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User: Atzanteol

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Comments · 2,391

  1. Re:It depends on No, It's Not Always Quicker To Do Things In Memory · · Score: 1

    They did do it with StringBuilder also - and showed a large improvement. It's like they read your mind!

  2. Re:Anyone who believes Wikipedia on Wikipedia Admin's Manipulation "Messed Up Perhaps 15,000 Students' Lives" · · Score: 1

    I disagree with your first statement but agree with the second. Most people believe what their friends and uncritical family members tell them and do zero verification with outside resources. Trusting Wikipedia, while risky, is a big step up from that. It's way over the top to say they're complete idiots for doing so. Otherwise everybody is a complete idiot for believing in anything they haven't themselves verified - and we can hardly expect such rampant skepticism to lead to a better society.

  3. Re:Unfair comparison on Homeopathy Turns Out To Be Useless For Treating Medical Conditions · · Score: 1

    Not even remotely proven. A small minority of studies (primarily of the "exploratory type") show an effect. But the better the studies the less the effect.

  4. Re:Unfair comparison on Homeopathy Turns Out To Be Useless For Treating Medical Conditions · · Score: 5, Interesting

    though in some cases, reporting you feel better is the same as actually BEING better. Antidepressants, for instance.

    This still isn't quite correct. For example: patients may want their doctors to feel as though a treatment is working and thus report an effect that isn't real ("yeah, sure - I feel better"). But the minute they walk out the door they feel just as crappy as when they entered. Other "effects" from placebo are simply bias in the study on the part of the researchers. Or the "observer" effect where people change simply because they're being watched. Placebo is a catch-all for any reported result that isn't explained by a real treatment.

    Also - something quacks^Hhomeopaths never want you to know is that any reported effect *size* is minuscule from both homeopathy and placebo. So a small percentage of people reporting a tiny improvement? Your money is best spent elsewhere.

  5. Re:Unfair comparison on Homeopathy Turns Out To Be Useless For Treating Medical Conditions · · Score: 5, Informative

    This represents a gross misunderstanding of the placebo effect.

    Placebo has no physiological effect (like homeopathy). Often people taking placebo, homeopathy, etc. will *report* feeling better - but this does not mean they are better in any meaningful sense of the word.

    More info here: http://www.csicop.org/si/show/...

    It is very unethical to sell somebody a treatment which does not *treat* anything.

  6. Re:if you run a VPN, they can't do shit on AT&T Patents System To "Fast-Lane" File-Sharing Traffic · · Score: 1

    That's a good rant - not sure what it had to do with my comment or the question I was replying to. I even quoted it.

  7. Re:if you run a VPN, they can't do shit on AT&T Patents System To "Fast-Lane" File-Sharing Traffic · · Score: 1

    (you are torrenting and NOT running a vpn? really? why?)

    Because there's nothing wrong with seeding a Linux ISO torrent?

  8. Re:No more downtime on Live Patching Now Available For Linux · · Score: 1

    I *just* updated and it's pestering me to reboot again. Mostly libkrb stuff.

    Just because you ignore it doesn't mean it's not asking you to reboot.

  9. Re:No more downtime on Live Patching Now Available For Linux · · Score: 1

    Ubuntu pesters me nearly daily to reboot....

  10. Re:Your Article Is All Fluff, Reader Finds on Your Java Code Is Mostly Fluff, New Research Finds · · Score: 1

    This is just me probably - but WTF is with languages making semicolons optional? Require them or don't allow them. Making them optional is a pain in the ass for somebody who is used to adding them since it will cause me to sometimes use them and sometimes not. I *hate* having this inconsistency in my code...

    I've never quite understood the hate for the semicolon - but I type it so reflexively now that maybe I don't realize how difficult it is for newbs?

  11. Not me. on Why It's Important That the New Ubuntu Phone Won't Rely On Apps · · Score: 3, Insightful

    'When you want to listen to Nas's Illmatic you don't think "I want to fire up Grooveshark so I can listen to Illmatic." You just think "I really want to listen to the one of the greatest rap albums of all time right now."'

