Jobs is basically that guy who may not be very artistically inclined himself, but is a weael who has convinced artists he has absolutely uncanny taste and runs a gallery in SOHO that turns unknowns full of questionable potential into superstars of the art world through sheer force of bullshit.
Computers don't suck at math, those programmers do.
THANK YOU. I thought I had lost my mind reading post after post that went into details, suggested fixed point etc. but not made the simple statement you did. The story's statement that "computers suck at math" is drivel. It's not worthy of a 10 year old let alone a computer professional - which many of us supposedly are.
I am HORRIFIED by how poorly understood floating point is among programmers. The idea that someone would blame the computer for this sort of thing smacks of an unprofessional idiot blaming his tool (when he has simply been using the wrong tool all along).
No, Slashdot is mostly made up of computer janitors
Well janitors aren't usually asked to solve problems - they do boring repedative manual work, which is why they aren't paid so well.
he greatest insight you'll get out of most of the posters here is, "hurrr durr, the bridge must've been running Windoze! LOL!"
What I find particularly sad is that you've clearly just abused the community and they think you're kidding.
ith maybe a little "omg the twin towers were collapsed by EXPLOSIVES!!!!"-style conspiracy theory and "THE GOVERNMENT IS BAD!!!" braindead libertarianism thrown in for color.
In my experience both extremes are braindead, and as for conspiracy theories I don't see nearly as many of them here as you make out.
As for your signature "Software piracy is victimless theft", I just can't tell you how wrong that is. First of all copyright infringement of software has nothing to do with rape and pillage, secondly since nothing is physically taken it's not theft at all, and thirdly it's not a victimless crime since the victims are the software manufacturers and distributors who might otherwise have made a profit - especially the poor schmuck who wrote the software that might be out of a job when it doesn't sell. Your signature is therefore complete legalese drivel.
Fucking hell. Has slashdot just plain lost its sense of humour? If that wasn't an obvious joke, what the hell is? Instead I get -1 overrated and a serious response.
Dear Darkness404, you are wasting your breath. You've just sent an open letter on a geek site to a bunch of B-Ark movie producers. The chances that they read this are nil. Your reasoning and logic don't work on people who have a reputation for indulging in extreme drug habits and alcoholism, not to mention corruption and other excesses. These people would sell their mother's kidney on Ebay if they could find a way. Trying to reason with such vipers is probably quite bad for your health. But you may be modded up.
I got excellent grades at both undergrad and masters level. My handwriting has always been awful, despite great effort since primary school. I only took notes when I had no other option, which was rare. It may help some people. Others it just drives mad, and wastes their time.
I went back and taught a couple of elective subjects after Uni. I always provided notes. I did not have any problems with students staying awake, or with a lack of learning, or with attendance. That's probably because I wasn't just reading the damn notes parrot fashion.
I used to hand out notes for my lectures, but then stopped doing it. Students fall asleep in class if there is no physical activity
Don't blame the students. What you're teaching is boring, or the way you're presenting it is boring. Making them manually copy down every line because some get bored is an awful way to keep them awake. If they don't want to attend the lectures they shouldn't be forced to.
When I first started at the University I was very idealistic and thought I was going to change the way teaching was done. The hard lesson was that there is a reason why professors use chalk and blackboard. It works.
The way things are going smartboards are the future. Deal with it or become a relic.
Providing outsourced basic IT operations has paid my wages for the last 10 years, and some of my colleagues for 40.
Your own job should have been outsourced. I bet there's someone willing to do it for a tenth of the cost. What's that you say? Service. Quality. Ahhh so if you outsource to the lowest bidder quality goes down the toilet.
Your bank, your insurer, your car dealer, your supermarket probably use us.
Actually they probably used you until they realised how BAD most outsourcing is, and re-insourced the project.
Outsourcing your data is a security risk and an expensive mistake.
Cloud computing is just a new(ish) way for providers to run things.
Nothing new about it except marketing hype and buzzwords.
