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User: gabec

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  1. Re:Pshaw on Google Fires Back About Search Engine Spam · · Score: 1

    ExpertsExchange has an extremely misleading UI, starting with a question, followed by graphics that imply it's hiding the answer and you must register to see it... but all the text google thinks is there, is really there... you just have to scroll down to the bottom of the page.

    (You may know this and block them simply because they're being intentionally misleading... OTOH, you may not. I actively railed against them for years before noticing.)

  2. Re:Traffic Cameras are Free Money... on Tennessee Town Releases Red Light Camera Stats · · Score: 1

    Ah, another Knoxvillian...

    After getting a small speeding ticket from Oak Ridge at one of these red light cameras I swore off going to Oak Ridge for any financial transaction. So far, I've counted about $3,500 worth of small contracts, Craigslist purchases and whatnot I've turned down or avoided simply because they were in Oak Ridge.

    It's my small, passive-aggressive non-resident contribution to Oak Ridge.

  3. Re:You don't on How Do I Keep My Privacy While Using Google? · · Score: 1

    RE: "Seriously.. despite all the controversy it has stirred up.. if you don't have anything to hide.. who cares"

    That is, of course, the crux of the privacy argument and even exactly the sentiment Eric Schmidt was expressing: "Only bad people want privacy."

    Even defending those that want privacy is hard to express. Why would you want privacy? What do you have to hide that you don't want known?

    So here are a few off-the-cuff points for privacy:

    * There's a quote out there (google it--lol) that goes along the lines of "You don't need privacy to protect you from the government you have today, you want privacy to protect you from the government it may become."

    * People's ideas of what's acceptable to share are different depending on the times. Maybe a miniskirt is no big thing today. Maybe by the time she's running for senate miniskirt=whore. Maybe you comment on a friend's private facebook account. Maybe last week Facebook just made all that very, very public (http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/12/13/2028219/Facebook-Founders-Pictures-Go-Public).

    * On the last vein, Do you think if today were 1929 you'd hesitate to put that you were Jewish on your online profile?

    * Even publicly making a stance on pro/anti online privacy costs you in some way. Certainly anyone pro-privacy had better have a squeaky clean past present and future. After all, anyone that uses scroogle.com and the like are exactly the wingnuts you'd want to track, right?

    Nobody can see into the future far enough to know just what they'll regret, and just what it will cost them.

  4. Re:Not keeping low profile? on Best Way To Clear Your Name Online? · · Score: 1

    That made me think of an even better idea... astroturf yourself. "[Joe Skeleton] wins Nobel Peace Prize!" etc. Get enough out there--backdated even--and if anyone asks, just say you have some real prankster buddies.

    Short of that though, your best bet really is to start putting your name out there for what you've done since. I've sort of had the opposite effect happen to me. For years just out of college I thought it was pretty rad to be findable online and worked to be every result on the first page (why... I don't know.) of Altavista (yeah, remember them?). Then after a while I changed my mind and started pulling things offline, which left only crap I couldn't erase myself. Now the first page results include only one item that's legitimately from me (not someone with my same name) and it's of me chewing out a guy on a mailing list. Thus my legacy is of being a douche to some random guy. =/

  5. Re:Tethering on Verizon Droid Tethering Comes At a Hefty Price · · Score: 2, Insightful

    OP is ranting to a degree that he's misrepresenting his case.

    First, all smartphones require this crappy extra $30/month fee. Blackberries, iphones... Droids. It sucks, but Droid isn't the bad guy here, it's every carrier.

    Second, tethering isn't supported for most smartphone plans on the major networks. You want it on your iphone, too bad. The iphone itself supports it (as does Droid obviously) and AT&T doesn't. Well, apparently they will, but they will charge extra, just like Verizon. (http://mashable.com/2009/10/08/iphone-tethering/) Once again, don't blame Droid / verizon, blame every carrier.

    So please don't blame the Droid or Verizon for this without including every other network and smartphone in the rant. =P

    (Though calling 5gb "unlimited" is pretty skeezy.)

    PS. Loving my droid, tethering or no. ;-)

  6. Re:Release cycles? on Some Early Adopters Stung By Ubuntu's Karmic Koala · · Score: 1

    FWIW, I've been using Ubuntu since 6.10 and Karmic Koala has been by far my easiest and most care-free install. Every six months since 6.10 I've installed the new Ubuntu and it generally takes me about a week to get my OS going to full speed. Sometimes the damn dual monitor thing doesn't want to work. Sometimes my network shares stop being accessible by name and have to be hit by IP... whatever, it's all piddly one-off stuff.

