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User: bartron

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  1. They were greedy on Two Years In Prison For Using Infrared Contact Lenses To Cheat At Poker · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Be greedy and you raise suspicion. If you have a hand that you would consider a winning hand under normal circumstances then you play it, regardless if you know you will lose. Start doing impossible or improbable moves and you may as well be wearing a huge neon arrow sign on your head.

  2. Re:Paywalled? on Using Pulsars As GPS For Starships · · Score: 4, Informative

    Only partially. CSIRO gets some funding from the government but the rest it needs to make up from revenue by selling stuff (IP or services), setting up research partnerships etc.

  3. Re:Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already. on Rupert Murdoch Wants To Destroy Australia's National Broadband Network · · Score: 2

    I don't trust the government as far as I could spit but the advantages afforded by 100mbit fibre to the home is worth picking the lesser of two evils (or incompetents as the case may be. BTW, my election preferences go way beyond fast internet, although it is a consideration)

    Also, even though a government may be inefficient it takes a government with no expectation (or requirement) to make a profit to implement a scheme such as this. A private company needs to make money to survive and can't bear the debt an initial rollout requires to implement (case in point, the fibre rollout in the ACT by TransACT). Once the infrastructure is in place then it, or portions thereof, can be privatised if needed.

  4. Rupert Murdoch can die in a hole already. on Rupert Murdoch Wants To Destroy Australia's National Broadband Network · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Honestly, I'm sick of technological advances being blocked because it hurts someones bottom line. Something something stock whip makers.

    If the NBN affects his business then his business is archaic and newscorp can adjust or die...preferably the latter

  5. Re:Troll... on OpenOffice: Worth $21 Million Per Day, If It Were Microsoft Office · · Score: 1

    This.

  6. Re:Or... on Fragmentation Leads To Android Insecurities · · Score: 5, Informative

    If someone is using an iPhone, at some point it was connected to iTunes to activate it (or it wouldn't be working).

    That used to be the case but you can activate and iPhone or iPad without iTunes these days and never ever hook it up to a host computer.

  7. Re:Just download Avast mobile security on Fragmentation Leads To Android Insecurities · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What the hell?

    How can anyone say, with a straight face, that you need to run AV software on a goddamn phone? A PHONE! What manner of circumstances lead to this being considered something that is perfectly normal?

    If anything it just shows what a logistical clusterfuck Google created with the first few editions of Android and letting all and sundry create hardware without at least enforcing some form of automatic patching regime. Don't get me wrong, I think ICS is a wonderful OS for a phone, but to birthed straight into the world expecting to have to run AV software??? Look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself that's a perfectly normal and rational thing.

  8. Re:Great, more senseless mangling of both plot and on New Hobbit Trailer Debuts · · Score: 1

    So don't watch them and read the books instead. Personally I couldn't give a flying f if the movie(s) deviate from the words Tolkien wrote or if stuff is added that wasn't in the book (but is in the LOTR appendices). Movies are like a magic show. If you watch David Copperfield and do nothing but complain how such-and-such is not physically possible then GTFO. Same with movies. As long as the move has pace and the story is compelling then sit back and enjoy the show. Treat it as an interpretation of the story rather than some attempt to visually display the book verbatim and I'm sure you will enjoy it.

  9. Re:I had this in my last interview on Tough Tests Flunk Good Programming Job Candidates · · Score: 1

    I'd accept "I know right where to find it" as an answer if someone showed me how they'd find it... something like this:

    port=ftp/data echo "The $port port is `grep $port /etc/services | awk '{print $2}'`"

    Some things that are found in manuals are so key to the field that it still makes sense to ask. For example, another poster complained that Google asked him how many bytes were in a MAC address. Well, if I'm hiring a senior network admin, I'd expect him to know the basics of common layer 2 transports (which might be just ethernet for a LAN engineer, but would encompass much more for a WAN engineer). I'd expect him to be able to describe an ethernet frame. Maybe not down to the last bit, but he should at least know the major parts and I'd certainly expect him to know how big a MAC address is

    Oh I fully agree. For stuff that is day to day then yeah, knowing your key functions off the bat is going to be handy. Most of the time I write code that includes functions that I have no idea about unless I look them up. I know 'where' to find the info if I need it but just don't ask me to do it without referencing something. It's funny when I look back at my own code and realise just how complex it can be. It's easy to look at that and think "this guy knows his stuff" but what you can't see is the stumbles, hurdles, google searches etc that went into it. That's what they need to be able to test. Anyone can get the desired result given enough time. How you go about it though is the key.

