The boss can't assign you new work because you might need to pull an all-nighter on something that other projects depend on so they can meet their deadlines, and neither he nor you can know what changes might be required ahead of time.
If you had a competing project, that project's deadline might have to be missed if such an all-nighter were required or vise versa. And your boss knows as well as you do that it would take too long to familiarize someone else with your code enough to pull the all-nighter for you, and of course you are unable to understand other people's code because other people are bad programers, and don't even understand their own code, so how in hell could you hope to undestand their pitiful scribbles.
Your boss keeps you as a 'free resource'.
So you browse slashdot ( and other sites ) discretely and if the boss knows, he looks the other way.
If your company sets the firewall too anally ( and I have worked at one place that gave NO INTERNET ACCESS TO DEVELOPERS. Stupid. The internet is every programmer's bookshelf. It's like giving your dev team a lobotomy. ) you just sit there bored as hell and twiddle your thumbs until you ( the best developer on the team who is put in charge of the most widely used and critical code because you are the only one working there with a clue about how to write a library of quality reusable code ) quit in frustration.
Though I hardly ever use my winNT box anymore ( except for outlook ) I've used gVim on windows extensively, and it's pretty solid IMO. Maybe there is something else wrong with this guy's machine ( other than it's OS ) that's causing it to crash gVim.
Let em rot in their oppressive countries not knowing what's really going on. See if Italy ( or the UAE ) can support financially with ad revinue the infrastructure to index the web.
Every water rocket I've seen has bent fins that make the rocket spin. This spinning creates gyroscopic forces that stabilise the rocket in the same way that a ( finless ) football is stabilized. I wouldn't want to ride in one though.
The trolls were OK, but I think of Orcs as half Pig, half Human chimeras. Maybe it is the hildebrant pics I have in my mind, or maybe it is because Orc rhymes with Pork.
Also, I remember that in the books the Orcs and Goblins seemed to have their own society and culture. In the movie they look diseased, and not capable of having a society.
They ought to make a big rugged off road jeep/suv/truck type of vehicle that really works and really is rugged. That would ease the average Joe's fears about an alt-fuel car being a delicate piece of techno-jewelry for rich enviro-weenies. Individual control of each tire's rotation and high torque at low speeds ought to enable computerized uneven terrain grabbing techs.
And they have the right idea about making it use gas for fuel. I won't even buy a diesel because not every gas station sells it. I wonder what MTBE/Ethanol additives do to the chemistry of a fuel cell designed for gas?
This disease ( a virus I think but it doesn't matter ) was very deadly when it first came out but quickly evolved to kill much more slowly. What happened to the old killer version? That is, why did the less lethal mutant cause the lethal version to become extinct?
I bet it's probably because enough of the population was infected with the less lethal version that the number of suceptible ( to the killer version ) people decreased. The people infected with the mild version were in effect vaccinated against the more virulent form.
I wonder if you could create a version of a dangerous disease that did nothing ( or not much, maybe just the sniffles ) but would spread quickly, vaccinating the public against the virulent form.
Syphilus hasn't mutated back to it's virulent form, wouldn't a less virulent form always have the evolutionary advantage over a nasty one? ( i am not sure.. )
On the other hand syphilus still kills unless treated, and diseases like leporcy and smallpox ( which would still be around if we hadn't killed it off completely ) have always been around.
If we could be *sure* that a less nasty version would outcompete a nasty one, then releasing an artificial mild form might make sense, but then humans have never been able to predict how an introduced species would affect an ecosystem, so I doubt we could do this.
Resources for aspiring 3l337 B105CR1PT K1DD13??
on
Open-Source Biology
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· Score: -1, Flamebait
Does anyone know where an aspiring biohacker can learn the basics to monkey with genetic engineering / kool bioexperiments in their kitchen? I was a bio major in college for 1.5 years before switching majors but since I program all day I think playing with sonmething else in my spare time would be more fun.
I don't mean taking courses in bio either, strictly amateur stuff or neat books that are readable by people with limited bio knowlege.
What would be involved in say splicing the cannabis gene for THC into a peanut plant..?
I never drank diet stuff till my dad came down with diabetes and it was in the fridge. If this had been in the days of saccarine I wouldn't have drunk any 'cause saccarine tastes nasty, but aspartame tastes fine to me.
