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User: Spazmania

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  1. Re:I call BS on Enterprise SSDs, Powered Off, Potentially Lose Data In a Week · · Score: 2

    Implementing battery backed write back cache on an array that uses SSD would be similarly stupid.

    How do you figure? Write to ram is a whole lot faster than write to flash, especially if the flash block has to erase first.

  2. Re:I call BS on Enterprise SSDs, Powered Off, Potentially Lose Data In a Week · · Score: 4, Informative

    Every write, not every read. Reads are satisfied as soon as either drive returns the data. And if the raid controller has a battery or supercap so it can cache writes, you'll almost never notice the difference.

  3. Re:Security clearance on Ask Slashdot: Moving To an Offshore-Proof Career? · · Score: 1

    It does garner a higher premium. Someone was stupid enough to post a cleared job at a rate nobody cleared would accept. I guarantee you they didn't fill it at that rate.

  4. Re:Security clearance on Ask Slashdot: Moving To an Offshore-Proof Career? · · Score: 1

    No citizenship, no clearance. A green card gets you the right to work in the US in general. A clearance (and the jobs which require it) will have to wait until you're a full citizen.

  5. Re:Security clearance on Ask Slashdot: Moving To an Offshore-Proof Career? · · Score: 2

    ANY USG security clearance, not just a high one. Only a U.S. citizen may receive a federal security clearance. No exceptions. If the job requires the employee to hold a U.S. security clearance it can never be worked by a foreign national, including anyone on an H1B VISA.

  6. Re:Not ageism per se. on Why Companies Should Hire Older Developers · · Score: 1

    Correct. What's changed is me: I've gained the wisdom to recognize which new technologies shouldn't be used yet because they break easy and cause more problems than they solve.

    No one wants to hear that the in-vogue tech isn't all it's cracked up to be. Wisdom is not valued in a software developer.

  7. Re:We're so screwed. on US Appeals Court Says NSA Phone Surveillance Is Not Authorized By Congress · · Score: 1

    Well sure, but Al Capone and John Gotti have a decidedly odd slant on liberty and restrictions on government action.

  8. Not ageism per se. on Why Companies Should Hire Older Developers · · Score: 1

    It's not ageism per se. Devs over 40, like myself, haven't embraced the latest greatest technology. We haven't drunk the kool aide because it's probably another passing fad.

    This appears to be missing skills or an enthusiasm gap during the interview.

    Take puppet for example. It's the current craze in devops -- automated software deployment. It's also a piece of trash. It implements a lot of novel concepts that will probably evolve into something good over the next decade, but along the way puppet's young developers threw out nearly all the hard lessons learned by the folks who built package managers such as dpkg and rpm. Lessons like "uninstall." Puppet has no concept of "undo" or "revert." It's all the badness that was "make install" back before package managers existed.

    But God forbid you should want a job in devops without puppet experience.

  9. Re:We're so screwed. on US Appeals Court Says NSA Phone Surveillance Is Not Authorized By Congress · · Score: 5, Insightful

    We have indeed tasked loyal people with a job. You misunderstand that job. The job is to keep us as safe as possible within the restrictions on methods that liberty requires.

  10. Right place, right time. on Why Was Linux the Kernel That Succeeded? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Tozzi overthinks it in the article. The kernel succeeded by being in the right place in the right time and then continuously being good enough that there was insufficient reason for change.

    Linux, the OS not the kernel, was the first mostly complete Unix available on a college student's budget that would install on hardware the college student mostly already had. Right place, right time. Hurd didn't exist in any usable form, Minix and Solaris were $$ and the *BSD's didn't start to release for a year or two later.

    Fast forward four years and when those graduating college students met the Internet bubble, Linux was the server OS they knew. Right place, right time.

    Byeond that it was a game of, "don't eff it up." That's where Torvalds' pragmatism came in to play.

  11. Myths and Truth on The Programming Talent Myth · · Score: 1

    Most myths contain an element of truth. The truth is that computers are very unforgiving to software code which is not exactly, precisely correct. Few human beings are capable of operating near that level precision in any intellectual activity, let alone coding. Fewer still are capable of self-checking their results to catch the errors.

    So until we develop a DWIM interface (do what I mean) there is and will be a sharp line between the folks who are good enough and the folks who aren't. There's a limited amount of difference in work product between the folks who "aren't quite" and the folks who "aren't at all."

  12. Re:Warmth? on Native Hawaiian Panel Withdraws Support For World's Largest Telescope · · Score: 1

    I'll take option 4: suggest you try a little google expertise yourself and look up a word: hyperbole.

  13. Re:Warmth? on Native Hawaiian Panel Withdraws Support For World's Largest Telescope · · Score: 2

    FAR ÃÂ 91.211 Supplemental oxygen

    (1) At cabin pressure altitudes above 12,500 feet (MSL) up to and including 14,000 feet (MSL) unless the required minimum flight crew is provided with and uses supplemental oxygen for that part of the flight at those altitudes that is of more than 30 minutes duration;

    But hey, what does the FAA know about thin air and hypoxia.

  14. Re:Warmth? on Native Hawaiian Panel Withdraws Support For World's Largest Telescope · · Score: 1

    It's typically in the 40's (Fahrenheit). It doesn't get above the 50s. Have you ever actually been to the top of Mauna Kea?

