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User: sycomonkey

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  1. Switch to Community College and transfer to a 4yr on Ask Slashdot: Is Going To a Technical College Worth It? · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's really rare to go to a technical college for CS-related stuff and have it work out. The entire concept has been sullied beyond redemption by the ITT's and Devry's of the world. The best bet, money wise, it to take your first 2 years at community college, get all your prereqs like History and Calculus and CS101 out of the way for cheap. Then transfer to a traditional state 4-year for the last two years, even if its just a satellite campus. It's going to be much more expensive, and more challenging than CC, but you will hopefully end up with knowledgeable professors right when you need them, and after 50% of the class has dropped for lack of interest or plain immaturity. Also do your best to work with the school and line up an internship during your summer break between 3rd and 4th year. You'll have a degree that helps your resume instead of hinders it, a token amount of real world experience, and spend a bit over half as much money as just going straight to the 4-year.

  2. Re:The importance of grouping on Kasparov Arrested By Russian Police · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Then why do they keep saying they're a punk music group, they obviously can't be a group if they're not associative.

  3. HTTP is Stateless. on Delaware To Permit In-state Online Gambling · · Score: 1

    Trying to confine any sort of online activity to any sort of geographical boundaries is an exercise in futility. "In-State" is essentially meaningless on the internet. Sure, they will come up with all kinds of enforcement mechanisms, and some of them might even repel a few Non-Delaware people, but the vast majority will do a quick google search and get around it in less time than it will take them to type in their creditcard and start throwing money away.

  4. As part of my CS degree we had to write a Tetris clone, and add an extra feature. Mine was a 5-block piece game mode. It was virtually impossible. 3-blocks is far too easy. Four blocks is really the only fun setup for that particular style of block game.

  5. Easy: Rip before watching on DVDs, Blu-Rays To Show 20-Second Unskippable Govt. Warnings · · Score: 1

    If you still want to keep things above board (for the creators, not the leeching middlemen), just rip the disks before you watch them. Yeh, it's a good 5 minutes and a bit of a hassle, and totally illegal due to DMCA, but you never have to sit through any of the crap they shove on the disks these days again, like these warnings, trailers, or flashy menus. Obviously pirates don't have this problem.

  6. Re:Burden of proof on Facebook 'Likes' Aren't Protected Speech · · Score: 2

    By "market reality" I meant things such as the fact that China exists, or that Widgets cost 3x as much to make in country A than in country B. Facts that affect markets.

  7. Re:That's at-will, not right-to-work on Facebook 'Likes' Aren't Protected Speech · · Score: 2

    Yeh, I messed that up. At-Will is standard operating procedure in the US though, which was my point.

  8. Don't hate the player, hate the game on How Apple Sidesteps Billions In Global Taxes · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Apple has a fiduciary responsibility to avoid as much taxes as legally possible. This is more indicative that the laws are not written correctly, rather than that Apple is doing something "wrong". Of course, congresscritters might be hesitant to fix these loopholes, since a lot of their sponsors directly benefit from them. In fact, that may or may not be why they are there in the first place, but the saying "don't attribute to malice what you can attribute to incompetence" probably holds here.

  9. Re:Burden of proof on Facebook 'Likes' Aren't Protected Speech · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There are disadvantages to that. I'm specifically thinking of the flexibility of the job market: In the course of being edged out by competitors or a changing market, an employer might hold on to their workforce longer than they should out of fear of being sued for wrongful dismissal. That makes the entire economy less capable of adjusting to disruptive technologies and global market realities. That being said, in the US we tend to avoid this to kind of an absurd level. Most states are right-to-work, where you can be fired (or quit) for no reason whatsoever. And even in states were that is not the case, it is often practically impossible to sue for wrongful dismissal except in particularly egregiousness cases like discrimination (and you can still get sued for that in RtW states anyway).

  10. Re:Education industry on Google's First Employee Departs · · Score: 1

    Indeed. It got me through a particularly horrible multivar calculus professor a few years ago.

  11. Re:Doesn't everyone run in classic? on The Condescending UI · · Score: 1

    Man I figured you could back Win7 up to the XP look but I'd never actually tried it. Myself, I like my transparencies, tyvm. I mean, in my linux boxes I lately have been using XFCE, but I still use transparencies, to the point where having a completely opaque terminal is a showstopper. Anyway, so I tried setting Win7 to the classic theme and it looked like the mid 90's puked all over my computer. All I'd need to do was switch to a 1280x1024 CRT and set my wallpaper to some poorly rendered fractal and it would be like I was in middle school all over again.

    I switched back to Aero pretty quick. We're talking about pure aesthetics here, but I can't imagine why you'd intentionally go back to that look.

  12. I also switched to XFCE on Linus Torvalds Ditches GNOME 3 For Xfce · · Score: 1

    But when I switched it was because of Ubuntu's Unity. I suspect that's not an issue Torvalds would be likely to have.

  13. Brick and Mortar shenanigans on HDMI Brands Don't Matter · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I once wanted a 6ft HDMI cable right away. I noted that they were available at a popular online cable store for $10, and set out to find one for $20 or so, considering that to be an acceptable mark up for the immediacy required. Couldn't find any for less than $30, most stores sold them for $50 or $60. They are either price fixing or just individually deciding to rip people off. Either way I just went home, paid $12 after shipping, and waited for them to show up.

  14. Re:Bad algorithm on Algorithm Glitch Voids Outcome of US Green Card Lottery · · Score: 1

    I agree. I'm personally of the opinion that absolutely anyone who wants to immigrate should be able to, assuming they pass a security check and have a reasonably clean criminal record in their former country. We should be thrilled that people want to move here. Many first world countries are actually losing population and it is very hard on their economies.

