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User: samkass

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  1. Re:Qualifications on Fighting Tech's Diversity Issues Without Burning Down the System · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    "1) Push your technical recruiters to hit 20% thresholds for female candidates"

    At the expense of the qualified candidates?

    No. Just make sure that 20% are considered as candidates, even if it means adding 20% more candidates. We all know that the exact same resume with a female name is much more likely to be rejected without being considered. This is just to push back against this bias.

  2. Re: Ok, I give up on Meet Flink, the Apache Software Foundation's Newest Top-Level Project · · Score: 2

    But how does Apache Flink compare to Apache Spark? They both claim to be largely compatible with but much faster than Hadoop...

  3. Re:Floppy drives on Ask Slashdot: Sounds We Don't Hear Any More? · · Score: 1

    I was thinking a Commodore 1541 floppy disk seeking to the last track on the floppy... doesn't compare in longevity to many of the other suggestions, but I sure remember it as a kid.

  4. Re:Just when I donate to the EFF, they go off agai on EFF: Apple's Dev Agreement Means No EFF Mobile App For iOS · · Score: 1

    in fact it's MORE of a statement because it goes against the clause that developers "cannot talk about the developer contract".

    That clause was removed years ago. The EFF quoted a very old version of the agreement.

  5. Re: And so therefor it follows and I quote on Italian Supreme Court Bans the 'Microsoft Tax' · · Score: 1

    I would guess that yes, you could legally force Apple to refund you the $0 they charge for their OS.

  6. Re:It helps to actually use the thing. on How Sony, Intel, and Unix Made Apple's Mac a PC Competitor · · Score: 5, Informative

    Pay no attention to the fact that Apple has sold an entry-level Mac Mini for $499 for the last 9 years.

    They have sold the entry-level Mac Mini for $499 for 1 week. Before that, it was $599.

    It used to be $499, then went up to $599 for a few years, now back to $499. Which is all beside the original point: there is not a high barrier to entry for the Mac. And it has a lot of additional value to a lot of people: simple for the beginner, and an entire open-source UNIX for the advanced user, combined with high-quality parts and great service, a big ecosystem of software and services, and almost no viruses or threats to worry about, and a lot of folks (me included) think life is too short to deal with Windows at home.

  7. Re: Issue with FSF statement... on Apple Yet To Push Patch For "Shellshock" Bug · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's true, Apple releases the full source code to the UNIX underlying MacOS X, including all the user land command line utilities and the OS kernel. You can rebuild them all.

    So what is this article about?? Things are working exactly like FSF intended. Apple users can download the source to bash, patch it, and install it on their own machines. If people wait for the vendor to patch, what's the difference between it and closed source?

  8. Apple has explicitly said in their "Using Swift with Cocoa and Objective-C" document that Swift isn't compatible with Objective-C++. You have to create a C API for the C++ code and call it through that. Hopefully that will be remedied soon, but in the meantime using Objective-C++ instead of Swift is a no-brainer for new development that needs extensive compatibility with a C/C++ installed base or set of libraries.

    It looks like a fun language, and perhaps appropriate for small projects, but it's definitely not there yet.

    As to the original poster, I think the answer is "yes". Learn them all. And Java and Scala and whatever else. The more language you learn the more you see it's 98% syntax changes and you can appreciate the 2% of each language/environment.

  9. Re: Incompetence on Anonymous Peer-review Comments May Spark Legal Battle · · Score: 2

    Common misperception. Tenure simply means that your employment is no longer "at will" and to be fired requires going through an established process instead of just saying "you're fired and I don't need a reason!"

  10. Re:HALO on Report: Microsoft To Buy Minecraft Studio For $2bn+ · · Score: 1

    If that happened everyone would just stick with the old version and tell Mojang-rosoft to f*ck itself. Just like open-source reveres engineered bukket server became the default Minecraft server for most servers the cracked client would become the default. As is many people run old versions already just to maintain compatibility with various mods already so its not that much of a stretch. I bought Minecraft specifically because they have Linux support, that would end if MS ever got their hand on it.

