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User: vikingpower

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  1. The difference with the USA on German Intelligence Agency Planning To Follow Big NSA Brother On Shoestring · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...is that Germany is much closer to being a true and functioning democracy. I don't see how this would come through the Bundestag, the German parliament, without being at least watered down, viz. being quietly forced into starvation as soon as a left-leaning government comes into power.

  2. Welcome back into the Middle Age.

  3. Over my fucking dead body on Amazon Wants To Run Your High-Performance Databases · · Score: 1

    And I mean "my", "fucking", "dead" and "body" literally. I already imagine telling one of my customers that I host their data on Amazon AWS. I will never have had that good an opportunity to study people's backs.

  4. Miracle I am still alive on Mental Illness Reduces Lifespan As Much as Smoking · · Score: 1

    Reading the actual paper I thought: "Wow. Should have been dead by now".

  5. Nice piece of work on Sifting Mt. Gox's Logs Reveals Suspicious Trading Patterns · · Score: 3, Informative

    Well-done article. Read it top to bottom. Congrats.

  6. Have mercy on Ask Slashdot: Communication With Locked-in Syndrome Patient? · · Score: 1

    and pull the plugs. Really. This is no way to live.

  7. How long on DARPA Unveils Hack-Resistant Drone · · Score: 4, Insightful

    before someone takes over one of these babies ? I mean - for a challenge, this is about the same thing as waving a kilogram of prime steak in front of a pride of lions...

  8. Re:Not quite right on US Officials Cut Estimate of Recoverable Monterey Shale Oil By 96% · · Score: 1

    Switched networks built up out of segments, ever heard of those ?

  9. Re:Incoming conspiracy. on US Officials Cut Estimate of Recoverable Monterey Shale Oil By 96% · · Score: 1

    Before a week ? Before the sun has set, you mean...

  10. This could actually be good news on US Officials Cut Estimate of Recoverable Monterey Shale Oil By 96% · · Score: 4, Insightful

    One more incentive to the US to turn towards renewable energy sources. The USA are lagging way behind western and northern European countries in that respect. Last week e.g. the Dutch railways announced that from next year on, 100% of their operations will run on electric power from renewable sources, mainly wind, bought from a total of 5 north west European countries ( DE, DK, BE, NO, NL ).

  11. Not only better on Professors: US "In Denial" Over Poor Maths Standards · · Score: 2

    Other countries than the US do not only count better, but more and more other countries are beginning to count more....

  12. Obligatory on Even In the Wild Mice Run In Wheels · · Score: 0

    A colleague of mine ( who has an animal nickname BTW, we call him "Bokito", you may wanna google that ) has a great poster on his whiteboard, with a picture of a treadmill on it: "This is what a career ladder looks like". 'Nuf said.

  13. Re:Konrad Zuze on Grace Hopper, UNIVAC, and the First Programming Language · · Score: 1

    Plankalkül, with an Umlaut on the "u"....

  14. So, where is the problem ? on Controversial TSA Nudie X-Ray Machines Sent To Prisons · · Score: 1

    All the security personnel get to see will be the outlines of obese / overweight / fat American inmates, malnourished by a decades-long diet of corn-syrup-based beverages and saturated fatty acids, as the USA underclass is wont to consume. I pity the prisons' security personnel.

  15. Re:Aperture Science on NASA's Plan To Block Light From Distant Stars To Find 'Earth 2.0' · · Score: 2

    Not only great science. Great and sound engineering, also. The document behind the second link has visibly been written by good engineers, who understand their trade. Remember the old tongue-in-cheekish adagium: "without engineering, science would be only philosophy"....

  16. A 103-yeard old granny orca ? Before the CA coast? on Orca Identified As 103 Years Old · · Score: 1

    Now I know where my manager spends her holidays....

  17. Re:LLVM on WebKit Unifies JavaScript Compilation With LLVM Optimizer · · Score: 1

    Granted, it does not say "interpreted" on that page. Hence the "walks like...looks like... quacks like" analogy. In that sense, Java is "interpreted" as well, although a bytecode interpreter. The interesting thing about Julia is the assembler code generated after the first run of any routine: its performance is compared with that of later runs, and after a couple of runs you can see incredible performance gains.

  18. Some classics on Ask Slashdot: What Should Every Programmer Read? · · Score: 1

    Karl Popper, "Objective Knowledge", in order to make you understand what the dangers of induction and inductive reasoning are.

    John von Neumann & Oskar Morgenstern "Theory of Games and Economic Behavior", a brain-trainer that will leave you, after having read it, much more induced to first simulate, then code !

