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User: sg_oneill

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  1. Re:It's more than the tie on Getting IT Talent In Government Will Take Culture Change, Says Google Engineer · · Score: 1

    I don't think you realize how much it costs to put a satellite into space. 2 hours of quick coding probably should be validated by a few different eyes.

    Oh shit we're not talking about satelite firmware lol. Thats waaaay above my paygrade. We're talking about firmware on a little piece of hardware that shits weather measurements out a satelite dish to a satelite. Its expensive because bandwidth is ridiculously expensive for remote serial over satelite type guff.

  2. Re:It was a saved screenshot on Murder Suspect Asked Siri Where To Hide a Dead Body · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Yeah "Where do I hide a body" is an old Siri joke from launch. You used to be able to ask her that and she'd give you locations of nearest mineshafts, dumpsters and so on. It was just a bad taste demonstration of the backend search powers.

    I call bunkum on this, and if it IS true, I'd personally want to send a "friend of the court" submission that its a pretty famous joke search and doesnt necessarily prove anything.

  3. Re:What if it were Microsoft code on Larry Rosen: A Case Study In Understanding (and Enforcing) the GPL · · Score: 1

    The GPL doesn't proscribe that "You must GPL the end result" it says that you are infringement and must not distribute. The way out is to GPL or hash out some agreement with the Licensors (GPL authors) of some sort, but relicensing simply is not automatic, as frusturating as it might seem.

  4. Re:Stupid on Apple's Diversity Numbers: 70% Male, 55% White · · Score: 0, Troll

    In my average IT class, we started with 20% females and finished with about 5% females.

    I.e. they dropped at a higher rate. Most were not obsessed with computers enough to excel.

    Yeah thats not what women actually say about why the drop out. Most report getting harrassed, creeped on and treated like weird aliens, and then finally ignored when they try to participate by the males in the classes and eventually shit just gets uncomfortable for them.

    Instead of guessing why women graduate outcomes are not as expected how about we actually look at the source and ask women instead of doing exactly what they complain about and ignore or deprecate their experience.

    After all, what the f*** would us guys know about what its like to be a woman unless we ask.

  5. Re:It's more than the tie on Getting IT Talent In Government Will Take Culture Change, Says Google Engineer · · Score: 5, Informative

    Its more than just the ties. I work in a government science department that does really amazing and meaningful work tracking animal populations, building climate and weather models to assist firefighters and policy makers (protip: We're in trouble, regardless of what the crusading economists seem to think ) , and coordinating a vast network of parks and wildlife reserves. This is *really* enjoyable work and 1000 times more rewarding than "Yet another corporate intranet for 'sell-cyanide-to-kids-dot-com".

    But hand in hand with that is an insane bureacracy. Recently I was asked to make some changes to software to throttle back satelite data rates from remote weather stations in the australian outback from every 2 minutes to every 15 minutes. The satelite data was insanely expensive and the modelling isn't fine tuned enough to warrant data points every 2 minutes (This is for predicting fire behavior during fire-season bushfires) even if we wanted it to be. So we set up the changes and tested it, and waited for the new firmware to be pushed out to the new sites. But no, its a government, anything "simple" is suspicious, so instead it must go through user acceptance testing , a layer of consultants , various committees and of course the various sub-departments must engage in their customary fight over who pays for it. It was 2 hours work and it will save $10K a month easily. But six months later its STILL not even at user acceptance testing whilst the beancounters fight over budget.

    Its amazingly demoralizing.

  6. Re:Space Drive or Global Warming? on Why the "NASA Tested Space Drive" Is Bad Science · · Score: 1

    Not to mention that there is a tonne more datasources than just weather stations.

    But more to the point climate science has tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of scientists , most post-doctoral, most physics trained, so not just "opiniated geology undergrad" or "crusading economist" trained, and all are in pretty broad agreement that theres a lot of thermal and kinetic energy coming from anthropological sources and that energy has to go *somewhere*.

    Quite different to a handful of optimistic experimentalists getting their press release misquoted by the worlds press.

  7. Re:Just refuse the new gear on The Hidden Cost of Your New Xfinity Router · · Score: 1

    Do you also type "Micro$oft"?

    Grow up.
    Typical AmeriKKKan! Fuck you dad.

  8. Open source the damn thing. on HP Gives OpenVMS New Life and Path To X86 Port · · Score: 1

    Aproximately 1000 years ago, in a galaxy far far away, I learned my trade on VMS on an old Vax mainframe doing cobol. Horrible horrible stuff. But it was a rock solid operating system with features that you just don't see anymore, and more to the point having the code out there so coders can see another way of doing operating system far from the Unix or windows mainstream has a lot of value in and of itself.

