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From Slashdot | Orson Scott Card Blasts J.K. Rowling’s Lawsuit

Re:The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Score:5, Insightful)

by MightyMartian (840721) on Thursday May 01, @03:29PM (#23267028)
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Actually, there was little or nothing that Shakespeare could have done in his time to prevent someone writing a play called Humlet Duke of Dinmark. And yet Shakespeare did alright financially (well enough to build a theater), and, in fact, has been regarded for much of that time as being not only one of the greatest writers in the English language, but in the entire history of our species. That his plays have been cribbed by later playwrights, writers and into the modern age movie and TV show creators has not diminished his reputation.

The idea that a writer could make fanastical amounts of money (and let’s be honest here, there are only a handful of authors that have had the kind of success Rowlings has had) simply by writing is a pretty new one. Do you think Homer got royalties every time a copy of the Illiad was produced? Do you think the Akkadian kings went after people that made copies of the Gilgamesh epic, or added their own bits to it? The story of world literature is one of works being added to, chronicled and sometimes even being outright stolen (the Hebrews did it when they ripped off big chunks of the Sumero-Akkadian creation and cosmographical myths). Do you think world literature over the five or six thousand years that it has existed (many times longer if you count oral transmission of stories) has suffered because for the overwhelming majority of that time authors had little or no protection against plagiarism and unauthorized derivative works?

From Slashdot | Linux System Programming

Thou shalt not ignore warnings (Score:5, Informative)

by mi (197448) <mi+slashdot@aldan.algebra.com> on Monday April 14, @03:19PM (#23068006)
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Build your code with -Wall -Werror (or your compiler’s equivalent). Once you clean up all the crud, that pops up, crank it up with -W -Wno-unused-parameter -Wstrict-prototypes -Wmissing-prototypes -Wpointer-arith. Once there — add -Wreturn-type -Wcast-qual -Wswitch -Wshadow -Wcast-align and tighten up by removing the no in -Wno-unused-parameter. The -Wwrite-strings is essential, if you wish your code to be compiled with a C++ compiler some day (hint: the correct type for static strings is “ const char *“).

For truly clean code, add -Wchar-subscripts -Winline -Wnested-externs -Wredundant-decls.

The people, who wrote and maintain the compiler, are, most likely, several levels above you in understanding programming in general and C-programming in particular. Ignoring the advice their code generates is foolish on your part…

As a minimum, solved warnings will make your code more readable by reducing/eliminating the “Why is he doing this?” questions. More often than not, they point out bugs you would otherwise spend hours chasing with a debugger later.

And they make your code more portable. But if you don’t understand, why a warning is generated — ask around. Don’t just “shut it up”. For example, initializing a variable at declaration is usually a no-no. If the compiler thinks, the variable may be used before being initialized, scrutinize your program’s flow. If you can’t figure out, it may some times be better to disable this one warning temporarily with -Wno-uninitialized to move on, instead of shutting it up for ever by a bogus “= 0” or some such…

The book may well say something about respecting warnings, but the review does not, which is a shame.

From Slashdot | Google Crawls The Deep Web

Anecdote from Google (Score:5, Funny)

by arrrrg (902404) on Wednesday April 16, @06:12PM (#23096424)

When I interned at Google, someone told me a funny anecdote about a guy who emailed their tech support insisting that the Google crawler had deleted his web site. At first, I think he was told that “Just because we download a copy of your site, doesn’t mean your local copy is gone.” (a’la obligatory bash [bash.org].) But, the guy insisted, and finally they double checked and his site was in fact gone. Turns out that it was a home-brewed wiki-style site, and each page had a “delete” button. The only problem was, the “delete” button sent its query via GET, not POST, and so the Google spider happily followed those links one-by-one and deleted the poor guy’s entire site. The Google guys were feeling charitable and so they sent him a backup of his site, but told him he wouldn’t be so lucky the next time, and he should change any forms that make changes to POSTs — GETs are only for queries.

So, long story short, I wonder how Google will avoid more of this kind of problem if they’re really going off the deep end and submitting random data on random forms on the web. Like the above guy, people may not design their site with such a spider in mind, and despite their lack of foresight this could kill a lot of goodwill if done improperly.

