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User: bkgoodman

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  1. I can get a job as a stocker at Costco without a college degree?! Thanks for the info....but I've been working as a developer in High-Tech for the past 30 years...without a degree...

  2. I saw a cable that had 2100 (recent) reviews - ALL 5-star! A DIFFERENT post of (what appeared to be) the identical product indicated MANY more problems - and eluded to "other posts" of the same product having false 5-star ratings!

  3. BETTER now than it has been. on Say Goodbye To the Information Age: It's All About Reputation Now (aeon.co) · · Score: 1

    Back when I went to school we were taught to do research. We walked into the library, opened the encyclopedia, and if it said that the Indians and Pilgrims shared a meal of thanks, helped each other, made friends and lived happily ever after - and we could provide a Bibliography to prove we got that info from a "proper" source - then that's how it happened. People have a LOT more source-material at their hands - some good - some bad - and they have to LEARN how to sift through it themselves. Reputation is ONE way to do this - but as we're discussing - reputation is only a single weight that has to be managed when scrutinizing material.

  4. TOTALLY true story... on Ask Slashdot: What's The Worst IT-Related Joke You've Ever Heard? · · Score: 2

    We were in a Chinese restaurant back in the day with a bunch of geek friends - long before ssh was a thing (even before http!) - and telnet was the only way to session between systems. The waiter came to take our order, and was going around the table doing so. Right in the middle of someone giving their order, he just turned around and walked away. We were all kind of stunned. One of the guys exclaimed "Connection closed by foreign host"! :-D

  5. Re:Solving ground loops on Is the Optical Cable Dying? (cnet.com) · · Score: 1

    "Ground Loops"? Really bro? This isn't 70's analog audio. You get no "hum" from HDMI not because it's "balanced" to avoid ground loops - it's because it's digital and doesn't pick up noise like an analog cable. That said - even if you could pick up the noise, it would show itself in the form of data corruption which would be audio loss/dropout. Also - HDMI is an LVDS signal, so it is the digital equivalent of a "balanced" signal. But I digress - digital is all about "getting it there perfectly" - it either does, or it doesn't - and if it doesn't - you have a broken system. There is no "noise" or "hum" that can be introduced into the cable that could be heard in the decoded, analog output.

  6. I have a "rolled-my-own" solution which leverages Amazon AWS. Though this is kind of a mess of scripts, I like it for many, many reasons. First of which is that AWS is VERY cheap. You can also use the Glacier service (offline "tape?" backup) to make it even cheaper. You can set it up to automatically "destage" stuff over time from the "hot" (more expenseive) S3 tier to the cheaper glacier. It also has facilities for automatic versioning. One of the (oddly) most important things, is that you can specify very fine-grained permissions. For example, most of my machines only have key which are sufficient for *adding* more backup content. i.e. they cannont overwrite, delete or even read existing content. This is particularly important when things like ransomware attacks will try to compormize existing data. There is also the case where either ransomware or accidental actions wind up wiping/changing/corrupting files, whch are then backed-up, compromizing the backups (classic problem with using a "mirror" as a backup). I also have scripts which do incremental and full backups at different intervals, and others which "prune" out old backups after an extended period of time. Another good AWS thing is the ability to specify what kind of reliability you need - and also the ability to migrate/mirror/copy data to servers in DIFFERENT geographic regions. All said, it took some doing, but it is VERY cheap, safe, and extremely robust.

  7. "The Bible Code" on How Big Data Creates False Confidence (nautil.us) · · Score: 2

    I'm reminded somewhat of "The Bible Code" - the theory/idea that there is a bunch of stuff hidden in the bible, visible when viewed different ways (like when skipping characters, etc - Google it) The reality is - the bigger the dataset - the more patterns - even false patterns may be present in it. If I had a billion money's, what would they type...

  8. PT Barnum said it best....

  9. Mechanical Computer on The E6-B Flight Computer Is 75 Years Old, Still In Use (informationweek.com) · · Score: 1

    If your into this kind of thing - check out this in-depth video of how an old US Naval WW-2 mechanical computer works. Absolutely amazing - totally old-school. https://m.youtube.com/watch?fe...

  10. Re: Snap Circuits on Merry Christmas - Be an Erector Engineer! · · Score: 1

    Snap circuits are neat - but I'm not a huge fan. They are generally fairly very "high level, complex" building blocks. Even most of the definitions of what the pins (of the modules) do aren't described, nor referenced in any instructional way. (Though people have reverse-engineered and posted online). It's a long way off from the radio shack circuit kits of my childhood. They would be a lot better if they didn't dumb it down since much. My 11 year-old still prefers messing with my old Radio Shack kits, where he can understand what's going on enough to be creative, and build his own stuff.

  11. Re: Well.. on Chipotle Plans To DNA Test Produce After E-Coli Outbreaks In Nine States · · Score: 0

    It depends on the kind of shit. From cows, earthworms of herbavores is completely different from that of humans, or other carnevores. It depends on the gut bacteria of the creature taking said shit. You cannot fertilize a field with human waste.

  12. If you want to code, code. on Fullstack Launches Coding School For Women (sdtimes.com) · · Score: 0
    If you want to code, code. If you don't, don't. Of the women (and men, for that matter) who do - it's a bug they picked up in middle school or highly school. From their, they decided to go into college for it - and ultimately the workplace.

