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User: trybywrench

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  1. Re:One of my earliest memories on Was That A Tsunami? · · Score: 1

    When I was around 14 I was visiting family in Daytona Beach, we were walking on the beach at night after eating dinner listening to the waves for an hour or so then went home. Some time that night a very large wave came ashore and reached all the way up the beach past where the cars drive and where everyone sets up (umbrellas, towels, etc ). The next day, you could see how far it reached by the stains from the water in the otherwise white sand. I distinctly remember the weather man on the news saying it was possibly a "rogue" wave which was the first time I had ever heard the phrase. IIRC there were no storms that night.

  2. Re:Blackberry Enterprise on How BlackBerry Is Riding iOS and Android To Power Its Comeback · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Blackberry Enterprise is one of those products that I really just have to scratch my head at. It has always seemed to me that encouraging users to treat as secure something which is easily lost, stolen, or damaged is a fundamentally flawed concept for a business model. Sure, there are users out there who have a genuine need for such a concept, but the problem that really needs to be addressed is user understanding of data security practices, not giving them technology that encourages continuing bad practices in ignorance.

  3. unique vs total? on Apache OpenOffice Downloaded 50 Million Times In a Year · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you're going to make the comparison between the two download counts they need to be the same as in unique vs unique or total vs total but not total vs unique.

  4. Read good code, talk to good developers on Ask Slashdot: Becoming a Programmer At 40? · · Score: 2

    I'm 37 and was recently promoted from senior dev to director of our development department at my company which means I do the hiring/firing now. I think ageism is real in this industry but, at the end of the day, what matters is results. If you can write good, maintainable, best practice code and deliver on time you will always be employable. Another thing that is key is you have to be willing to learn new things and re-invent yourself as technology evolves. Don't you dare get entrenched in one language, platform, or way of doing things always try new things and approaches. When you tell yourself or someone else "well this is just the way i've always done it" that should set off an alarm.

    More tactically, my advice is to read good code and talk to good developers. You can gain a lot of wisdom by just having the guts to ask, expect some odd looks given you're older but all good developers appreciate good code and will help you produce good code. If anyone gives you sh*t about your age write them off as a waste of space and go talk to someone else.

  5. works like a champ on Boeing's CHAMP Missile Uses Radio Waves To Remotely Disable PCs · · Score: 1

    It's interesting that it can disable multiple targets, I wonder what the power requirements are. I figured the missile would detonate near the target and use the energy of the explosion to somehow how generate targeted microwaves like a shaped charge energy weapon more or less. It's on a missile because missiles are fast but I bet we see the same setup installed on drones in the near future.

  6. Re:Another Apple blunder on Apple To Stream a Product Launch Live For the First Time · · Score: 1

    "Ipad mini priced at $329 so as to avoid gutting sales of Ipad 3. Another in a string of Apple blunders. Customers will defect to Nexus 7 at $100 less or Kindle Fire also at $100 less and offering the Amazon marketplace. It's now safe to say that Apple will be looking at a minority share of the tablet market from here on in."

    man what a great quote. Since when has any Apple customer cared about a price difference of $100? Just the fact that it's made of metal and not plastic is worth $100 to the average consumer's mind. Heh "string of blunders" that's freaking priceless.

  7. sounds like code and fix on Ask Slashdot: How Often Do You Push To Production? · · Score: 1

    Pushing to production multiple times a day sounds like code-and-fix to me. Now, promotion to UAT/Test multiple times a day sounds much more reasonable. Pushes to production should be regular and frequent but not multiple times a day. In my company, we have a couple of change windows that production pushes happen in. Most times the windows come and go with no updates but when we do have code that's ready for production we schedule it for the next available window.

  8. How is this possible on California Employers Can't Ask For Your Facebook Password · · Score: 2

    I'd like to see one of these cases in detail because I can't get my mind around how an employee would feel compelled to give up their facebook (or other) private passwords to their employer. Nor can I get my mind around an employer thinking it's within their power to make such a request.

    Correct me if I'm wrong, but an employee is protected by law to not even have to tell their employer if they have kids or not let alone access to private information.

