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Comment: OK I'm officially sick of this general biased (Score 1) 397

by w4rl5ck (#43159423) Attached to: European Parliament Decides Not To Ban Internet Porn

... opinion that seems to dominate this discussion, which is

male and female are biologically different so for christ sake treat them different!

This is because the basic idea of this paper is quite a good one, and it's pretty much in the title: "Eliminating gender stereotypes in the EU".

Of course you can interpret a shitload of crap into this title IF YOU PREFER TO, but it might be worthwhile to check the background a little bit.

Gender stereotypes is all about "girls don't like tech stuff" and "man don't like to dress up in beautiful clothing's", and so on.

Could we at least agree on the fact that there are a lot of talented girls out there that we dreadfully miss in our IT world, and that would bring in a lot of interesting innovations? Ask Lady Ada - as an example.

So THIS is what the paper is about. It's about thinking how to tell girls, hey you are not just girls, and boys that they are not just boys.

Of course it's a crazy shame that some people added this puritarian anti-porn bullshit to the otherwise not that stupid document (in fact it seems to be the same person that had all the clever ideas, which does not falsify the ideas, just the person), but thankfully there is a tiny tiny bit of democracy still working in the EU, so that part was skipped.

Sorry for the strong language - but I'm a bit sick of it all.

Comment: Porn? I fail to understand how this is about... (Score 1) 853

by w4rl5ck (#43107917) Attached to: EU To Vote On Proposal That Could Ban All Online Pornography

... movies or pictures depicting consensual sexual activities between grownups. Of any gender combination, that is. I really see NO overlap between that and the laws discussed here.

Well, OK I did not read the whole thing, but all I saw (including the summary above) is all *not* about porn, but about equal rights for both genders.

May be some males get it wrong because the suddenly understand that the kind of porn they watch might just be something depicting NOT equal rights for both genders, but that's not a matter of sexual intercourse, but of how the people interact.

Stop whining, male, our time at the head of the table - alone - is over.

Comment: Patrick Steward (Score 2) 634

by w4rl5ck (#40395525) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: How To Introduce Someone To Star Trek?

Pick something that is Picard-heavy, could be sth. Borg-related.

If you could find an episode that also features a heavy amount of Guinan and Data, you should be at a good starting point. Patrick Steward, Brent Spiner and obviously Whoopie Goldberg are the best that ever happened to Trek. Ever. Seriously. I love Nimoy, but Steward and especially Spiner took it to a level that fits Goldberg.

A Q episode might easily do the trick.

Also, the Sherlock Data/Moriarty episodes are brilliant, but some of the humor might be to complex and tied to the characters to fully enjoy.

I'd then pick one nice episode of every series but Voyager (there was not one nice episode to pick) and show how the series changed over time, and that there are lot of different 'versions'. A lot of brilliant episodes have already been mentioned here. Pick Way of the Warrior for DS9. It has everything, brilliant humor, acting, suprise, action, and loads and loads of Klingons. Plus five thousand photon torpedoes armed and ready to launch. Goose bumbs here. "He said: it's a good day to day". Oh my good was it great to watch that for the first time. I hated DS9 until that point. What a turnaround!

Enterprise: the episode in which they unveal the Vulcans using the monestary to spy on the Andorians. Self-explaining, deep for showing how twisted the Vulcans really are. Plus T'Pal. Uh I actually forgot about those nice "we have to go through desinfection again" fanservice scenes...

TOS: Horta, obviously. There are better episodes, but this one nails the 'Trek against dilemma' sheme. After that show "mind meld" (the documentary) which fills in the background of Shatners father dying during shooting it.

As for movies, IV is the most funny and brilliant, while The Unknown Country is by far the best Trek movie EVER EVER made, as it perfectly chimes into the tune of the universe. II of course... KAAAAAAAHN' - but VI is even better. Avoid uneven numbers, they suck. That's law.

