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User: eldavojohn

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  1. The Natural Rise & Fall of Empires on Rackable Buying SGI Assets For $25M? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Time was that there was little cooler than an SGI workstation.

    Time was that there was little cooler than your company having its own Cray machine.

    Time was that there was little cooler than having the latest Sega game system in your home.

    Time was that there was little cooler than to puts around on a BSA motorcycle in front of your friends.

    Time was that there was little cooler than to be a citizen of Rome ... Wait, I'm sorry, what was the point of this exercise again? To wax nostalgic about the inevitable fall of empires?

  2. Unless the SEC's in on It ... on Rackable Buying SGI Assets For $25M? · · Score: 5, Informative

    a story that might be an April Fools day joke

    Hey I myself enjoy taking a joke too far but if this is an April Fool's Day joke, I must confess I would have jumped out and yelled "surprise" before filing a merger and acquisition notice with the Security and Exchange Commission of the United States Government. I hear they don't take too kindly to joke 8-Ks.

    From the SEC Filing:

    On April 1, 2009, Rackable Systems, Inc. ("Rackable"), a Delaware corporation, announced that it had signed an Asset Purchase Agreement (the "Agreement") to acquire substantially all the assets of Silicon Graphics, Inc., a Delaware corporation ("SGI"), including SGI's non-U.S. subsidiaries and operations, other than certain assets unrelated to the ongoing business. The Agreement, dated March 31, 2009, was made and entered into by and among Rackable, SGI and certain SGI subsidiaries. The Agreement has been approved by the respective boards of directors of Rackable and SGI.

    Under the terms of the Agreement, Rackable or a subsidiary of Rackable, will acquire the assets for a purchase price of approximately $25 million in cash, $10 million of which will be placed in escrow and available to Rackable following the closing to reimburse Rackable for payments and expenses made or incurred in connection with certain tax matters. In addition, Rackable will assume certain liabilities associated with the acquired assets. Following the signing of the Agreement, SGI and certain of its affiliated entities located in the U.S. filed a voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition and motions to approve the Agreement.

    Also note that they had planned to repurchase up to $40 million worth of shares but it looks like instead they're opting to acquire SGI. What that means to you day traders and quant fund managers, who knows?

    And note to Rackable's PR: Either this was a genius joke, or a terrible day to announce huge news. Someone either deserves a promotion or a firing.

    The world doesn't screech to a halt because a bunch of nerds are slapping their knees and pulling pranks; here's evidence someone got something done yesterday.

  3. Re:Waste on Yeast-Powered Fuel Cell Feeds On Human Blood · · Score: 4, Funny

    If you have to perform regular extractions (or worse, operations) is it really better than the current alternatives?

    Nonsense. CADIE claims that this new technology is necessary to ensure that humans continue to have a purpose to exist past the first uprising--that alone should be merit to continue this research.

  4. "Waffle & Bluster"?! on The Guardian Shifts To Twitter After 188 Years of Ink · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Martin Luther King's legendary 1963 speech on the steps of the Lincoln memorial appears in the Guardian's Twitterised archive as 'I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by,' eliminating the waffle and bluster of the original.

    I couldn't find anything when googling for "waffle and bluster" aside from this story so I looked up each of the words.

    waffle

    Speech or writing that is vague, pretentious or evasive. Example: "This interesting point seems to get lost a little within a lot of self-important waffle."

    bluster

    Pompous, officious talk.

    I guess we think more highly of Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. in the states.

  5. Unexplained Achievement "The Maker"? on Slashdot Launches User Achievements · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I (and many many others) have an achievement called "The Maker" ... what does that mean? It's not listed in the FAQ.

    Also, how are you computing the total number of Achievements? If you add up my achievements (and if I add the powers of two I get closer) but it doesn't come out to be the number you posted.

    Also, if I have CmdrTaco's attention, why not leave this up? You've written the code for it and although it will certainly tax your database (default awards were handed out on different days) to update these values for everyone, why not leave it in place? Are you afraid this would increase karma whoring (it's in powers of 2 anyways) or produce negative effects?

