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User: Bacon+Bits

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Comments · 1,388

  1. Re:ARM is the new Intel on Intel Pushes Into Tablet Market, Pushes Away From Microsoft · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The PC is the mainframe.

    No, the PC is the refrigerator. Tablets are the beds. A home needs exactly one refrigerator (more are a luxury), but it needs about one bed per person. Now consider that people have been sleeping in refrigerators for the past 20 years. Thus, the market for refrigerators is highly over-saturated, and the market for beds is seeing explosive growth as millions of people have never had one before. In the end, though, everybody still needs a refrigerator. There may come a day when they don't, but everybody knows that a refrigerator isn't a bed.

    Yes, the metaphor is a bit strained.

    Point being that consumers are realizing that tablets do about 90% of what they want in a PC, so they just buy tablets. That doesn't mean they don't occasionally need something for that remaining 10%. We may see tablet docks that turn a tablet PC into a full desktop setup, but we're not there yet. I can browse the web, watch a movie, play a song, look up information, and type an email or text on a tablet or phone. I can probably do my online banking -- although it's a bit cumbersome. I wouldn't want to write a paper, or seriously manage my finances, or do photo editing, or do my taxes on a tablet (unless I was single, had no kids, had one job which withheld taxes, and did not own a home).

    Besides, all Intel has to do is make a better ARM than ARM. They did that before when AMD introduced AMD64, and now that Intel fabs ARM, they can learn the ins and outs of that, since obviously there's something there that they missed. Intel still has the most advanced fabrication plants in the world. It would be foolish to write them off so quickly.

  2. Re:Rewarding the bullies... on Student Records Kids Who Bully Him, Then Gets Threatened With Wiretapping Charge · · Score: 1

    This is because, just like the student in this story, schools have been punished for doing the right thing in the past. Teachers and administrators that go out on a limb to protect students at the cost of the district get removed by the board of education because some parent will complain regardless of what is done.

    The issue is that they need to fix the goddamn wiretapping laws, and police and prosecutors need to learn some goddamn discretion.

  3. Re:That isn't what a CSci degree is for on Bachelor's Degree: An Unnecessary Path To a Tech Job · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I agree. Using the term "Computer Science" for what most degree programs teach is purely the result of the growth of the industry. 70 years ago you couldn't get a Computer Science degree. 50 years ago, you could get a Computer Science degree without ever having used an actual computer. 30 years ago, the only degree in computing you could get was Computer Science, and it encompassed the whole of the field. 20 years ago, Computer Science began to mean "software" instead of Electrical Engineering's "hardware". 10 years ago, the field was so broad, so diverse, and encompassed so many disparate technologies that required significant specialization that you could get a specialization certificate on your CS degree. Today, you can get a 4 year Bachelor's in any number of fields including Information Technology (sysadmin, netadmin), Information Systems (DBA, Systems Analysis), Information Management (management for IT), Software Engineering (web design, application programming). Computer Science is again a theoretical area of research and development on the theory of computers. All these other fields born from this CS research once again free it to be what it once was: mathematicians and logicians playing with number machines.

  4. Re:Probably typical on 44% of Twitter Users Have Never Tweeted · · Score: 1

    The school district I work at uses a messaging system which is capable of sending phone calls (pre-recorded or computer generated voice), email, SMS, and twitter. We also contact the local news agencies if the emergency requires it (school closures, etc.). We also use it for attendance calls for students with unexcused absences or tardies. Parents are signed up for phone calls (required at time of registration) and email (if given) by default, but they have to opt in for SMS.

    We still have parents who don't know about school emergencies.

  5. Re:Rebooting is not a fix on Seven Habits of Highly Effective Unix Admins · · Score: 1

    On the flip side, spending six weeks fixing an issue on a single server running a non-critical, non-time-sensitive service which occurs once or twice a year and is 100% worked around by a reboot probably isn't an efficient use of your time.

  6. Re:Not malicious but not honest? on Heartbleed Coder: Bug In OpenSSL Was an Honest Mistake · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Programmers are human. They'll make a ton of mistakes.

    Doctors are human. We hold them accountable for their mistakes. Engineers are human. We hold them accountable for their mistakes. Indeed, we hold just about everybody accountable for their on-the-job mistakes and the consequences of their mistakes result in everything from terminations to criminal proceedings.

    So, when should programmers be held accountable for their mistakes, and how should be respond as a society?

  7. Re:IANA Physicist, So... on Navy Debuts New Railgun That Launches Shells at Mach 7 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Not exactly. Oxygen is a prerequisite for the process known as combustion, since combustion is an oxidization reaction. "A rapid, exothermic oxidation of a substance, called the fuel," is a reasonable definition of combustion. Usually we say the fuel is combustible.

  8. Re:One of which was even spelled correctly ;-) on Ask Slashdot: Which NoSQL Database For New Project? · · Score: 1

    The language you copied, fucked with, and then claimed to have the definitive version of.

    Isn't that how English came about in the first place?

