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User: zaydana

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  1. Re:Passion on Reversing the Loss of Science and Engineering Careers · · Score: 2

    Which one is preferable? You pay for that literature degree, or they pay for something "useful" and then join Lehman Brothers? Its a bit like how it would of been better for everybody if Hitler had of gone to arts school, even if someone had to pay for his education.

    On the other hand, if we let people study what they are passionate about, we get passionate engineers, teachers, etc. who will cause a much greater benefit for society than those who only study to get the Beamer.

  2. I was a freelancer on Ask Slashdot: Money-Making Home-Based Tech Skills? · · Score: 4, Informative

    I haven't done any online projects recently, but for some years I used to work pretty much exclusively on projects from rentacoder.com (now vworker.com).

    The way I got into it was by starting bidding low on small jobs, getting good feedback, and progressively moving onto larger jobs. You'll find that the people willing to pay a decent amount on these websites also want experience and good reviews.

    Once you have the reputation to even be considered, you need to make sure you bid on the right projects. That means finding projects that don't have a huge number of bids, and projects which match your previous experience. You need a portfolio. If you have spare time, spend it working on something which you can show off to prospective bidders. I'm pretty sure a little javascript asteroids clone I wrote 5 years back got me more work than any other reasons I gave people to hire me.

    It also helps to concentrate on projects which are the latest big craze - when I was working, this was javascript. Not many people knew how to use it properly, so there were fewer bidders and you could charge higher prices. Of course, everybody "knows" javascript now days - I imagine phone apps is where it is at.

    However you approach it, don't be discouraged when you don't win projects. It takes a while to get into the game. And regardless of how well you do, remember that you'd still make more money by working for locals (which is why I quit). Unless you enjoy it, theres probably better ways of making money.

    Good luck!

  3. Re:Common mistake on Apple's Siri As Revolutionary As the Mac? · · Score: 1

    As someone who has been forced to use speech recognition in the past due to RSI, I'd much rather say "Wake me up in eight hours" than "Alarm. 8am"

    It is easier to say things which flow than to stop and start. And thats not to mention that "Alarm, 8am" is rather unspecific - do you want to be woken up by the alarm? Do you want to ask if you have an alarm at 8am? Are you going to say something after that referring to the alarm? Either the computer will get confused, or it will be limited to a certain pre-defined set of commands, which poses it's own problems (like memorizing the list of which natural-sounding commands actually work).

  4. Re:Doom3 to dark? on id Software Demos Rage On iPhone, Releases Source Code For Two Games · · Score: 0, Redundant

    The Force?

  5. Re:3000BC called... on New iConji Language For the Symbol-Minded Texter · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This post is remarkably narrow minded. Not all written languages in the world are made of symbols representing consonants and vowels, you know. In Japanese, for example, you use either Kanji (where a character has an associated meaning as well as multiple pronunciations), or kana (where each symbol is composed of a consonant as well as vowel, with a few exceptions). Or take Chinese, where each symbol has a single pronunciation, but also has a meaning attached. I'm not a linguist either by any means (I'm sure any of them reading this are getting rather agitated), but the way these sorts of languages work is beautiful - you can usually guess the meaning of a word you hear because you know the symbols associated with it and thus the meaning. You can't do that in scripts which are just composed of single consonants and vowels, especially when the pronunciation of them changes in every word (think English).

  6. The Matrix on Scientists Implant Biofuel Cells Into Rats · · Score: 2, Funny

    I guess its only a matter of time before we have big towers full of humans in glowy red fluid which generate electricity. And hovercrafts, lots of hovercrafts.

  7. If we are to air on Cleaner Air Could Speed Global Warming · · Score: 4, Funny

    If we are to err, I'd rather we erred on the side of clean err than polluted err.

  8. Re:Talk to people who have done it before on Licensing an Abandonware Game? · · Score: 1

    Warzone 2100 is different because it was the people who owned the copyright who released the code first for other people to work on, not other people asking the owners to release the copyright.

    You're right about the remake being good though. It was one of my favourite games back in the day, and I was incredibly surprised to find I could download it and now play it on my mac without any hitches, probably smoother than the original ran in windows.

  9. Re:I wonder how that is compared to the loss from on 2010 Bug Plagues Germany · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Moreover, it makes you wonder who much of a problem Y2K may have actually been if we hadn't of looked for all the problems and fixed them.

    Chances are things like this would have only been the beginning if Y2K hadn't have been anticipated and planned for, even if we over-reacted. Maybe we should be giving some people more credit than we do...

  10. Re:It's hard enough dealing with ONE Telstra on AU Goverment To Break Up Telstra; Filtering News · · Score: 3, Informative

    Japan is a similarly isolated island country, and yet affordable 1 gbps connections are proliferating in urban areas.

    Population density of Japan: 337.6/km2
    Population density of Australia: 2.833/km2

    Theres a reason that 1gbps connections are available in Japan, but not Australia. For how isolated we are as a country here, its remarkable that we have the internet as good as we do.

  11. Re:So it's a fnacy nmae on Schooling, Homeschooling, and Now, "Unschooling" · · Score: 1

    Mod Parent Up. I myself am a uni student who has found myself in pretty much the same situation. Its taken me until being about 21 to actually learn how to work, despite years of schooling. Why? Because school was easy enough that I never learned how to work in the first place, and when I encountered something I couldn't immediately figure out, I'd pretend it didn't exist. Its only since I recently started learning a language for personal interest that I've realized what work is, and learned how to do it. I think that if kids (not just smart kids) were extended to a decent level throughout school, and never learned to just coast through it, they'd be a lot better off in the long run.