And I find it actually quenches my thirst better than non diet soda. I also find that 10 minutes after drinking a regular soda my mouth tastes awful ( bacteria love sugar ), and that if I accidentally spill diet soda on myself I am not sticky afterwards.
I never drink regular soda now even though I am not on a diet.
Mod MSNBC down to: -1 Troll
on
Is Linux Dead?
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· Score: 1
The article mentioned that the satellite was not designed for the radiation dose it takes. Maybe having big olde clunky 1970's parts makes it more robust in that regard
His bill would allow copyright holders to set up decoy files and use
other techno-tricks like file-blocking and redirection to throw P2P
pirates off the trail, but it would forbid those holders from
employing tactics that would damage or destroy pirates' own computer
systems.
This is already done routinely by pr0n sites on the web!
There is no IDE that will not reduce the productivity of someone used to the intricacies of the unix toolset, and no IDE that is as useful or that is as usable with other tools as the myriad tools in the unix toolset.
The unix tools were designed to be used as a box of tools, not a single robo-weedwacker-chainsaw-hammer-can-opener-widget. Adding the functionality of an electic sander to that monstrosity would mean a complete redesign to integrate it well whereas on unix you can just get a sander that does the job of sanding well. It is even worth learning how to use the sander well because you can use that same sander to do other jobs that require sanding.
There must be a bunch of people who dick around with dangerous chemicals etc as kids...
I got into it when I was 12 and ordered plans for making model rocket motors from one of the ads in Boys Life mag. There was an address for a chemical supply house from which I ordered 2 pints of concentrated sulfuric acid, 5lbs powdered potasium nitrate and 1lb powdered magnesium for about $35. I got sulfur powder from agway for $1.50/lb.
With this I made gunpowder, nitric acid, nitrocellulose, and replaced charcoal with Mg powder in the gumpowder formula ( 2 moles Mg for every mole of C in gunpowder recipe ) to make some seriously powerful flash powder that burned my hand enough to send me to the emergency room ( I lighted about a cubic centimeter of the mixture with a wooden match and the flash powder scorched my thumb and wrist )
I expected it to burn but I was suprised by how fast it went up. Once I learned the nature of the stuff ( do not make! it probably is not safe to handle, some mixtures are prone to go off spontaneously ) I made firecrackers by rolling up magazine subscription cards with toilet tissues, fuse and masking tape. These loosely confined firecrackers made 4 foot wide blinding white flashes and loud bangs when lit off.
I did things that would earn me a Darwin Award. But I was not as bad as this kid.
I could have made nitroglycerin ( Boy did I want to! ) but I didn't want to risk having hot acid explode and leave me a Freddy Krueger of a person. I could have made pipe bombs but I stuck to cardboard because there was no shrapnel and so it was safer. I can't say I used common sense but this guy seems to have been asking for it..
My parents never knew the stuff I did. They knew I'd ordered chemicals, but they thought they were strictly for model rocket motors. Most of the explosions they heard were things I told them might happen. ( once, I tried powering a rocket engine with compressed air and hydrogen made with muriatic acid and charred aluminum cans in a pickle jar ) I wore goggles and the jar was behind cinder blocks and in a hole in the gravel driveway. When I used the sparker to ignite the engine there was still air in the jar and the resulting explosion blew the lid of the jar of acid 50 feet into the air and made the loudest bang I ever produced. I had done this with alcohol vapors and pure oxygen without that happening before...
This was all before the internet was widely available and research hard..
This post has no point accept that I wonder what other ppl have done that deserves a darwin award...
Circuit city would love it if NOBODY sold VHS tapes because then everyone would have to buy a DVD player.
Confused customers looking for the VHS tape section are easily redirected to the DVD player section of Circuit City.
I personally can not tell the difference between a digital and an analog TV's picture, and I like sturdy tapes better than easily scratched DVDs. I also already have a VCR and don't want to bay another $70 for another piece of equipment that does the same ( does less actually since you can't record DVDs )
I also remember that the pr0n DVD that I watched on my PC would not let me watch the film until the previews at the beginning had finished playing ( with the Fast Forward button disabled too! ) If i cared to watch the film again I'd have to sit through all the previews again before being shown the freaken main menu!.
I also remember watching The Matrix on a computer monitor and thinking that the hi-res made the film look WORSE because at that resolution the CG effects were more obvoiusly drawn in.