From Slashdot | Adults Too Quick to Dismiss Educational Gaming?

Also check out Number Munchers…

And there is a HUGE market for them (Score:3, Insightful)

by Frenchy_2001 (659163) on Wednesday April 09, @08:00PM (#23019190)

Educational Gaming is *ALREADY* here and it’s already making a killing in the market, not only for kids but particularly for adults.
Some of the best sellers on the Nintendo DS could easily be classified as Edutainment. Games like Brain Age, Flash Focus or Brain Coach are all games that will also teach you to use your abilities. More recently, games like my French/Spanish Coach or My Word Coach are designed to improve your mastery of your language or start on a new one.
Those “games” work by making the necessary repetition of teaching (especially for language) less tedious than “classic” methods. After all, it does not really matters how little Johnny learnt to associate head with cabeza, it just needs to be drilled into his mind until the association is automatic. If it takes simple games to take the tedious part away, I’m all for it. I personally “play” My Spanish Coach and this has been the easiest method for me to get motivated and learn that language (YMMV).
The DS has been a revolution on that front, seen as a very nice gadget by lots of adults on top as a game console for kids. The touch screen interface blends the genre and allows new type of software for such a cheap gadget (~$100, far cheaper than a pda and much wider spread).

Check some of the games available on DS. Lots of choices.

From Slashdot | Richard Dawkins to Appear on Doctor Who

…also check out Richard Dawkins at TED.

Re:Atheists, Come Out! (Score:5, Interesting)

by Reality Master 101 (179095) <RealityMaster101NO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday April 08, @09:22AM (#22999326)
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People talk about Christianity like it’s the Nazi party, like it’s this horrible machine that people are indoctrinated into.

I don’t mean this to me inflammatory — I really don’t — but a LOT of Christianity really is like the Nazi party. Not to say they’re putting atheists into ovens, but the hatred of atheists in mainstream Christianity is unbelievable. I would guess you live in one of the more enlightened parts of the country.

I was reading this story [go.com] recently, and it was absolutely shocking. These are mainstream citizens, not some wacko cult. And it really isn’t all that unusual. Google for “atheist persecution” sometime.

Your response will probably be that these aren’t “real” Christians, but I maintain you can’t separate the two. Polls show that your tolerance is by far in the minority of Christians. Mainstream Christianity has a burning hatred of atheists. I really believe that if a Hitler arose in the United States and called for the rounding up and extermination of atheists, there would be way more support for the policy than you’re willing to admit.

Most atheists are perfectly willing to “live and let live”, but the majority of Christians aren’t. It’s not just annoying proselytizing, it’s out and out persecution. I could give you long lists of links of examples, but I have a feeling you’re not ready to accept how out of control fundamentalism has gotten in the United States.

On a personal note, I don’t admit to being an atheist in Real Life anymore. It’s just not worth the hassle. It’s easier just to say I believe in God without any details, and just define God as, “that natural process that created the universe.” I’m pretty sure my in-laws would probably be horrified, though I doubt they would out-and-out disown the family.

Re:Dawkins may may a renowned evolutionary biologist (Score:5, Insightful)

by Alsee (515537) on Tuesday April 08, @03:03AM (#22997434)
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I never really understood atheism anyway. They mock theists for their faith, but there’s certainly no way to prove that there’s not a god

July, 1998
A juror in Judge Esmond Faulks’ court in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, eagerly asked the judge for the defendant’s date of birth so he could draw up a star chart to help him decide the case. He was removed.

There ya go. Presuming that you agree it was *appropriate* to forcibly eject that juror, presuming you consider that juror mockable and perhaps even a dangerous loony-toon, now you completely understand atheism.

To elaborate, probably half the other people on the jury read their horoscopes during lunch. Silly, irrational, but Mostly Harmless entertainment value so long as they don’t take it seriously and start fucking over other people based upon their faith in magical messages from the sky.

-

Re:Dawkins may may a renowned evolutionary biologist (Score:3, Insightful)

by professionalfurryele (877225) on Tuesday April 08, @04:30AM (#22997842)

Atheism as you present it is a straw man. No one is saying that there definitely is no incredibly abstract god whose only properties are that it exists and that in some way this god causes the universe to exist.

