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User: FuzzyDaddy

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  1. Re:dead tree is bad, but... on Prime Time Freeware Manual: the Dossier Series · · Score: 4, Interesting
    While I agree that it is preferable not to make printouts when possible, I find the book format much more readable than the screen. I usually end up only printing out the pieces of interest (table of content, chapter I need, etc.) But I am bothered with the amount of paper I produce.

    Perhaps the test is hpow long you're going to use the book.

    Does anyone out there read books on PDA's? How do you find it compared to reading from the computer or reading from a dead-tree book?

  2. Re:Not water on US Joins ITER Tokamak Fusion Project · · Score: 1

    I believe the point is that although it is claimed to be safe, it's not like it's all that safe, as it uses tritium, which is very dangerous, and not at all like water.

  3. Re:Giving job interviews - good advice! on How to be a Programmer · · Score: 1
    I was hiring a process engineer for a small lab who would need a good working knowledge of the equipment she was working on, including the ability to repair it. I also needed someone who was not afraid of the equipment, and would be willing to make improvements on it.

    Her ability to jump in on a new piece of equipment and try it out and figure out how to use it, without damaging it in the process, has been a big asset for us as we have asked her to do this many times. Often there is no one that knows how to use or fix something, and we need people who can figure it out.

    If I was hiring a design engineer or a computer programmer, I certainly wouldn't have asked them to do that. The point isn't to ask something unexpected and irrelevant. The point is to actually test the relevant skills of the person, not just sit and chat with them to see if they're amiable. Amiability is crucial, of course, but so are skills.

  4. Re:How was JEDEC deceived? on Rambus Wins Case Against Infineon · · Score: 4, Funny
    short of torturing the RAMBUS representatives

    Which is starting to look attractive to some people about now...

  5. Giving job interviews - good advice! on How to be a Programmer · · Score: 3, Interesting
    You should at a minimum give the candidate the equivalent of an oral ex- amination on the technical skills for two hours. With practice, you will be able to quickly cover what they know and quickly retract from what they don't know to mark out the boundary. Interviewees will respect this.

    This is right on - the jobs I've been most attracted to are the ones where they asked me the most technical questions. I'm surprised how little of this sort of questioning many people do when hiring. When I'm interviewing people, I try to put them through their paces as much as possible.

    I had one engineer help me take apart a vacuum feedthrough, clean it, and put it back together. She jumped right in and did it. I offered her a job on the spot.

  6. Fess up... on 98% of DNS Queries at the Root Level are Unnecessary · · Score: 4, Funny
    How many people just went and checked to see if there's an .elvis TLD?


    Actually, I've always had a theory that Microsoft coined ".msn" because they wanted to get their own top level domain.

  7. Re:Yes they did... on The Future of Java? · · Score: 1
    It takes twice as much code to get the same thing done as it does in Python, and the result is slower to boot.

    > I disagree on both points.

    > If you are writing enterprise applications ...

    This is where language wars get silly. Who said the original poster was writing enterprise applications? Don't think your application is the final measure of a programming language for everyone, just because it is for you.

  8. Re:eep.. on The Costs of Making a DRAM Chip · · Score: 1
    Anyway, I'm still waiting for soya based memory sticks.

    How about some soya based bread sticks instead?

  9. This isn't faster than light communication... on UFO Evidence From SOHO Satellite · · Score: 2, Informative
    However, I also claim that there is information transmitted between you and me, at that moment in time, regarding the status of the other packet.

    This is where your argument breaks down.

    This is the same problem with EPR type communcation. I send out two entangled photons. Person C and A measure the polarizations simultaneously, far apart. They know they got the same answer. But how do you use this to send a message from A to C?

    Or in less esoteric terms, suppose I can send two letters to people who can't communicate with each other. They know they both got the exact same letter - but how can they use this to tell each other anything? They can't - and hence no information has passed from one person to the other.

  10. Pocket Porn on Microsoft Shows Off Watch, Portable Media Player · · Score: 1
    I know a couple going through infertility treatments (which have been succesful, btw).

    Anyway, the husband was called on to give "samples" - which you give in their little room - he downloaded dirty pictures from the internet onto his PDA.

  11. Re:It might be kosher (two maybes, an if and a but on Lab-Grown Steak · · Score: 2
    Would it count as "flesh stripped from a living animal"? (Yes, the bible says you have to kill something before you eat it.) I guess you could properly slaughter the animal, and harvest the cells while they were still alive, but if the cell line was extracted from an animal that was alive during the extraction, I would think that would be a no-no.

  12. Where it will all end on Requiem for the Disappearing Pay Phone · · Score: 2

    This is the logical endpoint.

  13. Actually... on Apple Applies For Color-Change Patent · · Score: 1

    I bet your parents picked it for you when you were a baby.

  14. However this plays out... on Lindows Legal Challenge · · Score: 4, Interesting
    While I have no love in particular for either Microsoft or Lindows, I do hope on some level that Microsoft ends up losing something significant in this case. It would be nice, for once, to see a big company initiate legal proceedings against a much smaller entity, then come out the worse for it in the end. Too many times you see big companies coming down with lawsuits with an apparent attitude of "even if we lose the case we don't come out behind, and perhaps we can crush them solely with the expenses of litigation."

  15. Re:Just to pick one out of that mess of gobbledygo on Top 10 Unsolved Space Mysteries · · Score: 1
    Flamebait? I thought it was funny. And you even put a little :-) at the end.