    Not sure if you're aware what's been happening with that Bukkit server you cite. Turns out, Mojang AB secretly bought it two years ago when they hired away the lead developers. So Microsoft would own Bukkit, too. So it would have to be re-reverse engineered...

    I agree... A Microsoft purchase would destroy Minecraft. Microsoft doesn't know how to do Java, or "open", or Mac/Playstation/iPad games... It would become just another banal property that gets milked for Microsoft Entertainment Division profit.

    My older son literally burst into tears instantly when I was stupid enough to read the Verge headline out loud. He apparently shares my opinion...

  11. Re: Stupid on Apple's Diversity Numbers: 70% Male, 55% White · · Score: 2

    If there were quotas, the ratios wouldn't look like this. My take was that Cook said what he did because he has a firm belief that there are more minorities who can do awesome work for Apple but for whatever reason (ie the bigotry displayed on this thread) are being dissuaded from the company or even the industry. And that Apple wants to take advantage of that.

  12. Re: Real Programmers don't use GC on Ask Slashdot: "Real" Computer Scientists vs. Modern Curriculum? · · Score: 3, Funny

    Fortunately JavaScript solved that. These days, programmers type == instead of ===! Progress!

  13. Re:How can I not be a Cynic... on Inside Ford's 3D Printing Center Where More Than 20K Parts Are Made Each Year · · Score: 2

    Given design, setup/prep, printing/molding, and trim work, that's still quite impressive. Mass producing one thing over and over is easy. Changing your tooling to deal with a new part is what's hard. When I worked in factories, we'd get laid off for a week when it was time to switch products. The engineers needed time to swap everything out. It was equivalent to rearranging a huge house where all the furniture weight over 30tons. I'd imagine these places are setup for lots of rapid changes so it wouldn't be so bad, but it's still probably requires a lot of work. Also, I doubt the workers are your regular linemen. They'd almost have to all be engineers.

    When I wrote a bunch of software for InvisAlign over 10 years ago, we were ramping up to a capacity of 20,000 unique plastic parts per day while printing over half of that every day. I can only imagine what they're doing today. The actual printing was mostly stereolithography making molds, pressure forming, then CNC cutting them off, but there was also scanning, modeling, approvals, labeling, mesh cleanup, supports, etc., which all had to happen in 3d. The automation required to get all that humming along was substantial (lots of patents, and not just "on the internet" ones...)

  14. Re: Could it be.... on Printing 3-D Replicas of Human Beings with a Home Brew Printer (Video) · · Score: 1

    A dozen years ago when I was at Align Technology, the room full of these things churning out InvisAlign molds were, I think, the most the 3d printer is working printers at any facility in the world. I haven't been there in awhile but as far as I know they're still made that way.

  15. Re:ANOTHER DEAD BODY! SWEET JUSTICE! on Robbery Suspect Tracked By GPS and Killed · · Score: 5, Informative

    The strange concept is that you would bring up gun control when the statistics don't back you up. Over the last decade, the percentage of officers killed on duty, by guns vs other causes, in Britain is slightly HIGHER than it was in the United States. The US is far more violent than Britain, but guns do not contribute to that nearly as much as you would have others believe.

    Do you have a source for that? According to the site linked below (which includes citations), "In the US – population 311.5 million – there were an estimated 13,756 murders in 2009, a rate of about 5.0 per 100,000. Of these 9,203 were carried out with a firearm. In the UK – population 56.1 million – there were an estimated 550 murders in 2011-12, a rate of about 1.4 per 100,000. Of these 39 were carried out with a firearm." I couldn't find similar statistics for police officers, but you're obviously pretty sure of your facts so I thought I'd ask. http://fleshisgrass.wordpress.com/2012/07/24/us-and-uk-murder-rate-and-weapon-updated/

  16. Stop with the Netflix boogeyman. Netflix is 60% of prime-time traffic in the US-- there can thus mathematically be only one Netflix. Any law designed to solve any problem with Netflix will thus by definition not be relevant any other company. Netflix can't mathematically be on any single network and have even peering with any other network, which is the core of how all the little networks become "the Internet". Which is the basic problem-- there is no "the Internet", but maintaining the illusion of one requires certain agreements that we're all just making up as we go. Platitudes are unhelpful.

