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User: Chirs

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  1. why does that necessarily follow? on Google Fiber: No Charge For Peering, No Fast Lanes · · Score: 1

    Write the laws such that the municipal utility must meet standards on congestion, speed, packet loss, etc. Set the fee levels high enough to allow for continual infrastructure improvement.

    Around here the phone, electricity, gas, sewer, and water are all municipal or provincially-owned utilities. They seem to do just fine.

  2. local cableco offers 250Mbps over copper on Google Fiber: No Charge For Peering, No Fast Lanes · · Score: 1

    It's not 1Gbps, but around here I can sign up for 250Mbps over copper. The local telco only goes up to 260Mbps on their fiber offering.

  3. good idea, poor execution on Professors: US "In Denial" Over Poor Maths Standards · · Score: 4, Interesting

    As I understand it, the problem that CC is trying to solve is that most kids don't have a gut-level understanding of what numbers actually *mean*.

    I went to school with a lot of people that just memorized the rules, but didn't really have a feel for them. And so when the circumstances changed they couldn't adjust the rules to deal with the new circumstances. (Dealing with binary or hex, for example. Or curved space, or alternate coordinate systems.)

    So with CC they're trying to give kids a more intuitive feel for numbers. That said, the alternate techniques are supposed to be *in addition* to the ones that we all learned, not instead of them. And the alternate techniques are not as efficient as the traditional techniques (which are optimized for the common case) but they're more flexible. So some questions (like those involving large numbers) don't mesh well with techniques involving counting/drawing/reordering/etc.

    Lastly, some of the issues are due to bad question design, bad teaching, etc. We've got centuries of experience teaching the traditional techniques, not so much with the new stuff.

  4. a bit more complicated than that on Professors: US "In Denial" Over Poor Maths Standards · · Score: 1

    In the interests of "accountability" and "lean" and "metrics" and such there is little flexibility because teachers are forced to "teach to the test".

    The problem is not that it's a government-run organization, the problem is that teaching is inherently difficult to standardize. Each kid is different.

    Standardized testing is an attractive idea (how do you know how you're doing unless you measure it?) but the problem seems to be that it's *really hard* to come up with effective measurements for everything a teacher does.

  5. seems to be incorrect teaching on Professors: US "In Denial" Over Poor Maths Standards · · Score: 4, Informative

    From what I understand, the alternative methods are supposed to be taught in addition to the traditional methods, not instead of them. The idea is to get kids comfortable with what the operations actually "mean", not just rote techniques.

    The method of using addition to do subtraction is one that I do quite regularly (I'm almost 40). It's handy as an estimation technique, since for a first approximation you can round both numbers to something that's easy to work with, and then factor in the correction if necessary.

    As for division, the technique described clearly doesn't scale to the numbers in the example. It was a poor choice of question to demonstrate the technique.

  6. no, the ones like on Ask Slashdot: What Should Every Programmer Read? · · Score: 2

    //it is okay if x overflows
    x++;

    or

    //bump the refcount so nobody can delete it while we're using it
    x++;

  7. I still don't understand why Microsoft never implemented that fully.

  8. Re:640k isn't enough for everybody on Game of Thrones Author George R R Martin Writes with WordStar on DOS · · Score: 1

    The idea of ramdriving every program by loading 100% of every program you are running and 100% of every file used by every one of those programs is silly, but it's the new norm. You don't read what you want, you read it all, even if you don't need it.

    For any respectably large file (i.e. a significant fraction of your RAM) I'd bet most software will not actually read the whole file. It'll memory-map the whole file, but that doesn't actually read the data. The actual pages will only get faulted-in when you actually go to read them. And if you're short on memory then pages you haven't read in a while will be dropped.

    I've helped write soft-realtime software that goes to great lengths to avoid the overhead of page-faulting at runtime. It pre-allocates a fixed-size buffer, then calls mlockall() on those pages (and the pages belonging to the executable) to pre-fault the memory and keep them from getting swapped out.

  9. better solution...last mile as public utility on Major ISPs Threaten To Throttle Innovation and Slow Network Upgrades · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A better solution would be to run the last mile as a public utility. You pay the city to maintain a single fiber to the premises, and then all the various ISPs could hook in at defined network access points.

    So your local connectivity would be within the utility, but anything beyond that would be routed through your chosen ISP...sort of like picking different long-distance providers for a phone subscription.

  10. what's wrong with a utility? on Major ISPs Threaten To Throttle Innovation and Slow Network Upgrades · · Score: 1

    My power/water/gas/sewer utilities are reasonably priced and provide excellent service.

    I'd be perfectly happy if internet were priced like a utility: a basic monthly rate for the simple fact of being a subscriber, and a low per-GB fee that actually reflects the incremental cost of more bandwidth.

  11. that's exactly the problem on Major ISPs Threaten To Throttle Innovation and Slow Network Upgrades · · Score: 1

    If the ISP also owns content, they have a vested interest in making it as hard as possible to access outside content, and as easy as possible to access their own.

    It would be far better if the ISP was wholly separate from the content owner, and was legally required to offer the same network access terms to everyone.

  12. beg to differ on New Battery Tech From Japan Could Supercharge EVs · · Score: 1

    If most people would need a large repair by 75K then how can Hyundai offer a 10yr/ 100K mi powertrain warranty?

    I'm another statistical anomaly, I guess. I'm currently driving a 2005 Matrix with 93K miles on it, and it's only needed a new clockspring assembly ($300 in parts, did it myself).

  13. the syntax is the easy part on Ask Slashdot: Minimum Programming Competence In Order To Get a Job? · · Score: 2

    The more complicated part is all of the system libraries, the third-party libraries, the "right way" to do things in that language, etc.