Comment: The overall ships design does not make sense... (Score 1) 589

... because without warp drive, there is no need to have warp pistons, so why should one build them? Just a massive waste of material.

One could as well go for a more Galactica-based design, it's quite more compact and not less intriguing.

Or, just start with solving earths problems first, as it was done in Star Trek, too. No need to travel to Mars when two or three or four stupid guys are clutching to the triggers to blow all of the civilized world into oblivion.

Oh yeah and, sure, nobody will ever try to use the laser for anything but digging into moons surface ;)

Still, I somehow like the idea, but we should really wait for Zefram Cochrane, will just make a lot more sense, and 2063 not that far ahead anyway. Heck that's only 51 years and one world war, should be OK right?

Comment: Re:what's "unfair" about it? (Score 1) 166

by w4rl5ck (#39876957) Attached to: German Science Minister Faces Plagiarism Scandal

The page and it's results are fair, even while they need to be discussed. I completely agree, and never said different (or meant to do so).

But headline and summary of this slash dot news item is kind of unfair (at least it carries a strong tendency), to begin with, and I'm afraid a lot of people will start talking bull about it without even getting some of the background. Thats the unfairness my headline related to, sorry for not being more clear about that.

And of course, if the claims proof to be true - which from my perspective can only be judged by people who know what they are talking about, and step out of anonymity. I guess the people I'm looking for are the professors at the university which let that thesis pass, plus may be independend scientists.

I myself feel not up to figuring out what's going on, as I have literally no clue about this part of science, and I have no idea what would be common sense and common phrasing, or wrong citation.

So let some experts (trustworthy ones, obviously) do their job, then build our own judgement based on that. At least that's what I'm going to do.

To dive one level deeper here:

Citation is a pretty complicated business, especially in the more "virtual" sciences, and especially in Germany. You can easily find proper thesis that have longer footnote lists on EACH page than text, and still they are very valid because of the conclusions DRAWN from those citations, which can only make up 5% of the cited texts to deliver firm ground for the conclusions.

That's the tricky bit about those. Incorrect citation does NOT mean that there is no scientific value in the conclusive part of the thesis, nor does it mean that the conclusive part is invalid. It just means that some pages of the work miss attribution, and it depends if those pages are "firm ground" - or the conclusion itself.

So, this is all a bit more complicated than just downloading an MP3 from mega upload and getting caught.

Comment: Well, lets keep fair for a while and look at facts (Score 5, Informative) 166

by w4rl5ck (#39876405) Attached to: German Science Minister Faces Plagiarism Scandal

1. there has not yet been any scientific peer review of the claims. It's all unproven and should be treated as such

2. the thesis was written in 1980. This is quite a different area regarding both scientific citation rules as well as the abililty to "copy+paste" in today's sense.

Using ideas and deriving information from former work is not unusual, and from what I have read in analyses of the analyses, it's quite unclear how much of these so-called plagiarized pages will really be named as such by a university committee (that will most likely be instantiated).

Also worth to mention that the thesis (for all 350 pages!) received an scl grade.

Comment: As this violates... (Score 5, Interesting) 403

by w4rl5ck (#39743167) Attached to: Europe Agrees To Send Airline Passenger Data To US

... the German "constitution" (actually we dont have one, its called Grundgesetz, but never the less) and some public laws in Germany, I'm curious how the German government is thinking to get away with letting this pass.

In other words: German people have a government guaranty that something like this does never happen with their data. Go one "democratic" level up, and that's gone - cant happen.

I'm curious how far this is in line with the (interpreting of) the EU constitution (which is finally in place for a few years, but that took some kind of precaution to make sure it's vague enough here and there...).

If the pirate party jumps on this, things will likely go crazy.

Comment: Well in Germany... (Score 3, Informative) 116

by w4rl5ck (#38624686) Attached to: Pirate Party UK Looks Forward To 2012

... they are scaring the hell out of the "old" partys after scoring about 9% or so on the Berlin city parliament vote (which is important as Berlin is a county).

