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User: minstrelmike

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  1. Re:Ninety percent of coding is... on The Working Dead: Which IT Jobs Are Bound For Extinction? (infoworld.com) · · Score: 1

    The problem isn't encoding a user story. The problem is getting the correct story from the user. That requires discussion and insight into what they aren't telling you, what their basic assumptions are that you aren't aware of.

    OTOH, if you could do a really fast turnaround and quick update, then you could get user stories direct from the support line and fix the software in real time with AI using real user stories. What could possibly go wrong?

    The internet is down. Can you please reboot it?

  2. Re:It sucks the fat right out of you on New Battery Technology Draws Energy Directly From The Human Body (bleepingcomputer.com) · · Score: 1

    Could you lose weight with this?

    Hire that man. He's a marketing genius. (Unless "he" turns out to be a "she" in which case we don't hire women).

  3. What's the difference between assimilation and reaccomodation? I forgot. My energy must be depleted.

  4. Re: I guess they didn't run that simulation on Arctic Stronghold of World's Seeds Flooded After Permafrost Melts (theguardian.com) · · Score: 1

    Temperature goes both ways, up AND down. Even if the temperature of the Earth rises 3 degrees and all the ice melts in the Antarctic, we will still have summers warmer than winters and days with variable temperatures.

    It's bizarre how believers will close their eyes to basic facts in order to maintain some sort of perverse equilibrium with whatever cult belief they've latched onto.

  5. Re: I guess they didn't run that simulation on Arctic Stronghold of World's Seeds Flooded After Permafrost Melts (theguardian.com) · · Score: 1

    This is the month of May. Arctic thawing peaks in September. In May, the thaw is barely beginning....

    That _is_ the point. In May, all the H20 should be solid, not liquid, at least based on previous year's records and the solid scientific assurances from Exxon-Mobil since the 1970s that global warming is a liberal lie.

  6. Re:Don't think Uber will be alone with this on Uber Starts Charging What It Thinks You're Willing To Pay (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 1

    Airlines have an entirely different economic model with entirely different economic issues, if you care to enlighten yourself about the problem of empty seats on airlines.

    Uber and taxis and limousine services and even charter airflights do not have the limitations that commercial airlines, trains and busses have.

  7. Re:Don't think Uber will be alone with this on Uber Starts Charging What It Thinks You're Willing To Pay (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 1

    Other companies will adopt this as well. They will charge you what you are willing to pay them. You won't even be safe outside of the online world...

    I've read of drink vending machines (soda pop and water bottles) that charge more depending on the outside temperature.

  8. Re:Great.. Methane.. on China Successfully Mines Gas From Methane Hydrate In Production Run (oilprice.com) · · Score: 1

    The problem isn't coal, methane, natural gas; the problem is fossil fuels, of which coal and petroleum are composed. I've been under the impression that methane hydrates at the bottom of the ocean have been there a loooong time and so bringing them up into the atmosphere will contribute to global warming.

  9. Re: Sounds about right on Only 36 Percent of Indian Engineers Can Write Compilable Code, Says Study (itwire.com) · · Score: 1

    That's my take. Without knowing what the rate is for American (and Australian and Russian and Chinese) students in university classes, this is just a factoid. Maybe The Indian programmmers actually are better than other country's students. Without concomitant measurements, it's just a factoid.

    My son is a compsci major in an American state university and he's not impressed with the code of his classmates (and neither are the profs).

  10. Divorce statistics by race exactly match divorce statistics by wealth. Poorer people tend to divorce more often. Divorce causes poverty in some instances, increasing costs so poorer people lose more during a divorce. In addition. less monre=more stress=more divorce.

  11. It's not insane. It's looking at _both_sides. Right now, the fad is to decrease all cholesterol, but decrease the worst stuff mainly. since the worst stuff tastes worse than the good low cholesterols, you end up cutting fat but making the relative percentages of cholesterols worse instead of better. Think about it without getting angry first.

  12. Re:"I've done enough testing" on Ask Slashdot: What Are Some Lies Programmers Tell Themselves? · · Score: 1

    No. If there was a problem, they called Tuesday at lunch. They didn't _try_ calling someone Friday at 10pm.