    Not me. I do think "Should I fire-up Subsonic and pre-load a bunch of music for later off-line use or stream now from Pandora?" Apps give not only content but specific functionality for their use-cases.

    Maybe I'm showing my age - but I prefer my apps to provide specific functionality rather than these sort of "mashups" where we just put a bunch of crap in front of the user and hope they find what they were trying to do.

  12. Re:Literally? on Does Showing a Horrific Video Serve a Legitimate Journalistic Purpose? · · Score: 2

    You may be using too restrictive of a meaning though. What if I phrased it this way:
    Fox News is doing ISIS' work for them.

    That would seem to make sense regardless of whether Fox News is getting any monetary reward right? And I can be said to be working "for somebody" without being paid by them if I labor on their behalf. And I could say that somebody I trick into doing my work is "working for me."

    I don't even think this is an archaic usage. Seems pretty common to me.

  13. Re:Humanoid? on Students Demo Firefighting Humanoid Robot On US Navy Ship · · Score: 1

    Robots!

  14. Re:Yes meanwhile.. on Google Quietly Unveils Android 5.1 Lollipop · · Score: 1

    It's not even out yet for any of the Nexus devices. https://developers.google.com/...

  15. Re:Won't be enough on Safety Review Finds Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Site Was Technically Sound · · Score: 1

    *I* think it's funny that you believe being overly pedantic is going to help move the discussion forward. Nerds or not we should all know how to have a conversation without assuming things not in evidence. And still you persist with believing the OP thinks there is "no risk". Perhaps nerds don't know how to ask clarifying questions?

  16. Re:Won't be enough on Safety Review Finds Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Site Was Technically Sound · · Score: 1

    He didn't say "no risk" he *at best* implied "no risk." My reading of his comment was that he implied "low-risk" actually. That's why I say your over-the-top reaction to it was unnecessary since your confidence in what he meant should be low.

  17. Re:Evidence of a market failure on Comcast Employees Change Customer Names To 'Dummy' and Other Insults · · Score: 1

    Except - Comcast has signed exclusivity deals with those towns and won't let you build or make it prohibitively expensive to build there.

  18. Re:Won't be enough on Safety Review Finds Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Site Was Technically Sound · · Score: 1

    Wow man - this is casual conversation. To take an "implies" and turn it into "a complete disregard for probability" is just way over the top in this context.

  19. Re:Won't be enough on Safety Review Finds Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Site Was Technically Sound · · Score: 1

    Where did the person you replied to say there was no risk?

  20. Re:jessh on "Mammoth Snow Storm" Underwhelms · · Score: 1

    So it's worth people dying in order to proclaim us to be a nation of "not-wimps?"

  21. Re:We don't all work in Windows + efficiency on Ask Slashdot: Where Can You Get a Good 3-Button Mouse Today? · · Score: 1

    Missed the sarcasm I see?

  22. Re:We don't all work in Windows + efficiency on Ask Slashdot: Where Can You Get a Good 3-Button Mouse Today? · · Score: 1

    All of which are *much* more efficient than "ctrl+c" + "ctrl+v". I'll be honest - I like the highlight + center-click thing for the most part. But there are a number of times where explicit copy/paste is much nicer. And I think at this point it's actually more efficient overall. ctrl+c is pretty damned easy to hit and removes the accidental copy issues one can run into. Also having *one* copy/paste buffer is *enormously* better than Linux's sorta-kinda-two. Yes, workarounds...

  23. Re:We don't all work in Windows + efficiency on Ask Slashdot: Where Can You Get a Good 3-Button Mouse Today? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    and occasionally less efficient - especially if you want to paste *over* something like a URL.

    Select new URL, select old URL, paste, oh crap, delete old URL, got *back* and select new URL, paste.

  24. Re:A Cyrano de Bergerac app on What Will Google Glass 2.0 Need To Actually Succeed? · · Score: 1

    Yeah I would kill for such an app.

    Sounds like this app would be very helpful then.

  25. Re:No secure download on Oracle Releases Massive Security Update · · Score: 1

    Mod up!