Slashdot Mirror


User: Keith111

Keith111's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
91
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 91

  1. My Suggestion: QBasic console + Help file on Ask Slashdot: Best Book For 11-Year-Old Who Wants To Teach Himself To Program? · · Score: 1

    Sometimes the best guide is no guide. I started programming with the QBasic help file... it made me approach programming significantly different than everyone else at college which is probably why I was always the one to come up with the creative ways to solve or bypass problems. I'd start with a more simple language though, its most important to just get used to the idea that you write code that a computer reads top down (or in other directions) so that you can start to understand that you need to keep the current state in mind, etc.

  2. Sad day for science on TSA Shuts Down Airport, Detains 11 After "Science Project" Found · · Score: 1

    We just lost a scientist. That kid is going to be too traumatized to ever do science again, all thanks to the TSA. It's possible that the TSA just prevented us from developing warp drive, teleportation, photon torpedoes, or even self-toasting bread.

  3. Re:Just a thought... on Lawsuit Claims NASA Specialist Was Fired Over Intelligent Design Belief · · Score: 1

    If you look at the machines we create, they seem a lot more complex than we are in many different ways and we're just starting. It's entirely conceivable that if we had creators they would be less complex than we are. Thusly, if our creators had creators they would be even less complex. Eventually down a long line of creators of creators we might find that our very first creators were simply a pair of 1's and 0's, so to speak. I don't see any reason to think that the evolution of life is all that different than evolution of software, even the most complex things today started out as a small handful of kilobytes at most. It's just interesting that if we are on a long cycle of creators then we are the new creators and we have decided to create machines rather than genetically engineer a better us. But perhaps our creators were life of a different sort and decided to create machines out of carbon and cells, and considered US the machines... and that the next cycle will consider machines as real life. (Disclaimer: I am not religious or any other stupid whatever. I hold no belief on the origins or meaning of life, nor do I care.)

  4. Re:This is why you drop to impulse in a solar syst on Warp Drives May Come With a Killer Downside · · Score: 1

    That just means the airport is going to have to taxi spaceships even longer since we have to wait for them to take off, land, and fly far enough away from the space line to begin take off. I hope we have more comfortable seating and entertainment

  5. Re:Two separate things here on Photographing Police: Deletion Is Not Forever · · Score: 1

    A dispersal order doesn't really need a lot of reason behind it. If 2 or more people's gathered presence seems to lead to the liklihood of intimidation or harrassment or anything really they can issue one. It's a pretty nasty piece of power they have and probably should never have been given.

  6. Make sure the position is crystal clear on What Does a Software Tester's Job Constitute? · · Score: 2

    At Microsoft, for example, there are 2 test positions which sound the same but are VASTLY different. "Software Development Engineer in Test" and "Software Test Engineer" are the two positions, but SDET is given a lot more responsibility and gets to do a lot of development and works very closely with the developers and others on the team. STE generally gets little development and is all about making sure the test environment that actually execute tests is working and making sure the infrastructure is happy and the network is working. So my advice would be to make sure that you ask about other testing positions and discuss the differences and make sure you are getting the right thing. Testing is awesome and fun and very important and usually more difficult to do right than development but not all testing positions are created equally.

  7. Re:Privacy on Many Early Adopters of the Amazon Fire Are Unhappy · · Score: 1

    The problem there is that then every time you accidentally click the power button off you have to retype your password to unlock it again... unlike the regular android OS it doesn't seem to have a 'lock if unused for X minutes' option so the lock is not going to be on my kindle until they do it.

  8. Re:This is news? on Skilled Readers Recognize Words By Shape · · Score: 1

    Modern science has become the art of proving common sense to be true/false. Interesting thing is though is that if only skilled readers do this it would explain why some people don't get pissed off at "you're" / "your" mixups. I see them and they are completely different and wrong and make no sense to me when I read it until I stop and translate it in my brain to the right word then continue on. Apparently illiterate people still sound out words and thus words which sound the same have the same meaning to them.

  9. Re:Work too on Theater Professor's Firefly Poster Declared Threatening · · Score: 1

    I posted the Facism poster near my desk at work in a prominent location in his honor this morning.

  10. Re:Uhhum.. for some of us this is old news. on School Children Are Now Too Fat to Fit In Class Chairs · · Score: 1

    Yeah, Australia is much better off spending time and money on more important things than helping students feel more comfortable in classrooms. Important things like illegalizing porn with small breasts.

  11. Re:DON'T DO IT! You'll get fired on Simple Virus For Teaching? · · Score: 1

    Heh this is probably correct... Best would be to go get some virus CODE and display it on a screen and step through how it hooks itself into a system. A great thing to use here is the 0ldschool types that would infect the exe headers and plant itself at the end. Or some that do the code cave storage. Then move from there and show them rootkits, as they are pretty much just a way more advanced version of those. Plenty of resources online for that. One particular book that is somewhat old now but still really informative http://www.amazon.com/Rootkits-Subverting-Windows-Greg-Hoglund/dp/0321294319

  12. Lost in Translation on Microsoft's Chief Exec For Latin America Says 'Open' Means 'Incompetent' · · Score: 2, Informative

    Considering this is translated and considering it is an exec talking, I think it is far more likely to mean: If your company cannot provide an end to end solution, you declare it open source to make yourselves look not so lazy.

  13. Practice makes perfect on 3 Drinks a Day Keeps the Doctor Away · · Score: 1

    I imagine this is due to alcohol being considered a poison by the body, thus making the body work to kick out toxic substance. Keep your body in shape by giving it a lot of practice fighting off things probably keeps you stronger.

  14. Re:"Wah, I Don't Want Choice or Responsibility! Wa on NCsoft Sued For Making Lineage II 'Too Addictive' · · Score: 1

    NCSoft puts an hourly warning into all their games and has for the last 4 or 5 years or so saying "You've played for an hour, please log off and take a break"

  15. Re:Too close to the subject... on How Can I Make Testing Software More Stimulating? · · Score: 1

    Yup, someone else should be testing it instead of the developer (except for unit tests). I personally love testing and test development, but I am a security tester so I always treat testing like a chess match between me and the dev and try to outthink them. It's exciting when I find a really good defect. It's all a mindset though. If you think (like most devs I've met) that testing is all about validating what is supposed to be happening then it will definitely be boring. If you think of it as seeing what you can get away with, or if you're the type of guy that loves to break things to figure out how they work or to use things in ways they're obviously not supposed to be used then testing will be natural and fun.

  16. Re:Who's going to pay for the service plan? on A Windows Phone 7 For Every Microsoftie · · Score: 1

    The phone is not going to be unlocked, it is going to be a carrier bloated phone and employees will have to choose which carrier they receive it from. Microsoft will not be paying for the service, only the phone.