"Cloud Computing" is just web based thin client with the servers outsourced to a 3rd party who you then trust to run their services scalably. The reason it hasn't been done before is simply that it's batshit insane and before you added marketing hype you'd lose your job even suggesting something as asinine. You simply don't put your day to day operations at the mercy of yet another 3rd party (and unlike basic utilities these services aren't simple and service levels are a bear to negotiate).
I've done installs of Ubuntu on a virtual machines a couple of times but my initial experiences led me to stay away because I really like the development tools in Ubuntu and development really isn't Ubuntu's core strength - the end user desktop is or was. Installing dev tools felt like a right pain the behind and the fact that they didn't seem to allow let alone encourage custom kernel compilation put me right off. Fair enough I thought. I'm a geek I can stick with something else.
However pushing a release of an end user system like this that corrupts large files is just fucking moronic. I'm dumbfounded. Add allegations of pushing cloud computing shite to the mix and I'm giving Ubuntu a wide berth for now. This only confirms that i want to find another distro. Centos and Debian are looking to me like the leading distros for a geek to use, though I haven't checked out some of the others for a while. I don't hear as much about Mandrivel and SUSE these days.
That is a good question, and it deserves a better answer than the ones you have gotten so far.
It all comes down to Bell's theorum (John S. Bell)
From wikipedia: "Bell's theorem is a no-go theorem, loosely stating that: No physical theory of local hidden variables can ever reproduce all of the predictions of quantum mechanics."
Its solvable by a simple law- no employee of a corporation may be paid more than 10x the average employee. So if the CEO wants that raise, everyone gets a raise. It also stops outsourcing, as if the CEO wants to make megabucks, he has to pay those workers as much as he would US workers
It's an attractive idea but unfortunately naive. Company consists of CEO, CIO, CFO. Each are paid $megabux. Real work is outsourced, but that's another company doing the work. Everyone there gets paid $peanuts, including middle management. Employees get $10k. Middle management is capped at $100k. Somewhat of an oversimplification with just one split into 2 companies, but all you've done is stratify the company into layers. What's more there is little incentive for good work to be rewarded as it upsets the numbers. Not too different to a caste system.
If it phases you or upsets you do yourself a favour and leave. I'd rather you stay of course, but leaving is a better choice than worrying about it.
Just yesterday I had two posts on the same discussion that were very similar modded very differently. One ended up at +5:Insightful. The other at -1:Troll.
I regularly find that my posts get modded up to plus 5 then 4 days later get eroded to -1:Troll by people who don't like them. The only way I can see this happening is people bookmarking and coming back to mod things down. If you don't believe me just say something legitimate but negative about Apple or Google. Watch the moderation yoyo! I've got no way to prove it but I don't think I'm just being paranoid when I say that these people don't just mod down the post you don't like but then look at ALL your comments and mod them down too.
The only solution I can think of is to weight negative feedback lower than positive or cut off negative feedback once a comment gets enough positive. The trouble is that this too could be abused by a group or person with multiple accounts. Personally, despite only reading at +4 I'd like to see moderation abolished. People keep saying that occassionally idiots get mod points but it all works out, but the truth is moderation here has gone to the dogs.
Developers: Umm, yeah, sure, no problem... You know, we might want to make one or two very minor fixes first... [runs frantically back to computer and pounds away]
The ifElectionRiggedFlag is proving harder to remove than we thought. That sucker is everywhere. How about we just rename it to ifTesting and set it to false?...and lets rename the forceWinningCandidate and forceWinningParty strings to blank while we're at it.
So no, this law does not go too far, in fact it does not go far enough. It should mandate that anyone found driving while distracted be charged with reckless endangerment of human life.
Anyone who claims they've never driven while distracted is a complete and utter moron. Mod it flamebait, I don't give a fuck but you sir are a fuckwit. It'd be more effective to ban babies from being in the car since an infant in a car seat who has just vomited and is about to choke to death is a far greater distraction than changing the fucking radio station.
I'm almost surprised you haven't suggested that cars need to be banned period.
