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User: eulernet

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Comments · 945

  1. Re:I am expert on procastination on In Praise of Procrastination · · Score: 1

    There is already a ton of books about procrastination, but nobody reads them.

  2. Re:Meanwhile in Germany... on Jammie Thomas Hit With $1.5 Million Verdict · · Score: 1

    This shows how american judging is emo and moralistic, compared to german's reasonable approach.

  3. Re:No, Wait... on Jammie Thomas Hit With $1.5 Million Verdict · · Score: 1

    I was unaware that I was sitting on a fortune here...

    Now, I can probably sell my computer on eBay for a couple of millions.

  4. Re:coverity is a great tool. on Serious Security Bugs Found In Android Kernel · · Score: 1

    Personally, I'm using Gimpel PCLint.

    It's a much more mature product than Coverity, and clearly less advertised !

  5. Re:Not just iPhone 4s on iPhone Alarm Bug Leads To Mass European Sleep-in · · Score: 1

    Good idea !
    Apple already owns the patent for alarm clock waking you up with one hour late.

    They just need to patent the 23 other hours.

  6. Re:Not just iPhone 4s on iPhone Alarm Bug Leads To Mass European Sleep-in · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    Not me: if she owns an iPhone, she must be pretty stupid.

    I have higher standards !

    Ok, I'm alone.

  7. Re:What we need... on Is Google Polluting the Internet? · · Score: 1

    Maybe the author is colorblind, or almost blind ?

  8. Re:Why do we attack google? on Is Google Polluting the Internet? · · Score: 1

    we have corporations like Lockheed Martin developing more weapons to pollute the earth and murder innocent children overseas.

    I don't care !
    My privacy is more important, or at least, that's what I heard.

  9. Re:No we don't. on Is Google Polluting the Internet? · · Score: 1

    Hmm, you are very wrong, and I suspect that you are pretty disconnected from reality.
    You are confusing people and companies.

    Companies seek for money, success, recognition and power, politicians seek for power.

    Luckily, people have a lot of other motivators than money or power.
    Why not simply fame, complacency or addiction ?

  10. Not Cross-Platform ? on Microsoft's Silverlight Strategy 'Has Shifted' · · Score: 4, Funny

    Hey, it works on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7, so it's cross-platform.

    Once again, Slashdot promotes an article bashing Microsoft.

    This is so unfair !

  11. Re:slashdotted? on Google's Slideshow of Interesting Things · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Hey, I'm quite proud now ;-)
    I got:

    The bad news is that Google Docs has just encountered an error.
    The good news is that you've helped us find a bug, which we are now looking into.

    We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you.
    In the meantime, if you'd like updates on this and other issues, try visiting our Google Docs Help Group: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Docs

    Sorry, and thanks for your help!
    - The Google Docs Team
    RPC layer error [DEADLINE_EXCEEDED]: /CosmoStorage.Query to 10.237.134.79:8182 [DEADLINE_EXCEEDED]

  12. Re:Great! on Adobe Reader X With Sandbox Due In November · · Score: 1

    and Adobe has to support about 24 more languages than Foxit does.

    I don't understand what languages have to do with a patch in the code, or do you mean that the language resources are coded into the source itself or, even worse, that there are 24 different versions of the source ?

    The problem is not that Adobe took 3 more days than Foxit, the problem is that Foxit has patches easy to deploy, and Acrobat Reader hasn't, so any new exploit will work for a lot of time.

  13. Re:Old Success Stories on Microsoft Admits OpenOffice.org Is a Contender · · Score: 1

    Microsoft found a way to make people switch to Office 2010: in Europe, they sell Office 2010 at 10 euros to the people working for companies using Office 2010.

    This is a clever move to encourage people to switch to their latest products, and as usual, taking the money from companies.

  14. Not the first attempt... on Erasing Objects From Video In Real Time · · Score: 1

    Ten years ago, one of my friends, who works on movies' restoration and coloring, told me that they had software that was able to remove moving objects from a scene.

    The idea was to use the whole scene to recreate the missing parts.

    I also remember an article on compression.ru, with plugins able to remove logos or subtitles:
    http://compression.ru/video/logo_removal/index_en.html
    http://compression.ru/video/subtitles_removal/index_en.html
    and even TV ads removal:
    http://compression.ru/video/tv_commercial_detector/index_en.html

  15. Re:Same Old Song And Dance on Computer Defeats Human At Japanese Chess · · Score: 1

    Also we now have Rybka, which was created by a team of programming grandmasters, and has a rating several hundred points above the highest human (although no one has ever shelled out the cash necessary to get it to play against the world champion, it would likely win).

    Hum no, Rybka is written by only one programmer (Vasik Rajlich) and he's only an International Master.
    His program is heavily based upon the open-source chess engine Fruit.
    It's true that the GM Larry Kaufman suggested some ideas, but he's not programming Rybka.

    Also, their ELO is absolutely useless, since these ratings were measured with games between programs, and not by confronting them to human players.
    It reminds me the case of the prisoner who played against his mates and got a massive ELO rating from the US chess federation, but he was just abusing the system.

    BTW, you can also easily find an excellent open-source chess program stronger than Rybka: Ippolit.
    There are several variants, named Ivanhoe, Robbolito and Houdini.

    Check these free programs, their strength is very impressive, and they are used by chess players for game analysis.
    And no, it has been confirmed that they are not decompiled versions of Rybka, which is the argument used by Vasik to block these programs from the official chess programs ratings.