Screw DVD and it's stupid software features. I just want to watch the frikken movie.
Actually you SHOULD be able to shoot your.357 at coke cans as long as the noise doesn't keep people up at night. But we don't live in an ideal world...
Slashdot Mirror
I came acrosss this semmingly more respected anti grav device within a few link clicks of the article. Though IANAP.
If you had a competing project, that project's deadline might have to be missed if such an all-nighter were required or vise versa. And your boss knows as well as you do that it would take too long to familiarize someone else with your code enough to pull the all-nighter for you, and of course you are unable to understand other people's code because other people are bad programers, and don't even understand their own code, so how in hell could you hope to undestand their pitiful scribbles.
Your boss keeps you as a 'free resource'.
So you browse slashdot ( and other sites ) discretely and if the boss knows, he looks the other way.
If your company sets the firewall too anally ( and I have worked at one place that gave NO INTERNET ACCESS TO DEVELOPERS. Stupid. The internet is every programmer's bookshelf. It's like giving your dev team a lobotomy. ) you just sit there bored as hell and twiddle your thumbs until you ( the best developer on the team who is put in charge of the most widely used and critical code because you are the only one working there with a clue about how to write a library of quality reusable code ) quit in frustration.
Though I hardly ever use my winNT box anymore ( except for outlook ) I've used gVim on windows extensively, and it's pretty solid IMO. Maybe there is something else wrong with this guy's machine ( other than it's OS ) that's causing it to crash gVim.
He could promise to take his site down if the D/A ( or Italy's version ) lets him off scott free.
Let em rot in their oppressive countries not knowing what's really going on. See if Italy ( or the UAE ) can support financially with ad revinue the infrastructure to index the web.
Don't sell em anything. Why risk being sued.
Every water rocket I've seen has bent fins that make the rocket spin. This spinning creates gyroscopic forces that stabilise the rocket in the same way that a ( finless ) football is stabilized. I wouldn't want to ride in one though.
Also, I remember that in the books the Orcs and Goblins seemed to have their own society and culture. In the movie they look diseased, and not capable of having a society.
How much fossil fuels are used to manufacture a car? Alot! Making cars last ( I mean average time to scrap of ~25+ years ) would save alot.
And they have the right idea about making it use gas for fuel. I won't even buy a diesel because not every gas station sells it.
I wonder what MTBE/Ethanol additives do to the chemistry of a fuel cell designed for gas?
How are yu supposed to stop at newly discovered solar systems to install braking lazerz?
This disease ( a virus I think but it doesn't matter ) was very deadly when it first came out but quickly evolved to kill much more slowly. What happened to the old killer version? That is, why did the less lethal mutant cause the lethal version to become extinct?
I bet it's probably because enough of the population was infected with the less lethal version that the number of suceptible ( to the killer version ) people decreased. The people infected with the mild version were in effect vaccinated against the more virulent form.
I wonder if you could create a version of a dangerous disease that did nothing ( or not much, maybe just the sniffles ) but would spread quickly, vaccinating the public against the virulent form.
Syphilus hasn't mutated back to it's virulent form, wouldn't a less virulent form always have the evolutionary advantage over a nasty one? ( i am not sure.. )
On the other hand syphilus still kills unless treated, and diseases like leporcy and smallpox ( which would still be around if we hadn't killed it off completely ) have always been around.
If we could be *sure* that a less nasty version would outcompete a nasty one, then releasing an artificial mild form might make sense, but then humans have never been able to predict how an introduced species would affect an ecosystem, so I doubt we could do this.
I don't mean taking courses in bio either, strictly amateur stuff or neat books that are readable by people with limited bio knowlege.
What would be involved in say splicing the cannabis gene for THC into a peanut plant..?
And I find it actually quenches my thirst better than non diet soda. I also find that 10 minutes after drinking a regular soda my mouth tastes awful ( bacteria love sugar ), and that if I accidentally spill diet soda on myself I am not sticky afterwards.
I never drink regular soda now even though I am not on a diet.
AAA
The article mentioned that the satellite was not designed for the radiation dose it takes. Maybe having big olde clunky 1970's parts makes it more robust in that regard
If they DoS P2P they are fucking with everyone's network not just file traders.
His bill would allow copyright holders to set up decoy files and use
other techno-tricks like file-blocking and redirection to throw P2P
pirates off the trail, but it would forbid those holders from
employing tactics that would damage or destroy pirates' own computer
systems.
