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User: voxner

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Comments · 43

  1. Re:Top quality desis no longer apply for H1B ... on US IT Worker Files Hiring Lawsuit Against Infosys, Class Action Proposed · · Score: 0

    I don't see how this crappy piece of generalization deserves a +4.

  2. Re:TV on XBMC 12.0 'Frodo' Released: PVR-Support, HD Audio and More · · Score: 1

    Matroska format is not supported in some TVs. For my bravia i convert mkv to mpeg4 format. Unless you want to encode subtitles it could just be a copy of the video codec in the mpeg4 container. ffmpeg is your friend.

  3. H1B on Senators Seek H-1B Cap That Can Reach 300,000 · · Score: 2

    H1B drives foreign student enrollment in STEM in American Universities. In mid-tier schools like SUNY Buffalo most of the professors, graduate students in Computer science are foreign. You can spot an occasional American, but the graduate/research programs are more or less sustained by foreigners. Take away H1B and the students & some of the professors will be gone, the money (either from the foreigners or from the NSF) will dry up and the whole program will just collapse. I don't see how that can be good.

    The Princetons & Harvards may not face the problem, but a lot of non-ivy league schools will. H1B sustains an entire academic ecosystem in the U.S. Any reform of the program should consider this aspect for there are entrenched interests in sustaining the status quo.

  4. OS Reinstallation on Windows 8 PCs Still Throttled By Crapware · · Score: 2

    I do a clean install after I buy a PC. For windows 7 I had to do the following.

    1. Get all the drivers from the OEM for the specific model.
    2. Get the REAL windows product key (& OEM cert) of your pc. Google is your friend here.
    3. Get a Retail windows copy from MSDN or some other legit site.
    4. Format the PC, install windows and use slmgr tool to activate it.
    5. Now install all the drivers & you are good to go.

    No crapware now & it saves me disk space that the OEMs manage to steal in the name of recovery partition.

    I have an inkling that Microsoft/OEMs will make the process more onerous going forward but I believe its worth the pain.

  5. Re:uses? on CodeWeavers Announces Flock the Vote Software Giveaway · · Score: 3, Informative

    Running Microsoft Office in Linux. I had a good experience with codeweaver for linux. I haven't tried wine yet...

  6. Awesome for a Barebones machine on Arch Linux For Newbies? Manjaro Is Here! · · Score: 1

    In my stint in previous company I was given a machine with 256 mb ram. Running ubuntu was a nightmare & so I installed arch with openbox, feh & rxvt-unicode. I never looked back. The only issue was the hibernate but that never worked for me in ubuntu anyways.

  7. Re:Think of an application that you'd like on Ask Slashdot: Best Way To Jump Back Into Programming? · · Score: 1

    Exactly. Learning to program should not be an end in itself. It should be a path to something tangible - a portfolio of work.

  8. Re:Monopoly on Intel Invests In ASML To Boost Extreme UV Lithography, 450mm Wafers · · Score: 2

    Posted wrong link - intel-3d-transistors

  9. Monopoly on Intel Invests In ASML To Boost Extreme UV Lithography, 450mm Wafers · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is an ominous sign of things to come. Intel already has significant advantages in the foundry business. These could be leveraged further to give its x86 chips a boost vis-a-vis ARM. The other players need to pull their act together & pool resources to counter this. If there is no level-playing field because the foundries can't keep up we could well be facing an x86 monopoly in the low-power chip market too.

  10. G+ has its place on Online Loneliness At Google+ · · Score: 2

    Google+ is a good place if you know what you are looking for. I like to follow nerds and it just about seems like the "right medium" for that. Family, friends tend to hang around in FB. I see G+ & FB as orthogonal entities catering to different social ecosystems.

  11. What's new? on Extreme Memory Oversubscription For VMs · · Score: 1

    I had recently started poking around the lguest hypervisor. From my limited reading I believe 2 of the 3 memory subscription choices mentioned in the article are present in Linux. Existing linux based open source hypervisors like kvm etc use paging/swap mechanism (i,e, for x86 - the paravirt mechanism). Ballooning is possible using the virto_balloon. Kernel shared memory in linux allows dynamic sharing of memory pages between proceses - this probably doesn't apply to virtualization.

    I couldn't find any CPU over-subscription thing in open-source hypervisors. It seems to be the only area where open-source hypervisors are lacking.

    On an other note, established players like IBM tend to use Type-1 hypervisors (link) for enterprise servers, it would be interesting to see how this company fares against them.

  12. PDF Viewer on Google Builds a Native PDF Reader Into Chrome · · Score: 1

    I hate Adobe Reader but in certain situations like docs with two columns of text I prefer it over evince. When I copy text, I expect text to be copied from only that particular column, evince however likes copying from both columns giving me a senseless garbage of text, so I am stuck with Adobe Reader because I happen to clip text from a lot of academic papers for my references. Hope this native PDF Reader takes these nitty-gritties into account.

  13. Re:notepad.exe on How To Behave At a Software Company? · · Score: 1

    Absolutely, but I would suggest something a little more sophisticated.

