Re:Beer, is there anything it can't hurt?
by hey! (33014)

Actually, American versions of Pilsners, while evolving towards lightness, didn't become insipid until after Prohibition. When Prohibition was repealed, Americans were ready to drink anything. Only a few breweries left, which had survived selling malt for malted milk and root beer, provided a thirsty nation with beer that you could drink a lot of, very quickly.

I've done a bit of home brewing, and the funny thing is that an American style beer is actually an extremely difficult style of beer to make. Replacing much of the malt with rice means that you end up with a very light flavor. The tiniest off flavor is immediately detectable. Get anything wrong with the fermentation, or the water, or the storage and it tastes really bad.

Re:Andersen and Landley - You don't have copyright
by Dr. Zowie (109983)

It's called, "Sour Grapes".

Actually, no, it's not. The phrase "Sour Grapes" refers to one of Aesop's Fables, in which a Fox, unable to get his mitts on some nice, juicy grapes, grumbles that the grapes look sour. You've used a false analogy, because Diesel Dave isn't speculating that the reward wasn't worthwhile (sour). He's pissed off because he wasn't able to enjoy any himself, and therefore doesn't want Anderson and Landley to enjoy their winnings. That's more like the Dog in the Manger, a story about those who begrudge others the things that they can't enjoy themselves.

Re:"locked in"?
by mattpalmer1086 (707360)

Gah. Here's a FAQ you may find useful:

Q: What does open office and MS Office have to do with a document standard?
A: Nothing.

Q: What does the GUI of your word processor have to do with the format you save a document in?
A: Nothing.

Q: Why do you need to use open office if you use ODF?
A: You don't, use whatever software you like.

Q: What does the open source software development model have to do with open information standards?
A: Nothing.

Q: Does using ODF mean that communists will steal my children?
A: No.

Q: Will aliens eat my brain if I equate information standards with software implementations?
A: Yes.

I don't understand a thing :
by Spy der Mann (805235)

Can someone explain to me what E8 is? The wikipedia article left me with more questions than answers :(

Re:I don't understand a thing (
by iabervon (1971)

(I am not a particle physicist or a mathematician of the right sort, but I can kind of follow this sort of thing)

Re:Wikipedia link to E8 - Still makes nooooo sense
by ajs (35943)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E8_(mathematics) [wikipedia.org]

Holy crap! - I can read all the words, but none of it makes any sense. It's like the took regular English words and gave them all different meanings. I haven't felt this uncomprehending in a loooong time - and even the dumbness felt from quantum chemistry pales to this. Well, a lot of it falls out of this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_theory [wikipedia.org]

Which then gets you here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symmetry_group [wikipedia.org]

Once you get those two, you can hit:

No idea
by Moraelin (679338)

Well, if you look at nodern carnivores, you see such examples as:

- the fox, which is pretty darn red

- the tiger, which is relatively bright orange and with stripes too (and cats somewhat inherited that: a normal tabby male is almost always orange, though the females are nearly always grey when they're tabby.)

In fact, think about this: the most logical camouflage colour would be green, right? That's the colour we dress our soldiers in, right? Well, in practice mammals are coloured anything but green.

A hypothesis there is that camouflage doesn't always mean having the same colour as the surroundings. Three quarters of camouflage in the animal world seems to have to do more with the mental capacity of your opponent (prey or predator, as the case may be) than with blending in.

Re:an oldie but a goodie
by Jeff DeMaagd (2015)

Who/what the hell is ESR???

a nobody that pretends to be somebody. Move along, nothing to see here.

Re:The winners: *Direct* Quote
by quadra23 (786171)

One product, WatchGuard's Linux AV tool, caught fewer than 6 percent of the viruses sent to it. "We're not exactly sure what the problem with WatchGuard is," says Morris. "The test was set up the same way for all of the vendors."

This number quoted by the original poster missed the section in bold, it was technically < 6%, which could mean either 0 or 1 virus (funny how everything always works out to binary in some way or another :). My question would be which is it? Either way, my system would be compromised by either 24 or 25 viruses -- neither of which is a good scenario especially in regards to well-known viruses (according to the article no 0-day exploits were accepted).

Re:PLEASE HELP
by technos (73414)

You know how the CIA uses reverse-engineered alien technology to scan your brain, right? Spread frequency directional RF in the low 8GHz range at between 1400 and 1750w. When exposed to the field, your neurons phase-lock to some minor harmonic when they fire. Then they just sit back and listen to all your remaining brain cells chirp away.

How the FBI 'hacks' your computer isn't much different, but it's a lot easier, and shares some of the same gear. Instead of using the RF field to modulate your neurons, they use it to induce a weak localized EM field in the computer and then read back the disturbances in that field from the harmonic corresponding to the sub-gigahertz bus of the machine into a low-cost simulator.

The great news is you don't really have to do anything out of the ordinary to counter the attack. You already have plenty of tin-foil on hand from making your hat. (They wouldn't be scanning your machine if they could scan your brain directly, after all.)

Re:Jesus camp, of course
by Paulrothrock (685079)

Here's a little tip I'm going to teach my son, if I have one: Religious chicks are just as horny as regular chicks, except it's also considered "taboo," which makes it even more attractive. Combine this with "if it's not in my cooter, it's not really sex" and the daddy issues that go along with being religious and you've got a perfect little sex kitten.

It's almost worth waking up early on Sunday mornings.

Re:Are they serious?
by jrumney (197329)

Its mainly about developing using Google's APIs. KML, AJAX, Atom, that sort of thing. Sure, the tips and tricks are already known, but its still useful to have an intensive session where they are presented to you by the people involved in their creation, rather than spending untold hours filtering through the crap on online forums to find the useful tips.

RAS syndrome and U.S. trademark law
by tepples (727027)

The joke is often repeated. But U.S. trademark law may help explain RAS syndrome. Trademarks are adjectives and should be used with a generic term, even if they contain an abbreviation of the generic term. Hence "TCBY yogurt" even though "TCBY" is "the country's best yogurt", "DC comics" even though "DC" was "detective comics", "SAT reasoning test" even though "SAT" was "scholastic aptitude test", and "SPAM luncheon meat" even though "SPAM" stood for "specially processed assorted meat" at one time. Writers pressured by trademark owners to include the generic terms in their copy tend to overextend the habit of abbreviation + generic even to cases where the abbreviation is not a trademark.

Another cause is to disambiguate homophonic or homographic acronyms. "Put your PIN in the computer" could be misheard as "put your pin (or pen) in the computer", which could damage the machine. "Put your PIN number in the computer" has one interpretation.

For your informational enjoyment we've added a statistics page. See how often you've been Seen on Slashdot. We'll soon be adding more information, such as links to the most recent comments. Enjoy!

Re:Given the choice
by jg (16880)(#16377027)

RMS has been very civil in our extensive mail exchanges.

Theo de Raadt, on the other hand, has not been civil in the slightest.

Your 'real world' doesn't include electronic data?
by geekotourist (80163)

Perhaps you're confused by the name "Electronic Frontier Foundation"?

• the "Electronic Frontier" is woven into everyone's life: what happens electronically can be more real, longer lasting, than any real-world event, and
• "Foundation" doesn't mean the same as "Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation" (it can buy countries), or the "Ford Foundation" (it can casually sponsor a year of PBS). The EFF, unless it wins the trillion-dollar lawsuit, is a small donor-supported non-profit.
• And in some cases, the ACLU doesn't do as well [slashdot.org].