  16. Just to pick one out of that mess of gobbledygook on Top 10 Unsolved Space Mysteries · · Score: 2
    By technologically enhancing such vacuum stress within these nuclei, via a retuning of Maxwell's "scalar potentials," the normal radioactive breakdown process is accelerated -- literally billions of times

    OK, quiz time, gumbysworld. What fields are determined by Maxwell's scalar and vector potentials? What are the MKS units of these potentials? What are the units of the fields? What other forces are involved in radioactive decay?

  17. Re:Wow on Fixing Wireless Security By Pulling The Plug · · Score: 3, Informative
    I remember talking to someone at IBM about this. They told me that at the end of every shift, they were to remove the HDD from their computer (I assume it was on some sort of tray) and place it in a locked storage cabinet.

    I worked for a company that sold systems for use in classified environments. They all wanted removable hard drives for this very reason.

  18. How Cool. on Dual Screen/Display Laptop · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Many uses for computers have not had widespread use because of issues of form factors.

    I want to do my AutoCAD drawings at a desk, sitting up, with a cup of coffee. I want to read a book on sitting back in a comfortable chair. I want to watch TV sitting WAY back on my couch. When doing designs, I like to have a full screen of the design software, and a pad of paper for notes and hand sketches.

    Whether the input device issues (where's the damn keyboard?) are worked out or not on this thing, I can't tell. But to have two independent desktops on one device seems really useful.

    Geeks tend to denigrate "form factor" type issues, because there is often no substantial underlying technical difficulty. Giving someone much credit for making a rounded computer case seems silly given the enormous expertise that many other people put into making the guts. But these things can be important, and can affect usability. Because my computer is not butt-ugly (yes, I have a candy-colored iMac), I (and my wife) don't mind putting it in a very public area. This makes it far more convenient to access casually during the day.

    Which isn't to say I would get a crappy but attractive computer (no Mac flames please, that's beside the point) - but even seemingly dumb things can have an important effect on the way people use computers.

  19. I want a new mac mouse on Apple Win32 to OS X Porting Guide · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    I want a three button mouse for my mac to use with Linux, but I can't find one to match my iMac'c color!

  20. Re:gcc and Intel compilers on Intel Compiler Compared To gcc · · Score: 2
    One tool that Intel has that no one else does is an accurate software model of their processor. They make one to validate the design before making silicon. This allows them to look at EXACTLY the code that is executing inside the processor - cache hits/misses, branch predictions, everything down to the last clock cycle.

    This tool alone probably gives them a huge edge in developing compilers.

  21. This we don't need on Newsflash: Mac Users Love Apple, Hate Microsoft · · Score: 5, Funny
    From the article:

    There needs to a psychosexual analysis of the Mac community.

    Please, god, no.

  22. Re:Source and motivation on DOS Attacks On DNS Provider · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Whereas these attacks, as well as some of the worms that have surfaced recently, strike me more as testing of new techniques and probing of defenses by an organized group that is working on techniques to cause widespread disruption.

    Frightening as it is, I would agree with you. It seems that bragging rights would be much better for taking down amazon, yahoo, msn, or some other big name company. Attacks on infrastructure components which are not widely known to the public at large do strike me as a probe to see where the vulnerabilities of the network lie.

    After this period of explosive internet growth, we need to start addressing the vulnerabilies of the network. Whether the network can still withstand a massive physical attack or not, we know it is vulnerable to network attacks. I had a friend who used to work for MIT Lincoln Labs, he told me there were at least a dozen ways to take down the internet.

  23. Re:Ahh the memories... on MS-DOS 1981-2002 RIP · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I've actually had to use the hjkl keys as arrow keys in vi recently. I telneted in from a windows box and it was screwing up the control characters.

    Software written for when you couldn't count on arrow keys or color displays is still useful for those desparate situations where you need to get in and get SOMETHING to work. I don't even know how you'd try to get into a flaky windows box...

  24. Whose paying? on Publishers' Attack Free Government Sites · · Score: 5, Informative
    The limited availability of information in scientific journals has always bothered me.

    When I was a grad student, the taxpayers paid about $750K/year to keep our lab going. We published five or six papers a year.

    Those papers were then sent to UNPAID peer reviewers (professors at other universities.) Of course, that's part of their jobs, and a good chunk of their salary comes from the same government grants.

    So far so good. I think the publicly funded research has generally been good for the country and humanity as a whole.

    Now, the journal we published the articles in holds the copyrights, charges $20 for a reprint, and a subscription is literally tens of thousands of dollars a year. Remember - they didn't do the work, or pay for the research, or even pay the article reviewers.

    So this nonsense about "the government paying for something than can be provided privately" is nonsense. The government has paid for 99% of it already, these companies want to profiteer on the back of those government expenditures.

    If the government is funding the research, should the citizens have open access to the results?

  25. You think 90 seconds is bad... on 87GB On DVD-Sized Media · · Score: 2, Interesting
    We rent out videos for my daughter (3 yrs) - Blue's Clues and other semi-educational kids things. Each time, I sit there and fast forward through five minutes of promos for other crap (including Barney, which I vowed would never enter my house.)

    As annoying as it is now, if I couldn't fast forward through them, I wouldn't rent them. Period. I don't want her watching a bunch of commercials.

    And while she's clever, I'm not sure she's ready to log into our linux box and watch them on the computer. :)