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Comment Re:The first things I used computers for (Score 1) 106

And I don't mean the Fortran version, but the original MDL code (aka, Muddle) which is a much weirder variant of Lisp than ZIL.

ZIL is basically a subset of MDL, so most of the weirdness you've seen in MDL is also there in ZIL. Check out the "maze" files in Bureaucracy, for example - the game reads a text file at compile time and generates pages of gibberish that have to be combined in the right order to solve a puzzle.

Comment Re: Legalize prostitution (Score 1) 321

The linked article does say illegal sales have gone down, and gets into some reasons why they haven't gone away completely:

Business has fallen since the law passed, but enough people think they can score a bargain, or simply donâ(TM)t trust the shiny new stores, to keep things moving.

These are temporary problems, and they don't translate well to other industries. For example, high quality, low tax medical marijuana resold on the black market can easily undercut legal recreational sales. But a black-market brothel can't undercut the legitimate ones as easily, or offer the same level of service -- lower prices tend to mean lower quality, and operating in the open gives the legal ones extra advantages (marketing, health inspection, integration with other businesses).

Comment On the other hand... (Score 4, Interesting) 365

A study on anonymous hiring practices in France showed that anonymization resulted in fewer minority candidates getting hired. Their explanation is essentially that the companies who care enough about diversity to participate in this sort of study are already subtly biased in favor of minority candidates, and anonymization put a stop to it. Considering the amount of focus big tech companies are putting on diversity, there's a fair chance the same thing is happening here too.

Comment Not relevant to the web site (Score 3, Interesting) 118

Most of the Affordable Care Act has nothing to do with the web site. The site didn't have to implement those "2.8 million words of Obamacare regulations" as code: it only had to match patients up with insurance plans, which means interacting with dozens (hundreds?) of government and industry databases.

Some states, like California, managed to implement their sites without any of the problems of the federal exchange. The federal exchange mainly suffered from (1) being rushed, and (2) having to deal with a larger number of external systems than any single state exchange.

Comment Re:Post bigotry here (Score 5, Informative) 1113

There is NO DIFFERENCE between the "two" parties.

Except, you know, when it comes to issues like health care, reproductive rights, or Social Security.

Anyone who says there's no difference between the two parties is either (1) totally uninformed, (2) obsessed with fringe issues and apathetic about everything that the rest of us care about, or (3) trying to convince you to stay out of the election so their vote will count more.

Software

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: How to ask college to change Intro to Computing? 3

taz346 writes: I got a Bachelor's degree 30 years ago, but I recently started back to college to get an Associate's degree. Most of the core courses are already covered by my B.A. but one that I didn't take way back when was Introduction to Computing. I am taking that now but have been very disappointed to find that it is really just Introduction to Microsoft Office 2010. That's actually the name of the (very expensive) textbook. It is mindless, boring and pretty useless for someone who's used PCs for about 20 years. But beyond that, why does it have to be all about MS Office and nothing else? Couldn't they just teach people to create documents, etc., and let them use any office software, like Libre Office? It seems to me that would be more useful; students would learn how to actually create things on their computers, not just follow step-by-step commands from a dumbed-down book about one piece of increasingly expensive software. I know doing it the way they do now is easy for the college, but it's not really teaching students much about what they can do with computers. So when the class is over, I plan to write a letter to the college asking them to change the course as I suggested above. I'm not real hopeful, but what the heck. Do folks out there have any good suggestions as to what might be the most persuasive arguments I can make?
Hardware

Submission + - Meet the Mozilla OS Developer Phone (geek.com)

An anonymous reader writes: It’s no secret that Mozilla has been working on a mobile OS. Previously codenmed Boot2Gecko, the project focused on a purely HTML5 based system that worked in many ways like current mobile devices. As the project grew into Mozilla OS, the company has laid out a partnership with ZTE that will have real world devices in certain markets early next year. Testing for this OS had previously consisted of a compiled ROM that would be flashed over a handful of Android devices. Now, Mozilla has moved into full fledged product evaluation mode with their own custom developer phone.

Comment Re:Christ. (Score 1) 102

I thought that the inclusion of (usually optional) parental control settings was part of parenting, deciding whether your kids are ready for whatever's behind the lock.

Covering up the parts of the world that make you uncomfortable is not parenting. Your kids will be exposed to that stuff whether you like it or not, so your job as a parent is to give them the knowledge and skills they need to understand it in context.

Displays

Apple Patents Portrait-Landscape Flipping 354

theodp writes "On Tuesday, the USPTO granted a patent to Apple for Portrait-landscape rotation heuristics for a portable multifunction device (USPTO), which covers 'displaying information on the touch screen display in a portrait view or a landscape view based on an analysis of data received from the one or more accelerometers.' Perhaps the USPTO Examiners didn't get a chance to review the circa-1991 Computer Chronicles video of the Radius Pivot monitor before deeming Apple's invention patentable. Or check out the winning touchArcade trivia contest entry, which noted the circa-1982 Corvus Concept sported a 15-inch, high-resolution, bit-mapped display screen that also flipped between portrait and landscape views when rotated, like our friend the iPhone. Hey, everything old is new again, right?"
Firefox

The Enterprise Is Wrong, Not Mozilla 599

There's been a lot of noise about Mozilla's new rapid release leading to conflict with Enterprise users. Kethinov found an Ars article that points out that "Now that Mozilla has released Firefox 5, version 4, just three months old, is no longer supported. Enterprise customers aren't very pleased with this decision, and are claiming it makes their testing burden impossible. We're not convinced: we think Mozilla's decision is the right one for the Web itself.'"
DRM

Capcom Announces Unreplayable Game 535

Hatta writes "Resident Evil: Mercenaries 3D for the Nintendo 3DS will be an experience that can be completed once per customer. Using a single, unwipable save slot Capcom ensures that a second hand customer gets a second rate experience. If you buy this game used, you will be stuck with the previous owner's progress, unable to start the game fresh."

Comment Re:BitCoins are simply a hobby, not a currency (Score 1) 642

the history and current events are showing that the economy is benefiting in tandem with currency increasing in value, not losing.

Economic benefits in tandem with deflationary currency? Cite, please. I think quite a few Japanese people (not to mention the world's economists!) would be surprised to hear that.

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