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User: iguana

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  1. Re:Repeat after me... on Programming Languages You'll Need Next Year (and Beyond) · · Score: 2

    Obligatory Programmer Hierarchy image: http://lukewelling.com/wp-cont...

    From: http://lukewelling.com/2006/08...

  2. 22.7 and pi on The Rule of Three Proved By Physicists · · Score: 1

    "22.7 — a.k.a., the rule of three — now appears to be as significant as pi."

    22/7 approximates pi.

    Iiiinteresting...

  3. Re:Meh on C++ and the STL 12 Years Later: What Do You Think Now? · · Score: 1

    What if your application never exits? Embedded stuff is expected to run for months. We could never use a garbage collected language.

  4. Re:What could go wrong? on California Bill Proposes Mandatory Kill-Switch On Phones and Tablets · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Better yet, imagine how useful a phone kill switch would be during widespread citizen protests?

    "For public safety, we have to shut off everyone's phone. And because terrorism."

  5. Re:The most important thing is experience! on Ask Slashdot: What's On Your Hardware Lab Bench? · · Score: 1

    "EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF TEST EQUIPMENT LIES"

    Agreed. The map is not the territory. What you see on the scope is kinda sorta what might be going on. Don't trust it 100%.

  6. Re:Had a bad week... on Ask Slashdot: What's On Your Hardware Lab Bench? · · Score: 1

    I'm having a week like that. What hammer do you use?

  7. Re:oh man, what a mess on Xerox Photocopiers Randomly Alter Numbers, Says German Researcher · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Could also be a problem with an overly aggressive hole filling algorithm. http://www.mathworks.com/help/images/ref/imfill.html

    I'd expect there's nothing nefarious going on. It's very likely an overly aggressive image processing algorithm.

  8. Re:The good old days on Ubuntu Developing Its Own Package Format, Installer · · Score: 1

    *waves cane* Good! Begone you whippersnapper!

  9. Re:Professional languages on Ask Slashdot: Job Search Or More Education? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Knowing C, IMO, is a litmus test for someone who knows how computers work. Pointers, memory, file I/O, etc, aren't directly useful in higher level languages these days. But knowing they exist would help someone write smarter code.

  10. If you want to be a programmer, on Ask Slashdot: Job Search Or More Education? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    get a degree. Programming jobs are heavily resume/GPA filtered. Unless you have someone on the inside ("who you know"), what you know will only get you so far. The great jobs, IMO, for a newbie, are best approached with a great GPA and transcript.

    There is so much more to programming than just banging on a keyboard. Get a good discrete mathematical background, algorithms, data structures. Study the hardware level as well (don't sleep through Comp Arch like I did). For the best bang for your buck, dual degree CS with something else engineering related (mechanical, chemical, physics, etc). STEM is the big thing these days.

    Do NOT bankrupt yourself or your future with crazy loans. Yes, "get a degree" and "don't bankrupt your future" are almost mutually exclusive these days. But even from a smaller college, a great GPA and transcript will get you in more doors.

  11. Re:the USA will drop the Dollar Bill... on Is It Time For the US To Ditch the Dollar Bill? · · Score: 1

    'merica! f' yeah!

  12. Re:Came here looking for the Planet Money link on Is It Time For the US To Ditch the Dollar Bill? · · Score: 1

    Thought of that Planet Money episode as soon as I saw the title. The TL;DL (too long; didn't listen) of the podcast is coins aren't continually circulated like paper bills. People throw them in jars and leave them there for months, years. So *more* coins than bills are actually needed in order to keep the normal supply circulating.

  13. Re:Pilot Hi-Tec-C Pens on Ask Slashdot: The Search For the Ultimate Engineer's Pen · · Score: 1

    Amen. I discovered these by accident then bought a couple boxes last year from Amazon. I'm partial to the 0.4. I write small and these give the best, quickest lines of any pen I've used. By quickest meaning I don't have to slow down on rougher paper. Ink always lands on the paper nice and evenly.