  12. Re:Selecting for stupidity. on Attractive Women Make Men Temporarily Stupid · · Score: 1

    Perhaps, the fact that you consider them dumb a-holes and are rather unapologetic about it may contribute. Arrogance usually isn't all that attractive.

  13. Re:This won't go over well on Daydreaming Is Really Complex Problem-Solving · · Score: 1

    I find this true as well, especially when I'm working on things that require a bit of creativity.

    I spend a lot of time making up mnemonics for memorizing Japanese characters - the only way I've found to really remember them is making up little stories for each. But, if I decide to just sit down and try to make stories for hours, it doesn't usually work. I can be stuck on a character for 10 minutes, then get up to go to the toilet, and figure out a story straight away when I wasn't even trying.

    I've found the same thing with coding as well. Sometimes I'll be trying to solve that stupid bug, and spend an hour or so on it. Get up to have a drink, stop concentrating on it, and then it just all makes sense.

    While daydreaming constantly obviously wouldn't be productive, I think its fairly certain that spacing your work out and giving your mind a chance to go off on a tangent is probably very good for getting things done that require problem solving and creativity.

  14. Re:In Soviet... Japan... on In Japan, a Billboard That Watches You · · Score: 0, Redundant

    In Soviet Russia, Billboards watch you.

  15. Re:Bender sez... on Vista To XP Upgrade Triples In Price, Now $150 · · Score: 1

    Unfortunately most businesses don't have the liberty of dumpster diving in The Pirate Bay - if they could afford to pirate Windows, they'd probably be doing it regardless of whether Microsoft raised the price or not.

  16. Re:Don't let Carmack win!!! on Armadillo Aerospace Takes Level 1 Lunar Lander Prize · · Score: 1

    Sir, you can't be serious. You'd have somebody be killed so you can sit in your parent's basement and waste your life on computer games? I hope you're joking, but even if it's a joke, I find it rather distasteful.

    Now don't get me wrong. A good game can be a great way to relax a bit. But wishing a group of people's lives to be pretty much ruined and another person's life to be ended for the sake of relaxing a bit? You need to get out more.

  17. Re:Just makes sense... on Microsoft and Nokia Adopt OSS JQuery Framework · · Score: 1

    True, although it would be interesting if future browsers could detect certain versions of jQuery via the <script> tags in webpages, and accelerate those versions. That way, the latest version could always be included if needed, but for older versions browsers could provide a native implementation.

    Of course, that doesn't mean its a good idea. If Microsoft managed to fuck up CSS, JavaScript and pretty much everything they have implemented so far, I sure as hell don't think they'd implement jQuery any better.

  18. Re:Obama Should Love NASA on Obama's Evolving Stance On NASA · · Score: 1

    With all those capital letters, you just *know* the argument is worth having. Cool and collected discussion ftw.

    (No, I'm not an American. Its actually kinda funny/scary reading all these pointless arguments.)

  19. From TFA on The World's Nine Largest Science Projects · · Score: 3, Informative

    "With a large mirror, 6.5 meter (21.3 feet) diameter mirror the $5 billion+ [James Webb Space Telescope] will launch folded up inside the space shuttle and then unfold to its full-size - several times that of Hubble." Launching a spacecraft to a 1.5 million km orbit with the space shuttle in 2013. Its good to see the discovery channel has done their research. Honestly, I expected more from these guys...

  20. Re:wrong wrong wrong on The World's Nine Largest Science Projects · · Score: 4, Funny

    You're forgetting that they're building the plant here in Australia. Electricity was only recently introduced in Australia (think last few years), so many houses don't actually have many electrical appliances, preferring to rely on more proven technologies such as candles, fireplaces and kangaroos.

  21. Re:Safari should require prompting on Windows on Microsoft Urges Windows Users To Shun Safari · · Score: 2, Informative

    That may be so, but even then Apple probably would have been wiser to choose a folder other than the desktop. Its just too easy to accidentally click a file on the desktop, or for some less computer literate user to see a .exe on their desktop and click it, wondering what it is.

    You'll notice that on the latest installment of OS X, safari downloads to a Downloads folder, not the desktop.

  22. Re:Good on UK Proposes Banning Computer Generated Abuse · · Score: 1

    Go watch the movies "Waking Life" or "A Scanner Darkly". The first one is less obvious that it was based on photographs.

  23. Re:Logical fallacy of investment on Eric Lerner's Focus Fusion Device Gets Funded · · Score: 1

    Of course, the "dogmatic scientific establishment" said the same about Galileo, Einstein and Boltzmann in their times. Not saying all the "crackpots" should be funded - most of them certainly should not be. That said, unless they *are* funded, we'll never really know if they had something.

  24. Re:Good acts of violence on Mass Hack Infects Tens of Thousands of Sites · · Score: 0, Troll

    But what about when you have to clean up a nice girl's computer?

    I say congrats to the guys who made this, and keep up the good work!

  25. Re:Oh, and proof of this. on Australia Scraps National ID Plan · · Score: 1

    And why are your criticizing the liberals for selling assets to pay off debts? they didn't get the country in such debt in the first place, and it's just sound financial management to sell assets to rid yourself of debt (in fact it's finance 101)

    Ever played monopoly?

    Thank god you're not in government.