True, but for example, we've not really developed many (any?) more insights into parallel programming since the 70s or so.

    I get that knowing the ins and outs of a language helps. Recently when adding something to a Perl script I first wrote 5 years ago, the whole thing ended up being half the size and much more maintainable. But the thing is that the program did work fine to start with. It's more important IMO to know how to program and be comfortable with using a reference manual for any language you may need than it is to be an expert in any single language. The only real distinctions that I think matter when it comes to programming languages are things like functional vs imperative, garbage collected or not, single vs multithreaded, and probably object oriented vs procedural. Those things involve different ways of thinking. But once you can program in C, you'll probably have no problem at all with any modern scripting language for example, as they're way easier to use. Learning a new computer language is often more akin to learning to understand a local dialect than it is learning a whole new language.

  11. Well duh. on Superannuated Scientists Still Productive · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Science and engineering are quite mature fields and don't change very quickly. The stuff you learn serves you well for a long time. Our best engineer just retired this year. He was stationed at Rolls Royce, a couple of Universities and then here. Amazing guy. He's in his 60s now and says that he can feel that he's less able to remember things and keep everything organised in his head the same way that he used to, but he was still supremely capable when it comes to deconstructing problems and solving them using "the literature", or figuring out his own equations by graphics a bunch of data in a spreadsheet.

    Obviously computing technology changes a bit quicker, but I still think that there are still concepts that serve you well and that don't really change in amongst all the other fads that come and goes. Interface and languages have been changing, and everything is getting more powerful, but we've not had any really new concepts since the internet. Virtual machines, parallel processing and thin client "cloud computing" style stuff have been around for decades, but people like to pretend that it's all shiny and new and that your experience becomes completely useless every couple of years..

  12. Re:Anyone who thinks they can predict the future.. on IBM's Five Predictions For the Next Five Years · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I was thinking the advantage of passwords or physical tokens is that they aren't tied to your body too, but for a different reason. Not so that you share them with friends, but so that nobody chops off your body parts just to access your stuff. People have had their finger chopped off just so that someone can steal their fingerprint-scanning car.

    What's more important to you, your finger or your car? Considering replacing the car just requires an insurance claim..

  13. Re:Just because of speed? on Firefox 9 Released, JavaScript Performance Greatly Improved · · Score: 1

    I have one too (and I use my laptop display for secondary stuff like media controls) but that doesn't mean that I like looking at crap that doesn't need to be there any more than I want an unmovable clock top and center on my display (hi, Gnome Shell).

    How is a blank 1890x50 px area along the top of your browser window "useful information", exactly?

  14. Re:Just because of speed? on Firefox 9 Released, JavaScript Performance Greatly Improved · · Score: 1

    I was considering that too.

    I just checked and in fact Firefox does things the way I'd want them to be done when in full screen mode.

    The killer of me switching now would be that it doesn't have synch built in, and with the number of Chrome installs I have (5), that is a bit of a PITA. Presumably there are extensions to do that, but right now I'm not fussed.

    I also just noticed that on Windows 7 even Chrome wastes space at the top of the menu, same as IE.. however in Linux it is nice and compact.

  15. Re:KDE ripoff? on New Qt Based Desktop Environment · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Look to [bunch of old OSes] - get something new already

    Ummmmmm. Okay. If you're that desperate for something new, how about coming up with something new?

    There's also something to be said for not fixing what ain't broken. New for the sake of new is why we end up with so many bugs, and pieces of awful, incomplete, crappy window managers like Unity and Gnome Shell being used in stable release versions of popular Linux distros when they are nowhere near ready for prime time.

  16. Re: 'Social networking has robbed us of our nostal on High School Reunions — Facebook's Newest Victim? · · Score: 1

    Reunions, of any sort, be they class or long lost family members or a friend you lost touch with and didn't see for decades, are part of the human experience.

    "The human experience"? You sound like you're trying to sell something. It's one possible part of the human experience, but it isn't needed to make you a human.

    I just don't need ONE more account to check, password to remember, privacy settings to manage

    So instead of having one more account to check that does everything, you have to make 15 phone calls or type 15 texts, or tell the same story 15 times. Sounds like an efficient use of time to me..

    Facebook isn't preferred for one on one communications, but it is a great way to organise group meet ups without any hassle or phone/texts costs. For me and my friends, Facebook has taken over from our own forums for organising stuff just because it's so convenient. Not to mention free (no, I don't care if some marketing people know how old I am or what I like to talk about..).