    Heck maybe people might port it around (Difficult job though. The old VMS had a .... unique...... way of doing things with its register marks and bizaro addressing modes) which could provide options for people who want to utilize VMSs ultra-secure design.

  9. Re:So China is going to do on Chinese Government Probes Microsoft For Breaches of Monopoly Law · · Score: 2

    what the DOJ failed to do.

    Well not quite. The DOJ proposed splitting microsoft in half. Chinas solution to corruption tends to involve ventilating the CEOs brain with lead, 15 minutes after the judge declares "Fuck this guy!".

    The only one who seemed to be advocating caping bill G here was probably ESR, because ESR is kind of a mentalist (RMS doesnt do guns)

  10. Re:It's not a marketplace.. on Is the App Store Broken? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's not a marketplace, it's a lottery for developers.

    Or at least for our clients. I cottoned on *very* early that the SAFE money isn't in the app store, but in writing apps for others. Usually poor schmucks who believe their "Floppy duck clone will corner the market if only they had a coder". At first I was pretty OK with this, after all no one else in my hometown was doing it, and I could easily clock $4K a week ($12K for 3 weeks development with contracts back to back) and dude these where pretty good apps. But after a while it sort of started to feel like I was taking people for a ride by not explaining the market to these people. In the end I decided to stop doing social networking apps simply because they almost NEVER succeed , and I started insisting that they needed to start on a marketing plan with a professional *before* the contract starts (Since marketing considerations DO in fact drive it). This was all to protect my clients and ultimately my own reputation (Sometimes when an app fails in the market the client will blame the coder and thats BAD for reputation, even if its just total unfair nonsense).

    And in the end I was lucky to get $500 a week because the work dried up as people moved to less ethical mass-production offshore developers who wouldnt say unpleasant things like "You need to spend some money on a marketing plan first" or "I dont feel comfortable spending your life savings on yet another facebook clone"

    Yeah, I work for the government now. Somehow this feels more ethical.

  11. Re:The Alliance of Artists should lose this suit on Ford, GM Sued Over Vehicles' Ability To Rip CD Music To Hard Drive · · Score: 2

    Assuming that ripping your own CDs is actually legal.

    As long as you don't distribute it, its totally legal. No doubt about it.

    I don't even know how you would violate the law with this thing. It'd probably involve a custom firmware.

  12. Re:Bullshit.... on A Fictional Compression Metric Moves Into the Real World · · Score: 2

    A "combined score" for speed and ratio is useless, as that relation is not linear.

    Typing at 70 words per minute, slashdot poster declares quantity over time measurements meaningless.

  13. Re:Sales flow chart. on Oracle Offers Custom Intel Chips and Unanticipated Costs · · Score: 4, Informative

    How does PostGreSQL compare?

    I work at a large government department with stupidly large scientific datasets being thrown in and out of databases and we're migrating as fast as we can from Oracle to Postgres. The only thing we can't really shake is bloody Oracle financials and a few crufted old Java apps that we don't have the code to rewrite.

    Postgres handles beautifully, and on some things even better although on some nasty multi-join type things Oracle will still beat it.

    But it doesn't even matter because we can just throw more hardware at it infinitely cheaper than the extortion racket that Oracle pricing represents.

    MariaDB is surprisingly competent too and in fact even has a surprisingly complete GIS implementation (Although PostGIS is the gold standard as far as we are concerned). Just avoid the Oracle branded one (MySQL), its not as well tuned, doesn't play nice with packaging systems and is generally posessed of the Oracle odour.

  14. Re:Delivery method on Researchers Successfully Cut HIV DNA Out of Human Cells · · Score: 1

    Actually a Judas-virus approach would be perfect since its already clear that the body seems unable or unwilling to kill the virus, its free to move into place to knife its buddies. And if the body does decide to start killing the viruses, well all the better really it means the body now realises HIV isn't something to keep about!

  15. Pretty low on Deaf Advocacy Groups To Verizon: Don't Kill Net Neutrality On Our Behalf · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Exploiting the technical ignorance of elderly congressmen by lying about the technical needs of deaf folks.

    Its pretty scummy tactic. Unfortunately for Verison disabilities activists can be INCREDIBLY noisy when they are shat upon, so I doubt our deaf friends are going to tolerate this guff at all.

    Go deaf dudes!

  16. Re:Such harassment on Sexual Harassment Is Common In Scientific Fieldwork · · Score: 1

    .
    I'm curious, have you ever had a job? I don't mean a summer job or your coding job surrounded by fellow nerdlings. I'm talking about a job in a larger company where you have to deal with all sorts of people.

    Yes, I work in the public service and been CTO at a telecommunications provider and I've fired staff before for this.

    I suggest working on your social skills if your making a habit of upsetting your female coworkers.