  10. I had this in my last interview on Tough Tests Flunk Good Programming Job Candidates · · Score: 1

    There were two parts to it. One was a set of about 20 questions that I maybe had an inkling of the answer. It was a warm day, I was wearing a suit and stuffed into a room by myself to see how many I could answer. Are they testing my abilities or my tolerance to being in an uncomfortable environment? Most of the questions were ones that only someone with OCD would be able to answer off the top of their head. Information like what protocol goes with what port is stuff that I don't use on a daily basis, but I know perfectly well where to look for it when I do need to find out. That's what reference material is for.

    the second part was "here's a problem, how would you code the solution". In this case the language could be anything, so I wrote in pseudo code and even went back over one of them because I though of a more efficient solution.

    Things that can be looked up in a reference manual or on the internet should be left out of interviews (unless the question is along the lines of "How would you determine XYZ?"). Keep it to methods used to solve a problem and you'll get a good understanding of how a particular person works and how they will work for you.

  11. Pointless if there are no apps. on Hyperion Promises An AmigaOS Netbook · · Score: 1

    Most people I know that are nostalgic about their Amiga's (and C24's etc) have a perfectly capable emulation environment available to them that runs orders of magnitude faster than the original hardware, on even moderately powered netbooks.

    But even if they get new hardware out and AmigaOS is fantastic, where are the apps? What's the draw to get people to buy this thing other than the nostalgia of having a computer with the Amiga stamp on it? It can be the best damn OS in the world but if it hasn't got apps then it hasn't got anything.

    BeOS was pretty cool back in the day and kicked Windows to the curb in terms of performance but it died because it didn't have apps. Making an AmigaOS laptop today makes about as much sense as making a dedicated BeOS laptop (yes, I'm aware of various efforts to resurrect BeOS...still makes no sense)

  12. Right. So start archiving then. on Soon, No More Film Movie Cameras · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Archivists might be worried but you can't say there wasn't enough warning. Production houses have been switching to digital since at least the 90's.

  13. Re:No one NEEDS multi-OS on Hot Multi-OS Switching — Why Isn't It Everywhere? · · Score: 1

    Not sure what mac users you know but my experience is the opposite. Petty much everyone I know other than my mum and my sister has either a virtual machine or bootcamp install of windows for running the few apps that need windows to run. VM's are more common that bootcamp though mainly for the convenience of not needing to reboot.

  14. Not on your life on Ask Slashdot: Would You Take a Pay Cut To Telecommute? · · Score: 1
    No way I'd take a paycut in order to potentially benefit my employer. If I'm performing better then I expect to get paid better.

    Having said that I wouldn't go 100% telecommute either. One day a week or maybe two at most. More than that and you lose face to face interaction with co-workers and supervisors/managers. I could have done a recent project completely at home with no supervision but all anyone would have seen would be the end result. It's just as important to be able to physically present the process you go through in order to be appreciated for the work you do. No appreciation for the work = you don't get appreciated as an employee and you'll be passed up on opportunities.

  15. Lets face it on German Foreign Office Going Back To Windows · · Score: 1

    Until you can get one single unified model for a linux desktop, linux ON the desktop isn't going to happen. Fine for servers and fine for users that know what they are getting in to. Not fine for regular people. With freedom comes choice and with choice comes indecision. Sometimes less choice is more and why Windows, with all its faults, has succeeded. One OS which operates the same (in theory) regardless of hardware. Linux, from a users perspective, does not operate the same regardless of hardware. The interface is a fragmented mishmash of every 'good' idea its contributors came up with. Linux is a server OS. Some of us run server OS's on our desktops and that's fine, but it's not for regular users and never will be.