  9. Keep it separate from developers if you can on Ask Slashdot: Should Developers Install Their Software Themselves? · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What we do at my company is allow the developers to work with the project managers and deploy their applications out to a test environment for client facing review and acceptance as often as they like. This lets us do new test deployments quickly and easily with no red-tape. Once the project is a go for production then a formal request is made to move to the production server farm. The main guys in Ops, Dev, and the PM are brought into a meeting and make sure everything is taken care of ( SSL certs, DNS, monitoring, load balancing, number of nodes, etc ) then a go, no-go decision is made on the deployment. Once it's been decided that a production deployment is ready then the actual task of deploying the application is assigned to whoever wants it (usually the team lead) since the process of deploying to production is identical to deploying to test in our environments. Also, we use our continuous build server (Hudson) with a production maven profile for actually retrieving the war that is going to the server farm (i do Java web apps).

    My personal preference as a sr.dev is to have other people do the deployments and verification as much as possible. It never ceases to amaze me how often over looked issues are found just because someone other than the person married to the code is doing things.

    My best advice is, regardless of the size of your organization, map out a process on paper and follow it all day every day. You will appreciate the consistency when you get in those situations where a lot of balls are in the air at once.

  10. Are you serious? on Pakistan's PM Demands International Blasphemy Laws From UN · · Score: 5, Funny

    Oh wait your serious, let me laugh even harder! - Bender

  11. Re:Author obviously knows nothing about the Navy on Why Aircraft Carriers Still Rule the Oceans · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Not only are carriers sufficiently armed and escorted themselves, sinking one does not win a war. In fact, sinking a carrier is such an overt act of war it guarantees the doom of the attacking government.

    them> yay we sunk a carrier
    them> what's that sound? it's a thousand inbound tomahawks? ....hm

  12. DDOS isn't the end of the world on Wikileaks DDoSed Again · · Score: 1

    How does a DDOS prevent wikileaks from spreading information? Go somewhere else, upload whatever you have to any of the bazillion file upload services then seed the address in the social networks and the rest takes care of itself. I don't think any government thinks a DDOS would prevent information that wikileaks has from being made public. My guess is it's just a publicity stunt by wikileaks themselves.

  13. cruise control with steering on Will Speed Limits Inhibit Autonomous Car Adoption? · · Score: 1

    I've always imagined self driving cars as just cruise control with steering. You set the speed turn it on and then read a book, any touch of the steering wheel or brake pedal would disengage the whole system and return it back to manual control.

  14. KVM + management suite on VMware, a Falling Giant? · · Score: 2

    Libvirt and the improvements to KVM plus Xen getting mainlined (is that the right term?) has to be hurting VMWare. Rackspace, along with a lot of major players, are spearheading OpenStack which ought to be a major open source enterprise player when it matures. Also, cloudstack recently went 100% open source which puts even more pressure on VMWare.

    Also, projects like OpenVSwitch are putting major pressure on the proprietary vendors too.

  15. what an oppurtunity! on Ask Slashdot: Becoming a Network Administrator? · · Score: 1

    Man I would be learning everything I could get my hands on/enrolled in. Having said that, don't over do it. A good network is a simple network and don't forget that everything will be running on it so if it breaks everything breaks.

    They guy above who said to contact an HP Gold Partner has the right idea but do the work yourself that way you learn it instead of just contracting it out. From the sounds of it it's not like you're going to be buying insane networking gear that supports OC-19whatever so sticking with a firm like HP and taking the best practices route is the way to go.

  16. where's the long form? on Osama Bin Laden Reported Dead, Body In US Hands · · Score: 5, Funny

    I want to see a long form death certificate

    (stolen from fark)

  17. Re:Obvious question from their perspective on Ask Slashdot: Do I Give IT a Login On Our Dept. Server? · · Score: 1

    I replied above but logged in this time. It's only a HIPPA violation if patient identifiable information is given to non-authorized parties. So a calendar filled with patient info would only be a violation if non-hospital employees were looking at it. Even then, the info has to be specifically patient identifiable so like a schedule of operations published to the world is not a HIPPA violation . I work as a software dev in pharmacy and deal with a lot of prescription data, as long as we don't tie SSN's (which are being phased out) or names and addresses to the drugs being dispensed then we can do whatever we want with the data.

