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User: sandytaru

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  1. Re:Any experienced teacher already deals with this on UK Computing Teachers Concerned That Pupils Know More Than Them · · Score: 2

    Summers off is a myth. Teachers are in classroom prep and training all through June and July. They might squeeze in the normal two weeks of vacation that other Americans will scatter throughout the year, if they're lucky.

  2. Re:Whats the point? on Obama Proposes 2 Years of Free Community College · · Score: 2

    I'm assuming the community colleges would also include the local tech colleges. If that burger flipper goes on to become a plumber or an electrician, they'll probably make more than I do with less than half the schooling.

  3. Re:the only cool one on Ask Slashdot: High-Performance Laptop That Doesn't Overheat? · · Score: 1

    I was referring to one of Apple's slogans from the 2000s, which was "It just works." Which was the case for Apple during its heydey but as you have pointed out, not any more.

  4. Re:the only cool one on Ask Slashdot: High-Performance Laptop That Doesn't Overheat? · · Score: 1

    They can still develop hot spots, though. Mine tends to get noticeably hot right below the Z and X keys. I do love the G-series, though. Actually, I just like MSI. Things just work, like they took a cue from Apple.

  5. Re:These temperatures are Ok in the mobile world on Ask Slashdot: High-Performance Laptop That Doesn't Overheat? · · Score: 1

    That's the compromise I made with my gaming laptop. It's gonna get hot, so I just have a good cooler underneath it when I'm on the road.

  6. Re:live by the sword on HOA Orders TARDIS Removed From In Front of Parrish Home · · Score: 1

    Usually the funding for the initial building is done by a real estate investment trust. So the "builder" in this case doesn't refer to the construction company, but to the folks that funded them. Neighborhoods with a HOA are supposed to come with some perks, too - community landscapers, a club house with a pool, that sort of thing. Someone still has to run those things long after the construction crew is gone.

  7. Re:live by the sword on HOA Orders TARDIS Removed From In Front of Parrish Home · · Score: 2, Insightful

    These days it's hard to find a new construction home that isn't part of a neighborhood that has a HOA.... unless you build yourself on one of the abandoned PVC farms from 2008. Our house was the show room foreclosed on such a property, and thus we got a new house while escaping the clutches of the HOA that never was.

  8. Re:For what? Nobody can download that much pron... on The Luxury of a Bottomless Bucket of Bandwidth For Georgia Schools · · Score: 1

    Georgia Tech is part of the USG system, so they're already included in this grouping if I understand TFA correctly.

  9. Re:In other words, it's a Utility. on The Luxury of a Bottomless Bucket of Bandwidth For Georgia Schools · · Score: 1

    Correct, all USG schools have a per semester technology fee. Sounds like they actually found a better use for it than new iPads for the mac labs, at least.

  10. Re:They've finally built a 100% uptime cloud? on The Luxury of a Bottomless Bucket of Bandwidth For Georgia Schools · · Score: 1

    I would like to see that too. They're across the street from my office, funny enough. I wonder if I go knock on the door and ask, if anyone would talk to me?

    Now if they could just make this service available to alumni, I'd be set. Heck, I'd pay them. My house isn't that far from campus, and their service clearly can't be any worse than AT&T or Charter.

  11. Re:So who's taxes are paying for this? on The Luxury of a Bottomless Bucket of Bandwidth For Georgia Schools · · Score: 2

    'Twas $75 a year the last time I was a student in 2013. Good to know my money went to something awesome.

  12. Stupid, stupid, stupid on Sony Thinks You'll Pay $1200 For a Digital Walkman · · Score: 1

    They also discontinued their $50 MP3 headphones with 2 GB of storage. (2GB is plenty if you're swapping in a fresh podcast once a week, after all.) These were also Walkman branded. You can still get the $99 4GB version, but the design is different and it's not as simple to use. Those $50 headphones had surprisingly good sound, they were water resistant, and they survived years of harsh treatment. Mine only finally kicked the bucket when they got stepped on. I was heartbroken.

  13. Re:Ya, Sure. on Anthropomorphism and Object Oriented Programming · · Score: 3, Informative

    I think there is a layer there at which point it's useful, and one at which it's not. It's fine to anthropomorphize a program when explaining to an end user why it's broken, e.g. "The program doesn't know to check for the start date of a new lease when the old one expires, it just thinks it should activate it regardless." (Actual problem we're having to fix right now.) But of course the developer shouldn't think that the program is confused; it's doing exactly what we asked of it in a nightly stored procedure, and not bothering to check start dates because it wasn't programmed to do that in the first place!

  14. Re:Painted into a corner on Hunting For a Tech Job In 2015 · · Score: 1

    I concur regarding mismatched expectations for skill sets and salaries. I saw a local position that I'd be a perfect match for - I'd be their purple unicorn - but they were offering $20,000 less than what I'm currently making. I could probably negotiate a $5-10K salary increase based on being such a perfect match, but $20K isn't going to happen no matter how awesome I am. So I'm not even bothering to apply.