The correct solution by the way is to teach people how to cope with distractions. AND TEST the driver for being able to cope with distractions. Life is full of them and pretending they don't exist is far more culpable than changing a radio station.
Everyone has a right to travel. No one has the right to endanger others.
First of all there is no "right to travel". Secondly the two are not compatible. There is a risk to yourself and others around you when you travel. It can be minimised NOT eliminated.
Those that do endanger others need to be held accountable for their actions
Here's how I reason. Regardless if I can or cannot drive perfectly well while drinking coffee with one hand, for all I know this could be completely fatal in your case. And if keeping the right to drink my morning coffee while driving potentially means losing my legs or even my life simply because you also had those rights, then it's a very, very, very small price to pay.
The way I see it it's a slippery slope. If you aren't capable of driving with the minor distraction of holding a drink in your hand, you're probably not safe to drive. We could stop all accidents right now if we banned motorised transportation. Then your precious legs would be safe, but it's not such a small price to pay.
People need to get the fuck over the fact that life isn't going to be accident free. The only way to never have accidents is to never do anything.
I might as well begin a second job as a prostitute, that would be sick, but at least I could save a little.
I'm not certain but I don't think there's much of a market for overweight male prostitutes in their mid 30s working out of their mother's basement. Then again, I guess it depends where you live.
I'm joking. But if you're really serious all i can say is it won't be worth it.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is not just Ballmer. The problem is that Microsoft wasn't broken up. Ballmer is the symptom.
Here's proof he's the whole fucking diseased monkey. Patient fucking zero.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvsboPUjrGc
Jobs is basically that guy who may not be very artistically inclined himself, but is a weael who has convinced artists he has absolutely uncanny taste and runs a gallery in SOHO that turns unknowns full of questionable potential into superstars of the art world through sheer force of bullshit.
There fixed it for you. Jobs is a marketeer.
Jobs is not a geek per se but he talks our language, that's how he got involved with Woz.
And by "got involved" you mean befriended, used and stabbed in the back?
Computers don't suck at math, those programmers do.
THANK YOU. I thought I had lost my mind reading post after post that went into details, suggested fixed point etc. but not made the simple statement you did. The story's statement that "computers suck at math" is drivel. It's not worthy of a 10 year old let alone a computer professional - which many of us supposedly are.
I am HORRIFIED by how poorly understood floating point is among programmers. The idea that someone would blame the computer for this sort of thing smacks of an unprofessional idiot blaming his tool (when he has simply been using the wrong tool all along).
No, Slashdot is mostly made up of computer janitors
Well janitors aren't usually asked to solve problems - they do boring repedative manual work, which is why they aren't paid so well.
he greatest insight you'll get out of most of the posters here is, "hurrr durr, the bridge must've been running Windoze! LOL!"
What I find particularly sad is that you've clearly just abused the community and they think you're kidding.
ith maybe a little "omg the twin towers were collapsed by EXPLOSIVES!!!!"-style conspiracy theory and "THE GOVERNMENT IS BAD!!!" braindead libertarianism thrown in for color.
In my experience both extremes are braindead, and as for conspiracy theories I don't see nearly as many of them here as you make out.
As for your signature "Software piracy is victimless theft", I just can't tell you how wrong that is. First of all copyright infringement of software has nothing to do with rape and pillage, secondly since nothing is physically taken it's not theft at all, and thirdly it's not a victimless crime since the victims are the software manufacturers and distributors who might otherwise have made a profit - especially the poor schmuck who wrote the software that might be out of a job when it doesn't sell. Your signature is therefore complete legalese drivel.
Fucking hell. Has slashdot just plain lost its sense of humour? If that wasn't an obvious joke, what the hell is? Instead I get -1 overrated and a serious response.
to keep things sterile...
Prototype here:
http://www.sitcomsonline.com/photopost/data/813/kryten2.jpg
Dear content producers
Dear Darkness404, you are wasting your breath. You've just sent an open letter on a geek site to a bunch of B-Ark movie producers. The chances that they read this are nil. Your reasoning and logic don't work on people who have a reputation for indulging in extreme drug habits and alcoholism, not to mention corruption and other excesses. These people would sell their mother's kidney on Ebay if they could find a way. Trying to reason with such vipers is probably quite bad for your health. But you may be modded up.