    For those of you without Warcraft characters, you add it to your user page and then it appears on the right of your user page as a hyper link to the armory (check out my user page). Then you get a +1 achievement with Level 80 (or I guess whatever level your main is) on your Achievements page.

  6. Re:Sesame Street & the Importance of Bilingual on Shouldn't Every Developer Understand English? · · Score: 5, Funny

    I can confirm that linux is bi. My girlfriend and I had a threesome with him. I thought it would be cool to watch him fuck my girlfriend ...

    Sounds like you have a completely fair scheduler enabled.

  7. Sesame Street & the Importance of Bilingualism on Shouldn't Every Developer Understand English? · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ... notes that 'Linus Torvalds, a Finn, comments his code in English (it apparently never occurred to him to do otherwise).

    I thought I had read/heard somewhere (might have even been the documentary Revolution OS) that Finns & Swedes grow up with English Sesame Street available to them and as a result many of them are bilingual from a young age.

    I've also ready that being bilingual or a polyglot is beneficial to thinking and memory skills. So I would caution thinking that because Linus Torvalds chooses comments in English for any reason other than more people speak it than Finnish. I would also caution you to assume that Linus learned English in order to increase his hacking skills. And I might even be inclined to argue that Linus' bilingualism aided or enabled him to reach such great heights with programming languages.

    After toying with tools like ANTLR, it's not too far of a jump to say that understanding another language (even a dead one like Latin) helps you understand that information & logic can be portrayed multiple different ways with different vocabularies & grammar rules. Thus priming you for many software languages.

    I cannot attest as to whether or not English buys you anything over Russian or Chinese as far as resources available on the web but I will argue that someone who has Russian as a first language and Chinese as a second will most likely be better off to code than someone with merely English as a first language (Disclaimer: I am the latter).

    'advocating the adoption of English as the de-facto standard language of software development is simple pragmatism, the most virtuous of all hacker traits'

    I don't think that makes you an 'ugly American programmer' but I sure do think it sets you up for some surprises in life.

  8. Where's the MTTF? on Mac Tax, Dell Tax, HP Tax · · Score: 4, Insightful

    pretty exhaustive comparison

    I don't think it was exhaustive at all. What I feel like I'm buying when I buy a laptop is more than what this article implies. I am buying into a brick of hardware where if one piece fails or becomes obsolete, it might as well be the whole brick. Which is why it surprises me that talk of hard drives (though they are the easiest component to replace) doesn't even list the manufacturer of the drive! How about a Mean Time to Failure (MTTF) of each of the products used? How about even just telling me that all the USB ports are 2.0 (I mean, I'm assuming that but who knows)? And what about the support that comes with each laptop as far as # of updates (BIOS/firmware) issued for the mainboard and all devices?

    High-end laptops tend to carry high-end prices, whether their operating system hails from Cupertino or Redmond.

    Actually I advise people that high end Macs are a tiny bit more expensive than high end other laptops while low end Macs are much more expensive (percentage wise) to low end Dells or HPs. And I think that's better information (and I thought I read that in the article). You usually get what you pay for and I wish the article had done a more thorough analysis of the laptops component by component.

  9. Re:Be the First to Ask Google to Stop, I Dare You on Should Google Be Forced To Pay For News? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Sadly, the Guardian sells next to nothing despite it being by far the best newspaper.

    If they are "by far" the best newspaper then what are they worried about? Google News puts them right next to every other newspaper and if their superiority is so vastly obvious, they should be stealing readers left and right from other newspapers. Readers who are used to trashy tabloids should read one article from them and switch their home pages to The Gaurdian, right?

    If you ask me, this is a result of newspapers fearing that people will go to Google News and realize that there are other viable & better news sources out there.

    News aggregaters simply mean that providers need to work harder to win eyes, it's putting them up against everyone else which is great for the end consumer. Once again, an industry is bitching about a great new technology that makes the end user's life a whole lot better but makes them work a little harder for their dough.