  16. Re:I hire games programmers. on Best Education Path To Learn Video Game Programming? · · Score: 1

    In my case, my penultimate games company was also Microsoft Regional Directors.
    They worked on Microsoft technologies, and I was coding casual games for browsers, using their own C++ framework (based on ActiveX).
    When the company fired all their game programmers (and one of them is the creator of Trackmania), they proposed to provide 2 months of training on Microsoft technologies (.Net, etc...).
    I gladly accepted, since I was not sure about my future in games.
    Also, I have no diploma, because I started working on games since I was 19, and in France, it's difficult to be recognized for your abilities instead of your diplomas.

    After this experience, I was unemployed during 6 months, where I tried to find a game company, using my large network of ex-colleagues.
    Finally, I was hired at Nevrax (on the Ryzom project), and I realized that I lost interest in games programming, so I quit after my trial period of one month.

    Then, I contacted my friends and asked if they knew some companies that could hire me for their project, and I'm still working at this company right now (since 7 years).

    I think that my most important decision was to realize that games were over for me, which was very difficult to accept (I was coding games since the last 20 years). After that, finding a job was a lot easier.

    Money was never my main motivation, I'm always trying to find jobs where I'm not bored, and sufficiently paid.

  17. Re:Easiest option: on New Tool Blocks Downloads From Malicious Sites · · Score: 2, Informative

    Try Comodo Personal Firewall, it already warns when a new program tries to install on your computer, and it's free.

  18. Re:Is anyone surprised? on Chinese Nobel Winner's Wife Detained · · Score: 1

    so why should they get respect?

    According to:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt#Foreign_ownership

    22% of the US debt is owned by China.

    868 billions are enough to let any official shut his mouth, especially for the sake of a single person.

    And for the rest of the world, China is probably the biggest investor.

  19. Re:Sure. on Against Apple, Ballmer Floats Microsoft Merger With Adobe · · Score: 1

    They perhaps don't care about security and but they are masters of software bloat !

    Their programs are insanely huge.

  20. Re:I hire games programmers. on Best Education Path To Learn Video Game Programming? · · Score: 1

    In my case, I started at 19 (in 1984), and I experienced how the games went from two guys team (one coder, one graphist) to large teams (which I still believe is an error, because I never met anybody able to manage a large mixed team).

    In the last years of my career in game programming (10 years ago), I realized that I was one of the oldest guys in this sector, I was still single and was always badly paid.
    Also, most game companies in France died at this time, and I didn't want to go in England or somewhere else.

    I also encountered a lot of talented young developers, some of them even behaved like kings, and it was not simple to discard all my experience to start something anew.

    Perhaps one of my problems is that I have been an early developer, and most of gamers are now in their thirties.
    It's difficult to create games for another generation of gamers.

    I hope you'll be successful in your future, and be able to adapt when a new generation of gamers will appear.

  21. Re:I hire games programmers. on Best Education Path To Learn Video Game Programming? · · Score: 1

    I agree with you.

    However, I have to add that the transition post-games is very tough.
    It's difficult to start a new type of job, because your competences are game-related.

    Personally, I had the chance of working for an Internet company for games, and I used this opportunity to work on Web related projects after this experience, but it's more difficult for people specialized into 3D engines.

    Another opportunity is to advance in the hierarchy, so that you learn management, and this can be used anywhere, but this was not my case.

    With videogames, it's impossible to plan your whole career into this sector.

  22. Re:Sad yankee system on DC Suspends Tests of Online Voting System · · Score: 1

    Actually, I do know of an example in the 60's where the military tried to rig a regional election. They failed miserably.

    It depends on the type of fraud.
    I think their main problem was that they did not hide their fraud, or it was too obvious.

    When a hacker enters a system, it tries to keep the smallest foot-print, and it's the same thing when you try to hack a voting system.
    If you change all the votes to one of the candidates, it will be obvious that there is a fraud.

    In France, even though we use paper ballots, there is still a common way to change the votes !
    During the counting, the papers are taken by people.
    The guy in charge of taking the papers out can:
    1) change them into another ballot (one well known case is someone got caught by putting them into his sockets). This also can be done when transferring the ballot box
    2) Mark the opposite ballots with some graphite pencil. A vote is cancelled when there is a mark on a vote.

    I'll let you imagine other systems...

  23. Re:I hire games programmers. on Best Education Path To Learn Video Game Programming? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Ok, it seems that you hire game programmers.
    Now, explain me why there is no game programmer in his forties ?

    I mean, all the people I know quit working on games at some stage, and I know no team with very experienced developers.
    I don't speak about management, since a few developers are able to become managers, but this is very rare too.

    Disclaimer: I've been a game programmer during 20 years, and I'm now an happy engineer, outside of game programming.

  24. Re:Setup and Teardown on Bittorrent To Replace Standard Downloads? · · Score: 1

    You can also put a lot of small files into a single torrent (MAME Roms come to my mind), and select which ones you want to download.
    It'll be much more efficient than having one torrent per file.

    About the connection, I have to agree: my DSL modem is configured by default to reduce connection hammering (like when using BitTorrent).
    It's pretty difficult to disable the setting that prevents this.

  25. Re:Help us steal from others! on Red Hat Urges USPTO To Deny Most Software Patents · · Score: 2, Interesting

    To me if you wanted to encourage innovation, you could have Prizes for Innovation.
    Yes it's not a billion dollar bonanza but neither are Nobel Prizes, and still many regard those as prestigious.

    In France, we have subventions for innovation by an organization called Anvar.

    You have to present your R&D advances, and if it's innovative enough, you'll get money to help you pay your development team (they'll pay you a percentage of your expenses for the R&D salaries).

    Of course, all companies are taxed for this organization, but the money is redistributed to the innovative ones.

    In my opinion, this is a better way to handle innovation than patents, since you can be paid around 2 years after having started...