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User: dossen

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  1. Re:I think a lot of people have forgotten... on Cryptocurrency Wipeout Deepens To $640 Billion As Ether Leads Declines (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 1

    Let us assume that you are based in a location where the cost of energy makes mining cryptocurrencies unprofitable. Let us further assume that you have the capital to setup solar power generation. Would it not then be more profitable to sell the power at the going rate in that location, rather than using it to mine cryptocurrency? If I'm producing something worth X per unit, it makes no sense to use it in the production of something else, unless that something else is worth more than X per unit of my input.

  2. Re: A lack of imagination? on Space Is Not a Void (slate.com) · · Score: 1
  3. Re: the damn touchpad on laptops on Ask Slashdot: What Single Change Would You Make To a Tech Product? · · Score: 1

    Good one. While I like my thinkpads, I would like to have other options while keeping my prefered pointing device. And all the stupid pointing pads should at the very least be disablable at a level _below_ the OS - anice cover plate would be nice too :-)

  4. Re:It is always IT's fault on The Cult of DevOps · · Score: 1

    Just a quick counter point to your first problem. Lack of a (good, working, sane) chargeback system may cause needed work to not be done, if the people who need to do it are not on the same team/in the same department as the people who need it done. Think servers being built by developers - who can't continue work until they have been created - instead of having server specialists build them - who may in fact be able to build them better and faster. This happens easily when no chargeback system exist for the developers to "pay" the server specialists. Everybody works on tasks that contribute to their own department/team bottom line - but the total result for the company as a whole might be a lot worse than possible.

  5. Re:Quantity over Quality on How Allies Used Math Against German Tanks · · Score: 1

    The MG 42 was in fact so good, that it's successor, the MG 3, is still in use around the world (I trained on it myself about a decade ago, in the danish army).

  6. Re:IPv6 Issues on Interop Returns 16 Million IPv4 Addresses · · Score: 1

    MAC is 48 bits. It is expanded to EUI-64 format by inserting 0xFFFE in the middle and flipping the 6th bit of the first octet. This is then used as the host part of the address.

  7. Re:I mostly agree! But let's soften it a little. on Market Data Firm Spots the Tracks of Bizarre Robot Trading · · Score: 1

    The secondary market solves the problem of matching the time frame I want to invest on with the time frame companies need investment on - if I need my money back in a year, I can still invest in a company that will take 10 years to return the investment. Depending on how well that looks after one year I might get more or less than one tenth of the eventual profit - I might even take a loss. But since money is interchangeable and there is a secondary market I still get to invest.

  8. Re:Rogue-like on Life Recorder · · Score: 1

    Charlie Stross - Halting State: Searchable voice tags... And the police are wearing recorders for evidence - there's actually a small bit of the story that involves the police not being able to prove their case because of having no video - Imagine a world, where confessions get thrown out of court, if the police can't establish continuous video from arrest to court hearing...

  9. Re:The Sony on It's 2010; What's the Best E-Reader? · · Score: 1

    Got a PRS-600 a little while ago and I totally agree on it being a good choice. The screen is a little bit grey on account of the touchscreen - but not so much that it bothers me. Everything else is just about as good as I could wish for (granted, eInk is a little slow on the update, but I knew that going in).

  10. Re:People aren't robots on Office Work Ethic In the IT Industry? · · Score: 1

    Not every problem is solvable! Lots of real problems are in fact instances of unsolvable problems - then the very best you can hope for is to find a partial solution with the right properties to be useful. A practical example would be optimizing software for size - a perfect implementation would leave no unneeded line of code behind and would thus be able to solve the halting problem. Since the halting problem has been proven unsolvable, it follows that perfect optimization for size is not possible. Thus the best you can do is an algorithm that removes _some_ unneeded code while ensuring that exactly zero needed lines of code are removed. Not that the partial solution is not helpful - it is often enough to give great value - but that does not make it a complete solution.