  9. Re:Database Scaleability. on Ask Slashdot: Which NoSQL Database For New Project? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    God forbid someone make them think about their data structures and how the end user might need to query them with their own reports.

  10. Re:no. on Should Microsoft Be Required To Extend Support For Windows XP? · · Score: 1

    It's a little hard to call it 'valuable intellectual property' with a strait face when they refuse to derive any value from it.

    No it isn't. It's a revised and ongoing work. They own the old version 5.1 (Win XP) and the new version 6.3 (Win 8.1). They both have much of the same code in them. So by selling the new version, they're still deriving value from the old version. If you want to buy Windows, MS will sell you a recent version containing much of the same code that was available in Windows XP.

  11. Re:Open source compiler on .NET Native Compilation Preview Released · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'm not going back to GW-BASIC, thanks,

  12. Re:Count down clocks on signals? on Your Car Will Tell You How To Hit the Next Green Light · · Score: 1

    Yes, but those are proven to decrease ticket revenue. Why do you think red light cameras are so much more popular?

    Personally, I'd love to see this system running in my town. Traffic control here involves trying to impede drivers and preventing them from reaching the speed limit by forcing all lights to be red by the time you get to them as much as possible. Your choice on a clear road is either to speed, or drive 10 under. It's so pervasive in this city that nobody outside of town or in the surrounding cities likes to drive in this town.

  13. Re:I never trusted Monty in the first place on MariaDB 10 Released, Now With NoSQL Support · · Score: 1

    C/C++ don't claim to follow relational data rules like MySQL does. Not only is SQL supposed to error if it can't do *exactly* as the user describes, it's supposed to change nothing if any of the affected rows error. It's not supposed to be allowed to guess if the user tells it to do something ambiguous or nonsensical. It's supposed to be required to throw an error in that case. Indeed, many RDBMSs error on some tasks simply because the result would be non-deterministic.

    An RDBMS is not just a fancy key-value store. It's not a series of JSON or XML strings. It's a data entity rule set. Used correctly, it will not allow you to store obviously invalid data, even if the underlying datatypes allow the data as valid types.

    Determinism is the real issue here. Imagine a compiler that produced different programs from the same source code. That's not particularly useful, is it? Well, a lot of the behavior that MySQL has let slide indicates that they don't particularly care about being deterministic. It's sloppy, and the one thing DBAs hate is sloppy, unpredictable results.

    MySQL is the IE 6 of the database world. It encourages poor developer practice. It allows and even encourages lazy or downright risky developer behavior, when the RDBMS should be the element requiring the developer to think about how he stores his data and consider the ramifications of getting useful data from his system that go beyond his own needs. It has more oddball syntax than any other RDBMS, and is less likely to complain about data integrity and more likely to perform silent truncation or silent modification than even SQLite.

  14. Re:Sarcasm on Homeopathic Remedies Recalled For Containing Real Medicine · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Should diluting a helpful ingredient be considered harmful then?

    "Helpful" is not necessarily true. It's possible to have a life-threatening allergy to penicillin.

    Additionally, all antibiotics intended for human medical use are legally available only with a prescription in the US.

  15. Re:Wasn't RTF supposed to be minimalistic and simp on Microsoft Word Zero-Day Used In Targeted Attacks · · Score: 1

    Quite a powerful capability; but one of those powerful capabilities best handled carefully, kept away from direct sunlight, protected from shocks, and otherwise treated as though it is just waiting to ruin your day.

    That sounds like an apt description of a computer in general. Or dynamite. Or banks. Or the government. Or beer.

  16. Re:Everyone is a potential criminal in L.A. on L.A. Police: All Cars In L.A. Are Under Investigation · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Personally, I like to point out that the government as tried -- repeatedly -- to count the number of federal laws that exist. It has never succeeded.

    One begins to question why ignorance of the law isn't a legitimate defense when the laws cannot even be enumerated.

  17. Re:I call BS. on Titanium-Headed Golf Clubs Create Brush Fire Hazard In California · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm not a golfer

    Yes, obviously. There are no rocks on greens, but there are likely no titanium heads, either. That's where you use the putter. Putters need to have some weight to them since you don't swing them very hard.

    You might swing hard with a titanium head club on the tee or on the fairway, but you're unlikely to encounter rocks there, either. You're also unlikely to encounter dry grass.

    The problem is when golfers hit into deep rough, which can be far off from the fairway that you're intended to play from. Rough can be largely unmaintained. There can be fallen trees, tall grass, and rocks. It isn't irrigated, so it's likely to be as dry as wild grass. And, no, you may not see sparks on a bright summer day. Daylight in an open field on a clear is quite glaring. Even if you did see the sparks, you may not see any flame. The fire could smolder for hours as a tiny ember before finally flaring to life. That's why you're always told to cover a fire pit with sand before you leave it to ensure it's extinguished, remember?

  18. Re:Ban 'em on AWS Urges Devs To Scrub Secret Keys From GitHub · · Score: 2

    It sounds like they're billing users with excessive usage when they get compromised. If that's the case, why should Amazon care that someone who had the correct authentication keys installed bitcoin miners? How are they to know that they weren't installed by the owner? As long as AWS as a service isn't impacted directly, I don't see that they'd care.

