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User: izzo+nizzo

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  1. working remotely is not as plausible as it seems on Ask Slashdot: Why Are American Tech Workers Paid So Well? · · Score: 1

    If you think you can accomplish your project with remote workers, you probably have a ton of experience managing projects and lots of technical expertise, or you found an amazing agency that charges a lot through word of mouth.

    Technology can usually make you money if you invest in it. It you treat it like a commodity that you should hunt for bargains on, you're shooting your own business in the foot.

  2. Re:Product placement on More NFL Players Attack Microsoft's $400M Surface Deal With The NFL (yahoo.com) · · Score: 1

    I think the people postulating that these issues are overwhelmingly related to connectivity and latency may be forgetting that most of these players are younger than us, and they grew up post-Internet. They may not have had MySpace pages but they know the difference between crappy Microsoft software and a wifi issue

  3. You know nothing about Apple's policies regarding this type of data.

  4. Re:commentsubjectsaredumb on Being Lazy Is a Sign of High Intelligence, Study Suggests (independent.co.uk) · · Score: 2

    I wonder if the term lazy made you misunderstand the result - which was more about physical activity than mindset, was it not?

  5. cross-pollination with racing? on Interviews: Ask Ruby on Rails Creator David Heinemeier Hansson a Question · · Score: 2

    Have you ever had a eureka or solved a bug while you were racing, or at least driving?
    More generally, do the abstractions that help you learn to race assist you in understanding parts of your web & technology systems?

  6. defining terms like Conservative on Facebook Offers Political Bias Training In Wake Of Trending Controversy (gizmodo.com) · · Score: 1

    I suspect that the alleged bias was the result of the bifurcation of "conservative" policy rhetoric. There are some conservative topics that are sensible and traditional, while others are so reactionary as to be utterly baseless. It's ok to be reactionary when you feel that your culture is being dismantled, but don't expect Facebook to promote your shrieks.

  7. you missed every point on Taking the Headphone Jack Off Phones Is User-Hostile and Stupid (theverge.com) · · Score: 1

    It's rather pitiful to comment on speculation about a product that won't come out for three months. You can't have a valid opinion without seeing the compromises in play.

    Which, by the way, according to the speculation, are that the phone will be thinner and much more waterproof. Are you still arguing "no one asks for this"?

    I realize that Slashdot is just as childishly anti-Apple as it has always been - but as Apple cements its position as the most important company in America and in technology, what does that mean for Slashdot?

    Let's be adults! I know we can!

  8. I think Facebook should kill Android on WhatsApp To End Support For BlackBerry, Nokia, and Other Older Operating Systems (whatsapp.com) · · Score: 1

    I have been thinking that if Facebook dropped their support for Android, that could be the most effective way to kill the platform. It sounds like they just might agree!

    If it's not obvious, the reason I think Android should be "killed" is because I observe that people really set themselves back by (trying to) use it. It doesn't seem to work as advertised and the security problems are going to come home to roost at some point.

    By reducing the amount of Android phones in active use, Facebook could strengthen the economy by encouraging other developers to spend their time making great iOS (and watchOS and tvOS) apps instead of trying to make decent Android apps.

  9. GitHub and Twitter on Ask Slashdot: How Can My Code Help? · · Score: 1

    Put it on GitHub and then reach out to people via Twitter who might find it interesting. Spend a little time on it every day and update people when you've answered their concerns or questions.

  10. throw cash at people to distract and mollify them.

  11. Re:Helios - encrypted, verifiable & private on Online Voting Should Be Verifiable -- But It's a Hard Problem · · Score: 1

    That may be correct. On the other hand my discussion with Dr. Neff led me to think that the verification step *might* be something that would let you detect who the vote was for - which would address the type of tampering that transparently switched who your vote was for.

  12. Helios - encrypted, verifiable & private on Online Voting Should Be Verifiable -- But It's a Hard Problem · · Score: 1

    There's an algorithm (or two) that leverages multi-step encryption to facilitate two (seemingly exclusive) properties.

