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User: Jaime2

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  1. Re:Most degrees from India... on Wikipedia Admin's Manipulation "Messed Up Perhaps 15,000 Students' Lives" · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I used to do a lot of contractor hiring. I started with the attitude "if you lie on your resume, I won't even consider you". After realizing that I would never hire anyone - I backed off on the attitude. The interview process became an exercise in determining what the candidate knows, while the candidate made every attempt possible to deceive me. It was very disheartening and I hated hiring someone who lied to my face for 60 minutes straight because he lied less than everyone else and was the most likely of the bunch to get the job done.

    BTW, this was at a really big company and 99% of the resumes that HR sent me were educated in India and came to the US to work in the previous three to five years.

  2. Re:And now why this can not be done in the USofA on Costa Rica Goes 75 Days Powering Itself Using Only Renewable Energy · · Score: 2

    Sure you could put Niagara Falls in a dam, but it wouldn't be pretty.

    They went through a lot of effort to get hydro power from Niagara Falls without ruining the tourist attraction factor. Instead of turning it into a dam, a three square mile reservoir was built and water is diverted from the upper river to this reservoir (mostly) at night. During the day, the dam creates energy by draining the reservoir into the lower river. No part of the power generation system is within a mile of the falls itself.

  3. Re:I just don't care on FTC: Google Altered Search Results For Profit · · Score: 1

    ... but that's highly subjective. The fact that the FTC decided the practices are deceptive is what made them illegal. They were just anti-consumer behaviors before the FTC looked into it.

  4. Re:I just don't care on FTC: Google Altered Search Results For Profit · · Score: 1

    Google never promised to have its page rankings work in a particular way.

    This is the Federal Trade Commission. They issue fines for things like weight loss ads that present a highly one-sided narrative of the product, or to telcom companies that sell unlimited data services that have limits. They have the power to declare a practice deceptive and fine for it, even if the practice is legal.

  5. Why not just shoot them in the leg? It's not that much more of a ridiculous punishment. The sort of speeding most people get caught doing is not that highly correlated to increased risk, and truly dangerous speeding already results multi-thousand dollar fines and/or license suspension and/or jail time in most states.. Licenses suspensions aren't warranted.

  6. Re:Aluminum FTW! on GSM/GPS Tracking Device Found On Activist's Car At Circumvention Tech Festival · · Score: 1

    Almost every Jaguar has an aluminum body, and they have no frame.

  7. Re:Young galaxy? on Astronomers Find an Old-Looking Galaxy In the Early Universe · · Score: 2

    Sure the galaxy is 13.1 billion years old now. But we are seeing it as it was when it was much less than 700 million years old. So, we're "seeing" a young galaxy, regardless of how long ago it was formed.

  8. Re:Overstatement on 1950s Toy That Included Actual Uranium Ore Goes On Display At Museum · · Score: 4, Insightful

    My guess is that the 'most dangerous' toy would be a marble.

    Small powerful magnets. If you swallow two a few hours apart, you run a real risk of death. Swim goggles would be my guess for #2.

  9. Re:You are asking the wrong queston... on Ask Slashdot: Version Control For Non-Developers? · · Score: 1

    Serialized workflow is the enemy of scalabilty. I would do it in many circumstances because the benefits of the tool (Word in this case) outweigh the costs of the workflow it requires. But I wouldn't confuse that with consciously choosing a serialized workflow.

    It many cases were a customer of mine has multi-user editing problems, I find that the root cause is that they store bits of information with different use patterns in the same document. Simply splitting the document often fixes the problem.

  10. Re:You are asking the wrong queston... on Ask Slashdot: Version Control For Non-Developers? · · Score: 1

    You are trying to shoehorn the process into one that works with the limitations of desktop document editing programs. Switching to collaborative editing solutions, or moving the data from documents to databases would likely bypass the need to restrict the process to one editor at a time. I'm not saying that either is a better solution than your suggestion, but I have shown that what you are suggesting is only one of many ways forward.

  11. Re:Use GIT on Ask Slashdot: Version Control For Non-Developers? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Git and SVN are different products. SVN is centralized and git is distributed. If you want to create a centralized repository and only allow people to have access to certain parts of it, SVN is a much better fit for that workflow. Neither allows the user to browse the document repository with first checking it out. Well, they both have web interfaces, but those don't support a good editing workflow.

  12. Re:But, but, you're using logic and science on Federal Study: Marijuana Use Doesn't Increase Auto Crash Rates · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Any time someone responds to a study with the general statement "They are wrong, I have an anecdote to prove it!" should be tagged and forever prohibited from participating in discussions or weighing in on decisions on the topic.

  13. Re:There's a reason the REAL gear is expensive on Smart Homes Often Dumb, Never Simple · · Score: 1

    That's not the whole story. Unfortunately, very few vendors in the market see value in the old fashioned "build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door" philosophy. Instead, most have some strange profit angle that ends up reducing the utility of the stuff they sell. You see too many ad-ladened smart phone apps, subscription services, or good ole' vendor lock-in in the affordable stuff.