    More than that, they never say they won't terminate instances for potential ToS violations (that's if poor credential practice is even a ToS violation). I just don't expect Amazon to scan all of Github and all other VCS hosts, either. Amazon isn't going to go looking for customers to punish. You don't aim for your own feet.

  19. Re:Slashdot continues its decline on Speedy Attack Targets Web Servers With Outdated Linux Kernels · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You didn't read the article, did you? TFS is vague, but so is the article. The article contains no details about the vulnerability. It only contains information about the severity and locations of the attacks. Comments on the article add "Version 2.6.18 appeared to be particularly prevalent." The article is shockingly limited on details.

    Slashdot's editors are often appear to be asleep at the wheel, but this time the editors weren't adding anything that wasn't in the original article.

  20. Re:Lower detail on Is This the End of Splitscreen Multiplayer, Or the Start of Its Rebirth? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    GP is right, but for the wrong reasons. It's not because the number of pixels increases. A screen has the same number of pixels whether it's a single scene or multiple.

    The simple answer is because you have two (or more) cameras, and thus, must fully render two separate scenes. That means chewing through your rendering equation twice. Even if the individual scenes are smaller and less detailed, you still have to determine what objects look like from completely different angles, and that means you have to repeat a lot of the work. This is why you see so many games (Halo 4, Minecraft, Serious Sam 3) that have problems with split-screen multiplayer. Even though the resulting scenes have significantly smaller resolutions and significantly reduced detail, you still have to do much of the same work to produce each smaller scene before you start filling the frame buffers.

  21. Re:His debate on How Did Bill Nye Become the Science Guy? · · Score: 1

    But they don't believe in evolution, they believe in theistic evolution, that is, evolution guided by god, which is not really evolution. One of the fundamental aspects of evolution is that it does not require a guider, just chemistry, statistics, and time.

    But is it particularly important? Sure, Occam is wildly stropping his leather strap about the statement, but if both explanations agree 100% on the outcomes, and agree 100% of the mechanisms of action, and agree 100% on the observations, why does that matter? Does it harm the Universe in some way to say "$UnspecifiedDeity initiated the big bang" instead of "unknowable unknowns initiated the big bang"?

    Let's say I have two clocks. One was created by $UnspecifiedDeity at the beginning of the Universe, and then left to run on it's own. The other evolved naturally from the forces of chemistry, statistics, and time. Both clocks are right. Which is a more reliable clock? Do we learn less about time by examining one over the other? Does it matter of there is a clock maker at all as long as the clock tells the right time?

    Honestly, to me it's like Stallman complaining about BSD & MIT licensing. You're attacking people who agree with you in nearly everything when there are so many more that don't agree at all.

    It sounds like you are describing a god whose existence is indistinguishable from it's non-existense. How would you ever tell if that god exists? Why should anyone believe in it if you can't tell?

    You don't. That's why it requires faith.

    The response "But that's not rational!" is not a particularly convincing argument when you're talking about belief systems. Religion isn't supposed to be rational. It's supposed to be spiritual. It's supposed to give believers a sense of community, justice, purpose, and well-being -- even if you're a ditch digger. Rationality is particularly poor at that. Rationality tells you people are selfish, that there is no justice, and that any sense of well-being is probably not derived from reality. Spirituality tells you there is value in trying to overcome that.

  22. Re:Apple? on Why Buy Microsoft Milk When the Google Cow Is Free? · · Score: 1

    Uh huh. And students can still reset iPads and take control of them. MDM is shit from any vendor.

    Additionally, it doesn't stop Apple CS from responding with the same tired line that iPads are consumer products. My coworker got that answer this week to a complaint.

  23. Re:Faster, but smarter? on IBM's Watson To Be Used For Cancer Treatment · · Score: 1

    Hey, thanks for eating my angle brackets, Slashdot. You're the only comment system on the Internet that still thinks that's a good idea to parse user content as tags.

  24. Re:Faster, but smarter? on IBM's Watson To Be Used For Cancer Treatment · · Score: 1

    It's not particularly important, honestly. Sure, yes, accuracy is important and nobody will use the thing if it can't be accurate a good bit of the time. However, I can't imagine it would be anything other than a fast consultant. A source for a second opinion. I don't think for a minute that we'll be relying on digital diagnosis for a very long time.

    How many Sci-Fi shows have you seen where something like this happens:

    Nurse: Doctor, the patient's condition is declining rapidly.
    Doctor: I don't understand. Hm. Computer, what is your diagnosis?
    Computer: There is a 86.3% likelihood that .
    Doctor: Hm. That could be right. Nurse, do to confirm. However, I've got a hunch it's . I'm going to while you do that.

  25. Re:Goatse Security??? on Is Weev Still In Jail Because the Government Doesn't Understand What Hacking Is? · · Score: 1

    And exposing both. Gratuitously. Whether we want it or not.