    The idea that women or girls being uninterested in getting jobs in engineering due to masoganistic workplaces or hiring practices is putting the cart 10 years ahead of the horse.

  13. iTunes (or to remove the need for it), Orbiter, Final Cut Pro, Word and Excel (and not the free clones!)

  14. ...or this is just a giant rouse to convince us all the iMessage is an end-to-end, secure, PKI system that we should all trust, when this may not be true at all. Very hard to tell if it is a closed-source system which is not publicly auditable. Would you trust it with your secrets? I wouldn't (if I had any).

  15. Yeah! on Renderman Gets Blender Integration · · Score: 0

    A "free" Renderman was a bit limited without a decent "free" front-end. Been waiting on trying Renderman for Blender integration!

  16. Apple on How Bad User Interfaces Can Ruin Lives · · Score: 0
    Back in my day - Apple computers (in particular MacOS) was widely known to be the easiest, most intuitive, user-friendly machine/OS out there. So when my 80+ year old father was looking for a new computer, I steered him to a Mac. BIG MISTAKE

    I think it was a combination of older people getting stuck in their ways and not easily learning new thing - along with the massive complexity in newer OSX - along with a little nine-headedness - like no right mouse button, but a billion was of needing that functionality and other less-than-obvious ways of accessing it (like pressing on the right SIDE of the Magic Mouse, etc)

  17. Comparison. on Swift: Apple's Biggest Achievement For Coders · · Score: -1
    Objective-C really sucks. It is old (pre-dating C++), has not aged-well as the languages has been stretched over the years to accommodate new things, has always done a half-added way of encompassing C and (more specifically) C++ support (I.e. "Objective C++", but yet has survived (and grown), as it's the "only" way to do native iOS programming.

    Swift aimed to clean up some of the cruft from Objective-C and has somewhat fallen into all the same traps. It had inherently avoided all the C and C++ compatibility issues - yet is still one of the 2 ways of doing a native iOS app.

    So it's maybe, arguably, marginally *easier* than Objective-C, yet is one of two technologies to allow you to code inside Apple's walled garden - so, people are using it - but it's like praising a Siberian prison for serving thicker soup on Tuesdays.

  18. Re: Second post! on Perl 5.22 Released · · Score: 0

    Like Python 3?

  19. Applicants on Jesse Jackson To Take On Silicon Valley's Lack of Diversity · · Score: 0
    I've been in the industry about 25 years. I've interviewed countless candidates. The truth is, in 25 years, I have personally encountered zero Latino candidates and only one black job applicants - in comparison two hundreds of white, Asian and Indian a applicants. So let's talk about education or whatever - but the issue has nothing to do with companies or hiring practices - in my own experience.

    (BTW - we did make the black candidate and offer - he accepted, then shot us down after getting a counteroffer from his employer to stay. )

  20. Couldn't buy into.. on Surrogate Database Key, Not Bitcoin Protocol Flaw, To Blame For Mt Gox Problems · · Score: 0

    I'd have a real hard time buying into, or putting any investment into a currency that could run into these types of problems - or even potentially vaporize overnight - due to some intricate techical problem that I didn't understand - and maybe STILL wouldn't even long after it was explained to me ...

  21. Java on Eclipse Foundation Celebrates 10 Years · · Score: 0, Troll

    I think it's good - but on the rare occasion I can actually get Java to install and work, it's slow as a pig.

  22. Re: Now, if I can use the files for metal sinterin on Dell Partners With MakerBot To Resell 3D Printers and Scanners · · Score: 1
    MakerBot's software can use .STL files as their standard input. Pretty much any additive process can use STL. MakerBot's software is more to run the machine - your asking about capabilities of the software to design the part in the first place.

    Also, I know people that use actual objects created on MakerBot specifically to use mold-making for metal casting - so that would be an option for you too.

  23. Re: Not just "another IT purchase"... on Dell Partners With MakerBot To Resell 3D Printers and Scanners · · Score: -1
    AND (I forgot to mention)

    I bought a Dell laser printer a few years back. I think it's made by Brother, or Lexmark, or some other second-rate manufacturer. BIG MISTAKE. It sucks, and the drivers suck. Will never do that agin. Buy a printer from a real printer company, not "a PC" company that decides to go into the printer game.

    Not looking forward to their future 3D offerings.

  24. Not just "another IT purchase"... on Dell Partners With MakerBot To Resell 3D Printers and Scanners · · Score: 1, Interesting
    I can understand their desire to get I to this business - but as it stands now, this is sort of a "specialized" market and customer. It's not just like an IT department is going to throw one in on an order because "their vendor" (Dell) sells them.

    Much more likely to be purchased by an artistic, engineering, manufacturing-type of group - under greater control and scrutiny than "I need a [standard] PC" like a lot of boilerplate Dell IT purchases.

    Maybe these consumers would go with Makerbot, maybe not - but their gonna need the machine with the right specs - not just whoever is on the approved vendor list.

    So - don't know if this will be good for MakerBot and Dell. But then again, maybe I'm just short sighted - and a few years 3D printers will be as ubiquitous as 2d ones - and that's the game they want to be in.

  25. Re: Bias on Marc Andreessen On Why Bitcoin Matters (And A Critique) · · Score: 0
    HP learned back in the 70's with all their touchscreens that people cant't/won't/don't want to work (for any length of time) with their arms/hands up in the air.

    Why he (or anyone else) couldn't have come to the same conclusion WRT Leap Motion dumbfoundes me.