  14. I find it a bit hard to believe on Ask Slashdot: Minimum Programming Competence In Order To Get a Job? · · Score: 1

    I fancy myself a "knows a LOT of languages and knows how to adapt". So I can sit down in front of a machine running a completely in-house language, and be proficient in it in less than a day, very skilled in under a week.

    I question the timeframe. While the semantics of the language can be picked up in that time, I find it hard to believe that you can pick up all of the system dependencies, the overall design structure, all the dependent components, etc. for a large software system.

    I worked in telecom software for a while. When I was hired, they put me through a week-long training course on the proprietary language, another week-long training course on the proprietary debugger, another week-long course on the design of the proprietary OS, another course on the basics of telecom systems, another on OO-programming as used in their product, etc. Sure, some of it was fluff, but there was a lot of meat there too.

    I also worked as a linux kernel developer. It's C, so it's not exactly an unfamiliar language. But it took a long time to get to the point where I understood the structure of the kernel, knew what bits were handled where, understood why things were the way they were, and could submit code that was likely to be accepted by the main developers.

  15. The judges don't make the rules on Court: Oracle Entitled To Copyright Protection Over Some Parts of Java · · Score: 2

    they only interpret them.

    If the law was written such that APIs can be copyrighted, there's nothing the judge can do about that.

  16. What they have is pretty standard on USPTO Approves Amazon Patent For Taking Pictures · · Score: 1

    There are two possibilities.

    1) They're using it for purely defensive purposes.

    2) Either it's broad enough to be dangerous to others doing anything similar, or someone else could go and get a bunch of patents on slight variations of light positioning, ISO level, aperture, etc.

    In the case of 1, the problem is that it's basically obvious and shouldn't have been patentable. In the case of 2, professional product photographers are in trouble.

  17. how is it hoarding or scalping? on In SF: an App For Auctioning Off Your Public Parking Spot · · Score: 1

    Assuming they're paying for parking and not staying longer than they're allowed to, how is it "hoarding"?

    And how is it "scalping"? They're merely offering to delay leaving their spot if someone pays them to do so. Basically they're selling their time.

    Ultimately I think the app would need to give the general location to everyone, but the exact spot should only go to the individual selected by the person leaving the spot.

  18. get a manual on Did the Ignition Key Just Die? · · Score: 1

    In a manual transmission vehicle the power steering and power brakes will continue to provide assistance as long as the vehicle is in gear since the wheels will drive the engine through the transmission.

  19. what if you don't want it to turn on? on Did the Ignition Key Just Die? · · Score: 1

    Better to have a switch to tell it to turn on.

  20. telecoms is a natural monopoly on Mozilla Offers FCC a Net Neutrality Plan With a Twist · · Score: 2

    Unless you have a government utility owning the last mile, there are going to be very high barriers to entry. Nobody wants a patchwork of random cable/phone companies trenching all over the place.

  21. conflict of interest on Mozilla Offers FCC a Net Neutrality Plan With a Twist · · Score: 4, Informative

    There is a conflict of intersest between what the customer expects of an ISP (equal access to competing services on the Internet) and the ISP hosting their own service in competition with "external" services. This could be voice, streaming video, videoconferencing, etc.

    Any time the ISP offers services beyond being a dumb pipe, there is a natural temptation for the ISP to prioritize the traffic belonging to their own services above the traffic coming from competing "external" services. This can show up in many ways, the simplest being to not upgrade their external connectivity as much as they could--which has the natural effect of making their own services more attractive due to better bandwidth, latency, etc.

    By making ISPs dumb pipes and preventing them from shaping traffic due to any reason other than rated subscriber bandwidth, we could ensure fair treatement across all services.

  22. need to enter a PIN to enable on "Smart" Gun Seller Gets the Wrong Kind of Online Attention · · Score: 1

    While needing to enter a code on your watch to fire the pistol would be fine for range shooting, it would seem to be unworkable for people wanting a gun for protection.

    Maybe just a distance sensor would be better.

  23. "spin" implies falsehood, or at least bias on Australian Exploration Company Believes It May Have Found MH370 Wreckage · · Score: 2

    While I agree that it would be best for everyone to get unbiased news across the political spectrum, there is a difference between leftist (or rightist) "news" and "spin".

    To me, "spin" implies falsehood, or at least heavily biased reporting. On the other hand, it would be possible do completely unbiased reporting of news that is of interest to those on the left (or right).

  24. source-based not the problem on New White House Petition For Net Neutrality · · Score: 1

    As I see it, an ISP should first of all do QoS on their traffic based on *subscriber*...what their plan is, whether they have any SLAs in place, etc. At this stage the *type* of traffic should not be considered.

    As a second optional stage, *if a subscriber asks them to do so* then they could do type/source/whatever-based QoS, but that would *only affect packets belonging to that subscriber*.

    That way, your traffic can't affect mine, and mine can't affect yours. If I want, I can do my own QoS, or I can let the ISP do it for me. It is *not* the ISP's job to prioritize your VoIP packets ahead of my bittorrent packets. They should be equal. If you want them to prioritize your VoIP packets ahead of _your_ bittorrent packets, then that's fine.

  25. could be cheaper bandwidth on How Much Data Plan Bandwidth Is Wasted By DRM? · · Score: 1

    The servers for streaming video need to have good network connections because the buffers generally aren't very big.

    For pre-downloads they could use servers with crappier network links because they're not latency sensitive. Heck, you could do bittorrent-style peer-to-peer sharing of encrypted movies from other subscribers (maybe make it optional and give subscribers a credit for how much they upload to others).