  17. Re:The good news is that he's mortal on Rupert Murdoch's Quest To Buy Time Warner: Not Done Yet · · Score: 1

    No matter how rich and obnoxious the fucker will eventually drop dead.

    You'll want it soon. He's done incredible damage to australias democracy by controlling 70% of the media and using it to straight up intimidate politicians and then blatantly lie about those who don't bow down.

    An amazing amount of australians believe the rises in their energy costs came from the carbon tarifs despite every economist of note pointing out the inflation was almost insignificant , and many australians even complain about the effect the mining tax has on them despite it applying to about 2 or 3 hundred companies tops.

    Very few realise that 90% of peoples taxes dropped somewhat significantly BECAUSE of those taxes. But why would they know? Newscorp decided to simply not report that, and it led to an astonishingly incompetent government being voted in.

    Don't let this happen to you America.

  18. Re:Such harassment on Sexual Harassment Is Common In Scientific Fieldwork · · Score: 1, Troll

    Whether it does or doe not contribute to a healthy work environment, is it sexual harassment?

    I say no.

    Who gives a shit about the semantics. If your making your female workmates uncomfortable, you deserve to be rapidly ejected out the door with "DO NOT HIRE AGAIN" stamped on your file.

  19. Re: No real surprise on People Who Claim To Worry About Climate Change Don't Cut Energy Use · · Score: 0, Troll

    1) Reference to Al Gore as if he's relevant to the discussion
    2) Reference to swivel eyed conservative blogger

    You just need a reference to Climategate and you've got the tinfoil trifecta buddy.

    Bonus point if you can get a reference to "evolutionists" in there.

  20. Re: Maybe, maybe not. on Obama Administration Says the World's Servers Are Ours · · Score: 0

    Unfortunately that is not the case. Swiss have ultimately bowed to the US.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...

    When US says jump, the rest of the world jumps...

    Nothing unfortunate about it. That only affects the rich and powerful who for all purpose defraud american taxpayers and then shift the money offshore.

    Why should any american have to suffer increased deficits and taxes so a tiny elite of wealthy parasites can continue to leach american money offshore

  21. Re:Most humans couldn't pass that test on The Lovelace Test Is Better Than the Turing Test At Detecting AI · · Score: 1

    One day was pestering to be let out of a room and I managed to whack him right in the face with the door. His response was to walk slowly over to the sofa look right at me and then scratch it really slowly while holding my gaze.

    Mine did even worse once. She normally sleeps on the end of my bed. One night however I had a girlfriend stay over the night and the cat got a bit upset when she threw the cat off the bed. So she went out into the hallway, pulled all my girlfriends clothes out of her bag and strew them up and down the hallway. Then *pissed on them*. First time she's peed inside since she was a kitten.

    That was a pretty strong message I suspect.,

  22. Re:No real surprise on People Who Claim To Worry About Climate Change Don't Cut Energy Use · · Score: -1, Troll

    Global warming is a money/power grab, the ultimate in "Do as I say, not as I do" diplomacy.

    Only Alex Jones can save us from the reptile menace now!

  23. Re:Does anyone oppose this? on Fighting Climate Change With Trade · · Score: 2

    Since when have protective tariffs been "efficient"?

    Freemarket capitalists should be supporting freetrade no matter what reason the politicians give for getting rid of tariffs. Or are you one of those freemaket people who only think there should be freetrade if the USA benefits?

    "grrr scientists are engaged in a vast left wing conspiracy organized by the lizard people to lie about physics for some reason" is why.

    Some peoples brains just sieze up when the scientific community points out some aspects of our current way of life might be harmful to our long term viability as a society.

  24. Re:A legend of OS design on Prof. Andy Tanenbaum Retires From Vrije University · · Score: 1

    Yeah your right. The australian one was AARNet (Australian academic research network)

  25. Re:A legend of OS design on Prof. Andy Tanenbaum Retires From Vrije University · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Part of the reason I used Minix was I had an old second hand 286. because I couldn't afford one of the new-fangled 386s. Computers where bloody expensive back then! At the time I had started using a local BBS called "Omen" which had just gotten a brand spanking new ISDN connection to this new thing called "ARPAnet" (aka "Australian research something something net") , aka the australian wing of the internet, and it had two amazing features 1) IRC, 2) Usenet (There was also Gopher but eh..... Usenet was better indexed and also had hilarious flame wars). Anyway it struck me that if I had a unix I could get a SLIP connection to the internet and run IRC *and* Usenet simultaneously using the magical wonder of multitasking. Omen was using Linux (very very brand new) but since I didnt have a 386 I couldnt use it. So I grabbed Minix, since I couldnt afford Xenix or SCO Unix (Pre SCO getting brought out by Caldera and then turning cthulhu it was a great company).

    Problem is Minix didnt have a network stack :(