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+ - Slashdot Beta Woes 16

Submitted by s.petry
s.petry writes "What is a Slashdot and why the Beta might destroy it?





















Comment: Read section (I) of the law for the whole story (Score 5, Informative) 670

by Japher (#45521713) Attached to: Driver Arrested In Ohio For Secret Car Compartment Full of Nothing

So it's OK to have a hidden compartment in your car as long as it does not contain a controlled substance or visible residue of a controlled substance. For the record, I still think the law is crap but it's not as bad as the article makes it out to be.

Comment: Re:Fascist bloodlust (Score 1) 380

by Japher (#41924681) Attached to: Bradley Manning Offers Partial Guilty Plea To Military Court
I'm having trouble seeing how you can call what he did whistleblowing. He didn't find evidence of wrongdoing and send it to a third party to investigate... he released tens of thousands of cables wholesale. He had no idea what he was releasing to the public, and I haven't seen a single cable that shows wrongdoing on the part of the US government. If they exist, point them out and I'll retract that statement. But even if he had exposed crimes, it still doesn't excuse his actions. If a gunman fires randomly into a crowd and ends up killing a wanted felon accidentally, that doesn't excuse the original crime. Manning needlessly put lives at risk. He should be punished.

Comment: Re:Oh waaa (Score 1) 166

by Japher (#40215469) Attached to: Ask Slashdot. Best Online Science Course?
>It's the job of educators to make complicated material straightforward to understand.

Well, almost. It is the job of educators to make complicated material as straightforward and easy to understand as possible, but no more. Some things are just plain hard. Additionally, educators must concern themselves with what works for the majority of their students, and have to accept that they won't be able to make things clear for everyone. There comes a point of diminishing returns in simplification and ultimately it is the responsibility of the student to fill in the gaps.

>If it can't be done that way YET, then people with more imagination than you will figure out how to do it. All I ask is that you don't stand in their way, or denigrate them as they accomplish what you cannot imagine.

And in return I ask that you recognize that educators are doing their damndest to teach material that they have spent a lifetime gathering and that expecting them to have a magic bullet is unreasonable in the extreme.

Comment: Re:We need a new fashion (Score 1) 258

by Japher (#38602396) Attached to: Avoiding Facial Recognition of the Future
In addition to the point made by _0xd0ad, note that camera takes a picture of everything in its field of view which may include the car in front of or behind a car running a red light, and, depending on camera placement, cars which are legally stopped at the intersection. So no matter the country where the camera is deployed, it will probably be capturing innocent vehicles along with offenders.

Comment: I have to question the methodology (Score 2) 270

by Japher (#37726758) Attached to: Correlating Psychopathy With Speech Patterns
From TFA:


The abstract indicates that the study only looked at homicide offenders, and compared them only to other homicide offenders, not to any non-homicide offenders. They also only looked at a total of 52 people which doesn't seem like enough to me. There are so many factors which can change an individual's speech patters that claiming that the findings mean anything at all is irresponsible.

Take this study with a statistically significant grain of salt.

Comment: Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al (Score 1) 433

by Japher (#37635220) Attached to: Civil Suit Filed, Involving the Time Zone Database
I wasn't aware that place names weren't allowed to change over time. Do you still refer to Canada as The Dominion of Canada too, or do you just stick with New France to be safe? If you want to be truly pedantic, it should be pointed out that the term "America" was originally only applied to what is today South America, with North America labeled "Terra Incognita" or Unknown Lands. So what right to you have to say that YOU live in America at all? According to Vespucci, you may not.

Comment: What's the difference? (Score 1) 520

by Japher (#37521840) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: CS Grads Taking IT Jobs?
No, I'm not saying that there is no difference between CS and IT work, but I'm curious to know what the difference is as OP sees it. You ask if taking an IT job will hurt your chances of landing a CS job, but without knowing what you mean by that, it's tough to answer your question. For example, is a UNIX admin job CS or IT? DBA? C++ programming? Network Engineer? I would personally put all of those firmly in the IT category, but your opinion may be different.

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