  15. Re:Java or Visual Studio 2010 anyone? on The Insidious Creep of Latency Hell · · Score: 1

    Also Java and Visual Studio tend to be used by less skilled developers and students (disclosure: i'm a student). Poor responsiveness of programs written in Java or using VS is more a factor of who is writing it than anything to do with the language / VM / IDE.

  16. Terrible idea. on Senator Wants to Tax Internet Shopping · · Score: 2

    This is a terrible idea. If they want to make it consistent, they should make it so that NO online purchases are taxed, regardless of state. Sales tax is a horrible system and should not be encouraged. What should be encouraged is online purchases. It is so much cheaper and more efficient than traditional storefronts, but if people are forced to pay sales tax on purchases that have no business being taxed, then that is going to lower the economic incentive to purchase online. As it is I don't think there's any constitutional leeway here one way or the other. Trying to enforce state tax laws at a federal level is a gross overreach of federal jurisdiction.

  17. Re:Worst Formatting Ever on Newspaper Plagiarizes Blog, Taunts Real Author · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm not sure what you mean. When I look at the blog, it's black text on a white background, fixed width, centered. The font's kinda big, but that's about it. It's about as simple as you can get. Now if he had a busy background image, he may have removed it to conserve bandwidth, i'm not sure, but as of 8:24pst, it's a pretty dead simple page, and is perfectly readable. If anything it's TOO readable.

  18. "innovative accounting" on US Competitiveness Chief Immelt's GE Tax Bill: $0 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The tax system is a mess, but I think the key issue here is innovative accounting. I'm sorry, but accounting is supposed to be, by definition, crystal clear and straightforward. Innovation is this field is more properly described as "accounting in such a way as to hide money we've made while still (maybe) following the rules". Which says to me that the rules are not complete enough.
    Unless GE gave every dime of profit they made to charity, they should be paying taxes. A lot of taxes. THIS is why we have a budget deficit.

  19. Re:Pacific/San Juan de Fuca boundary? on Geologists Say California May Be Next · · Score: 1

    Well it's going to happen eventually, even if it's not the "big one" this article is predicting, the fact is that the SJF subduction zone has an extremely violent earthquake, on average, every few hundred years. And there was a big one in 1700. The average is 500 years, so maybe we can get along until 2200 before the next one. Maybe not. But it will happen eventually.

  20. Desktop Icons? on Ask Slashdot: Is the Recycle Bin a Good GUI Metaphor? · · Score: 1

    I don't show any desktop icons, personally. Between the Win7 taskbar and start menu/search field, there's really no reason to have to go back to the desktop to start applications or access anything. I know this is a personal preference thing, but once you start showing icons the whole thing can get ugly quick.

  21. Just make all internet purchases tax-free on Amazon Pulling Out of Texas Over $269 Million Tax Bill · · Score: 1

    I am strongly opposed to the idea floating around of making all online retailers collect taxes in all states. Buying things online is, in and of itself, better for the economy and the environment than buying them in a brick an mortar store, it is significantly less expensive and wasteful. If we are going to consolidate the system, level the playing field, then all online purchases should be tax-free. Let the states raise money through some other means (income tax, property tax, etc.).

  22. Should be a setting to avoid them entirely on YouTube Launches Ads You Can Skip · · Score: 0

    Five seconds of ad is five seconds too many. And ads in flash video are a huge waste of bandwidth. The addons do not yet exist to block them. If they really want to give us an opt-out, it should available immediately, and it should also be available as a blanket opt-out of all advertisement as a user-configurable setting. Hopefully, if this problem becomes prevalent, work on such video-ad blocking addons will begin in earnest.

  23. Re:C# on The Coming War Over the Future of Java · · Score: 1

    C# does seem an obvious possibility. As cool as Go is, it's not really the same sort of thing as Java. It's mostly intended to be compiled and is heavily geared at concurrency. I don't think any Hold-Your-Hand IDEs exist for it yet, either, that I'm aware of.

  24. It's true... on The Placebo Effect Not Just On Drugs · · Score: 1

    During my stint in pizza delivery, I became painfully aware of the uselessness of probably 75% of Close Door buttons on elevators during normal operation. It's funny that it almost never works at hospitals, which you would expect would share my sense of urgency. It was highly frustrating.

    Walk buttons are another one I thought had to be true. It's a bigger problem in Bellevue that Seattle, though. Often in Seattle, the light on the main thoroughfare will stay green until it detects a car stopped on the cross street. At certain intervals the Don't Walk sign crossing the cross street will flash, but it will go back to walk unless there's a car (in which case it's Don't Walk in both directions) or someone actually hits the button to cross the thoroughfare. This is a good system, I think.

  25. I doubt 1 million people in WA make 200k on Income Tax Quashed, Ballmer To Cash In Billions · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I voted for the income tax, though I didn't expect it to pass legal challenge. Rich people can buy a lot of lawyers. And in the end, we are back where we started: An antiquated, recession-prone sales tax that hits poor people a lot harder than rich. Washington's the sort of state I thought would be daring enough to perhaps someday implement a negative income tax, but if we can't even pass a traditional income on less than 2 percent of the state, then I really don't know about that. I'm just appalled people are willing to accept the status quo. But the most interesting point here is that this also say something about certain (but not all) macroeconomic theories. Some theories rest on the idea that individuals will always make decisions based on their own personal interests. Passing that income tax would have been in the interest of any person that made less that 200k a year, that is to say, about 98% of the state. The prop lowered taxes on these people. They would have received a direct financial benefit. And yet they voted it down by something like 60%. That either means that people are incredibly concerned about the welfare of rich people, or that people are more than willing to make decisions that harm themselves if they are convinced to do so by advertising.