    Peano, "Calcolo Geometrico", containing his famous axioms for Boolean algebra. There is a good translation from the year 2000 by Kannenberg, titled "Geometric Calculus"

    Leslie Lamport, "Time, Clocks and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System" -- you will never think the same again about synchronization and time-related problems....

    And so on. All classics from the 20th century, giving the necessary background in computing and logics fundamentals that I so often miss in today's fresh graduates. The oldest text, by Peano is even from 1888, but still actual today !

  19. Re:LLVM on WebKit Unifies JavaScript Compilation With LLVM Optimizer · · Score: 1

    Julia is a high-level dynamic programming language designed to address the requirements of high-performance numerical and scientific computing while also being effective for general purpose programming.Julia's core is implemented in C and C++, its parser in Scheme, and the LLVM compiler framework is used for just-in-time generation of machine code.

    Source: wikipedia entry on "Julia programming language", called on May 15, 08h56m CEST

    Walks like an interpreted language, looks like an interpreted language, quacks like an interpreted language... could it be an interpreted language ?

  20. LLVM on WebKit Unifies JavaScript Compilation With LLVM Optimizer · · Score: 1

    is also the back end behind the Julia Programming Language, and its thoughtful use by the Julia guys has made that language blindingly fast as compared to R, Matlab, Python etc. etc., while still "officially" being an interpreted language. So yes, why not ?

  21. Re:I don't see why you would not get hired on Ask Slashdot: Minimum Programming Competence In Order To Get a Job? · · Score: 1

    exercitussolus ( at ) gmail dot com

  22. Re:I don't see why you would not get hired on Ask Slashdot: Minimum Programming Competence In Order To Get a Job? · · Score: 1

    @Wisecat I think the answer upon both your questions is "yes". The trick, in the first question, would IMHO lie in "selling" yourself. And two major ingredients of that magic soup would be enthusiasm, as well as "honing" your CV for the vacancy. I don't mean outright lying, though. But one can always ask what a HR person, what a recruiting manager really wants to read and wants to see. Often, they are like children: if they whine for a chocolate, then give them a chocolate - or convince them there is chocolate in what you are about to give them. The results can be.... interesting.

    And yes, specializing in one language would be a good idea, especially at the point where you are now. ADA would be a bit risky, though having the potential to land you that great technical computing job. In your case, I would dive deeply into C++ and the more advanced programming concepts. I did with Java, and it made me break through, what with barriers, semaphores, locks, lock-free waiting, queueing, concurrent programming, dependency injection etc. etc. The chance I got was a job opening asking for exactly that, and I had prepared for such a chance exactly by specializing. Remember: luck does not simply come to you out of the blue. You prepare for luck to hit, creating the conditions for it to manifest itself. And then - a "jack-of-all-trades" could very well grow bold and sell himself as an assistant project manager, a configuration manager, or a technical product owner. You might want to think "up", think different.

    However - here is an offer. I have changed jobs so often that I have grown an eye for CVs. My email address is above this post. If you want me to take a look at your CV, just ping me.

  23. I don't see why you would not get hired on Ask Slashdot: Minimum Programming Competence In Order To Get a Job? · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Your age does not play as large a role as you may think. In 2004, I had 13+ years of experience in pure software on the odometer, but - due to mental illness - first lost my job, then became homeless. I did the only thing I was still able to do: I walked. All over Europe. Homeless, but not giving in. Once back in my home country, in 2006, I managed to settle down again: the clouds in my head had cleared, and a large aerospace constructor gave me chance. I was 39 years old, and it started a great ride in my career, one that I am still on.

    What I did, you can do. As to the language: there is not really a problem discernible to me. You probably already master C, or a C-like language. The jump to C++ is not that hard, in that case. Otherwise, you might want to consider ADA, a stunningly elegant language that could very well land you jobs with e.g. Rockwell, Boeing etc. etc. ( assuming you are in the USA ). Good luck, and do not forget: it is not your success that counts - it is the fact that you keep trying.

  24. Re:Only in America on Wyoming Is First State To Reject Science Standards Over Climate Change · · Score: 1

    Mod parent up. Here in Europe things are going - slowly - into the right direction. Especially Germany could be, by 2040, for about 80% dependent upon renewable energy forms. But hey, the sun is going down over the US anyway. Another half century and the country will have dwindled towards something like France now: great history, thinking of themselves as "a great nation", but mainly irrelevant to the rest of the world.

  25. Nice name on Fossils of Earliest Known Pterosaur Found · · Score: 3, Funny

    Kryptodrakon progenitor. I am getting a second dog, soon - this name might just fit the li'l bastard well.