However most theistic individuals don’t believe in that kind of god. They believe in a god who impregnates virgins, who brings people back from the dead, who has a chosen people die by the millions in camps, who has something against people who eat pigs, who hates women, whose retirement plan for suicidal mass murderers is a bed full of maidens.

Weak atheists are people who say there probably is not a god. Strong atheists say there is no god. Most atheists lie somewhere on this spectrum. You are picking the most extreme version of atheism, the kind not even Dawkins subsribes to, and are using that as a straw man.

However, I can say with a considerable degree of certainty the Christian God does not exist. Nor does the Jewish God. Nor do any of the Hindu Gods. I can say this in the same way I can say with a considerable degree of certainty that werewolves and unicorns do not exist.

Only insane atheists who I would denounce as logically flawed claim with absolute certainty there is no god. However the Gods of the Christians, the Jews, the Muslims, the Hindus and the Zoroastrians are just as absurd as Zeus ever was, and I have considerable confidence in saying they do not exist.

What is more, most theists agree with the last assertion, assuming you drop their specific god from the list. We are all atheists, it is just that some of us are atheists about more gods than others.

From Slashdot | Study Shows Males Commonly Mistake Sexual Intent

Re:wrong (Score:4, Interesting)

by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 30, @01:34PM (#22913214)

I think you underestimate the subtlety of your signals. If someone brushes against me, I usually assume it was accidental and say, “excuse me.” Smiles are useless; too many possible meanings. Like I have this ridiculous beard (its a “work in progress”), so lots of people smile when they look at me. (Some even point and laugh. Children are scared. But I digress ;)

Whispering something in my ear is a pretty good one, depending on what you say. “Hey, wanna go make out?” would certainly get my attention, and I probably wouldn’t misinterpret it. Though for clarification I might respond, “Maybe. Who with?” ;)

Blatant is certainly better. No chick has every gotten me by being subtle. I’m way too clueless for that. I don’t think it has so much to do with a lack of confidence, but rather a lack of socialization. I spent way too much of my adolescence in front of a computer screen instead of outside flirting with girls. Now 20 years later, I barely talk to people. I have the confidence to walk up and introduce myself; I just don’t know how to have conversations. For me everything boils down to problem solving, so if someone asks me a question my answers tend toward closure. My “goal” is to solve the conversation (ie. find its ending).

I suppose I could just change my goal to trying to see how long I can just keep talking on and on about nothing. You know, like women. ;)

(clearly I’m missing something.)

Re:wrong (Score:5, Funny)

by nizo (81281) * on Sunday March 30, @10:32AM (#22911666)
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See here is the problem: women give ambiguous signals, while men don’t. But wait: men are the ones with the problem. For those of us men who are married, is this starting to sound at all familiar???

Subconscious flirting (Score:5, Insightful)

by Lorien_the_first_one (1178397) on Sunday March 30, @09:37AM (#22911340)

But consider this:

Women will often flirt with a man just for attention. I’ve met women who simply didn’t even know what they were doing was interpreted as flirting. And when I confronted them with this observation, they gave this crazymaking attitude like “I don’t even know what you’re talking about. I was just being friendly.” Yeah, right.

Philipino women are a great example of behavior that can easily be mistaken for flirting. I’ve never been more confounded by any other culture. The world “no” just isn’t in their immediate vocabulary.

Women from American culture can flirt just out of anger. Anyone remember that song, “I know What Boys Like” [youtube.com] by the Waitresses? That song spelled it out loud and clear.Women were tired of feeling as if they were being oppressed by men. So they used their power against the men.

Those are just two of the reasons that I’ve found for the confusion on the part of the women. I know why I’ve been confused before: I was single. Now that I’m married, that confusion is pretty much gone. I know where I stand with my wife.

It takes two to tango. It’s not just that men have blurry vision. Women have fuzzy behavior, too.

Concious lying. (Score:4, Interesting)

by Scrameustache (459504) on Sunday March 30, @12:52PM (#22912866)
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Women will often flirt with a man just for attention.

Very, very true. There’s a girl I know, very pretty, very flirty. If you give her enough attention, she’ll eventually start mentioning her boyfriend. I asked her about it, she says if people know she has a boyfriend right away they don’t come over and talk as much. She does it on purpose, and takes offense at the suggestion that this isn’t right.