    Karmic Koala installed everything perfectly this time. I didn't have to custom compile Pidgin to get Microsoft Communicator functional at work. The OTR plugin worked too without custom compiling, unlike previous times.

    My setup for my laptop, for the first time ever, doesn't need switchconf to load one xorg.conf for stand-alone mode and another for dual monitor docked mode. Heck, I don't even have a xorg.conf! I deleted it alltogether and let the system figure it out!

    Wireless worked, the network worked, the printers worked.

    Everything has been smooth smooth smooth.

    So, for me at least, Koala is my favorite release yet. Kudos to the Ubuntu team, keep going!

  7. Re:Yes, go for it. on With a Computer Science Degree, an Old Man At 35? · · Score: 1

    You're older than I am, but you're far too young to be pulling the "[that] fact shows at the very least your ignorance and, at worst, your ageism" bullshit.

    Your argument assumes he was referring to mid-thirties as part of the "older generation[s that] didn't grow up with computers" and obviously if you were learning to program when you were eight, you're not in the same age bracket as the grandparent-post's target-generation.

    But cheer up! This means you're only an old fart on the inside.

  8. Playing with Magnets on What To Do With Old USB Keys, Low-Capacity Hard Drives? · · Score: 2, Funny

    A friend of mine loves old harddrives. They have a lot of super heavyduty magnets in them. To my knowledge he just dismantles the drive and then sticks'm to his fridge but ... either way, ubermagnets are fun!

  9. Dragon*Con on Star Trek Fragrances · · Score: 1

    holy crap... they're really making pon farr?

    Dragon*Con lampooned this a couple years ago in one of their fauxmercials at the con:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mboR7Y3pFUg

  10. Re:80 hours on How Does a 9/80 Work Schedule Work Out? · · Score: 1

    At my last company they allowed 9-nines or 4-tens. 9-nines is a great deal for the developer. Any actually important developer in a company ends up working 9 hours a day anyway, just due to interruptions, meetings, etc. so having every other friday off for doing what you'd be doing *anyway* is excellent, and if you have that mentality, then even if you *do* get called in for a crisis, well, then you don't get your "free day".

    It's actually a much better deal for the developer than the manager / company. the 4-eights guys end up being the ones to stay late friday night to meet a deadline and the 9-nines and 4-tens guys get to wash their hands of it on Thursday (and only come in for a production issue/crisis).

    Also, if you're the type of person with a lot of domain knowledge people probably drop by your desk a lot. Every Friday you're out someone drops by and goes "AH, dangit!" and wanders off to find someone else. Not a big deal, but it's there.

    Point is, don't feel abused when you get pulled in or called, because the company's doing something very cool for you they don't have to.

  11. Re:I want to see one on Microsoft Causes Internal Family Strife · · Score: 5, Insightful

    holy flamebait summary, batman!

    Seriously... Slashdot never has made claims at being unbiased, and I have no excess fondness for MS products (I'm currently writing this from my ubuntu desktop) but still... Frontpaging needlessly harsh opinions best left to tongue-in-cheek office humor don't serve the slashdot community.

    If I want vitriolic bias, I'll head to Fox News.

  12. Re:OT: Article submitter links to fascist rhetoric on Why Is the Internet So Infuriatingly Slow? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I ... actually see no connection between who posted the original story (Anti Globalism) and any of the sites the above poster mentioned. The linked story in the OP goes to Slate.com (a microsoft-owned publication, IIRC), which itself points to various respected URLs (chicagotribune.com, msnbc.com, washingtonpost.com, fcc.gov, techcrunch.com, infoworld.com....) While "Anti-Fascism"'s post is very interesting, in this particular case, I don't see a reason to discredit this story simply based on who posted it to /.

  13. Persistent worlds? Who cares! on The Future of Persistent Worlds In MMOs · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Persistent worlds? Who cares! How about being able to play with your friends! The mainstream MMOs have no way for you to play with your friends once they've chosen the wrong server.

    What's the *first thing* you ask someone when you learn they play wow?

    "What server?"

    How often has the answer been disappointing? So far, 100% for me.

  14. Re:We've heard this before on Leaping the Uncanny Valley · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Not to distract from the point but... What's wrong with her nose, and why doesn't it move with the rest of her face?

  15. Weird engine... on Cuil Proves the Bubble Is Back · · Score: 1

    It seems to be selective... if you search for something mainstream, Cuil will find some reasonable results... Search for something obscure and you get no results at all... Yet their whole claim to fame (or half of it, the second half being founded by ex-googlers) is their immense search base, right?

