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User: MerlynEmrys67

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  1. Re:30 Times Faster? on Obama's New Executive Order Says the US Must Build an Exascale Supercomputer · · Score: 1

    You apparently don't know what HPC stands for... Half Price Computing - everyone drives their margins to 0 to win one of these multi million dollar contracts. The only companies that win are the suppliers to the bidders. So lets see in 4 years CPU/GPUs will have 5-6x more compute power, we can throw 5-6x more CPUs at the problem and connect them up with nice 200-400Gbs (5-8x) interconnect. This isn't a research problem - just an interesting engineering problem.
    What is probably a research problem is adapting the algorithms to keep all of those 100's of thousand CPU cores busy solving the same problem and keeping them filled with useful work. I am not sure how well MPI will scale to this level

  2. Re:Helping a full third of all citizens? on Running a Town Over Twitter · · Score: 2

    a third of the 3,800 residents have Twitter accounts

    That isn't even the most objectionable thing in the summary. I found that the mayor of the town of 3,800 has 350K followers, I can imagine the signal to noise ratio involved there. Does the mayor have to filter through 1000 twits to find one that actually came from a constituent. Even worse if he uses twitter to do simple polling... What does his followers say vs. the people that actually live there.

  3. Re:Missed Opportunity on Wi-Fi Router's 'Pregnant Women' Setting Sparks Vendor Rivalry In China · · Score: 1

    They did - Wall Buster mode.
    Wondering if Wall buster mode goes over the legal power settings for the router - would be interesting to see if they can import into the USA

  4. Re:Go Solar, it can make good financial sense. on Solar Power Capacity Installs Surpass Wind and Coal For Second Year · · Score: 1
    Ok - so these "Subsides" are simply tax deductions that every business in the country gets. I spend money on R&D/Salary/manufacturing - I don't pay taxes on my expenses. If the claim is I pay taxes on revenues - the analysis is wrong and back to my original complaint.

    A subsidy is like the electric car business where the government pays me 15,000 dollars to purchase a tesla - causing the cost of the Tesla to go down. The cost of manufacturing being deducted from Tesla's taxes as an expense is not a subsidy at all.

  5. Re:Go Solar, it can make good financial sense. on Solar Power Capacity Installs Surpass Wind and Coal For Second Year · · Score: 1
    I keep hearing this "Big Oil Subsidies", I also keep hearing about the billions of dollars the oil industry pays to lease land to extract oil, and the permitting/protest process they go through that looses money as well.

    Can someone quantify what subsidies they get?

    Is it simply a tax deduction for R&D that everyone gets?

    Is it the fact that they extract 1B in oil value, but only pay 1/2 Billion in leases (In otherwords they make a profit instead of the government)

    What are these subsidies i keep hearing about

  6. Haven't we letter worded it now on Interactive Map Exposes the World's Most Murderous Places · · Score: 2
    I thought it was racist or not politically correct to say the T-word anymore. After all, by not saying it we give it power like He Who Shall Remain Nameless.

    THUG THUG THUG

  7. Re:Progressive Fix 101 on Cheap Gas Fuels Switch From Electric Cars To SUVs · · Score: 1
    I'm ok with the Tax Gas -> Why spend it though, we already spend more than we take in... Why not just use the extra money to reduce the deficit instead.

    Why do we have this, oh lets raise taxes to spend more money mentality, it is short sighted and stupid. We should raise revenue or cut spending until we have paid off our debt, and then spend the extra money on programs that will raise the prosperity of the country more than not taking the money from individuals can do it. Trust me that is a pretty high bar.

  8. You must work for very piss poor companies. Most of the companies that I have worked for make 400-500K per employee. Yes, at that level most of us can be paid enough to live on.
    Burger flippers may only make 100K per employee - but then that is a minimum wage job that pulls down 20K a year, plus fees/expenses/overhead etc. no wonder they can't make it at 15 dollars an hour.
    If you think your salary is the most important part of the equation - you are mistaken, COGS, buildings, benefits are a significant cost there. 100K per employee means 50K in profit per employee (If you have a 50% gross margin)... Think about that.

  9. Re:Rare arguement for jury nullification on Florida Teen Charged With Felony Hacking For Changing Desktop Wallpaper · · Score: 2
    Very true.