Afraid not. You’ve actually met women who were really good actresses.

Yeah right indeed. I’ve had “that wasn’t flirting!” applied to telling me to come closer, feeding me something with her hand and softly brushing my lip with her finger… the denial came AFTER that led to some good, sweaty fun. Apparently, she never made any signals (yeah right), it was all me (sure), and the soft caress on my lip was nothing but innocent accidental contact (do I look that gullible?).

Re:Or, on the other hand… (Score:5, Interesting)

by mcvos (645701) on Sunday March 30, @06:53AM (#22910626)

An interesting follow up would be to look at men and womens abilities to communicate their emotional states to others of the same sex, and also broaden the range of “intents” studied towards the opposite sex.

That’s exactly what I was thinking. If men understand the sexual intentions of other men, and women don’t understand the sexual intentions of other women, then it’s clearly the women who don’t communicate clearly. If women understand each other but men don’t, then it’s men who are obvlivious. If men understand each other and women understand each other, but men don’t understand women and vice versa, then it’s the “women from Venus, men from Mars” thing”. And if everybody has trouble understanding other people’s sexual intentions, then people in general are unclear or oblivious about sexual intentions.

It’s that men from Mars, women from Venus thingy.

That depends on the findings of the follow-up study.

From Slashdot | Report Suggests That Nanny State Might Actually Not Be For the Best

Re:I’m all for protecting childrens (Score:5, Insightful)

by Idiomatick (976696) on Friday March 28, @04:29PM (#22898408)

Agreed w/ almost every word. BUT swear words exist for a reason. You need a way to be rude in society. If someone is a real jerk to you being able to say “fuck off asshole” gives it weight. If there were no swear-words or they were used without notice they could not serve this purpose.

Exactly. (Score:5, Funny)

by ZombieRoboNinja (905329) on Friday March 28, @05:46PM (#22899546)

We’re protecting the swear words, not the kids.

If we have six-year-olds running around saying “fuck” willy-nilly, all that does is ruin the shock value of a perfectly good swear word. At that point you might as well be saying “boink.”

“Oh yeah, boink me harder, baby.”

“If Johnson doesn’t get that report in by Tuesday the whole department is boinked!”

Now where’s the fun in that? We’d just have to come up with a NEW swear word so horrifying that no child would be able to pronounce it without immediately being swallowed by the jaws of Hell, and honestly, I don’t really feel like digging that far into the Windows API documentation.

From Slashdot | Scientology’s Credibility Questioned Over Video Channel

Re:Yea, and some well know atheists.. (Score:4, Informative)

by d34thm0nk3y (653414) on Friday March 28, @03:47PM (#22897744)

The fact is that none of these pagan religion concepts existed before 100AD. There is no written historical account for these concepts before this time (such as mithras was born of a virgin, or osiris was ressurected). All pagan religions reference these concepts in written history after the birth of Christ.

They were talking about the sacrament of communion as far back as 2500 BC: (from Wikipedia)

Since the ancient Nilotics believed that humans were whatever they eat, this sacrament was, by extension, able to make them celestial and immortal. The doctrine of the eucharist ultimately has its roots in prehistoric (symbolic) cannibalism, whose practitioners believed that the virtues and powers of the eaten would thus be absorbed by the eater. This phenomenon has been described throughout the world.

One of the oldest of the Pyramid Texts is the Unas[14] from the 6th Dynasty (circa 2500 BC). It shows that the original ideology of Egypt commingled with Osirian concepts. Although ultimately given a high place in heaven by order of Osiris, Unas is at first an enemy of the gods and his ancestors, whom he hunts, lassoes, kills, cooks, and eats so that their powers may become his own. This was written at a time when the eating of parents and gods was a laudable ceremony, and this emphasizes how hard it must have been to stamp out the older order of cannibalism. “He eats men, he feeds on the gods…he cooks them in his fiery cauldrons. He eats their words of power, he swallows their spirits…. He eats the wisdom of every god, his period of life is eternity…. Their soul is in his body, their spirits are within him.” A parallel passage is found in the Pyramid Text of Pepi II, who is said to have “seizeth those who are a follower of Set…he breaketh their heads, he cutteth off their haunches, he teareth out their intestines, he diggeth out their hearts, he drinketh copiously of their blood!” (line 531, ff). Although crude, this was a core concept, the conviction that one could receive immortality by eating the flesh and blood of a god who had died.

