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User: boddhisatva

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  1. Posting Word and other document type resumes on Hounded By Recruiters, Coders Put Themselves Up For Auction · · Score: 1

    Word has a little box under properties fro "keywords". The keywords are not visible in the Word document but a search through Word resumes will see those keywords. And there seems to be no limit on the number of keywords. Same is true for HTML and other types. You dump in a huge list IT and comp sci words and every search hits on your resume. You get a phone call "I'm calling you because of your experience with ...(not having actually read your resume, you hear shuffling of paper as he goes through your resume looking for the skills he searched on.)

  2. A study using a population of one on Newly Released Einstein Brain Photos Hint At the Anatomy of Genius · · Score: 1

    This is "selection bias" taken to an extreme. I read he had a lump on the left parietal lobe from playing the violin and that pianists have a corresponding lump on the right. Did you read this in the Onion?

  3. He is a complete moron on It's Hard For Techies Over 40 To Stay Relevant, Says SAP Lab Director · · Score: 1

    I'm 63. I design and build my own computers, I do heterogeneous parallel programming, something which this jerk undoubtedly can't spell much less understand what it is or do it. I program FPGAs and experiment with various pieces of hardware, software and shit he can't imagine. I just came back from VLDB (the Intl. Conference on Very Large Databases) in Istanbul where I attended a workshop on hardware accelerated databases, which is my interest. I work with Oracle Exadata Machines. I've talked with developers of Hadoop and from Yarcdata (a subsidiary of Cray), while this guy was jerking off some VP at a large corporation trying to make a sale. $100 says he doesn't know what a TLB is or why it exists. Yes, things are changing at an exponential rate so reading voraciously and getting your hands dirty is what keeps you ahead. In a technical debate I could cut him to pieces. Oracle is working with Fujitsu on a new processor specifically design for databases - their Exadata systems, which I have worked with, are specifically designed for databases and already have such capabilities as moving part of the query processing to the storage node reducing the disk reads required. SAP doesn't stand a chance against a company that can deliver hardware that run the software much faster than general purpose machines. I mentor little shits like him.

  4. Change your line of business on Ask Slashdot: How To Make a DVD-Rental Store More Relevant? · · Score: 1

    When I designed a database to store sequenced DNA and it's attendant "annotation", clients had to subscribe individually to about 80 feeds (beyond a few free ones) of data. Each one was a negotiated rate and contract. A client told me that if I could negotiate with all of these sources and deliver data from a single source, he sou;d make me an extremely wealthy man. I found that the only way to accomplish this would be bribes, beatings and blackmail. This is why Netflix has a lineup of movies for streaming that include the worst movies ever made, from "Amazon Women on the Moon" to "Nazis from the Center of the Earth". There is no reason why every movie, every made, in every language couldn't be available to stream on the web. Movies aren't that big and bandwidth is growing. I watch HD movies over wireless - no problem. Negotiating with the movie owners and getting reasonable contracts is the problem. He who can do this will become a very wealthy man (or woman). DVDs, CDs, etc. are used less and less to distribute everything, including software. If you must, at least for the moment, sell the DVDs that people can't get anywhere else.

  5. Colleges and Universities are dinosaurs on How Free Speech Died On Campus · · Score: 2

    A college education costs more and more and becomes worth less and less. As it is, in many professions, a company will hire someone with a bachelors degree and three years experience before someone with a bachelor's and a master's. This makes the ROI for a master's a negative number. As technology is advancing at an exponential rate, the value of degree decreases at a corresponding rate after it is acquired. The Stanford professor who taught an AI course online and had 100,000 students quit to pursue this methodology full time. MIT is putting all of it's courses online, free. Maybe colleges will become research institutions. But in that regard, when some grad students started working on fuzzy logic, their professors told them "Pursue this and your career is over" and peer-reviewed journals refused to publish their papers. Similar stories come out of every field. Nothing has changed since Galileo. I remember the scene in "Good Will Hunting" where Matt Damon tells a Harvard student that he could have gotten his $50,000 education (back then) for the price of library card. Now it's online. By the way, the text for the AI class was $100. That has to go. Doing a google search and finding that most of the papers on Hidden Markov Models cost $15-$35 is most disconcerting. That has to go. The only people left behind should be alchemists and assholes.