I got excellent grades at both undergrad and masters level. My handwriting has always been awful, despite great effort since primary school. I only took notes when I had no other option, which was rare. It may help some people. Others it just drives mad, and wastes their time.
I went back and taught a couple of elective subjects after Uni. I always provided notes. I did not have any problems with students staying awake, or with a lack of learning, or with attendance. That's probably because I wasn't just reading the damn notes parrot fashion.
I used to hand out notes for my lectures, but then stopped doing it. Students fall asleep in class if there is no physical activity
Don't blame the students. What you're teaching is boring, or the way you're presenting it is boring. Making them manually copy down every line because some get bored is an awful way to keep them awake. If they don't want to attend the lectures they shouldn't be forced to.
When I first started at the University I was very idealistic and thought I was going to change the way teaching was done. The hard lesson was that there is a reason why professors use chalk and blackboard. It works.
The way things are going smartboards are the future. Deal with it or become a relic.
Has anyone cracked "Hello World" yet?
I think someone cracked my "Hello World". It compiled fine but when I ran it, it printed out "Core Dumped".
Providing outsourced basic IT operations has paid my wages for the last 10 years, and some of my colleagues for 40.
Your own job should have been outsourced. I bet there's someone willing to do it for a tenth of the cost. What's that you say? Service. Quality. Ahhh so if you outsource to the lowest bidder quality goes down the toilet.
Your bank, your insurer, your car dealer, your supermarket probably use us.
Actually they probably used you until they realised how BAD most outsourcing is, and re-insourced the project.
Outsourcing your data is a security risk and an expensive mistake.
Cloud computing is just a new(ish) way for providers to run things.
Nothing new about it except marketing hype and buzzwords.
"Cloud Computing" is just web based thin client with the servers outsourced to a 3rd party who you then trust to run their services scalably. The reason it hasn't been done before is simply that it's batshit insane and before you added marketing hype you'd lose your job even suggesting something as asinine. You simply don't put your day to day operations at the mercy of yet another 3rd party (and unlike basic utilities these services aren't simple and service levels are a bear to negotiate).
I've done installs of Ubuntu on a virtual machines a couple of times but my initial experiences led me to stay away because I really like the development tools in Ubuntu and development really isn't Ubuntu's core strength - the end user desktop is or was. Installing dev tools felt like a right pain the behind and the fact that they didn't seem to allow let alone encourage custom kernel compilation put me right off. Fair enough I thought. I'm a geek I can stick with something else.
However pushing a release of an end user system like this that corrupts large files is just fucking moronic. I'm dumbfounded. Add allegations of pushing cloud computing shite to the mix and I'm giving Ubuntu a wide berth for now. This only confirms that i want to find another distro. Centos and Debian are looking to me like the leading distros for a geek to use, though I haven't checked out some of the others for a while. I don't hear as much about Mandrivel and SUSE these days.
That is a good question, and it deserves a better answer than the ones you have gotten so far.
It all comes down to Bell's theorum (John S. Bell)
From wikipedia: "Bell's theorem is a no-go theorem, loosely stating that: No physical theory of local hidden variables can ever reproduce all of the predictions of quantum mechanics."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mechanics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_hidden_variable_theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_paradox
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell's_theorem
The term "liberal" in Australia is therefore rather ambigious a lot of the time.
Usually it just means we like sitting around in our underwear with the window open. ;-)
There is no "Neil" in Bohr. He's Danish: His Name is Niels Bohr, Niels Henrik David Bohr. Seriously, people...
According to quantum mechanics there's a vanishingly small possibility that the 's' simply disappeared.
It's the content, stupid!