Re:Scientology is the quintessential religion (Score:5, Insightful)

by eclectic4 (665330) on Friday March 28, @03:39PM (#22897568)

True:

When Dionysus turned water into wine, we understand that as a myth.

When Romulus is described as the Son of God, born of a virgin, we understand that as a myth.

When Vespatian’s spittle healed a blind man, we understand that as a myth.

When Apollonius of Tyana raised a girl from death, we understand that as a myth.

etc… etc… etc… Jesus was just a guy that had Pagan mythological stories thrown on his name decades after his death to start a religion. Nothing more.

From Slashdot | Computers May Thwart 2010 Census

1% error (Score:3, Insightful)

by Red Jesus (962106) on Wednesday March 26, @04:05PM (#22873228)

He also said the computers actually are easy to use, with a failure rate of less than 1 percent when tested in the field.

One percent of three hundred million is three million.

Re:1% error (Score:5, Insightful)

by eepok (545733) on Wednesday March 26, @04:21PM (#22873446)
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Ya, people are really bad when it comes to big numbers. I was a part of a research study as an undergraduate with the following premise:

You’re on a jury for a murder case with the scenario that a tan/brown man seen running away from a murder scene on a college campus. There was not enough of the attacker’s DNA at the scene, but they were able to extract a DNA derivative that has matched that of a tan man in custody. Given that this derivative has a 99.9% successful rate, do you feel comfortable convicting the man in custody.

I was the only one in my group of 12 to say “No, I will not convict based on this evidence.” No one else understood that 0.1% = 1/1000. Nor did they realize that our university alone had 20,000+ people on the campus at any time let alone that it was in the middle of a city of 200,000+.

Most people know what “fifty” is. Many know what “one hundred” is. Few understand what “one thousand” is. Too few understand the effects of millions, billions, and trillions.
There’s no way I’d convict with a 0.1% error, there’s no way I’d accept a 1% error in the business of millions.

From Slashdot | How To Communicate Science to a Polarized US Audience

Re:Science of Political Agenda? (Score:5, Insightful)

by UncHellMatt (790153) on Thursday March 20, @12:29PM (#22807706)

Well, the information may in fact be pervasive, however getting someone to look at it, accept it or even be willing to discuss it is another matter altogether.

Case in point, I met someone who was a die hard “believer” who was attempting to get me to “believe”. Yes, he actually believed (or so he claimed) that the world was created by a god about 6000 years ago. He said that the tools used today to carbon date objects were “flawed” and that “scientists simply made machines that looked like they did something [he didn't get it when I asked if they go "PING!"... go figure], but all they did was churn out answers the scientists want”, and that mankind couldn’t measure the speed of light (after I’d pointed out that we could easily find objects in the sky well over 6k light years away, and if they were in fact several million/billion light years away, how could the light be reaching us if the universe were only 6k years old?). I explained that he himself could measure the speed of light with rather simply tools, and suggested he look into the methods used by folks like Armand Fizeau. Needless to say, the guy just said “No, I don’t need to. It’s all in the Bible.”

What I’m getting at is that you can’t communicate to some people, regardless of how good your data is, your evidence, or your argument. If a person flat out refuses to hear counter to their belief because of “faith”, there is nothing you can do. Faith is, after all, accepting something as fact which observation and evidence prove to be false.

“If a person walks on water, they’ll sink.”

“No, the Bible said Christ did.”

“OK, if a person can, and you’ve got faith, the Charles is right over there. Knock yourself out.”

“I’m not Christ!”

“No shit. You’re no Einstein, either.”

Re:Science of Political Agenda? (Score:5, Insightful)

by amRadioHed (463061) on Thursday March 20, @12:57PM (#22808128)

Correction, accepting something as fact despite a lack of evidence is faith. Accepting something as fact despite evidence to the contrary is foolishness.

Too many Christians can’t get that right but one of those traits the Bible commends while the other is harshly criticized.