This is already done routinely by pr0n sites on the web!
They actually release these to to public with a 1/4 chance of burning a coaster when the media is $20 a pop! Man I would be mighty pissed.
There is no IDE that will not reduce the productivity of someone used to the intricacies of the unix toolset, and no IDE that is as useful or that is as usable with other tools as the myriad tools in the unix toolset.
The unix tools were designed to be used as a box of tools, not a single robo-weedwacker-chainsaw-hammer-can-opener-widget. Adding the functionality of an electic sander to that monstrosity would mean a complete redesign to integrate it well whereas on unix you can just get a sander that does the job of sanding well. It is even worth learning how to use the sander well because you can use that same sander to do other jobs that require sanding.
I agree about the keyboard with one exception: I wish the F1 key was not so near the escape key. I keep hitting it accidentally in vi.
There must be a bunch of people who dick around with dangerous chemicals etc as kids...
I got into it when I was 12 and ordered plans for making model rocket motors from one of the ads in Boys Life mag. There was an address for a chemical supply house from which I ordered 2 pints of concentrated sulfuric acid, 5lbs powdered potasium nitrate and 1lb powdered magnesium for about $35. I got sulfur powder from agway for $1.50/lb.
With this I made gunpowder, nitric acid, nitrocellulose, and replaced charcoal with Mg powder in the gumpowder formula ( 2 moles Mg for every mole of C in gunpowder recipe ) to make some seriously powerful flash powder that burned my hand enough to send me to the emergency room ( I lighted about a cubic centimeter of the mixture with a wooden match and the flash powder scorched my thumb and wrist )
I expected it to burn but I was suprised by how fast it went up. Once I learned the nature of the stuff ( do not make! it probably is not safe to handle, some mixtures are prone to go off spontaneously ) I made firecrackers by rolling up magazine subscription cards with toilet tissues, fuse and masking tape. These loosely confined firecrackers made 4 foot wide blinding white flashes and loud bangs when lit off.
I did things that would earn me a Darwin Award. But I was not as bad as this kid.
I could have made nitroglycerin ( Boy did I want to! ) but I didn't want to risk having hot acid explode and leave me a Freddy Krueger of a person. I could have made pipe bombs but I stuck to cardboard because there was no shrapnel and so it was safer.
I can't say I used common sense but this guy seems to have been asking for it..
My parents never knew the stuff I did. They knew I'd ordered chemicals, but they thought they were strictly for model rocket motors. Most of the explosions they heard were things I told them might happen. ( once, I tried powering a rocket engine with compressed air and hydrogen made with muriatic acid and charred aluminum cans in a pickle jar ) I wore goggles and the jar was behind cinder blocks and in a hole in the gravel driveway. When I used the sparker to ignite the engine there was still air in the jar and the resulting explosion blew the lid of the jar of acid 50 feet into the air and made the loudest bang I ever produced. I had done this with alcohol vapors and pure oxygen without that happening before...
This was all before the internet was widely available and research hard..
This post has no point accept that I wonder what other ppl have done that deserves a darwin award...
Circuit city would love it if NOBODY sold VHS tapes because then everyone would have to buy a DVD player.
Confused customers looking for the VHS tape section are easily redirected to the DVD player section of Circuit City.
I personally can not tell the difference between a digital and an analog TV's picture, and I like sturdy tapes better than easily scratched DVDs. I also already have a VCR and don't want to bay another $70 for another piece of equipment that does the same ( does less actually since you can't record DVDs )
I also remember that the pr0n DVD that I watched on my PC would not let me watch the film until the previews at the beginning had finished playing ( with the Fast Forward button disabled too! ) If i cared to watch the film again I'd have to sit through all the previews again before being shown the freaken main menu!.
I also remember watching The Matrix on a computer monitor and thinking that the hi-res made the film look WORSE because at that resolution the CG effects were more obvoiusly drawn in.
Screw DVD and it's stupid software features. I just want to watch the frikken movie.
In the past I've seen Discovery Channel documentaries about how subs have to surface to communicate by radio.. This could make that possible.
Actually you SHOULD be able to shoot your .357 at coke cans as long as the noise doesn't keep people up at night. But we don't live in an ideal world...
You could afford a business class connection with a static IP for less than that so sign up!