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User: dummkopf

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  1. mine's "dummkopf" on Online Nicknames Google better than Real? · · Score: 1

    i win. but fortunately my real name os a tongue twister, so googling it yields an almost unique result.

  2. these are models... what about experiments? on The Rules of the Swarm · · Score: 2, Informative

    Currently, Physics Today has an article about the swarming of birds. The studies from the group in Rome are expected to complement current models since currently there is little experimental evidence to back up the models. Using several cameras they take time-lapse pictures of the swarms and then reconstruct the complex trajectories on the computer (a tour de force...).

  3. get real! on Replacing a Thinkpad? · · Score: 1

    you might as well go to the outback, live from kangaroo meat and drink your own piss. cause everything else, at least part of it, it made somewhere in china.

  4. Re:ask the experts and not the morons on Numerically Approximating the Wave Equation? · · Score: 1

    it's a question of signal vs noise... not black and white.

  5. ask the experts and not the morons on Numerically Approximating the Wave Equation? · · Score: 1, Insightful

    asking such a question on slashdot is a waste of time since most of the answers will be stupid comments... googling for an answer to your problem must have given you some hits. i suggest you google (i) for people studying problems in this field and ask directly. scientists *always* help; at least i have never made any negative experiences. (ii) look for papers at http://scholar.google.com./ i am sure that in one of the CCP conferences (computational physics) these problems must have been discussed by someone. finally: how come slashdot lets such topics trough? i mean, is the news situation that bad right now?

  6. Re:Monte Carlo? on Numerically Approximating the Wave Equation? · · Score: 2, Funny

    way off dude... feynman did not invent monte carlo...

  7. Re:Employee who just gets the work done?? on Want To Work At Google? · · Score: 1

    yes: heard rumors that they want to shut down zurich and move it to the uk.

  8. Re:HR could use some help... on Want To Work At Google? · · Score: 1

    same here. comment to to the other responder: if HR calls you and wants you to work for them, it implies they have researched your background and have something in mind. clearly this is not the case. the approach is more a "here is a smart guy, let's get him. wait, no, we do not know what to do with him, oh well. bye".

  9. Re:Employee who just gets the work done?? on Want To Work At Google? · · Score: 1

    dude, i have a phd. in fact, i am an assistant professor at a very good university. that is clearly not what they need either. you have to be very "special" to fit in. i know someone who works at google in zurich. when i see her, i understand...

  10. Here's my inside scoop at a google interview on Want To Work At Google? · · Score: 4, Informative

    Passed the first stage with HR, then had the interview with one of the engineers. The guy asked the mandatory question "tell me what you do" but after two minutes cut me off as it was clear he was not interested in optimization problems in physics. It was clear from the start that we spoke "different languages" and that lunchtime was looming in Mountain View, i.e., he was in a rush. Then he asked me some test questions. For example: "Suppose I give you a phonebook and ask you for a name, how long would that take?" As you can see, the question and answer are wide open. I told him that if the book had N pages, it would take me worst case N lookups. He was not pleased and asked for a faster solution. Hence I said, OK, I throw it into a hash and then the lookup is O(1). Then he complained that there would be too much preprocessing (although I would expect google to hash things...). He wanted "something in between". Hence I said, OK, let's sort the book and then partition to the name wanted, i.e., O(log(N)). Then the guy asked what log that was. I said that it does NOT matter since, in the O-notation prefactors are irrelevant and as you might know, you can always transform a log from one base to another by just a multiplicative factor. That was not a pleasing answer and he kept asking me to what base. Eventually I told him base 2, if he really had to know, but it did not matter. I admit I did not well in the interview, but the guy at the other end did NO effort in leading a good interview. The next question was (since I do some distributed computing) if I have many clients and they want to upload data to a server, what is the best way to do that. Again waaaaay open. I said, well, the client sends a request and when the server is free it answers and gets the data. Not good. Might overwhelm the server. Of course he would not tell me what he wanted to hear so I poked around a bit to realize that he wanted that the server floods the network with a "I am free signal" and then clients can upload the data. So what about reaching the limit of the network? "Well, that is not an issue here". Aha, I thought, I see, an issue is only what the guy deems to be an issue. At that point it was noon in Mountain View and he suddenly wanted to hang up. No "do you have any other questions?" or anything that shows good manners from an interviewer. Hence I decided to stop him cold and said "I have some questions for you". You could feel how pissed he was about this -- after all lunch is looming around the corner -- and he gave me the probably shortest answers you could think. For questions which I had gathered from whitepapers published by google (and there are only FEW out there) he would always say "I cannot talk about that".

    So... You really want to work there? Yes, you get lots of money, yes you get brainwashed it seems and rather arrogant after a while. Granted, this was one guy only, but letting him onto candidates which are not necessarily computer scientists. Hm... Needless to mention, Ihad a negative email the net day. Note that I did NOT apply for a job at google. One day I had an email from a HR person in mymailbox with the Subject "Hello from Google",and that's when this story started...