    When did our schools become police states. I don't ever remember even seeing a police officer at my high school /*mumble*/ years ago (Now get off my grass). Now the schools have police officers on the property as an assignment, and trivial things like this become fully punishable by the state. What is wrong with two weeks suspension (Which I still think is heavy for a simple student prank) without needing to get the police involved and the threat of being arrested and tried as an adult (at 14 - really?)

    So yes, handle it as an internal school disciplinary issue, and don't have the police or local government get involved at all... There is no need to ruin children's lives at such a young age

  10. Re:a question - Right now on Apple's Tim Cook Calls Out "Religious Freedom" Laws As Discriminatory · · Score: 1
    I am required by the government, over penalty of a large fine to do business with corrupt insurance companies. I MUST purchase their product, that provides me nothing that I can't provide on my own. I like how now we equate having insurance with having access to health care. Currently I pay about 10,000 dollars a year for insurance that provides me about 5000 dollars in services a year. What could I do with that additional 5,000 dollars a year for the next 10-15 years that I am running a surplus to create a saving account that I can pay for services when I am older and running a deficit.

    To make it more plain. On average the country pays more to insurance companies that they are provided in medical services... otherwise the insurance companies would go out of business.

    So, yes currently the government compels me to do business with a company that I don't want to

  11. Re:This is the dumbest research I've seen this yea on No, It's Not Always Quicker To Do Things In Memory · · Score: 1

    What do you expect... There is only one person that MIGHT have a computer background on the paper... This is pure academic fluff, compare an in-memory database with a spinning rust based database and see how many operations you can get out of each one performing the same operation.

  12. Re:Check their work or check the summary? on No, It's Not Always Quicker To Do Things In Memory · · Score: 1
    Here is how you make the results faster.

    Compare:
    1) Calculating 1MB of data and writing it to disk
    vs.
    2) Calulating 100K of data, writing it to disk, repeat 10 times.

    If the time to write to disk is what takes most of the time, then getting the operation started early and writing to disk in parallel to calculating your data will always win. In their case - what they have done is made the in memory operation exceedingly stupid so it takes too much time. I could trivially write C code that blows their operation out of the water, unfortunately - their Java/Python code are hiding a LOT of inefficiencies in the in-memory operation. So compare their disk operation, with a cache line optimized in-memory calculation and a disk cache optimized disk write operation... It won't even be close.

  13. First Post on Homeopathy Turns Out To Be Useless For Treating Medical Conditions · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'm Cured

  14. It is never about the tool on Ask Slashdot: Issue Tracker For Non-Engineers? · · Score: 2
    There are two ways of approaching the problem... Get a tool and make your process conform to the tool, or document your process and get a tool that can be modified to support the process. One of these ways works, the other never does.

    That said - most engineering organizations have documented a process and adapted one of many tools to support this process. Sounds like in this case they don't even know what the process is - heck, everyone probably does their own thing so there is likely to not even be a process.

    Try this
    Step 1: Determine how you want issue tracking to work
    Step 2: Get everyone to follow this process without bringing in a tool, your process will change during this step
    Step 3: Document the final process from Step 2
    Step 4: Bring in any tool that can be lightly customized to support the documented process

    Note the hopefully lightly customized part above... Yes there is probably work to do here, regardless of what tool you choose. Most likely you want to pay for the tool that will require the easiest/lightest customization - it will be cheaper than trying to get a tool for free and using a small team to massively customize it.

  15. Austin Lounge Lizards say it best on Was Linus Torvalds Right About C++ Being So Wrong? · · Score: 1
  16. Its life Jim on Leonard Nimoy Dies At 83 · · Score: 4, Informative
    But not as we know it.

    A tear just left my eye.

  17. Re:Pepper Spray on 100 Years of Chemical Weapons · · Score: 1

    Yes, most women I know keep a bottle of it in their purse for usage. Not quite what you were thinking - but a much more common usage

  18. How are you sourcing candidates on Ask Slashdot: What Portion of Developers Are Bad At What They Do? · · Score: 1
    Please don't tell me you placed a monster ad, or even worse Craigslist. Are you working with a GOOD recruiting firm? Are you big enough to have an internal sourcing team to bring you candidates?