  10. Be the First to Ask Google to Stop, I Dare You on Should Google Be Forced To Pay For News? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    claiming they reap the benefit of content from news sites without contributing anything towards their costs

    Well, go ahead, be the first brave news source to ask Google to remove you from their caches. It'd be suicide. Even the article points out what you'd be doing:

    The Guardian says content providers are faced with a catch-22: they can't afford to withhold content from search engines, yet can't feasibly charge consumers for it either, "not least because of the presence of the BBC and the vast quantities of free content it publishes on bbc.co.uk."

    I'd like to hear and discuss the alternatives mentioned in the summary but can't find them in the article.

    Has the Guardian's online readership or ad revenue plummeted?

    Perhaps you should just learn to deal with Google acting as a portal and give your readers a reason to visit your site to read the whole article? This is overall a good thing for you--don't ruin it.

    Where is Google making the money and how could you scale fractions of that to go out to sites based on popularity?

  11. What Do You Want to Do with the Rest of Your Life? on Best Grad Program For a Computer Science Major? · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Disclaimer: I got a Bachelors of Science in Computer Science and a Masters of Science in Computer Science from two different schools.

    I am currently a junior computer science major at a relatively competitive university. I intend to remain here for some graduate work ...

    Ok, I'm not going to be able to tell you which degree to pursue but I am going to tell you that remaining at the same university you got your undergrad in is a mistake. I was once like you and my professor told me that it was a bad idea for me to remain at the same university for my masters. I didn't care, I wanted to be closer to my family and there wasn't another decent university around. I never got a good explanation why but due to some circumstances, I ended up moving and the result was my masters at a different university.

    I am thankful this happened.

    I now understand why it's better that you go to another university for your next degree and it has a little bit to do with what some people consider the most important aspect of college. I've oft heard that it's not what you learn at college, it's who you meet. And while I agreed with this about the bullshit degrees in college (like business, architecture, law, etc.) I had never considered it a matter of importance at all in computer science. But it is! Not because of this connection is hooking you up with this position here but more so because of the ideas that sometimes arise between two particular individuals or the new perspectives other people can put on how you see things--yes, even technical things like algorithms.

    And so, by staying at the same university, you are wastefully throwing away a chance to work with, learn with and be with 100s of new talented people. If you stay, you most likely know the staff at your current university and will have everything settled but I urge you to consider throwing away that comfort zone and take a gamble at meeting new people with different ideas and concentrations. I think this helps both universities from becoming too stagnant and focusing on the same damn thing year after year. I don't know, I'm no longer in academia but think about it.

    An MS in computer science appears to be highly theoretical ...

    It doesn't have to be that way. I was given a set of courses to choose from (as long as I satisfied breadth and depth requirements) and I think there were quite a few practically useful classes I could take--even software business classes. At least at my university it wasn't highly theoretical but an individual could certainly go that way. I knew what I wanted to do with my life: code. And it seems like everything I took in my grad classes was in some way useful. I'm given a large set of requirements and one of the first things I do is theorize with others about practical ways to implement it. Thankfully, you can usually spot the choke points and problem areas with designs and although patterns like proxy, caching, model-view-controller and polymorphism are theoretical concepts, they are often considered and analyzed without being implemented.

    The point is, everything will look good on your resume as long as it's a masters. And I'm certain you could go down any of the paths you listed and still land a job doing something one of the others is geared towards.

    The real question you should be asking is to yourself and it should be "What do I want to do with the rest of my life?" Once you answer that, you'll get a better idea of what masters program to take. The other degrees, probably also useful. I'm pretty biased though and wanted to be working in computer science for the rest of my life so it was an easy answer. Had I done IT I could probably still be where I am right now but I had no desire for that part of the field. Call your own shots.

  12. Agreed, TANSTAAFL on 20 Years After Cold Fusion Debut, Another Team Claims Success · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As long as I can use this new cold fusion device to power my perpetual motion machine, I'm good.

    Agreed. Although IANAP, TANSTAAFL.

    Although, I do understand what they're trying to achieve on a simple level (fusion at sustainable temperature with a net return of energy, albeit small at first) and wish them the best of luck. My uninformed gut thinks this is a pipe dream but they will most likely discover something.