  16. This is hilarious on Adobe Founders On Flash and Internet Standards · · Score: 4, Insightful
    I love it how if it a story about flash when concerned with iPhone/iPad everyone is full of hate and woe and spit venom towards Apple for daring to exile the chosen one.

    However when you take Apple out of the picture (despite this being filed under Apple for some reason) no-one can think of a kind word for the Adobe wonder child. Oh how flash isn't open, only works on Adobe approved systems, Firefox runs on more systems etc etc....you can't have it both ways people.

    I'm no fanboy but at least I'm not a hypocrite...Flash sucks, always has, always will....regardless of who choses to support it and who doesn't. FFS people, one would think you'd be happy that a company (in this case Apple) is trying to champion an open standard (HTML5) to free you from the shackles of requiring a compiled binary made especially for your system.

  17. Re:Clock can run in reverse. on National Debt Clock Overflowed, Extended By a Digit · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Attempting to deceive people by the means of an analogy and a degree is a vile act of the highest order. You sir, should be ashamed.

    Analogy's are a way to start educating the lay person in a manner that their brain can process and understand. If the lesson were to continue the analogy would be only the first step in a flight of stairs.

    Attempting to discredit an Economics professor with some perceived air of authority is a vile act of the highest order....or is that why you posted as AC?

    Disclaimer: I don't know if the OP is a professor of economics or not but the story involved beer and a good probability that the beer was free (as in beer).

  18. Re:Have you seen this? on Porn Found On L.A. Obscenity Case Judge's Website · · Score: 1
    agreed.

    in fact a simple google search will turn up plenty of images of naked women painted like a cow (search for 'cow painted woman" and turn safe search off) http://www.ilovecows.co.uk/pictures/cow-bp.jpg

    it's all typical joke email fodder

  19. Re:Mac support in the Enterprise? on Macs Gaining a Bigger Role In Enterprise · · Score: 2, Informative
    AD works but is is no-where clean. It doesn't support DFS (not the way we set it up anyway). The only thing that comes close is Thursby's AdmitMAC product which does the job but likes to own the computer in the process. To me that's just an invitation for instability and we'd be back where we started.

    I love my macs but they are indeed a pain to get working properly in a mixed environment.

  20. Apple, make a freaking laptop dock already. on Macs Gaining a Bigger Role In Enterprise · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'd love to roll out more Mac laptops but the main thing holding it back is complete lack of a first party dock connector for the portables. Not everywhere is the same of course but where I work it's an OH&S problem with loose cables hanging about the place.

    I know about bookendz and they might be ok but it's hardly an elegant solution and the aesthetic is so non-Apple. I would jsut like a single connector on the bottom of the Mac that connects to a dock that has all my shit permantly plugged in to it...is that so hard?

  21. Re:What's the draw? on Guillermo del Toro Will Direct "The Hobbit" · · Score: 1

    That's ok. The source code to his books is perfectly visible. Feel free to study it and improve on it. I look forward to your forthcoming books...sure to be best sellers. bad analogy - If Linus were Tolkien, Linux would be Lord of the Rings but he would have invented several of his own languages to write it in. :)

  22. Re:Macbook Pro on Vista Named Year's Most Disappointing Product · · Score: 2, Informative

    it's called irony

  23. interactive goat.cx on Touch-based Handhelds Turned Inside Out · · Score: 1

    taking /. trolls to new levels.....no thanks

  24. Re:Clarification Please..... on Australia Cracked US Combat Aircraft Codes · · Score: 1

    so how do you do this shit mid flight?

    pilot: "base this is foxtrot 1 at FL330. My 'check engine' light is flashing. Request instruction on how to reset"
    base: "ok, you ready?...first, pull the stick all the way back...."
  25. Re:A far cooler aspect. on ISS Goes Solar · · Score: 1

    I know what you mean. The other day I looked up into the night sky and all I saw were pinpoints of light. Then, with the aid of binoculars I was finally able to identify the moon. To think that you can only now, look into space and identify things.