  16. rent a geek on Programmer's File Editor With Change Tracking? · · Score: 5, Insightful
    The OP has a lot of things working against him:

    1) Obviously never heard of version control like (CVS, SVN, etc.). This is excusable, as setting up and keeping with your very own SVN repo isn't the top of people's lists, and it's entirely possible to not have heard of such a beast.

    2) Accepting the commandment of "thou shalt manually wade through gobs of data in a text file means he's no programmer. This is also perfectly fine, but means he's not the right person to be changing this file anyway.

    3) Is under the impression that revision history could conceivably be hidden within said plain text file, implying the OP doesn't understand basic file formats, which confirms that he is not merely the wrong person but absolutely the last person you want manually mucking with your data files.

    Therefore...

    My suggestion: Forward the request to your IT department (or rent a geek).

  17. Re:That's not water... on Water Ice On Mars · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Mod parent up +1 Obvious for explaining a star trek reference on slashdot!

  18. Re:Make Love, Not Warcraft on WoW Burning Crusade Delayed until January 2007 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Sword of 1000 Truths. No doubt when South Park talked to Blizzard to get permission for the episode they worked together to get the content to coincide with upcoming items (or just simply created them because of the episode).

  19. Re:not so surprised... on WoW Burning Crusade Delayed until January 2007 · · Score: 1

    WTS 60 Rogue, Priest, Warrior; twink mage........ With Burning Crusade Closed Beta Access. =D

    PST with offers. ^_^

  20. Re:3 Billion Women... on On The Feminine Form In Gaming · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Precisely the point any level-headed person would make. A hero[ine]-form represented in a video game represents an ideal. The men are tall, muscular, athletic, ruggedly well-formed facial features... Women are tall, lean, strong, athletic and well endowed. Neither ideal is reachable by any average person without a suction tube, scalpel, and a lot of physical training.

    By golly, I want my heroes fat, club-footed, bucktoothed and bedridden.

    Anyone other than me reminded of Vonnegut's Handicapper General from Harrison Bergeron?

  21. Re:Just another movie to not see on Benioff and Weiss To Write Ender's Game Script · · Score: 1
    As the wiccans say:

    "An ye harm none, do what ye will."

  22. Re:Weight Sensors on Self-Adapting Traffic Lights · · Score: 2, Informative
    When I was in Sweden years ago they had the motion sensors all over everywhere. It wasn't this guy's system of requiring groups of cars, but specifically your car and only kicked in at night. None of this crap in the US where you have to sit on the weight sensors, you just drive normally and by the time you get to the light it has turned green for you! Keep going the speed limit and you'll never overtake a red.

    Marvelous system. I couldn't help but think we're behind the times when I experienced the bliss of never stopping at an intersection during a car ride through downtown. ;)

  23. Re:Experience is key... on How Important is a Well-Known CS Degree? · · Score: 2, Interesting
    while there is no company to contact, there is in virtually all cases, a publicly available mailing list not to mention SIG and dev lists that are easily searchable which, IMHO, would provide a genuine picture of who you're dealing with.

    Do they actually appear in said lists? Do they mention submissions? How do they reply to criticism to their submissions? Not to mention the fact that you could just as easily contact project maintainers for information about the developer. It's not as if OS projects all lack deadlines, goals, etc.

    As for reliability, considering that OS work is completely voluntary I'd say that that at least implies a passion for programming. Though whether they can show up every morning at 8:00 is another story. ;)

    But to answer the original question, I think that in many cases you can get a better education at smaller universities. The smaller classrooms mean you can ask your teacher directly, as opposed to waiting until a grad student can take the time away from grading the prof's 200 tests for him to answer something he really could care less about.

    More important than name, equally (it can be argued) important to real-world experience, is networking. WHO you know matters immensely. In college I always eschewed this mantra, holding to the dream that my innate talents would shine through. It didn't work so well as I had planned, as I graduated during the bubble burst.

    Anyhow, I would say that right now, ending your sophomore year, you should be running around collecting phone numbers and email addresses of CS seniors. By the time you graduate in two years they will have secured positions all around the area and will be great for getting your foot in the door of various companies. DO IT NOW. Next year will be too late, the seniors then will still be considered "green" and their comments of "hey I have this buddy..." won't carry as far (they won't have as much influence or won't perceive they have much influence) after only one year.

  24. Re:Should I just wait? on Mozilla Releases Firefox 1.0 RC1 · · Score: 1

    Or you could have used the ... text/plain extension! ;)
    http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info/textplai n

  25. REPOST on Obsessively Detailed Map Of Springfield · · Score: 5, Informative

    Anyone remember the last time we posted this link? :P http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/27/121423 1