    Also, why is it that everyone jumps to announcements when it would be more sensible to call up another lab somewhere else and ask them to run the experiment and verify your results independently? Another question is why are they using the label of "cold fusion" when it seems largely they are observing things that are hard to explain so they must be cold fusion at work? These two things seem imprudent to me. Interesting though, very interesting.

  13. Re:Questions on Supernoding & Security on Skype Courts Businesses With "Skype for SIP" · · Score: 3, Informative

    are you retarded or just trolling?

    Neither, I hope.

    Your post indicates a very large ignorance about what SIP trunking is.

    Ignorant as charged. Mind helping me out ... oh, wait, forgot this was Slashdot!

    So they aren't installing software anywhere? They have made it "just work" with SIP trunking? What's their angle/revenue from something like this? And I can safely assume this means they won't be doing anything listed in my original post?

    I didn't find any details on any of this in the article. You have succeeded at making me feel like an idiot but any answers directly to these questions or the previous ones would still be appreciated. Let's just assume I'm a retard so you no longer have to establish that point, ok?

  14. Questions on Supernoding & Security on Skype Courts Businesses With "Skype for SIP" · · Score: 5, Informative
    1. Are they going to give you the option to turn off supernoding (I think this was included in version 3.0 but I don't use Skype) instead of having to work around them destroying your bandwidth?
    2. Will it still punch holes in the company's firewall?
    3. Is Skype still reading the machine's BIOS?
    4. And what about the rumors at home and abroad of back doors for bugging on Skype? Have those rumors been quashed or does my company risk dissemination of proprietary phone calls?

    Sorry guys, my very large employer gives me a big policy denial if I even try to visit Skype.com let alone download anything from them and install it. You have to address the above before you even start to gain the trust of large companies.

  15. Now with Shoulder & Elbow Joint Technology! on OLPC Set To Dump x86 For Arm Chips In XO 2 · · Score: 4, Funny

    OLPC Set To Dump x86 For Arm Chips In XO 2

    I'm sorry, I thought ARM is an acronym for Advanced RISC Machine (formerly Acorn RISC Machine). Why am I seeing it used as "Arm"?

    Or is there something I don't know about the processing power of two of my appendages?

  16. The More You Read the Uglier It Gets on How Office Depot Pushes Service Plans On Customers · · Score: 4, Funny
    I've seen these sheets and the further down you read the uglier it gets:

    ... if the customer somehow still refuses to purchase a warranty plan and can see the SKU on display, assess whether or not you could outrun the customer:

    • If YES, grab the company knife from underneath the counter and ask the customer to think of the extended warranty as "protection money."
    • If NO and you haven't already seen the victim ... er ... customer's credit card, grab the company camera under the counter and shoot photos as they leave the store. Be sure to get their license plate numbers clearly photographed and submit all photos in a dossier clearly marked "OPEN SEASON" to the Scientology division of Office Depot.

    Remember, you're helping them by saving them the loss N years from now when it breaks and they didn't buy an N + 1 year warranty.

  17. And Futurama on What Has Fox Got Against Its Own Sci-Fi Shows? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There is a lot of executive turnover at networks, and when a new programming exec comes in, the first thing he wants to do it to advance his own projects.

    That does not suffice for an explanation. You see, they must notice that the longer you leave a show in a solid time slot the more your established viewership watches it. Case in point: Futurama. I liked the show but I never knew when it was on so I often missed it when it was on the air. They moved it around to death!

    Even if they had put it on Saturday at 2pm I would have known when to watch it. Adult Swim is much the same--bad time slot but I know when it's on so I always watch it. Their shows get moved around way too much and as a result, it's harder for me to grow attached to any one show in a solid time slot.

    And don't tell me Fox doesn't know this, their syndication of The Simpson all through high school at 5 & 5:30 on weekdays was very popular. No, I attribute this to just sheer stupidity--maybe even the logic that if they move it around they will collect more viewers who normally don't watch the regular time slots.

    You would think thorough statistics would solve this problem ... but I'm not inclined to believe Fox has savvy executives in this respect. For all I know, they're moving around shows based on the number of complaints that are filed with the FCC from conservative Christian groups.