  15. Warmth? on Native Hawaiian Panel Withdraws Support For World's Largest Telescope · · Score: 4, Informative

    Mehana Kihoi. ... âoeWhen you place your hands and your bare feet into the soil, you feel that warmth, you feel her heart."

    Liar. Had you ever placed your hands and bare feet into the soil at 13,000 feet atop Mauna Kea you'd know that the only things you feel are hypothermia and hypoxia. It's friggin' cold up there, and the air is barely breathable.

  16. Re:Which vaccines? on Bill To Require Vaccination of Children Advances In California · · Score: 1

    I made no contention that HPV wasn't contagious. Read the words I actually wrote. What I said was that in a society that respects individual liberty, merely meeting the medical definition of contagious is insufficient to compel a citizen's behavior. It must meet a higher standard which lacking a better phrase I described as "involuntarily contagious." That is, I'll catch it as a stranger just by being near you in ordinary situations.

    HPV does not meet that standard. HEP A/B and HIV don't meet that standard. Measles does.

    As for deadly, cancer is deadly. HPV leads to increase -risk- of cancer. Not a certainty. Maybe I'm picking nits and the comparison to tobacco is more apt. From my point of view, that doesn't matter: regardless of whether its deadly, HPV doesn't meet a sufficient standard of contagion to merit compulsory behavior.

    Now, I had all my vaccination when I was a child and I'm glad of it. But respecting individual liberty means allowing people to do stupid things. Because they have the right.

  17. Re: Grandstanding, or stupidity? on Concerns of an Artificial Intelligence Pioneer · · Score: 1

    Patterns (plural) is creativity. The more novel patterns you can envision without falling off the edge into schizophrenia, the more creative you are. Quantity and quality, not time.

    Intelligence is about puzzles. The faster you can find the one correct solution to each progressively challenging puzzle, the smarter you are. Time, not quantity or quality.

    This is where researchers often get in to trouble. The language is slippery - the concept of a "pattern" can have a lot of different meanings. You have to intuit the relationships between the elements of a puzzle to solve it, the pattern which connects the pieces, right?

    But that's very different from intuiting the many useful ways pieces of something that isn't a puzzle could be put together. Seeing the many patterns which connect them and, even more importantly, intuiting the missing pieces which complete far more.

    Which yields this interesting observation about AI's: the problem isn't making computers smart. They already are. The problem is getting them to evince the slightest bit of creativity.

  18. Re:Which vaccines? on Bill To Require Vaccination of Children Advances In California · · Score: 1

    The wisdom of taking the vaccine is not at issue here. That's obvious and well documented. Your right to compel my behavior is at issue. Unless it poses an imminent threat to your well being, you don't have one.

    If we have to have sex to facilitate contagion, if that's the only way to get it, there can be no imminent threat.

  19. Re:Which vaccines? on Bill To Require Vaccination of Children Advances In California · · Score: 1

    Makes sense to me and I'd probably make the same case were I in your shoes.

    However, I think it goes -way- beyond what the state should or has a right to mandate. Measles is involuntarily contagious and deadly. HPV is not.

  20. Which vaccines? on Bill To Require Vaccination of Children Advances In California · · Score: 1

    Which vaccines must parents accept? Measles? Sure, that makes sense. Don't want to spread Measles. Flu? Flu vaccine is really hit or miss and the damage from not getting it is minimal. Requiring that would be less reasonable. HPV Vaccine? Just what is going on at these schools anyway...

  21. Re:Drink the kool aide on The Key To Interviewing At Google · · Score: 1

    Do you see the groupthink? Fine example this week: mobilegeddon.

    When the search re-rankings were being discussed, where was the guy who stood up and said, "Wait a minute... slow down. Are the mobile web browsers we wrote always rendering flexible pages reasonably? What about 90's-style HTML 2.0 re-flowable web pages? Might there be others we mis-render as eye charts? Let's take some time and study this more carefully. Take action when we can be part of the solution instead of part of the problem."

    That person wasn't a part of the group. He didn't "think on his feet" in the interview. You didn't hire him.

  22. Re:Grandstanding, or stupidity? on Concerns of an Artificial Intelligence Pioneer · · Score: 1

    Actually, intelligence and creativity are both reasonably well defined.

    Intelligence is how fast you can solve intuitive problems (e.g. "Cheryl's Birthday"). The faster you get it (and if you get it at all) marks your raw intelligence.

    Creativity is how many solutions you can come up with to intuitive problems over time. A typical test is to give you a couple of squiggly lines and two days to come up with as many explanations for the lines as you can. A smart guy may only come up with a dozen that he can justify. A creative guy will come up with scores.

  23. Re: Fear of a dumb planet on Concerns of an Artificial Intelligence Pioneer · · Score: 1

    Stupid machine with too much autonomy. Every reason to fear it.

  24. Re:Fear of a dumb planet on Concerns of an Artificial Intelligence Pioneer · · Score: 1

    Conspiracy much? The biggest players are game developers. Seriously. Governments don't need computers to improvise; they have actual people for that.

  25. Re:like no problem humanity has ever faced on Concerns of an Artificial Intelligence Pioneer · · Score: 1

    See, that's just prejudiced. What'd an AI ever do to you to deserve such a call for discrimination aimed at their entire species?