Especially the FDP, which traditionally has hold the position of "freedom rights", is below threshold now and in big trouble - and most voters either head for the green's or the pirates.

It's quite obvious that in the current situation, they will make it into the nations parliament on the next voting round; considering how hard it already is to find coalition partners in the parliament right now, that will be a very interesting situation.

Comment: Wow.... (Score 1) 257

by w4rl5ck (#38452586) Attached to: Hobbit Film Trailer Posted Online




BTW, I had goosebumps when Vader got his helmet. It's just not a trilogy anymore. And there are situations where it's just OK to go ass to mouth.

(there are a few movie references in here, blimey, Harry...)

Comment: Had to undergo the same transition... (Score 1) 229

by w4rl5ck (#38425438) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Transitioning From Developer To Executive?


Main lessons I learned:

* Learn to delegate. Fast. Don't ever ever do things yourself (speaking about solving tech issues). If you have worked with the same people before, they will frown at you for not "working" anymore for roughly 3-6 months. Ignore it. Justify it. If you are good at keeping their backs free, they will see why you do it. Reason: if you do things yourself (meaning: tech solutions), you will have to fix them. Everybody will play the "he did that" game, and you will drown. Even if you want to support the guys, help out... don't. As much as possible.

* Be rightful, honest, truthful. Never hide your own mistakes or gains from anybody. People will see, and learn to be truthful to you - because of respect, as opposed to be afraid. You need to know what's going on in your team, so this is a key part!

In other words: be the *good* guy. In every respect. Taking blame, and hand down compliments as well as negative stuff.

That will lead to people standing behind you when things get ugly, and they WILL get ugly at some point, because you are responsible for whatever goes wrong. Things have a tendency to go wrong.

* Trust is earned, not given away. You need to earn the trust of your guys as well as the big hats!

* And while taking about it, possibly the worse part, which is dealing with bosses: basically, the same rules apply. Be rightful, truthful, and try to justify things on reasoning, not emotions. Try to think FOR your people, not against them. Never blame something on a person. It's your fault for not forseeing this could happen. Keep in mind that you will suffer when your people loose faith, because you can't deliver without them. Watch out for structural issues in the company that will keep you from delivering; say, you don't have a QA department at hand or miss critical infrastructure. There goes your capability to deliver. It's about keeping those things in mind.

* Development methods don't matter. Structure does. Wrap your team around your issues, not vise versa.

* Oh, and I always wear heavy motorcycle boots, just in case somebody needs some kicking.

Comment: Re:You're not ready for a DSLR. (Score 1) 569

by w4rl5ck (#38174168) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Best Camera For Getting Into Photography?

Well, the first camera I have hold in my hands was an SLR. That was around 1982. Did not hurt, even if I could not grasp the full concept until maybe ten years later.

Of course, the camera does not matter that much, and there are so many brilliant cams out there now, including the iPhone 4/4S - they can all do "the trick". I've seen people taking pictures with their iPhone 4 that I still can't produce with my ~4000$ DSLR equipment (well call it "drug" ;))

If you want to get into Photography as opposed to "taking pictures", I strongly vote for a DSLR, though - you still get the most flexibility, you can easily scale your system to whatever you want to, and the current DSLRs are absolutely simple to use, too - just like a P&S. And they are not expensive anymore.

Just my 2 cents :)

Comment: Any DSLR will do the trick (Score 1) 569

by w4rl5ck (#38173696) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Best Camera For Getting Into Photography?

All DSLRs manufactured during the last five years are decent enough for beginner to ambitionist level.

Hint: spend your money on lenses, not the camera body. Though: a standard zoom lens set will do the trick, like 18-55/55-200 or the like. Depends on what camera you get, but the idea is always the same. You'll start buying more anyway ;)

Workshops bring you in contact with others, and you can learn from them. There are very good workshops, some even backed by podcasts which are free; Leo Laporte would be one, then another; there are numerous other ones.

Most important: enjoy and have fun! That's what it's all about.
