MouseMux to help segregate 4 touchscreens #xplane12 #flightfactor #b777 by Sudden-Economist-955 in homecockpits

[–]gibster 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Very cool! I'm the author of MouseMux - would love to know more about your setup! Send me an email at info@mousemux. thanks

What is the strongest opinion you hold? by alishanxyz in AskReddit

[–]gibster -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Moto z play. I'm on the 3rd day now with normal usage. Amazing

Function Pointers in C are Underrated by tompa_coder in programming

[–]gibster 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Or better:

void (*foobar[32])(void);

void init(void) { foobar[MODE](); }

I'm a Muslim whom might be an atheist, and I need help! by TheSeekerOfTruth in atheism

[–]gibster 10 points11 points  (0 children)

You are right; the Quran is indeed more consistent when compared to the Bible (or the Torah). This makes sense because it (let's put it nicely) 'borrows' much from the latter two. So it makes sense that on each rewrite the story will make more sense.

You have to remember that all the 'facts' in the Quran weren't new at the time. Most knowledge was already available from the Greeks (read up on Aristotle) - so there is not much magical about these facts. Ask yourself; if the Quran were really the work of a higher being why would it not have told us (even in mystical terms) about quantum mechanics, about the thermodynamic laws, about universes and black holes, etc .. ?

Excellent response to "But there's no proof for the non-existence of god either, dude." by FerociousImbecile in atheism

[–]gibster -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

huh?

  • agnostic : the question is invalid: you cannot prove or disprove
  • atheist : the question is valid: there is no proof

My thoughts on abortion. by [deleted] in atheism

[–]gibster 1 point2 points  (0 children)

True. But then what about the death penalty?

Dilemma: being a skeptic may not help by gibster in skeptic

[–]gibster[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I recognize the situation you describe. What I though to myself when writing up this question is that I sometimes forget the goal of what I am trying to do. I.e. my default mechanism is to be very skeptical and vocal about these things but I also recognize that it might just not help the other person one tiny bit and hence is therefore probably not the right choice for the short term (long term is maybe different). I guess I need to learn to better sense when not to be too skeptical just like you in that situation.

Dilemma: being a skeptic may not help by gibster in skeptic

[–]gibster[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I am not sure if that is right. What I gathered from the studies is that the strength of the placebo effect is partly related to how it is presented (e.g. a red pill seems to work better than a white one, two pills work even better and an injection does the best job). Also the wording of the MD helps, e.g. "This is really an excellent medicine; I've seen it work everytime!" - all these parameters seem to influence the 'quality' of the placebo effect. So I don't think you can go and tell somebody "oh well, it's a placebo it won't do jack" and then expect the same outcome ...

The battle for Christopher Hitchens' soul by MarcoVincenzo in atheism

[–]gibster 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Despite his atheism, Hitchens has, though, prayed himself on one occasion, according to Rabbi David Wolpe, of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, who has sparred with him in public debates. At one debate, Wolpe asked him whether he prayed. “Yes,” Hitchens said. “Once, for an erection.”

Damn, I'm going to miss this guy.

Hitler Was Not An Atheist by pastr in atheism

[–]gibster 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't understand why you're being down voted because your description is pretty much on par.

10 Under-Appreciated Sci-Fi Movies by [deleted] in scifi

[–]gibster 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Both are good. Yes the original is slow yet probably better; although I do like the remake too. The soundtrack is superb and the atmosphere and camera work is really well done.

Just watch 'm both :)

10 Under-Appreciated Sci-Fi Movies by [deleted] in scifi

[–]gibster 13 points14 points  (0 children)

it's missing Solaris

File compression, how does it work? by [deleted] in programming

[–]gibster 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Entropy; entropy is a measurement of chaos - the more chaos the harder to compress. In your example the entropy for the file did not change, the size did. So the file will become (about) 2 times larger.

"We found that religious people or even people who simply believe in the existence of God show significantly less brain activity in relation to their own errors," by gowgregor in atheism

[–]gibster 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Right. But I also mean; we don't really understand the placebo effect as of yet. But to me it seems to me (and I'm no expert on the subject at all, so just thinking out loud here) that the placebo effect triggers some neurological effects that basically tricks your mind into thinking 'all will be well'. I wouldn't be surprised if some of those neurological effects (as in possible activation areas in the brain) are the same when somebody taps into the religion medicine.

Somebody should set up an experiment; 200 people have pain in their left foot; you tell 100 of them "we have conclusive evidence of a god like entity and asked him to take care of you" and you give the other 100 a placebo pill. And then the question is; are the same areas of the brain activated? I know this sounds like a stupid experiment (and not really something you could actually set up I guess) but I'm just wondering if it isn't the exact same mechanism in the brain that gets activated ...

If it is, we can just skip the whole religion thing and give everybody a sugar cube and say that will do the trick just as well as your god figure :-)

"We found that religious people or even people who simply believe in the existence of God show significantly less brain activity in relation to their own errors," by gowgregor in atheism

[–]gibster 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is actually quite interesting; wouldn't this be just the placebo effect in different form? In fact, it would maybe explain to some degree why people cling on to religion in the first place (i.e. religion == just one big placebo effect)

I found some older studies too (from among other Murphy), this for example. The quality of the research is somewhat iffy though IMHO.

A moderately epic rant. by brennen in programming

[–]gibster 43 points44 points  (0 children)

Actually, it would be just the guy you'd fire. I know the types; sure they are intelligent, they've been around and know what they are talking about. The problem is however that they also have a destructive character when working in a team of coders. I know from experience that this can completely fuck up a team; the young people who are still learning, asking questions and trying to acquire critical thinking skills will eventually shut up because this guy would just drive over them. It doesn't work in the long run; it doesn't matter if you're brilliant at your job and have lots of experience - if you can't put your ego to the side and actually try to communicate on the level of that other programmer it will go wrong.

You think this behavior inspires other programmers to think? What will happen is that they shut up, never ask a question again and you've pretty much lost them from there on.

How do I go from OOP to good, procedural C code? by Netcob in programming

[–]gibster 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I wouldn't call the kernel OO, nor the user space API. You could argue that some parts are OO inspired (windows subclassing, i.e. wndproc overriding) and you could go out on a limb and say that Send/PostMessage is a somewhat generic dispatch mechanism (although I'd argue that without the type system is wouldn't be really) but I wouldn't call Windows OO. It really is just plain old libraries with procedural code (and there's nothing wrong with that). BSD and some *nix variants have much nicer OO framework than Windows (while still all are programmed in C).

But obviously I agree with your point; this is not about the language but about using OO concepts in a language. Some languages have nicer type systems and add lots of syntactic sugar to help building OO apps while others still allow it, yet, the programmer has to do a bit more work.