    1. Each voter can use a receipt code to ensure that their vote was counted, and counted correctly.
    2. No one can determine which vote came from which voter (unless perhaps if they steal all 5 encryption keys).

    The algorithm, developed by Dr. Andrew Neff, was first implemented by a company called VoteHere.

    Now it is available for testing and vetting via an implementation at https://vote.heliosvoting.org....

    FWIW I've posted about this system almost a dozen times over the past decade.

  13. go for it - admit them all. on Carnegie-Mellon Sends Hundreds of Acceptance Letters By Mistake · · Score: 1

    You'll have to hire some new professors but it will all work out.

  14. Re:Secret Ballot? on How Bitcoin Could Be Key To Online Voting · · Score: 1

    There are encryption techniques that allow voters and officials to audit the vote without making it possible to read anyone else's vote.

    Check out http://heliosvoting.org/

    It's based on an algorithm discovered about 15 years ago, and the implementation is OSS.

    https://github.com/benadida/he...

  15. it's a trick question because you will learn both on Ask Slashdot: Objective C Vs. Swift For a New iOS Developer? · · Score: 1

    Both are incredibly well-designed languages with some tricky parts but a lot of smooth sailing.

    Swift seems to be solid enough that it's ready for most use cases - or perhaps closer to a quarter or a third of what you need to do every world-class app out there.

    If you focus your next few months on Swift you'll be fine. There are lots of good examples, courses, lessons, blogs, and clever people who can answer questions.

    However you will find yourself missing out on a lot of easy wins - particularly in cases where you read some Objective-C code and want to know how to translate it into Swift for your projects.

    Objective-C is easy enough to learn - if you are going to be mostly just reading it. If you are writing it, of course, there are some tough things.

    Either way you absolutely cannot go wrong and you will end up knowing both very well within a year.

  16. Barbie was actually both real and responsible on "Barbie: I Can Be a Computer Engineer" Pulled From Amazon · · Score: 1

    I read the book via the Gizmodo blog post. I understood the critiques that they leveled at each page. At the same time I felt that a lot of the plot twists were open to interpretation. The most basic example is that her collaborators were boys. Is she supposed to only work with women? Of course not.

    The virus and its aftermath are another example where they felt it was showing how inept she was but I felt otherwise. People get viruses. She did a good job at figuring out how it was spreading and acting quickly to repair all of the hard drives that had been exposed. In real life, most of the time, when you have something like that to resolve, are you going to ask a man for help? Sure, most of the time you are. This is a good lesson to teach Barbie's readers. Do it right away. Don't be "ashamed about who got the virus". This shame is only on the part of Gizmodo. Barbie didn't overreact.

    The last point I'll touch on is when Barbie began her project as a designer but then ended up claiming "I guess I am an engineer". This could be painful for professionals, both men and women, to digest. However, for many young women, computer engineering is reasonably intimidating - for some reason they often think of it as something that is hard for them. Perhaps awkward sexual attitudes from male programmers are part of the struggle. Perhaps everyone is a little awkward. But for Barbie's readers, they get a little shot in the arm of "I can do this". It doesn't matter if she had to write a lot of code on the preceding page of the book. What matters is that she is encouraging people to think that they can do that if they choose to!

    I'm not saying the book couldn't have been better. But I felt that the attention to details in the plot was good. Always having her thumb drive, for example - that's a great habit! Designing something before you start coding - sure! The programming team could have been half men and half women, yes. Of course. Barbie could have saved the day by doing research instead of asking for help (although that's not really good advice when you get a virus). There may also be things that I missed that will end up amounting to poor role modeling for young women. But on the whole I think there's some good stuff in here and I hope that it doesn't all get lost in the backlash.

  17. Re:Cost vs. Benefits on Ask Slashdot: Best Laptops For Fans Of Pre-Retina MacBook Pro? · · Score: 1

    Repairs are indeed possible with the new computers. As for upgrades, consider that Mac laptops have excellent resale value and a great set of tools for migrating your data to another Mac.

