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User: Randyj70999

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  1. Obligatory XKCD comic on What Do You Do When Your Mind-Numbing IT Job Should Be Automated? · · Score: 1

    Otherwise known as job security!

  2. Automate a web control on What Do You Do When Your Mind-Numbing IT Job Should Be Automated? · · Score: 1

    I've been here before, 300+ mind numbing one-liners a day oncall to 500+ servers, so I wrote a website that automated the scripts into webpages that mostly rsh'ed the commands. In this day and age I'd put it into a touch-panel for 'Queenie' to peck at, and then set back and maintain, fix and add to the website, and when 'Queenie' made a mistake, I'd get chicken dinner!

  3. Attention deficit disorder on How Weather Influences Global Warming Opinions · · Score: 1

    Short attention spans, simple!

  4. Science vs anything else on Bill Nye To Debate Creationist Museum Founder Ken Ham · · Score: 1

    I always love to hear about 'Faith Based' Nuclear Power Production :-) can you imagine the safety controls in that?

  5. It's not revelent until the AMAZON RDS adopts MariaDB over MySQL 5.5!

  6. Been there, Done that! on How To Stop Prediction Market Manipulation · · Score: 4, Interesting

    During the first election of Obama there was a Fan of McCain that attempted the manulation. Spending about 1.5 million over 10 days attempting to drive up McCain shares. It failed, look at the data from the period, every time the person placed 150K dollars on McCain, the market bought it up within minutes to the net effect that he lost 1.5 million dollars before giving up.

    When an Intrade market is active, and that one was, the market will balance it out!

  7. User interface design on Microsoft Blames PC Makers For Windows Failure · · Score: 1

    This is fundimentaly a mindset of user interface design, 'Describe' the user interactions or 'Prescribe' the user interactions. The first makes the interaction follow the natural actions a user currently uses, either using non electronic 'objects' like turning the page on a book, to familiar user interactions for electronic devices, like tuning a radio. the latter simply creates a usre interface, and forces/precribes how the user maked thing happens. Microsoft choose to prescrive the UI expecting their market dominance would be enough. It wasn't.

         

  8. Coder Dojo on Is It Time For Hacker Scouts? · · Score: 2

    There is a coder Scouts, called Coder Dojo http://coderdojo.com/

  9. Support hardware on Physicists Create a Working Transistor From a Single Atom · · Score: 2

    This would be useful if the supporting infrastructure wouldn't require a house full of hardware to determine the tri-state conditions.

  10. Re:It shouldn't be mandatory on British Schoolchildren To Get Programming Lessons · · Score: 1

    The problem is exposure, and education is about learning something important. Using Power-point or worse yet expecting a ECDL to give a leg up to students. Most students will never be scientist either, would you stop teaching science. It's EXPOSURE.

     

  11. Meego and Tizen on Tizen, webOS, & the Future of Mobile Open Source · · Score: 1

    The merger of Maemo into Meego by Intel and then later into Tizen is another attempt my Intel to smother Linux. There is no other explanation as to why they failed and will disappear. And I guarantee, the if Intel signs up to WebOS as a 'member' it too will disappear.

     

  12. Revision History on Nature Publishes a "Post-Gutenberg" Electronic Text · · Score: 1

    This is all well and good for a science book to gain new knowledge over it lifetime, but does it contain a 'revision history'?

    How about History books, or Literature. When will we see history being changed dynamically and Literature censored in real time on your electronic copies? Only a revision history would inform the reader of the change and of what was 'revised'.

         

  13. Analog input into Digital Models on Why Economic Models Are Always Wrong · · Score: 1

    The 'economic' systems are NOT mathematic. Money is a 'perceived' value artifact.

    Economic systems are roughtly equilivant to an analog volume control operated by a 2 year old, linked to the clock chip of your (overclocked) home computer.

    IT makes for interesting performance figures, or can crash your computer.

  14. See Delphi Method on Social Influence and the Wisdom of Crowd Effect · · Score: 1

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphi_method

    "Anonymity of the participants

    Their identity is not revealed, even after the completion of the final report. This prevents the authority, personality, or reputation of some participants from dominating others in the process. Arguably, it also frees participants (to some extent) from their personal biases, minimizes the "bandwagon effect" or "halo effect", allows free expression of opinions, encourages open critique, and facilitates admission of errors when revising earlier judgments."