  14. Bing on Bing Loses More Money As Microsoft Chases Google · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I really hope Bing succeeds. I haven't used it much so far, mostly out of Inertia. But I don't like the idea of placing all my bets with Google. It's very important that an alternate good quality search engine is available. MS is best placed to achieve that for they have the man-power & the money. I hope they succeed.

  15. Re:Scientific? on Neanderthals "Had Sex" With Modern Man · · Score: 1

    I saw the Neanderthal series in NatGeo. They only found fossil record of one child that seemed to have traits from both neanderthals as well as modern man (this is not unusual as entire human sub-species have been based on one or two fossils , check the evolution of modern man in wikipedia). On top of that according to the show modern man does not have any traces of neanderthal dna. The picture next to summary features shots from the NatGeo program on Neonderthals.

  16. Impact on New HIV Strain Discovered · · Score: 1

    The article does not seem to mention the impact of the virus on existing treatments. Is the new virus a hiv version of MDR-TB?

  17. Re:Poor Title on F-22 Raptor Cancelled · · Score: 1

    The United States has a veto on israeli military foreign sales decisions(as most israeli military technology have american contribution in the form of money or tech). Case in point the arrow system was not sold to china over US objections. Same is the case with advanced anti-ballistic system for india (as the US believed it would skew the military balance too much towards india in south asia).

  18. Re:Idiocy on Homeland Security To Scan Citizens Exiting US · · Score: 1

    Basing security on statistics like .0001% is a very flawed way of approaching the problem. What about the future? What if the terrorists get hold of chemical weapons or nukes. Thats a whole different ball-game ain't it? State has a responsibility to protect its citizens from terrorists. With nukes there won't be many zeros after the dot. And with the passage of time the odds of terrorists getting their hands on WMDs only increases.

  19. Re:F-22 on Predator C Avenger Makes First Flights · · Score: 1

    The sixth generation aircraft is already in the drawing boards. Check this link.
    The fighters are not going anywhere and the only thing going to the sidelines is manned fighters and that is not about to happen anytime soon (given the present state of technology).

  20. Re:H1B's leaving on Smart Immigrants Going Home · · Score: 1

    Consider the following: if you are married, if you have more than 5 years experience, you are more likely to (a) be fired and (b) be passed over for a "new grad" or H1-B.

    5 years of experience should surely count something. People usually "progress" in their career path. If you are replaced by a "new grad" either the management is making a mistake or you deserve it (for the sheer reason that its actually possible to replace you with a new grad inspite of 5 years of experience). There are many firms that exploit h1b but Microsoft is more likely interested in an expanded talent pool rather than lowering wages. Of course your whole post reeks of "they took our jobs" mentality but thats a different issue.

  21. Re:Good way to drive them underground on Supreme Court of India Comes Down On Bloggers · · Score: 1

    India has enough freedoms especially for a third-world country. Most Indians come to the US for a better life and not from fear of persecution or lack of rights.

  22. Re:Options? on Norwegian Websites Declare War On IE 6 · · Score: 1

    When I was into web-design, I found grids very useful. It made the positioning of elements in the page much easier.

  23. Re:Just one question from me on IBM Offers to Send Laid-Off Staff to Other Countries · · Score: 1

    This offer may sound attractive to those who love to travel or just experience the "other" world. Such a shift could also entail moving a notch up in skills or management ladder which they can later market in the United States.

    It could end up being a strategic choice.

  24. Re:Nonsense on Why Windows Must (and Will) Go Open Source · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Microsoft simply can't manage their code in-house anymore

    Just because they botched vista/longhorn once does not mean they will never again be able to manage the code-in house.

    in a closed-source Microsoft, developers really only have one itch to scratch - their pay check.

    Programmers at Microsoft will be facing challenges that are quite similar to the ones faced by their linux counterparts. Their might as well be programmers in Mircrosoft who love what they do. So your statement generalizes (incorrectly) a parochial scenario as representative of the whole orgainzation and its mores.

    With open source, the developers are scratching a different itch. Often, they'll work on something out of passion alone, at which point some commercial entity may decide simply to start paying them full-time for doing what they enjoy. Recognition, pay - what could be better?

    Yes its true but a whole lot of development in the OS world (especially linux) is made possible by developers in corporations(ibm,red-hat..etc) who going by your logic are likely to be equally susceptible to just the "paycheck" itch .

    Your argument is reflective of the romanticization of the "hacker" lifestyle that seems to be quite popular here in slashdot.

  25. Re:....With a Return Address on Iran Has Put a Satellite Into Orbit · · Score: 1

    This line of thinking is completely flawed. The "mullahs" may be religious but they are certainly not trigger happy fanatics. Iranian leaders are concerned about maintaining their own power. For example their support for hezbollah is a geo-political calculation serving as an insurance against hostile powers and certainly not driven by extremist Islamic ideologies. A good article about the 2006 war that gives an insight into iranian intentions is here

    Iran in fact has a (relatively) fair degree of political freedom. Iranian leaders (in spite of ahmedijenad's rants about israel) are primarily concerned about their own power and survival and that is more rational and markedly different from the virulent islamic ideologies found in wahhabism and sunni/saudi world.

    Your argument would fit the taliban but not Iran.