  11. Hellium? No wonder there was an explosion! on Bad Math Causes Explosion at CERN Collider · · Score: 1, Funny

    If it were Helium, then, since Helium is an inert gas, things would have been less dangerous. But Hellium, let me tell you, that is another baby. It's the gas straight from Hell, you know? Basically a satanic fart. Oh wait, I guess that could be a typo. Anyhow. I hope things get better at CERN...

  12. they *do* cool stuff: quantum computing anyone? on Microsoft Research Fights Critics · · Score: 1

    In case you did not know, MSR also is involved in the field of quantum computing. See http://stationq.ucsb.edu/index.html.

  13. dirtiest job? on Dirtiest Jobs in Science · · Score: 1

    having to do what my boss asks me to even though it might be unethical... that, indeed, is the dirtiest job in science...

  14. a dark spot on my anus? on Hubble Discovers Dark Spot on Uranus · · Score: 1

    whoa!

  15. so what.... on 3 Email Chiefs Come to Dinner · · Score: 0, Troll

    they met for dinner. they chatted. they smiled, and they hated each other. and? nothing will change. they are just little cranks in big machines. and these machines have their own agendas. whatever. don't you have better news? like michael jackson going broke?

  16. Re:poor marketing stunt of MAKE on Yet Another Holiday Gift Guide · · Score: 1

    hard to tell. just did not appeal to me. the things i would have liked to do often were just outlined, the lame stuff was always presented in detail. i guess i expected something slightly different from what i got.

  17. Re:3G Ipod on Yet Another Holiday Gift Guide · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I agree that the older ones are nicer. But unfortunately mine did not make it to tell... The HD started screeching -- a sign of sudden death coming up. When I took it to the store I was told that it would be cheaper to get a new one. Geez! What kind of thorw-away society are we! Maybe we should collect old 3G iPods where the drives do not work and use them as christmas tree decoration?

  18. poor marketing stunt of MAKE on Yet Another Holiday Gift Guide · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Just got my renewal notice today. I know there are some who like it and some who hate it. I am not too fond of MAKE and I find it quite an interesting coincidence that just around the time the first year of MAKE is almost over -- translate to: we have to all renew -- there is a shashdot post from a MAKE contributor. Good marketing. Very subliminal... Still, I will probably not renew. Go ahead, shoot me now.

  19. how about dummkopf? on Blizzard Made Me Change My Name · · Score: 1

    when i did my phd in the US, the first thing my advisor asked me was. which username i wanted for my new account. since i could not come up with anything useful, he suggested 'dummkopf' (given my germanic roots...), which i gladly accepted. the name since has been used *everywhere*... until i got to zurich. everything went well for a while until i was asked to change the username or lose privileges on a local compute cluster. turns out one of the users felt addressed whenever he saw jobs which had a "dummkopf" in front of them... i know, makes one wonder. and no, i could not appeal. and yes, i still use it everywhere else...

  20. Re:this is crap and not true! on Creative Gunning For the iPod · · Score: 1

    can the software for your zen xtra recognize an iPod?

  21. Re:this is crap and not true! on Creative Gunning For the iPod · · Score: 1

    you can recode AAC into MP3....

  22. this is crap and not true! on Creative Gunning For the iPod · · Score: 4, Informative

    "as iPod is limited to iTunes when it comes to purchasing music online and with Creative's products, you will be able to purchase music from major online vendors. ". I purchase all my music from www.allofmp3.com and have no problem with iTunes. Just give up and stop writing crap about it....

  23. www.ogrish.com on Google Censors Abu Ghraib Images [updated] · · Score: 2, Insightful

    if you want completely uncensored pictures and movies from the atrocities happenening due to poor policymaking of a certain world power you should look at www.ogrish.com. while i have to admit that the framework is rather tasteless, if you really want to get an idea of what atrocoties are (besides the fact of the existence of such webpages) you should definitely have a look. and if you intend to vote for another shrub in the future, you should have a look and think twice...

  24. ipodRip on How to Get Music Off Your iPod · · Score: 1

    once upon a time OS X 10.3 messed up my HD completely with the encryption of a large file and not enough HD space. that meant total system crash, and therefore mp3 collection gone. after searching around, i came across ipodrip which trivially restored my data off the ipod. costs $10, but then $10 compared to a whole music collection is peanuts -- and you want to support the smart guys who figured out to undo the weirdness of the ipod filesystem...

  25. Define PC users?!? on Cherry OS Claims Mac OS X Capability For x86 · · Score: 1

    I assume that that Cherry OS runs as a host on some other OS? If so, what is the "host OS"? Will that be Windows, or also Linux? [I would check on the cherrySO site, but it is *already* slashdotted -- at least from Zurich].