  14. 15 years too late. on CDE Open Sourced · · Score: 3, Informative

    Open Sourcing CDE? Seriously? Would have possibly made a difference in 1998. But now? Except for historical interest, there's no point.

    Was a so-so environment on HP-UX back in the day. Gloriously ugly.

  15. Re:I wish Senators/Representatives read Slashdot on Law Professors On SOPA and PIPA: Don't Break the Internet · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Maybe if we all wrote them a letter on the back of a US$10 bill they'd notice.

  16. Why didn't I think of this!? on Spectrophotometer Analysis of Crayons · · Score: 1

    I "work" with color science. We have an X-Rite spectrophotometer just sitting around. Takes an artist's thinking, I suppose.

    I ran into a paper a while back where the author captured spectrum of 100s of "natural" objects. Rocks, leaves, skin, etc etc. Made for an interesting chromaticity diagram.

  17. If I don't check /. for six days consecutively... on Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda Resigns From Slashdot · · Score: 1

    I can't even remember when I signed up for /. Been a long long time.

    I visit several times a day, nearly every day. Even when out in the boonies of the world (Yachats, OR), I found a way. Dial-up and Links were enough to get my slashdot fix.

    I jokingly say I have a living will: if I don't check /. for six days consecutively, consider me brain dead and unplug the machines.

    Thank you so much for being a huge part of my geek life these last many years. Best of luck in your future endeavor.

  18. Kermit. 1988, 300 baud to college VAX on Columbia University Ending the Kermit Project · · Score: 1

    (bows head)

    Used Kermit from a 286 running MS-DOS 3.3, dialing 300 baud to our college's VAX. Ahhh, memories.

  19. Re:By Accident on Google Wants To Take Away Your Capslock Key · · Score: 1

    Programming.

    The convention in C/C++ programming is to put preprocessor symbols in all caps.

    #define THIS_IS_A_PREPROCESSOR_SYMBOL 42

  20. Re:Good stuff on Finance, Scientific Users Get ActivePython Updates · · Score: 1

    What he said! I love numpy+scipy+matplotlib. Makes my life soooo much easier.

  21. Re:We are staying on XP on Time To Dump XP? · · Score: 1

    > Heard the same arguments with the W2K-to-XP process

    The only reason I upgraded my work machine(s) from Win2k to WinXP was WinXP rebooted faster.

    Vista, Win7 don't run my tools any faster, don't reboot any faster. So I really don't have any reason to upgrade.

    I upgraded Win2k -> WinXP -> Vista -> Win7 at home for games. But here at work, WinXP works the same as Win7.

  22. Re:It should have been phased out... on Will the Serial Console Ever Die? · · Score: 1

    USB is an astonishing pain in the @$$ compared to the simple TX/RX/GND of US232.

    You have control interface, bulk in/out, a complete PHY with all its weirdness (DMA IO maybe?) and required code.

    New boards with flaky USB have crashed my systems more time than I can count. I have to reboot USB hubs on a regular basis.

    RS232 I've never had any trouble.

  23. Re:520 people, that's a big ship on Volunteers Wanted For Simulated 520-Day Mars Trip · · Score: 1

    Obviously you're reading this from the perspective of a project manager.

    "If it takes 520 days for 6 people to get to Mars, we'll get 520 people and make it in 6 days!"

    I'm now logging off the internet, forever.

    I will never EVER again read anything simultaneously so true, so sad, and so funny.

  24. Re:Focuses on Interfaces to Ease the Pain on Microsoft Releases New Concurrent Programming Language · · Score: 1

    ThreadX forever!

  25. Re:It should flourish. on Without Jobs, Will Open Source Suffer? · · Score: 1

    I'm still employed and hope to be continually employed.

    But in my spare time, I'm furiously hacking away on my own GPL'd application to:

    1) perhaps sell it (in the MySQL model)
    2) add new skills
    3) add something additional to my resume

    Scary economy has effect of making me work harder.