I prefer: It's the stupid content
Its solvable by a simple law- no employee of a corporation may be paid more than 10x the average employee. So if the CEO wants that raise, everyone gets a raise. It also stops outsourcing, as if the CEO wants to make megabucks, he has to pay those workers as much as he would US workers
It's an attractive idea but unfortunately naive. Company consists of CEO, CIO, CFO. Each are paid $megabux. Real work is outsourced, but that's another company doing the work. Everyone there gets paid $peanuts, including middle management. Employees get $10k. Middle management is capped at $100k. Somewhat of an oversimplification with just one split into 2 companies, but all you've done is stratify the company into layers. What's more there is little incentive for good work to be rewarded as it upsets the numbers. Not too different to a caste system.
We need more people in the B-Ark. More insurance salesmen, tv producers. Scientists are in the A-Ark and that's already full.
If it phases you or upsets you do yourself a favour and leave. I'd rather you stay of course, but leaving is a better choice than worrying about it.
Just yesterday I had two posts on the same discussion that were very similar modded very differently. One ended up at +5:Insightful. The other at -1:Troll.
I regularly find that my posts get modded up to plus 5 then 4 days later get eroded to -1:Troll by people who don't like them. The only way I can see this happening is people bookmarking and coming back to mod things down. If you don't believe me just say something legitimate but negative about Apple or Google. Watch the moderation yoyo! I've got no way to prove it but I don't think I'm just being paranoid when I say that these people don't just mod down the post you don't like but then look at ALL your comments and mod them down too.
The only solution I can think of is to weight negative feedback lower than positive or cut off negative feedback once a comment gets enough positive. The trouble is that this too could be abused by a group or person with multiple accounts. Personally, despite only reading at +4 I'd like to see moderation abolished. People keep saying that occassionally idiots get mod points but it all works out, but the truth is moderation here has gone to the dogs.
Developers: Umm, yeah, sure, no problem... You know, we might want to make one or two very minor fixes first... [runs frantically back to computer and pounds away]
The ifElectionRiggedFlag is proving harder to remove than we thought. That sucker is everywhere. How about we just rename it to ifTesting and set it to false?...and lets rename the forceWinningCandidate and forceWinningParty strings to blank while we're at it.
So no, this law does not go too far, in fact it does not go far enough. It should mandate that anyone found driving while distracted be charged with reckless endangerment of human life.
Anyone who claims they've never driven while distracted is a complete and utter moron. Mod it flamebait, I don't give a fuck but you sir are a fuckwit. It'd be more effective to ban babies from being in the car since an infant in a car seat who has just vomited and is about to choke to death is a far greater distraction than changing the fucking radio station.
I'm almost surprised you haven't suggested that cars need to be banned period.
The correct solution by the way is to teach people how to cope with distractions. AND TEST the driver for being able to cope with distractions. Life is full of them and pretending they don't exist is far more culpable than changing a radio station.
Everyone has a right to travel. No one has the right to endanger others.
First of all there is no "right to travel". Secondly the two are not compatible. There is a risk to yourself and others around you when you travel. It can be minimised NOT eliminated.
Those that do endanger others need to be held accountable for their actions
You mean like existing dangerous driving laws?
Here's how I reason. Regardless if I can or cannot drive perfectly well while drinking coffee with one hand, for all I know this could be completely fatal in your case. And if keeping the right to drink my morning coffee while driving potentially means losing my legs or even my life simply because you also had those rights, then it's a very, very, very small price to pay.
The way I see it it's a slippery slope. If you aren't capable of driving with the minor distraction of holding a drink in your hand, you're probably not safe to drive. We could stop all accidents right now if we banned motorised transportation. Then your precious legs would be safe, but it's not such a small price to pay.
People need to get the fuck over the fact that life isn't going to be accident free. The only way to never have accidents is to never do anything.
I might as well begin a second job as a prostitute, that would be sick, but at least I could save a little.
I'm not certain but I don't think there's much of a market for overweight male prostitutes in their mid 30s working out of their mother's basement. Then again, I guess it depends where you live.
I'm joking. But if you're really serious all i can say is it won't be worth it.