    For example, I have a garage door opener that has automation features. Unfortunately, every time IOS or Android update, either me or my wife can't use the smart features for a few months. They have a halfway decent app, but it will never be integrated with anything else and they won't publish an API spec to allow me to use an alternative method of control. This is very short-sighted. Opening up an API won't make the geek money rain down on you tomorrow, but if a critical mass of vendors do it, the market will mature to the point where you can put something together out of cheap components.

  14. Re:Hopefully the applicants had a relevent backrou on Ask Slashdot: What Portion of Developers Are Bad At What They Do? · · Score: 1

    That's because the only purpose of the question was to determine if you any semblance of programming skill. Such a simple test filters out 95% of candidates and leaves a lot of time to have real discussions with the other 5%.

  15. Re:Ask Japan... on The IPCC's Shifting Position On Nuclear Energy · · Score: 1

    Exactly how many nuclear disasters does it take before we figure out how to do what these other countries are already doing?

    It took zero. We stopped building Nuclear plants before Chernobyl (29 deaths) or Fukushima (1 death) happened. Now that we had one due to old tech and misuse and one due to neglect and a huge earthquake, it's still the wrong thing to do.

  16. Re: Yay for "zero tolerance" on Texas Boy Suspended For "Threatening" Classmate With the One Ring · · Score: 1

    Should you fire the person that is likely legally bound to make a very nonsensical call?

    That's an idea. It would certainly speed up the process of getting these policies reviewed and revised and fix the "sorry my hands are tied" attitudes that people making sense keep getting stonewalled with.

  17. Re: Yay for "zero tolerance" on Texas Boy Suspended For "Threatening" Classmate With the One Ring · · Score: 1

    And exactly what the fuck do you know about fear?

    I too am a parent. I am much more afraid that my child will be harmed by a friend or by her own choices than by a stranger shooting up a school or a by drug dealer. These zero tolerance policies don't address any fear I have. The links you provided don't represent anything I'm afraid of.

  18. Re: Yay for "zero tolerance" on Texas Boy Suspended For "Threatening" Classmate With the One Ring · · Score: 1

    I agree we shouldn't live in fear, but we need to keep our eyes open.

    ... followed by why you live in fear.

    Bad things have always happened. Bad things will continue to happen no matter how much you try to control them. The idea that you will only accept a situation after you have wrung the very last ounce of risk out of it is pretty much the definition of cowardice. Bravery would be doing something despite great risk - I'm not advocating that. Rather, sending your kids to school when there is a statistically low chance of harm is simply the sensible thing to do.

  19. Re:It's not the gas... on NFL Asks Columbia University For Help With Deflate-Gate · · Score: 1

    OK, so I guess I'm wrong, the NFL has no experience with inflating footballs. There are multiple balls inflated for each of the many games each week throughout the season and this has been going on for quite a few years, but they still don't really know anything about inflated leather balls. Right.

    They asked for the help, that's the point of the article. If they were confident in their conclusions, this thread wouldn't exist in its current form. I am not making some wild assumption that they don't know what they are doing - the NFL asked for help.

    I realized that they probably only asked for help because they wanted to get a response from someone with an un-assailable reputation, not because they are buffoons. But, it still happened, and pointing out that they know what they are doing does not advance the conversation.

  20. Re:It's not the gas... on NFL Asks Columbia University For Help With Deflate-Gate · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So, I said that the behavior of gasses is well understood and you responded with the ideal gas law. Are you agreeing or disagreeing with me? If you are agreeing, then why post?

    Next you mentioned the the NFL has a bunch of experience with this. Yet, it is the NFL that is asking for help. Obviously they don't agree with you.

  21. Re:Don't forget weight (mass) on NFL Asks Columbia University For Help With Deflate-Gate · · Score: 1

    There is about 1/10th of a pound of air in an inflated ball. If it were pumped to 100psi you could tell the difference, but you would need balls with very consistent tare weights and a really good scale to notice a few psi in the weight.

  22. It's not the gas... on NFL Asks Columbia University For Help With Deflate-Gate · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The problem with describing what happens when a ball cools isn't about the gas inside it; that's well understood. The problem is that the container is also affected by temperature and leather is a complicated material. The best answer here is to do a bunch of experiments, not a bunch of calculations.

  23. Re:Japanese solution! on Why ATM Bombs May Be Coming Soon To the United States · · Score: 2

    We have those in the US. I use various cards in those for fun to see what works. For some reason, it's entertaining to me to use a Microsoft Certified Professional card to get into an ATM vestibule.

  24. Yes on Researchers Moot "Teleportation" Via Destructive 3D Printing · · Score: 5, Informative

    Their method of destructive scanning allows for internal detail to be accurately reproduced. They aren't destroying it for the fun of it, they're destroying it to see it's internal structure. The DRM-like behavior is just a side-effect.

  25. Re:You're picking your tool before your problem. on Ask Slashdot: Linux Database GUI Application Development? · · Score: 1

    For pure data entry a straight up server side web application is usually the best choice. You don't need to support multiple client installs, just the server instance.

    Web apps are great for when you need an app to reach everyone on the Internet. Web apps are almost never the best choice if you have a captive audience. The challenges of deploying desktop apps are pretty small and approximately equivalent to the amount of effort needed to keep up to date with the march of progress in browsers. With a native app, you get to choose your own technology rather than be forced to use JavaScript for the UI tier and you get a much better user experience with less effort.