    But Frankin is right, of course-- everyone debating the issues should at least understand them.

  17. Re: GNU/Linux on The Man Behind Munich's Migration of 15,000 PCs From Windows To Linux · · Score: 2

    I think you have it reversed. The OS was originally called "Linux", and it included a kernel, GNU user space tools, MIT's X-windows system, some BSD api's, and later Apache web servers, etc. There was a Linux kernel, but also an entire Linux distro.

    It was only years later that RMS tried to retroactively name someone else's project with his organization's name, and that's one reason there's resistance there. Now the Linux kernel has "kernel" dropped and people try to say "Linux" only refers to that part. Ok, whatever. It's just RMS politics. People can name their distro whatever they want. But don't pretend GNU/Linux is a more "correct" way to refer to anything-- it's just a brand.

  18. Re:Finally on How 'Fast Lanes' Will Change the Internet · · Score: 1

    As far as Netflix is concerned, they painted themselves into a corner. They used a CDN (Cogent) that had settlement-free peering with many networks. Once Netflix started sending their traffic over those links it broke the settlement-free agreement. Netflix might have been in a better position if they didn't use a CDN and all their traffic went over transit. Then make agreements directly with the large ISP's that didn't involve existing peering ports.

    And since there mathematically can be only one example of a single company pushing 60% of all the data into the tubes during peak hours, nothing done in response to their situation is generalizable to the rest of the Internet in the US. Let's just leave the Netflix situation out of it and we'll end up with better proposals.

  19. Re:10.4.8 on Apple's Spotty Record of Giving Back To the Tech Industry · · Score: 1

    What are you talking about? Apple has released the source of every version of the core OS X stack from 10.0 to 10.9.0 (including 10.4.9):
    http://opensource.apple.com/

    You can even recompile your kernel and swap in your replacement. Occasionally they take a little time to post it (I don't see 10.9's point releases up yet), but it gets there.

    Why anyone holds these people up as innovators of industry is beyond me, they did not invent ...

    Invent != Innovate. I'm glad that you can admit that you don't understand the industry, though. Admitting ignorance is the first step in learning.

  20. Re: 3D printing on 3D Printing: Have You Taken the Plunge Yet? Planning To? · · Score: 3, Informative

    And OpenSCAD. If you have a 3D printer and haven't given OpenSCAD a thorough tryout you're missing out. I do the majority of my prints these days from OpenSCAD-created models, and the more you make the more libraries you build up to make better stuff later...

  21. Re: Because people already have E-mail addresses? on Facebook Shuts Down @Facebook Email System · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yeah, judging by the popularity of Gmail, people being concerned with their data being harvested doesn't seem to be a concern at all. I think it was just plain executed badly.

  22. Re: Hurray? on VA Tech Experiment: Polar Vortex May Decimate D.C. Stinkbugs In 2014 · · Score: 1

    Yeah, I saw my first stink bug in months in my bathroom yesterday, right after hearing about this news. Amusing. I doubt there will be noticeably less of them in the spring.

  23. Re:License needed only for specific things on Why Do You Need License From Canonical To Create Derivatives? · · Score: 2

    It's kind of strange that on the same day Canonical is being called out for not being 100% free about everything, another article discusses Google's actions with Android, which is much, much more closed and yet most of Slashdot seemed eager to rush to their defense.

  24. Re:WTF???? on Iconic Predator-Prey Study In Peril · · Score: 2

    Maybe the author had a cold.

  25. Re:BOYCOTT STARTS NOW on Online, You're Being Watched At All Times; Act Accordingly. · · Score: 1

    Whatever will we do without your whining? The place just won't be the same without a dozen off-topic childish posts on every topic!