  15. Never Happen on Can Computers Be Used To Optimize the US Tax Code? · · Score: 1

    When I worked for H&R Block on the early Rapid Refund project during the start of the IRS Electronic Tax Filing project, I was made aware of the Millions of Dollars spent Lobbying to make the Tax Forms MORE complicated, and tax law more unreadable.

    So there is little hope of ever making it a simple thing to do. In fact the top 1% have no intention of educating the (99%) rest of us to the tax breaks (loopholes) that they receive.

     

  16. Unfortunate use of the word 'Crowd' on Fark Creator Slams 'the Wisdom of Crowds' · · Score: 1

    This is an unfortunate use of the word 'Crowd'. I work for a prediction market that utilizes this principal however our use of the word 'Crowd' is best described as a group of knowledgeable people who are willing to bet on their knowledge being better than anyone else. What we do is aggregate the data to produce a consensus of that knowledge. We are accurate, every time we have a lot of 'trading' going on. The larger the better, we have picked the winner in all of the last national elections weeks before the election occurred. But we don't aggregate emotion and opinion, they have no value unless there is real knowledge behind it. We are not gambling, the betting is a measure of the commitment of an individual to the quality of their knowledge. The better the knowledge the better the result, if you combine small amounts of knowledge, you get an amplification of that knowledge.

  17. Randyj70999 on ACLU Files Lawsuit Challenging FISA · · Score: 1

    Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

  18. Re:Not Suprising on Half a Million Database Servers 'Have no Firewall' · · Score: 1


    and C is it's own virus.

  19. Re:So What? on National Security Letter Plaintiff Speaks · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ...That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security...

  20. Re:Ask Chris Date and Hugh Darwen about ... on The Future of Databases · · Score: 1

    You should ask Chris Data about Trans-Relational databases. He'll fill your head with it.

    RJ

  21. Future or History on The Future of Databases · · Score: 1

    This sounds very much like a program I assisted in in Cybernetics nearly 30 years ago. Based on modeling Intuition which pitted two automatons against each other playing a game (tick-tac-toe) one automaton kept a 'database' of failed moves and learned from them and got smarter. While this is not new, even then, and while written in FORTRAN IV it was a primitive version of this Idea.

    My thought is this, if this is the best microsoft can do, dredging up ideas 30 years old as new thought, no wonder they are constantly reinventing the same wheels in development.

    RJ

  22. How about GRASS?? on Open Maps? · · Score: 2, Informative

    http://grass.baylor.edu/

    Always worked for me....

    RJ

  23. Windows New Technology (WNT) is one letter off VMS on Linus Not The Father Of Linux, According to Report · · Score: 2, Funny

    Windows New Technology (WNT) is one letter off VMS just
    like HAL is one letter off IBM...Interesting.

    RJ

  24. It's not about Safety, it Where are you! on FCC: VoIP Providers Must Provide 911 Services · · Score: 1

    I think most of the posters do not have a clue, it's not
    about dialing 911 to reach Help, it for the help service (firemen, police, etc) to find you if you can't talk. Very much like the Cell phone system that allows you to track down the location of the 911 caller. To provide this a user of a WiFi VoIP handset could be tracked down to the StarBucks that he is making crank 911 call from.

    RJ

  25. You can have Reliable and Secure and Cutting edge on Calling Software Reliability Into Question · · Score: 1

    Having worked in the Telecom sector, where unreliable software always costs money, and was know my the Management that it needed to be reliable, and that doing so cost money. There was ALWAYS time and equipment to test, and debug before new releases were deployed. Every piece was tested, systems were also redundant with hardware failures rolling to backup systems. Expensive, you bet. Needed Yup!. But it can be done.

    The very answers that have been posted here attest to the fact that the "geeks" posting here (me included) have become WAY TOO ACCUSTOMED to buggy software.

    and Yes!, I have operated software on Unix machines that ran for YEARS (and in years) without failure, or reboots. (we sometimes rebooted them yearly just to test them.)

    raise your standards boys (and girls) why settle.

    PS: C is it's own virus!