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User: retchdog

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Comments · 2,733

  1. Re:Nerd Blackface on Big Bang Actors To Earn $1M Per Episode · · Score: 1

    Well, the "I know black people!" thing happens all the time, but I see your point. OTOH, "nerds" have pretty damned good prospects after high school, so crying oppression is a bit incredible.

  2. Re:Case closed on Senior RIKEN Scientist Involved In Stem Cell Scandal Commits Suicide · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Oh, please. Maas Biolabs would never conduct such a sloppy wetworks. Their general operating policy is abduction and indoctrination of the talent. In extremely rare cases, termination followed by cryonic preservation of the cortex prior to neural "biosoft" imprinting is acceptable as well, but don't expect any surviving witnesses in either case. Often, they use localized airburst toxins or a satellite projectile to zero out the target area. If the situation permits, venting of a military hallucinogenic/sedative can also neutralize the crowd. Either way, it would be indistinguishable from a random act of civil unrest such as those of the notorious Panther Moderns.

  3. Re:Case closed on Senior RIKEN Scientist Involved In Stem Cell Scandal Commits Suicide · · Score: 0, Troll

    Oh, come on, what are the chances that the kid would have grown up to be more useful than its harvested biomaterial? Pretty low if you ask me, especially if the stem cell therapy is expensive. I just hope the aborting mother gets market value for her labor (no pun intended) and goods.

    And sometimes you even get a marketable biotech product out of it. Would you rather have 113 patents, or a useless infant? I know which one I'd pick.

  4. Re:Case closed on Senior RIKEN Scientist Involved In Stem Cell Scandal Commits Suicide · · Score: 1

    i think you meant "paranoid ideation stranger than truth".

  5. Re:No they cant. on Planes Can Be Hacked Via Inflight Wi-fi, Says Researcher · · Score: 1

    No, the journalist just swallowed the press release verbatim. I mean, there's practically no downside to doing so, and it keeps everyone happy.

    Security is a demanding field with a few "rockstars", which means there's a lot of incentive to, uh, exaggerate one's accomplishments. This guy had extended time to pick apart a piece of airplane hardware in his lab, and did so. That's all. What real-world vulnerability does this translate to? We don't know; he can't reveal them at the moment because it would be irresponsible (oh, and incidentally, might also undermine his claims. convenient, isn't this?).

  6. Re:If you *lourve* your job ... on If You're Always Working, You're Never Working Well · · Score: 1

    But how to design an organization that can coordinate itself without hierarchy, especially given that it's made of humans used to playing games of master and servant rather than cooperating for common goals? Now that is the trillion-dollar question.

    shotguns and anal sodomy. not necessarily in that order.

  7. Re:Simple. on Ask Slashdot: IT Personnel As Ostriches? · · Score: 1, Funny

    this is a good guideline, but it's worth keeping an eye open for someone weak, yet brash enough to engage in criminal conspiracy. it's rare and i wouldn't plan on it, but it's an excellent opportunity to make a sideline income and develop a skillset suitable for a lucrative management position. i won't go into detail on the tactics, but they're pretty obvious. keep in mind, you want hush money and an intimidating rep; you don't actually want a confrontation. start with a moderate offer, on the lines of maybe 5% of their salary, and crank that up as time goes by.

    btw, start going to the gym now; yes, you can always kill the motherfucker, but it's much, much more effective to passively intimidate them.

  8. Re:blahblahblah on Ask Slashdot: IT Personnel As Ostriches? · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    and surprise anal!

  9. blahblahblah on Ask Slashdot: IT Personnel As Ostriches? · · Score: 3, Funny

    why the fuck are you asking here, of all places, about office etiquette? haven't you noticed that over half of the people here are bitter, miserable burnouts and misfits?

    are you also asking on the christian abstinence forums about finding prostitutes?

  10. Re:Please answer me one question on Inside BitFury's 20 Megawatt Bitcoin Mine · · Score: 1

    The miners can sell the coins as soon as they are produced.

    yes, but the production itself takes a long time (and exponentially longer with each one, by design). mining bitcoin is basically taking a long-ish position on bitcoin, as solandri implied. selling the mining equipment instead of using it is basically a hedge; it reduces risk. a rational portfolio would include some amount of both.

    so the manufacturers may not be shorting bitcoin, but it seems that they're not very eager to take a long position on it either, whatever that's worth.

  11. Re:Finally! on Judge: US Search Warrants Apply To Overseas Computers · · Score: 5, Insightful

    yeah, i would. it would be a nice reminder about why not to do business with totalitarian states.

    and, yes, i also think that this case is a nice reminder for other countries not to do business with the US for exactly the same reason.

  12. Re:Time Shifting? on Ford, GM Sued Over Vehicles' Ability To Rip CD Music To Hard Drive · · Score: 2

    i think it's a neti pot.

  13. Re:Trivial observation on A Fictional Compression Metric Moves Into the Real World · · Score: 1

    yes, the metric is obviously a different thing, but they were both designed for the show.

    a few mediocre professors are thinking of using the metric in their courses, but are pretty open about it mostly being a gimmick.

    in conclusion, shove it up your bloated ass.

