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User: johnjaydk

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Comments · 289

  1. Re:Rehashing all the old arguments.... on Should Programmers Be Called Engineers? (theatlantic.com) · · Score: 1

    In some jurisdictions, you cannot call yourself an Engineer without a license. Civil Engineers, for example, have to take the EIT exam, gain some experience, and then apply for the Professional Engineer designation and license.

    It would be great to enact similar rules for software engineers.

    The IEEE recognizes me as a professional member but it's not quite the same thing.

  2. Re:Rehashing all the old arguments.... on Should Programmers Be Called Engineers? (theatlantic.com) · · Score: 1

    My diploma from the university says "Master in Science of Engineering, Software". So I guess I'm an engineer.

    But very little of what I've seen in my professional career can be labeled engineering with a straight face. The business is just not mature enough to do its business to engineering standards. I hope it'll grow up with time.

  3. Re:Economics isnt science. on Machine Learning Could Solve Economists' Math Problem · · Score: 3, Informative

    Marx was a drunken idiot whose economic "theories" didn't have so much as a means to correctly communicate value.

    His value theory is totally bonkers but much of his diagnosis of the ils of the capitalistic system is fairly good. Where people go wrong, is in looking for the solution in his works. There is a lot arm waving but hardly any coherent solutions.

  4. Re:Yeah, Heh Heh on Thousands Visit Trinity Test Site For 70th Anniversary of First Atomic Blast · · Score: 4, Funny

    For some insane reason, I've been binge reading books related to the Manhattan project. The takeaway is that much of the time they were flying blind or wearing blinders due to the extreme time pressure.

    Sometimes they were plain reckless. The criticality experiments is a good case; adjusting the distance between two semi-critical cores with a screwdriver jammed in between. Great fun until the screwdriver slipped and the core went critical. Didn't go boom but killed a guy. For good measure they repeated the experiment and killed another guy.

  5. Re:Santa's gonna be PISSED on Denmark Makes Claim To North Pole, Based On Undersea Geography · · Score: 1

    Santa's got to pay the danegeld like every one else. We're back, in case You didn't get the memo.

  6. Re:If Google happens to be an EU corporation ... on The EU Has a Plan To Break Up Google · · Score: 2

    What EU really wants to achieve is to break America ...

    Nice conspiracy theory but we can't even get along internally over here. Herding all the cats into a unified, secret attack on the US would require a coordinated act by several deities.

    I'm afraid any break up is self inflicted. The US is already even more fractured than EU.

  7. Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING. on The EU Has a Plan To Break Up Google · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Not only that, but the EUSSR doesn't seem to understand that an American corporation has nothing to do with European communists. They should go and re-read their history books and remember how close all of Europe was to speaking either German or Russian.

    I could have moderated your drivel to hell but that wouldn't help much.

    The EU commision can't tell US companies to do anything but they can set conditions for allowing them to operate within the EU. It's called sovereignty and the US does it too all the time. Having a beef with virtual or actual monopolies is not exactly a communist thing either. A monopoly is a direct attack on the free market and therefore upsets true free market believers.

    The US have a long, although not resent, history of cracking down on monopolies. The Standard Oil case is the poster child for this kind of policy.

  8. Re:Sad, regrettable and probably inevitable. on Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo Crashes · · Score: 1

    It's a hard thing to say but people die on a regular basis when flying untested, high performance aircrafts. There is a reason why test pilots can't get life insurance.

  9. Re:And then... on Maps Suggest Marco Polo May Have "Discovered" America · · Score: 1

    He got the nickname Marco after he lost his horse. Before, it was just straight Polo ... and apparently it's his shirt I'm wearing.

  10. Re:The Fed is corrupt through and through on The Secret Goldman Sachs Tapes · · Score: 2

    I'm shocked, shocked that gambling is going on here!

    Gotta watch Casablanca again on of these days.

  11. The right movie can do the trick too on Swedish Dad Takes Gamer Kids To Warzone · · Score: 1

    I sat down with my 12 yo gamer son and watched the movie 'Hamburger Hill'. That took a lot of the glamour out of FPS games.

    Next time, I'll try with 'Platoon'.

  12. Re:I know you're trying to be funny, but... on Linus Torvalds: "GCC 4.9.0 Seems To Be Terminally Broken" · · Score: 5, Informative

    And Mussolini made the trains run on time?