  15. Re:As above plus on Box Office 2014: Moviegoing Hits Two-Decade Low · · Score: 1

    That's the case for a lot of us, I think. We just don't want to deal with opening night crowds, and we know that if we wait two months we'll be able to rent it at Red Box for a dollar.

  16. Re:Email is a productivity killer on Pew Survey: Tech Increases Productivity, But Also Time Spent Working · · Score: 1

    Zero inbox also ensures that you don't miss anything (usually.) I don't file anything until I've also checked off its matching task, if there was one.

  17. Summary is a bit misleading on Hot Springs At Yellowstone Changed Their Color Due To Tourist Activity · · Score: 4, Informative

    I RTFA. These pools have ALWAYS been colorful. That's partially why Yellowstone was made into a national park, after all. It's the composition of colors that has changed in the last century, due to a slightly lower temperature and thus a slightly different bacterial makeup. The summary sort of implies that it was pollution that made each pool colorful to begin with, which isn't the case. Instead of "Researchers say that the different colors of the hot springs in Yellowstone National Park are caused by human contamination" it would be more accurate to say: "Researchers have done a simulation that shows how human activity may have altered the colors in several hot springs at Yellowstone."

  18. Re:Make it convenient for me and I will pay on Peter Sunde: the Pirate Bay Should Stay Down · · Score: 1

    Well, and everyone pirating Japanese animation and Korean TV dramas. But even those have streaming available in the US via Crunchyroll now.

  19. Re:Make it convenient for me and I will pay on Peter Sunde: the Pirate Bay Should Stay Down · · Score: 1

    Why can't the places that claim to want to make money work out a deal with whatever local regional governments to sell their content for consumers? Country blocks are the stupidest thing ever.

  20. Re:Make it convenient for me and I will pay on Peter Sunde: the Pirate Bay Should Stay Down · · Score: 1

    Yup, the aforementioned regional licensing bullshit. That's a problem the MPAA/RIAA and whoever needs to sort out with the streaming services if they want to end piracy for good.

  21. Make it convenient for me and I will pay on Peter Sunde: the Pirate Bay Should Stay Down · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think another reason TPB isn't as necessary as it used to be is because the convenience gap it filled has slowly been replaced by paid services, in many instances. Getting an entire season of a TV show used to involve hunting down disks or even VHS tapes, a lot of waiting, a lot of headache, and the cost - when a pirated torrent of the same thing could be had in a few hours. Even renting a movie involved going outside. What if you didn't want to leave the house - or couldn't?

    With the rise of on-demand services like Netflix/Hulu/all their friends, and the availability of most content for a reasonable cost, the laziness factor for torrenting is not as prevalent. For $2 and basically no effort I can buy a streaming movie off Amazon and watch it on my PS3. If I wanted to pirate it now, I'd save $2 but it would not necessarily be any easier or faster.

    Same also applies for music. I pirated a lot of MP3s a long time ago because the songs were not readily available on CD or anywhere else (usually because of regional licensing bullshit.) These days, I can pay a dollar to whichever music service of my choice that carries the song, and have the MP3 without having to buy the whole album.

    There will be other services along the lines of TPB, but they're more likely to stock 3D makerbot blueprints than they are cheaply available mainstream media in the future.

  22. Re:I just don't get it on FBI Seizes Los Angeles Schools' iPad Documents · · Score: 1

    My beef with the iPads is that since they lack a physical keyboard, kids aren't going to learn to type on them. At least with cheap laptops like Chromebooks, there's a crappy physical keyboard and not just a touch interface.

  23. Re:Spending too much, reserves good, SW improves c on A Mismatch Between Wikimedia's Pledge Drive and Its Cash On Hand? · · Score: 2
  24. Re:Spending too much, reserves good, SW improves c on A Mismatch Between Wikimedia's Pledge Drive and Its Cash On Hand? · · Score: 5, Interesting

    An example of what they've done would be the recent Monuments project. They built a back end, complete with a Google maps API interface, to tell you exactly where they needed photos of which historic monuments, in relation to a given ZIP code. Based on that, I learned there was 200 year old farm house about a half a mile from my office, and I spent a productive lunch break driving over there and photographing it. Their website handled the upload, licensing, and then distributed the new photo to the Commons as well as the Monuments project. There were no errors during this entire process which means the entire thing was rigorously tested and properly coded. It was a painless user experience, if a bit dry because of the spartan aesthetics of Wikimedia, but my "generated content" was incorporated seamlessly into their project in about five minutes. That's good website engineering.

  25. Re:Meh, they're okay. on Chromebooks Overtake iPads In US Education Market · · Score: 4, Insightful

    My nephew has one. It does everything he needs it to do for school, which is all one should expect out of a machine offered to kids through school.