  14. Re:Trivial observation on A Fictional Compression Metric Moves Into the Real World · · Score: 1

    It was designed as a background prop for a TV show. Not a very high bar.

    It might be adequate as an artificial evaluation metric for homework in an "Intro to Data Compression" class. It might be, because it hasn't even been used for that yet.

    I wouldn't exactly call this a tool. For example, it would be really easy to game this 'score' if there were any significant incentive for doing so. That's usually a bad thing.

  15. Re:Get used to this... on The Misleading Fliers Comcast Used To Kill Off a Local Internet Competitor · · Score: -1, Troll

    oh, come on, you know his brain can only associate one talking point to an issue at a time. you're going to confuse the poor guy now.

  16. Re:Useless without measure of lossiness/distortion on A Fictional Compression Metric Moves Into the Real World · · Score: 4, Informative

    it's for lossless compression only.

    anyway, you can just add a term representing the lost information and throw it into this "score". hey, why not? just figure out how important the lossiness is relative to compression rate. if it's very important, take the exp() of the loss metric; if it's unimportant (like time is), take the log(); finally, if it's just kind of important, leave it linear, or maybe square or square root. whatever.

    seriously, just make some shit up and throw it in. you won't compromise anything. it's already just made-up shit.

  17. freemasons run the country on A Fictional Compression Metric Moves Into the Real World · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The so-called Weissman score is just proportional to (compression ratio)/log(time to compress).

    I guess the idea is that twice as much compression is always twice as good, while increases in time become less significant if you're already taking a long time. For example, taking a day to compress is much worse than taking an hour, but taking 24 days to compress is only somewhat worse than taking one day since you're talking offline/parallel processing anyway.

    The log() seems kind of an arbitrary choice, but whatever. It's no better or worse than any other made-up metric, as long as you're not taking it too seriously.

  18. Re:Incomplete data on For Half, Degrees In Computing, Math, Or Stats Lead To Other Jobs · · Score: 1

    put away your 'clever' strawman and grow up. mathematicians do, in fact, think of all of these things. i know several mathematicians working in statistical mechanics as well as others doing binary static analysis. rigorous, formalized thinking helps with almost everything. the halting theorem is an old, essential result; no one believes that it's the final word on what's (im)possible.

  19. Re:Customer service? on Man Booted From Southwest Flight and Threatened With Arrest After Critical Tweet · · Score: 3, Interesting

    And before any of you complain, since surgery I can walk fine.

    Did you just apologize to a bunch of whiny pricks for being crippled?! What the fuck, man?

    I'm glad you got surgery. Thanks for the account of your experiences.

  20. Re:Jonathan on For Half, Degrees In Computing, Math, Or Stats Lead To Other Jobs · · Score: 1

    he switched majors, unless you're talking about this Michael Jordan, which would be a bit dishonest. :)

  21. Re:STEM is the new liberal arts degree on For Half, Degrees In Computing, Math, Or Stats Lead To Other Jobs · · Score: 1

    oh, but this is slashdot, land of the elite self-taught programmer who's totally a genius because they coded that web app in php.

  22. Re:Incomplete data on For Half, Degrees In Computing, Math, Or Stats Lead To Other Jobs · · Score: 1

    hogwash. a lot of modern topics in CS are basically statistics: natural language processing; computer vision; most of machine learning; data mining; most of bioinformatics; etc.

    statistics just has terrible marketing (at least in the US) and they've been a bit too focused on silly things, so they ceded a lot of ground to CS for no really good reason.

    as for the other topics, if you follow the links you'll eventually come to the definitions. the article itself is terrible.

  23. Re:Four year engineering degrees- great on For Half, Degrees In Computing, Math, Or Stats Lead To Other Jobs · · Score: 1

    uh, yeah, a Ph.D. in mathematics might once have been a death sentence, but nowadays it's more like a license to print money (almost literally, in the case of Wall Street) if you're willing to hold your nose, check your ego, and get back out of pure math.

    similarly, a four year math degree from a respectable (not even necessarily great) university, coupled with the right research experience, extracurriculars, and/or job experience/internships, is a solid credential. maybe not as much of a sure bet as engineering, but pretty damned good and much better for certain specialized areas.

  24. Yeah, I can tell you that a CS "degree" which involves being "specialized" in a particular programming language is a bullshit trade diploma. It's not surprising that such an applicant is garbage; degrees in programming are for idiots. Smart people program on their own, or go to college for formal maths/sciences, or ideally both.

  25. Re:Huge Issue on Researchers Design Bot To Conduct National Security Clearance Interviews · · Score: 1

    given your ridiculous hypothetical, i think i'd take the one with the minor arrest. it shows that he is willing to socialize and take moderate risks in a social setting, while still performing equally to the poindexter.

    on the other hand, even a 5-minute interview would probably give me more information than a list of mostly-bullshit "accomplishments", so whatever.