  6. What have you been smoking? on Windows 8 Defeats 85% of Malware Detected In the Past 6 Months · · Score: 1

    Purchased by who? Vendors of new PCs and residents of asylums around the world? No one cares! Maybe, just maybe, more machines will be running Windows 7 than Windows XP shortly. Since no one is running it, no one is looking for vulnerabilities, ergo no malware.

  7. If they care, you don't want to work there on Is a Computer Science Degree Worth Getting Anymore? · · Score: 1

    But you'll probably have to. Especially if get the wife-kids-house going. I took a difficult comp sci class and got a B. A year later I ran into someone who was also in the class. She got an A. I could remember everything and she could remember nothing. College is to many people a sort of intellectual bulemia. Cram and puke. Get a good grade, remember nothing and don't care. You can always teach yourself later if you need it. Pursue what you like - whether it's math, comp sci, physics, carpentry, or anything else. You can't go wrong. If you pursue money, degrees, academic status, etc. then you have a problem with your perception of yourself. You see yourself as needing something to improve your self-worth. Self-esteem problems. But the world generally doesn't see it that way. Tony Robbins is making a lot of money feeding the pathology of neurotics. I like people who just crave knowledge and suck up as much as they can. Usually they have some general focus areas but they go after everything they come across. They're usually seen as crazy in some way but of course everyone's nuts, it's just a matter of taste. My girlfriend and I have a house where she teaches piano and violin (Juilliard, doctorate, etc.), I'm off consulting where I'm at a large corporation doing database work but not kissing anyone's ass and at night I have a condo full of computers in some stage of design, build, modification and programming. I'm gonzo, batshit crazy but holding down a full-time job. I tell people my long-term goal is galactic domination (actually I've always wanted to be the sadistic warden of a women's prison) and that I'm doing research on time travel or building an anti-gravity device. I could say that I can calculate the distance to the nearest exact duplicate of earth and everything on it or I could engineer a rabbit with a jellyfish gene that makes it glow purple in the dark. But that's all been done before.

  8. What were you expecting? on Why Are Operating System Version Names So Absurd? · · Score: 1

    Other names for commercial products are as bad or worse. Except perhaps the "Total Bitch" line of hair products. It would be great to work in marketing, coming up with names. Like working for the Onion or the National Enquirer. You go in a room with a box of botanical matter just shipped in from the Amazon and try to think up the weirdest stuff you can. "Pickup Truck Found on Moon". Name everything using the latin names of insect body parts. Quechua names for medicinal plants. Papiamentu words for female body parts. Those would be consistent.

  9. Send any HP-16C calculators you find to me on Ask Slashdot: What To Do With Found Calculators? · · Score: 1

    I miss just holding it.

  10. Re:C++ is Dead, Long Live Java on GCC Switches From C to C++ · · Score: 1

    Runs on an interpreter = raw speed? You have lost your mind. You really ought to look into how computers work. At least C++ is compiled. Java sucks. Java promised code reuse - not only is there no code reuse but changes to Java mean that 30% of Java programmer time is spent maintaining legacy code. Infrastructure, how many different infrastructure components have you gone through? Is it more than 10? Bjarne Stroustrup said "C lets you shoot yourself in the foot. C++ makes it harder but if you do it blows your whole leg off." There is a clue in there. C++, Java and OOP in general were created to keep mediocre programmers from screwing up too much. Carnegie Mellon has dropped OOP as a requirement for Comp Sci saying that it's outdated and will no longer be useful with modern hardware. Done any heterogeneous parallel programming? Are you comfortable with non-deterministic code? I'm 63 and you young turks remind me of the COBOL programmers at the home for ossifying techies. Gotta keep movin' son.

  11. Real men program in C on GCC Switches From C to C++ · · Score: 1

    "C++ is a horrible language." - Linus Torvalds

  12. Have youi considered bear traps? on Ask Slashdot: A Cheap, DIY Home Security and Surveillance System? · · Score: 1

    Snake pits, punji stakes, tar traps....no need to go high tech after millennia of innovative approaches.