  17. Re:Just because of speed? on Firefox 9 Released, JavaScript Performance Greatly Improved · · Score: 1

    Nearly all of my time is spent reading whatever is in the browser window, so why should I care about tab/address locations?

    Because Chrome wastes way less space with all that shit. It has a really similar layout to how I used to always rearrange Firefox to try to make more space, except it has the bonus of getting rid of the menu too.

    The only way they could improve on it would be to have an option to auto-hide the menu at the top. I just Googled and it looks like that is an "experimental" option in the about:flags page, but it's only in Chromium and the Windows version of Chrome.

  18. Re:Firefox - Too little, too late on Firefox 9 Released, JavaScript Performance Greatly Improved · · Score: 2

    Actually, he responded to me a few times the other day. I'm still unsure whether this is actually his job, or he's just an idiot. The fact that he said he works in advertising probably does mean that at least some of it is part of his job.

  19. Re:Just because of speed? on Firefox 9 Released, JavaScript Performance Greatly Improved · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So you don't trust the security of a browser that's actively having its bugs fixed, but you're not upgrading the browser you have - a browser for which there must be known exploits?

  20. Re:Firefox - Too little, too late on Firefox 9 Released, JavaScript Performance Greatly Improved · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Who are these "most people"? I heard about RockMelt a year or two ago. I think it was Windows only which wasn't a good start, especially given that I think it was based on Firefox. It's "interesting", but I thought it was long dead. Most sites where you'd want to share something already have share buttons for social networking sites.

    Adblock isn't geeky. Nobody likes ads. Apart from you perhaps, since you work in marketing.

  21. Re:And there was much rejoicing !! on AT&T Officially Ends Plans To Acquire T-Mobile USA · · Score: 1

    Complaining about trivial things, eh? I wanna play too! Let's see..

    You're not speaking to valley girls. You don't need to say things like "super-old", especially when you have all the adjectives of the English language to draw on.

    HTH.

  22. Re:Micromanage or you will be disappointed on Ask Slashdot: Transitioning From Developer To Executive? · · Score: 1

    No, I'm saying that anyone could make Facebook without much money at all (relatively speaking). Maybe not all the gaming and voice chat API, but all the stuff that Facebook had when it was first opened to the public. Facebook isn't any more complex than MySpace from a technical point of view - it's just better designed.

  23. Re:Give to 1 area, ur taking from another on Researchers Create "Mighty Mouse" With Gene Tweak · · Score: 2

    Yep, though it's easy to let words like design and creature slip into this kind of thing even if you're not religious. What you're saying is repeated so often that I just would assume he already knows it, thougn I may be wrong of course. It's okay to point out common mistakes, but it's just as bad if you repeat the "truth" without thinking. It's groupthink ast its worst.

    Reason was a valid word in context, taken to mean "explanation". Not an explanation by some anthropomorphic incarnation of evolution, but by logical being examining environment, behavior, genome, etc. Replace "maybe" with "because" in your second paragraph and you have a whole load of reasons. The reason for the mutation is an imperfect copying process, and the reason the mutation sticks or not goes along the lines of what you were saying.

  24. Re:Micromanage or you will be disappointed on Ask Slashdot: Transitioning From Developer To Executive? · · Score: 1

    It wasn't that TeX wasn't usable before then, just that it took that long for the language to be "frozen". Many products are shipped quite quickly with a poor feature set and added to incrementally, as you point out.

    If you're constantly lighting a fire under people's now busted asses, you're not going to retain much of your staff or have a working environment that people enjoy. You'll end up being renowned as a shitty place to work (Apple sounds like one of those places to me), and so you'll only get shitty developers. If you create the right working environment, people will be busting their asses getting things churned out just because they're enjoying their job so much, or as a matter of professional pride.

    If Facebook, Twitter and Groupon are your ideas of good software.. sigh. Aside from the problems of scale, which have been solved and have open source solutions available, those sites are technically quite simple (as in, easy to replicate). It isn't technical achievement that makes these multi-billion dollar companies. It's marketing, publicity and luck.

  25. Re:Give to 1 area, ur taking from another on Researchers Create "Mighty Mouse" With Gene Tweak · · Score: 2

    One meaning of the word reason is "explanation". We can explain why many genetic traits have been beneficial and helped a species to survive and propagate. He didn't say anything about "due to reason", he said "there must be a reason".