  13. Re:Most coders on Ask Slashdot: What Are Some Lies Programmers Tell Themselves? · · Score: 1

    My "tell" for knowing who is smart and who isn't is not the answers they give; it is the questions they ask.

  14. Re:"I've done enough testing" on Ask Slashdot: What Are Some Lies Programmers Tell Themselves? · · Score: 1

    the networking department we have is notorious for scheduling updates Friday at 5pm. They even tried to force us to change our standard timing for major updates but we refused. We release Tuesdays at 10am with everybody ready to take calls and fix foul-ups and that's when everyone is on the system actually using it. We do have folks who sign in over the weekedn but they aren't power users and their error reports leave a lot to be desired.

  15. Re: Alternative media. on Still More Advertisers Pull Google Ads Over YouTube Hate Videos (morningstar.com) · · Score: 1

    I doubt they would shut it down, it's just too valuable.

    Your logic is lacking. The "value" in uToob is the ability to sell advertising. If no advertisers want to spend money, then there is no value to be found, and no dollars to support the uploading of 400 hours of video per minute. That's kind of the point of the whole situation.

  16. I just did not connect my TV to my wired or wireless network. My TV should take input from its composite or HDMI inputs and display it, nothing more.

    Check to see if unknown devices are trying to contact your router. Look at the mac address and then look at the television's address. Or think about this. If they can have the tv operate while it is apparently turned off, then running a wireless connection regardless of user commands is simple.

  17. Re:now we know why tech is protected on WikiLeaks CIA Files: The 6 Biggest Spying Secrets Revealed By the Release of 'Vault 7' (independent.co.uk) · · Score: 1

    Is there any exploit sharing between CIA and NSA?

    If you have good hacking tools, you can get other orgs to "share" everything they have with you.

  18. Re: Well no fuckin shit on Why Your Boss Will Crush Your Innovative Ideas (bbc.com) · · Score: 1

    I don't even think it's political dynamics. If you're looking at an entire organization of however many levels of management (call it X), then in order for an idea to burble up to the largest chunks at the top of the bureaucratic cesspool, it needs to get a YES at every level, which means X yesses in a row. One NO and it's done. Simple math means most ideas die easily even if every level "wants' new ideas and only kills half of the dumb ones, at each level.

  19. Re:Didn't some country do this? on Indian State Saves $45 Million As Schools Switch To Open Source Software (factordaily.com) · · Score: 2

    Micro$oft moved an entire department to Munich and that's what did the trick for the mayor. As a complany, they know how to address the "real" problem.

  20. I went out to the site to read his commments but the site was down ;-)

  21. Re:Too good to be true. on Professors Claim Passive Cooling Breakthrough Via Plastic Film (sciencemag.org) · · Score: 1

    Actually, if all the indoor temperatures cool down, then that means the outdoor temperatures must increase. It's not like we're getting rid of any incoming solar radiation. So this kind of heat pump would make the outdoor temperature higher which means it increases the warming that affects glaciers. The only way a film like this would do any good is if we draped it completely over Antarctica and Greeneland to keep them from melting. Then the Earth could warm up but we wouldn't have to worry about sea levels rising.

    Win-win right?

  22. Re:capitalistic options on Did Silicon Valley Lose The Race To Build Self-Driving Cars? (autoblog.com) · · Score: 1

    Capitalism supplies what people are willing to pay for. Free enterprise (when well-regulated by government to maintain a level playing field across generations) ensures that all products are provided to market at the lowest possible price, but that doesn't guarantee the price is low enough to entice consumers.

  23. Re:Money vs Money on Did Silicon Valley Lose The Race To Build Self-Driving Cars? (autoblog.com) · · Score: 1

    Money's got nothing to do with it. It's the difference between bits and bytes. Actually building hardware is completely different from "building" software.

    And that's just the start. Distributing software is easy. Distributing hardware requires a lot more overhead.

    Bits versus bytes

  24. I thought there was already a repository of all American D.O.D. code. We just can't access it because it's behind the Great Firewall of China.

  25. What I found most interesting is that I _cannot_ load most linux software as a non-root user, even tho that is recommended. seems like there's always some package that wants to be root. It's actually gotten better over the years. I know I read a lot of bragging about how much more secure linux was but it seemed as if every software package I loaded needed to be root which made me think all those "developers" were just running as root and hoping to stay lucky.