    So rather than performing an upgrade (and I'm not saying that upgrading RAM was onerous, but yeah, it sometimes was), you can get a new machine and resell your current one. Let's say you're now out $600.

    If you can't accomplish $600 worth of productivity and fun by using a Retina Mac instead of a PC, keep in mind that you're also saving your eyes from strain by using the Retina display.

    I know Slashdot commenters won't appreciate this advice, but I think it's worth mentioning that the high resale value is an alternative to buying an upgradable machine.

  18. HTML verbs on Google Bots Doing SQL Injection Attacks · · Score: 1

    Even if you don't bother to edit your robots.txt file, I believe you can curtail this phenomenon by using POST rather than GET for links that change data

  19. Re:Good on Judge Thinks Apple Will Lose E-Book Price-Fixing Case · · Score: 1

    The equipment that made the e-book possible is not free of costs, just like the equipment that made the paper book. In fact it might even cost more. Just because there are no molecules in the e-book doesn't mean it was less costly to produce than the paper version. Nor does the price have to mirror the cost - the price also reflects the value, which for an e-book is potentially greater than the same book printed on paper and shipped to your door.

    Amazon operates at a loss by selling e-books for $10. That essentially meant that no smaller companies could compete since they most likely did not have the luxury of selling e-books at a loss. Apple was trying to move things in a pro-competitive direction.

    You may or may not be correct that what they did was illegal. But your implication that they were trying to pad an already-profitable margin is, to my understanding, mistaken. This I find to be an important detail of the case, particularly so because e-books are potentially an important part of healing our economy and culture. This suit has strengthened Amazon's position to the point where a monopoly is not out of the question. That is the scary part.

  20. Re:solutions: on The Trouble With Bringing Your Business Laptop To China · · Score: 1

    I would suggest using an iPad (not jailbroken). You won't get access to the same software as a laptop would, but at least nothing can be stolen or installed. If you take the time to learn how to use one expertly, you can accomplish a lot with an iPad.

  21. Rails class in Brooklyn on Parlez-vous Python? · · Score: 0, Troll

    Today is the last day to register for my beginner's Ruby and Rails class at 3rd Ward. It's five Tuesday nights from 7-10 beginning on April 3.

    http://www.3rdward.com/3rdwardclasses/ruby-on-rails.html

    It's very aggressively priced, at $295 for 15 instruction hours.

    The focus of the class is on practical techniques for getting started with Rails and making the best use of your time and the newest, best tools. No computing experience is necessary. The instruction will focus on OSX, but a certain level of support for other OSes is available.

  22. be a Rails developer on Ask Slashdot: Where Are the Open Source Jobs? · · Score: 1

    37signals job board
    github job board
    ruby jobs sites

  23. Re:What we do/don't need in Calculus. on How Much Math Do We Really Need? · · Score: 1

    I can't agree at all with this premise that we don't need to know advanced math. Knowledge of how things move, change, and interact is of practical use all the time. And, being able to understand data and make predictions are important no matter what your job is.

    I feel that saying that the usefulness of math is overrated is akin to saying that toilets are overrated. Sure, we got by just fine without them, but in a modern society with a large population, this is a crucially important ingredient for progress.

    Understanding gradients is a good example here - it gives you a much more realistic perspective on everything from good real estate deals to good social skills. Gradients are invisible but you can see them everywhere if you have a solid understanding of math. Sure, teaching people how to take tests is overrated, but this is not an indictment of math, no way.

  24. pairing rocks on Collaborative Software For Pair Programming? · · Score: 1

    Pair programming is an amazing way to work and to learn. You just have to BE SURE that you have two keyboards and two mice.

    I realize that the original question was in reference to remote pairing, but I don't know anything about that. Just chiming in about pairing.

  25. Re:Cyberlaw on Supreme Court Nominee Sotomayor's Cyberlaw Record · · Score: 1

    slashdot is the best source for relevant political information. the community here is good at determining the real consequences and implications of the issues that many don't understand.