  11. Re:As long as he knows how to ... on When Developers Work Late, Should the Manager Stay? · · Score: 1

    Not to mention that assigning any men at all to carry the fetus will generally ensure that the project fails quite rapidly... ;-)

  12. Re:silly on Microsoft Buys Teamprise, Will Ship Linux Tools · · Score: 1

    Since I haven't tried a CC+SVN setup, I would genuinely like to know, which features of TFS itcan actually replace? As far as I can tell, CruiseControl is for continuous integration, so I expect that it is comparable to the build features of TFS. SVN obviously delivers source control. But does CC+SVN deliver anything as far as issue/bug-tracking, planing and reporting on work done/outstanding etc? Because I think this is actually the more important part of TFS. The way checkins are actually linked to bugs/backlog items/requirements or whatever work items you choose to track adds a lot of value in making it easier to understand why the code looks the way it does.

  13. Re:I smell a government deal for MS! on MS's "Lifeblogging" Camera Enters Mass Production · · Score: 1

    It might not be a bad idea if something like this was mandatory for civil servants while on duty (maybe with higher framerate or even full video - sound would be good too) - then a digital record of what actually took place would exist - that might be useful to resolve some cases where the parties do not agree on what happened...

  14. Re:Effective way to keep screens locked on Schneier On Un-Authentication · · Score: 1

    Better yet - do a screenshot of the users desktop - with apps open and all, hide all icons etc. and set the screenshot as background... :-)

  15. Re:Bragging on Why Developers Get Fired · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Why does it seem, that the entirety of American business is set up to fall to pieces if employees take more than a few days vacation? Here (Denmark) we are actually entitled (by law) to have five weeks vacation a year, and we can take up to three of them together as summer vacation. This year I even combined it with some comp-time, and took 29 days in one go. And that didn't cause any major problems, since my manager knew he had to plan for it (it did cause him a spot of bother when I quit a week after coming back from vacation - but that's besides the point). I just truly can't imagine working in an environment where you are expected to put in long days (standard workweek around here is 37 hours, give-or-take) without compensation and not even get to take proper vacations...

  16. Re:Where do I begin on Working Off the Clock, How Much Is Too Much? · · Score: 1

    Yeah, I don't really get it either.
    I just changed jobs, so I still have some of the contract language fresh in mind. The it's spelled out in my contract (which i not unusual in terms of the danish labor market) is that I must call in sick, if I'm too sick to go to work. If I'm going to be sick for more than a few days (i.e. it's not just a flu or something) I have to get a note from a doctor (I think the company pays the expenses). Finally they are entitled to let me go if I'm sick for more than 120 days in a row.
    Besides that there are specific allowances for the first day your child is sick (you get to treat that like you were sick yourself) and pregnancies (I can't remember how much time I get of for that, but even as the father I would get a number of weeks with pay).
    But the short version is that sick leave is not a set number of days, but the number of days in a given year that I'm sick (which could be zero). And that has absolutely nothing to do with the six weeks of annual payed vacation time I get.

  17. Re:CapsLock on Fifteen Classic PC Design Mistakes · · Score: 1

    One useful thing to do with the CapsLock key: Compose key! I happen to live in Denmark, but find my native keyboard layout rather less than ideal for programming - there are however a number of characters, that are needed to type in danish and not present on a standard us layout (e.g. æ, ø, and å). But using the CapsLock as compose key, I can have a us layout keyboard and lots of special characters take only three keypresses to produce.
    Since I spent by far too long tracking it down - if you need this on Windows, AllChars (http://allchars.zwolnet.com/) does the job nicely.

  18. Re:Good News! on Programming Language Specialization Dilemma · · Score: 1

    Well, just off the top of my head... Anything using the Sharepoint framework would be CLR code (I can't say if it's pure or not - but that hardly matters, the point of being able to have both managed and unmanaged code is to use what's right for the job). That would be products like Office Sharepoint Server and Team Foundation Server.