    So many people think this is easy and won't pay for the expertise to hire "the best" (Everyone wants the best, everyone also wants to pay industry average wages... Moneyball doesn't work in Tech). A good recruiter will be able to talk to you to find what you are looking for, find you a couple candidates - listen to you on why you didn't like them and change what they are sending to you, repeat until you find what you are looking for

    Honestly it sounds like you have a specific set of filters you are looking for that you haven't applied (cryptographic systems, security maybe) and are bringing in generic candidates that weren't screened for these skills. I can trivially answer your questions - but then I have been in that area for 20 years, don't ask me how to write a database query or setup a JSON parser.

  19. Trees on WA Pushes Back On Microsoft and Code.org's Call For Girls-First CS Education · · Score: 4, Insightful
    The trouble with the maples
    (And they're quite convinced they're right)
    They say the oaks are just too lofty
    And they grab up all the light
    But the oaks can't help their feelings
    If they like the way they're made
    And they wonder why the maples
    Can't be happy in their shade

    And of course the sad ending

    So the maples formed a union
    And demanded equal rights
    'The oaks are just too greedy
    We will make them give us light'
    Now there's no more oak oppression
    For they passed a noble law
    And the trees are all kept equal
    By hatchet, axe and saw
    --- Rush 1978
    Remember, you can never make yourself better by having someone else chop the other person down. Very powerful song - still resonates today.

  20. Re:Too early to be discussing the contents on Obama's 2016 NASA Budget Status Quo, Funds Europa Mission · · Score: 2

    I would be happy if the Senate shitcans it and actually votes on something else. Would be better than what H.R. has done for the past 6 years which isn't to even to bother voting on a budget, much less one that could actually pass. Lets hope the Republicans can do a little better and actually vote on a budget, even better if they can get 6-10 Democrats to vote yes (and even better if 3-4 Republicans vote against it)

  21. Re:Institutionalized Prejudice on WA Bill Takes Aim at Boys' Dominance In Computer Classes · · Score: 1

    Have to disagree with you a bit here.
    If my preferred college has 100 openings there is a finite number of successes (people allowed in). If I allow people who aren't as qualified as I am into the college, and I don't make it in because I am not a particular color, sex, sexuality, etc. then I have been pushed back and must go to a less desirable college. This is happening today in MANY college admissions (with colleges being sued because they continue to discriminate on the grounds of sex and race/ethnicity).
    Now lets throw in other factors where sex and race are used to determine winners and losers and it is demonstrably provable that for every person you push forward, you must push another person back.
    If you believe a rising tide raises all boats are you a firm believer in trickle down economics as well?

  22. A good Net Neutrality thing for law on Fixing Verizon's Supercookie · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't care that you traffic shape my traffic -> But it is immoral and should be illegal to change it. Why do we allow ISPs like this to change the traffic flowing through their systems to the destination.
    I am not talking about adding an MPLS tag that gets inserted on insertion into the provider and stripped before it leaves the other side, I am talking adjusting my traffic to add content to the L4+ content. The ISP should only adjust things at L3 and below. Everything above that should never be touched (Ok - Large scale NAT I can live with - Lets move that to L5+)

  23. Re:I think the thing being missed here on Why We're Not Going To See Sub-orbital Airliners · · Score: 2
    Really, My company requires me to book the LUF (Lowest Usable Fair) +10%. I had to argue when the darn computer put me on a flight that included an overnight in Phoenix, that would have included a 100 dollar a night airfare because it was going to save them 50 bucks in airfare. My boss bought that argument and I got to come home a day earlier.

    Airfare is driven off of the cheapest flight between two places - saving a couple hours isn't going to be a commercial success, look at the example of the Concorde.

  24. Re:Slashdot sociopaths... on Argentine Court Rules Orangutan Is a "Non-Human Person" · · Score: 1
    The funny thing is most animals in captivity live 1.5-2x as long as their peers in the wild. I am going to love this, ape goes back into the wild without any real survival skills and either dies of starvation, or gets hunted by the first Jaguar that comes close to it.

    Once an animal is taken out of the wild and held in captivity it is almost impossible to put them back into the wild - they just can't survive. This is why you are very careful with taking animals out of the wild - it is a one way street.

  25. Been there, Done that, Own the t-shirt on How Venture Capitalist Peter Thiel Plans To Live 120 Years · · Score: 1
    I plan on living forever

    Got to love people's plans - Of course there is nothing stopping him from being hit by a bus, or other random thing that can get people.