  18. tsunami coming ashore in Hawaii now per cnn on 8.8 Earthquake Near Japanese Coast · · Score: 2

    CNN is saying the tsunami is coming ashore in Hawaii now, they said they've been evacuating all night so hopefull there will be no deaths. A buddy of mine in Japan said he felt the shaking for "6 or 7 hours" he's checking in regularly on facebook so i know he's safe. thoughts and prayers to all those affected.

  19. more like casualty of war on Ask Slashdot: Is There a War Against Small Mail Servers? · · Score: 1

    this seems more like a casualty of war with spammers.

  20. Re:Persistent myth? on Why You Shouldn't Reboot Unix Servers · · Score: 1

    I came here to say the same thing, I've never thought to reboot a unix box to fix a problem. In fact, in the face of a serious operating system issue I want to do everything I can do to avoid the temporary purgatory that is a reboot.

  21. I was at school in FL on Challenger 25 Years Later · · Score: 2

    I was at school in Port Orange (small town next to Daytona Beach). We could see it from the playground, they sent us all home. All the teachers were crying, got home, parents had come home from work and they were crying. It was pretty surreal for an elementary school kid.

    I distinctly remember the SRB's winding down from the explosion.

    Oddly enough, I am now living in Dallas which wasn't far from ground zero for the Columbia breakup. I remember hearing it thinking it was thunder, it was early enough in the morning that I was half asleep and didn't think it odd to hear thunder on a clear day. My sister called me to tell me to turn on the television. A buddy of mine was a brand new journalist in Tyler/Longview and covered much of the disaster. I think one of his stores or photographs was picked up by the NYT.

  22. key exchange problem on Collage, and the Challenge of "Deniability" · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Ok but how to do you communicate the "protocol" to your audience which may be scattered around the globe? And how do you guarantee communicating the "protocol" hasn't been compromised? As soon as the "protocol" is discovered it becomes easy to begin censoring again. I suppose it could work if you could be face to face with the person you're trying to communicate with and manually give them the "protocol" but if you can do that then you can just exchange public keys too and use the standard public key cryptography setup.

  23. Re:conservatives on Does the GOP Pay Friendly Bloggers? · · Score: 1

    as Quiet_desperation pointed out those numbers are meaningless without factoring in cost of living. family of four @ 250k/year in San Francisco is very different than family of four @ 250k/year in Fargo.

  24. Put them on Japanese whaling vessels on Heat Ray Gun Fails Final Test; Nixed From War · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I was thinking of this heat ray the other day when watching previous for that stupid show Whale Wars. Put them on the whaling ships as a non-lethal, extended range, deterrent to keep people from approaching the boats.

  25. parallel to operations on Where Does IT Fall Within Your Organization? · · Score: 1

    I work in a small independent pharmacy chain in Texas, we have about 15 stores and maybe around 110 employees total.

    Our IT department consists of me (Senior developer), a Junior developer, a Sys. Admin, and my boss who has the title VP of I.T. My boss is at the same level as the CFO and COO even though he doesn't have a "C" title and they all report to our CEO/owner. My projects mostly cross in to the operations department but the I.T. department has its finger in all departments. Our system administrator deals mostly with the pharmacies themselves where I mostly work with the corporate staff but also deal a lot with the pharmacies. My boss has the most experience (aside from the CEO) with the pharmacy business of all the executives so he basically consults for the other department heads. We routinely work on accounting concepts and ideas for the CFO as well as managing profitability with dispensed drugs for Operations.

    Unlike most grunts I have 100% confidence in my boss and the other executive level people here. I think I got that way because they're very upfront and candid, no sugar coating, no jargon, no exec speak. If your project rocks then it rocks if it sucks then it sucks and they've been 100% right so far (i've been here 10 years).