  13. We're a nation of laws and presumed innocence on Forensic Experts Say Screams Were Not Zimmerman's · · Score: 1

    I say that first we give him a fair trial and then we hang him. Gives 'em time to build a solid scaffold too.

  14. I've been using this method for centuries on Using Pulsars For Spacecraft Navigation · · Score: 1

    It's as quaint as a sextant.

  15. A solution to a lot of problems on Ask MIT Researchers About Fusion Power · · Score: 1

    A safe, clean, reliable, inexpensive source of energy many orders of magnitude greater than anything we have is (or could be) a solution to many of our problems, economic and environmental. Lowering costs of everything means, well, a lot. Better world standard of living, health care, food supply....it goes on. The future of manned space exploration depends on this. Without a new, very powerful source of energy, we aren't going anywhere. Is fusion the answer? Is it the answer? Is it at least a step in the right direction?

  16. This is not a quantum computer in the usual sense on D-Wave Announces Commercially Available Quantum Computer · · Score: 1

    Read about how a quantum computer works in the literature and then look at what this machine does. Two totally different things. Interesting, promising, a worthy endeavor - yes. Maybe a new use for the word, a new type of quantum computer. But not what you probably think.

  17. I suggest one more test on superluminal speeds on Neutrinos Travel No Faster Than Light, Says ICARUS · · Score: 1

    Me being chased by a rabid Wolverine.

  18. Using the machine is the issue! on Why New Programming Languages Succeed Or Fail · · Score: 1

    Bjorne Stroustrup: "A single-threaded, nonvectorized, non-GPU-utilizing application has access to roughly 0.4% of the compute power available on the device."

  19. You have to drop shields to fire disruptor bolts on The Mercedes-Benz 'Cloaking Device' · · Score: 1

    Disable cloaking device too.

  20. Begin taking bets on What To Do About an Asteroid That Has a 1 In 625 Chance of Hitting Us In 2040? · · Score: 1

    A 10% vig will cover the stockpiling of books and party materials: single malt scotch, caviar, oysters, fireworks. Newt, you bring the naughty girls. Gladiator fighting for the women. Fidel you're bringing cigars, Party runs until world ends. Anyone leaving early concedes their bet. No guns, knives, poison or explosives. Bets paid after the end of world must paid be in gold or diamonds,

  21. Perfect for a variation on ARM on The Vortex Gun Coming Soon To a Protest Near You · · Score: 1

    It sounds perfect for a small variation on an ARM device. A very simple sensor could continuously detect the vortexes and their centers, a simple circuit programmed into an FPGA could adjust fins to keep it on course. An easily constructed device would fly straight down the concentric rings and at target radiate spherical pattern of jagged shrapnel, eliminating the device and killing or otherwise neutralizing anyone within about 10 meters. One could acquire the components off the shelf in a city of any size. If you spend a great deal of money developing this you would need to tell the operator to be sure there was no one with an engineering degree at the other end.

  22. Looking for ideas? on 2 Science Publishers Delve Into Science Fiction · · Score: 2

    In the 30-year (or so) old film "Three Days of the Condor", Robert Redford works for a little CIA branch that reads books and magazines looking for ideas. They strike a nerve somewhere and the shooting starts. There's "fantasy" science fiction which is wonderfully imaginative and there is "science" science fiction a la Arthur C. Clarke who described telecommunications and global positioning satellites in the 1950s, Star Trek's "Warp Drive" prompted the idea of the Alcubierre drive which is theoretically but not technologically possible. Of course flying was known to be theoretically possible but not technologically possible until the last century.

  23. The timing of this on EFF Wins Protection For Time Zone Database · · Score: 1

    Saturn moved out of Taurus.

  24. So sex would work too on Scientists Study How Little Exercise You Need · · Score: 1

    By this definition, a good bout of healthy sex qualifies. Get your woman and have at with vigor a few times a week and you should be in good shape. Of course this being for the sake of your health, there can be no slacking! Whether you you feel like it or not you have to get to it! And no cutting the workout short either. You have to put forward that extra effort that made America great.

  25. Cited Blog Says Otherwise on Programming Error Doomed Russian Mars Probe · · Score: 1

    The cited Planetary Society blog with translated explanation describes hardware failure and not programming failure.