  19. Re:NO IT'S NOT!!!! Damn... on IBM's But-I-Only-Got-The-Soup Patent · · Score: 1

    How about this scenario - which happens to me quite a lot: You're out of town on a business thing, staying at a hotel. That means eating at a restaurant each night. I'm usually with coworkers, but they may be from different parts of the corp. We each have our corporate credit card and we each have an allowance for dinner each day. My choices are either to eat at a restaurant that will split the bill or not eat with my coworkers. And sometimes (say at a conference) the people I would like to eat dinner with might not even be from my own company. Either way, I need to bring home a bill that accurately (more or less) represents what I had - and more importantly is for the right amount. And no, I'm not going to start paying for it out of my own pocket - they don't pay me that well. Just as well we don't do tipping here (Denmark - not that nobody gives tips, but I've never needed to tip - other than to show actual gratitude for above-standard service).

  20. Re:Yes, of course on Should You Get Paid While Your Computer Boots? · · Score: 1

    That just leaves me wondering why? I really can't understand the mindset that makes people work for for free. The idea of being salaried I can understand (not that it is something I would like to be - it's so much simpler to just get paid for the hours I work ) - having a set task and getting a set pay to complete it - although said task might be either too big for the pay (employer wins) or too small (yeah, like that's going to happen). But doing work that you are entitled to get payed for and just not claiming that pay - what's up with that? Are you expecting some sort of recognition for that? Promotion? Raise? Does it actually work?

  21. Re:What features like this need... on Firefox Add-On To Track Your Location Via Wi-Fi · · Score: 1

    And it just so happens that the list you are asking for is shown in the options dialog of the extension. Not the most prominent place, but it's there alright.

  22. Re:What about watches? on EU Wants Removable Batteries In iPhones · · Score: 1

    I've had a few where I had to take them in to a shop to had the battery replaced - but they where watertight to several hundred meters and pressure tested after replacement, so it was more of a warranty issue.

  23. Re:nonono on Should IT Unionize? · · Score: 1

    Actually at my job (development at a large Danish bank) most systems would be stopped in case of a strike... See, our union made a bargain with the employers association - if they allow us to shut down most of the systems, we in turn allow a small group to stay at work and make sure that no permanent damage occurs (peoples accounts remain on the systems, international clearing goes on, etc). This basically means that a strike would be effective - since all the systems that allow the bank to service its customers would be down - and still an actual option for the workers - since our employers would loose their income but not the ability to still run a bank. And in that way we have gotten a nice contract that gives me 36 hour weeks, 7 weeks of paid vacation, decent payment for overtime (ranging from comp-time for when I just stay a little late some day (by my own choice) to much much more if I have to e.g. go to work unplanned on a holiday), good pension, some nice fringe stuff, and a nice salary - it's not leading the industry, but it's not bad either. Oh and raises and bonuses are given on merits - it's just that it's done as a set of pay grades with an individual percentage added - raises either change my base pay and/or the percentage added, while each year the base pay grows by an amount the union negotiated. Seniority is not a factor - except that the contract specifies the minimum level you can start on with a given job title and background, and they can't easily do pay cuts.

  24. Re:How About.. on Pitfalls of Automated Bill Payment · · Score: 1

    Why does using direct debit make me "their" property? Assuming that the system is properly implemented it should do exactly two things: Give you the bill in electronic form and allow you to change the _default_ response to a given bill from "don't pay" to "pay". Nothing more.

  25. Re:Likewise... on Pitfalls of Automated Bill Payment · · Score: 1

    Interesting world view. Are there really that many problems with automatic payments in the US? I've been paying almost all of my bills (including utilities, phone, magazines, and mortgage) automatically via the Direct Debit infrastructure in Denmark (Betalingsservice, http://www.betalingsservice.dk/en/) for 10 years or more (no, I'm not going to dig out old records to find out) - I can't recall one single problem, except for one or two times I forgot a bill that wasn't added to automatic payment. For me and 94% of the danish households (yes, they are a de facto monopoly run by the danish banks) this just works. I get a statement each month with the bills that will be payed in the next ~30 days, and if anything looks bad, I can block the payment before it ever goes anywhere - or get the problem fixed. This also means that I can depend on all of my bills being payed when I'm away on vacation - if I'm gone for 2-3-4 weeks, it's hard to make sure everything is payed, if I have to actively do something.