    Actually, he didn't. That myth have been repeatedly busted my historians.

  13. Re:New SSL root certificate authority on Snowden Seeks To Develop Anti-Surveillance Technologies · · Score: 1

    If you want to catch up to ~1990 tech, then you need to remove the "A" in "CA."

    Thanks for the insult. It hardly stung. I expect you to start the project shortly. I'll gladly donate to it on kickstarter.

  14. New SSL root certificate authority on Snowden Seeks To Develop Anti-Surveillance Technologies · · Score: 2, Interesting

    A nice step ahead would be the establishment of a new set of root certificates and an accompanying authority that signs other peoples certificates. All located in a country that doesn't play ball with NSA and other thugs.

    This would do a lot to dampen the routine man-in-the-middle we see these days.

  15. Re:Seriously? (Yes, seriously.) on Ask Slashdot: Best Rapid Development Language To Learn Today? · · Score: 2

    Don't you need to keep the original file and the code you used to transform it, so that you have an audit trail which shows how you got the current data?

    Only if it gets down to covering your ass and then you're fucked anyway. Nobody gives a shit how you contributed to a success.

  16. Too late to matter on European iPhone Chargers Prone To Overheating · · Score: 1

    That shit is almost ancient. Who gives a damn?

    If something that old haven't burned your house down yet then it's likely to be safe.

  17. Why not the death sentence while You're at it? on Life Sentences For Serious Cyberattacks Proposed In Britain · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Stupid gits.

  18. Re:When you gag the enginers ... on The 69 Words GM Employees Can Never Say · · Score: 1

    The story of the loss of the Challenger is much more complicated than simply "stupid managers, saintly engineers", and there's a lot of blame to spread around all parties.

    Sorry for using Challenger this way. It's borderline trolling/flamebait but an established, although incorrect example.

    My point is that engineers need to take a stand. Our actions or inactions can put the public at risk and that is a burden we have to respect. We are the experts and we have to make certain that the best possible knowledge is put forth in a way that management can't dismiss easily.

  19. When you gag the enginers ... on The 69 Words GM Employees Can Never Say · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You get a Challenger disaster.

    In my experience, You have to use exactly these words in order to get management to take problems serious. Turns out it was because they put management in a legal bind.

    Any engineer who follows GM's edict should be flogged. Bad stuff happens because good men do nothing.

  20. Re:Survivalists on Pentagon Document Lays Out Battle Plan Against Zombies · · Score: 1

    I hang around in survivalists circles a little bit and there's a little bit of a saying there "If you can survive a zombie apocalypse you can survive almost anything".

    Can we have a disturbing mod please?. I don't know if it's up, down or by how much but DAMN I need it here.

  21. Re:Aren't those guys rocket scientists? on The Dismal State of SATCOM Security · · Score: 1

    Not saying I'm representative of the whole group, but I'm a rocket scientist, and I'm pretty pants at information security.

    Getting them up there and not having them fall down is not half bad. I still try to keep my kerbals from blowing up. But seriously, at least accept that info-sec is important. There might be a business case in not being totally p0wnd.

  22. Aren't those guys rocket scientists? on The Dismal State of SATCOM Security · · Score: 1

    You would have thought people who made satellites were, like rocket scientists. Not drunken lemmings.

  23. Loots of good stuff out there on Ask Slashdot: Online, Free Equivalent To a CompSci BS? · · Score: 2

    This is all Python centric but that's where the jazz is these days:

    1. Codecademy. My 12 year old son just passed it.
    2. An Introduction to Interactive Programming in Python (coursera.org). Games and great fun. Also in python.
    3. Udacity.com. Do all of their software subjects. Just ditch the Java stuff. The 90's are long gone.

    I've got a 15 year old masters in CS but I went through the coursera and udacity stuff and learned quite a lot along the way. Good stuff.

  24. Re:isn't it used on violent prisoners? on The Science of Solitary Confinement · · Score: 1

    I also don't want to take the risk of torturing somebody who was wrongfully convicted.

    I don't want to torture anyone. Period. It permanently mentally mutilates both victim and perpetrator. Just say no.

    Don't even get me started on torture light...

  25. Re:Astrology is a proto-science on Majority of Young American Adults Think Astrology Is a Science · · Score: 1

    Economy -> ???

    Economy is the precursor to reading tea leaves, everybody knows that. They teach that in B-school.