    I heard the Futurama folks were looking at doing another TV slot but were just too jaded from their Fox experience to wanna start it again. I think they should get into their contract a solid time slot on a day to ensure success. I wouldn't blame them if they opted to go the straight to DVD route forever or try to work something out with Comedy Central.

  18. And You Wonder Why Amazon MP3 Only Works in the US on iTunes Gift Card Key System Cracked, Exploited · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "but we make more money as the amount of customers is growing rapidly."

    Brilliant business model there, Taobao. I used to feel bad that Amazon's MP3 Service only worked inside the United States but now it's pretty clear: I doubt Apple will have much luck prosecuting anyone in this case whereas it would have been different had it happened on American soil.

    I'm sure the Chinese government will help protect Apple's ... hahahaha sorry, couldn't quite say that with a straight face. Seriously, we must look like ripe-for-the-picking rubes to places like China. They're sitting there with free copies of Vista, Adobe Suites and now cheap "legal" music. I guess it will forever remain a mystery to them why their nation isn't home to prosperous software & music industries while the status quo is free for the taking with no repurcussions.

  19. Scientifically Speaking ... on Robot Love Goes Bad · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Toshiba Akimu Robotic Research Institute

    It's awfully convenient I can't find anything on this place in English aside from news stories ... are there any Japanese speakers that can translate that to Japanese and search for it?

    I think that there is a visible line between actual robotic research and novelty toys shop. I'm going to put this in the latter unless someone can provide evidence of some progress being made here. I'm getting kind of tired of these stories with big claims and no published research for review. If you're looking to make money, go ahead and sell your novelty barking dogs that really urinate on your carpet ... just don't try to veil it in a news story with claims of artificial affection being implemented.

    I think IGN and everyone else really embellished on this and no one did their homework.

  20. The Delta Between Conceiving & Marketing on Intel Envisions Shape-Shifting Smartphones · · Score: 3, Insightful

    'I won't do that. But we hope the science will be proved out in three to five years.'

    I think that's an overly optimistic figure and I wish he would have commented on the date it would hit shelves as it's likely many decades into the future.

    I'm probably captain obvious for saying this but as the complexity of our inventions reaches new highs (and requires more teams of people than just inventor-geniuses) it may increase the amount of time between inventing and actually marketing the product.

    You may be able to argue that this has always been a long time with people like Charles Babbage or Nikola Tesla but I suspect it's going to get to the point where a lab researcher invents a way of doing something that does not hit everyday usage until well after his/her death. The ability to cheaply fabricate a device may be a bigger feat than development of the device. I seem to recall from some book (Three Cups of Tea?) that a man who worked on fabrication of computer chips & boards thought of a novel way to accomplish the task when he was in his shower and noticed how water ran off his skin. He somehow applied this to making computer boards more cheaply and effectively ... and subsequently became very very rich (patents). A utilitarian might argue that this is the way it should be.

  21. Maybe We Should Thank Lars Ulrich? on Lars Ulrich Pirates His Own Album · · Score: 2, Insightful

    if he had had any clue BEFORE he went on his insane rants, we might be in better shape and the music industry might be in better shape too.

    I think that's debatable and so does the article:

    Of course, Napster was dead and buried a long time ago but thanks in part to Ulrich, the destruction of the service led to the creation of many others ...

    For you see, once you assign a very real and tangible target to an intangible idea, you have something to work with. Someone to debate, someone to open dialogues with, someone to launch a campaign against, etc.

    I saw a short documentary on Anita Bryant created by a homosexual who was thanking her and devoting the video to her hate speech against homosexuals. Now, I'm not trying to draw a comparison between homosexuals and file sharers but rather the effect it can have to assign a face to a movement or anti-movement. With a face, you have a target and while Bryant overturned the Dade county pro-homosexual ruling, she eventually made it possible to speak out against what was once this vague idea of hatred towards homosexuals that caused very real pain and suffering.

    So Lars Ulrich may have made something very tangible and targetable and debatable over what was once this ethereal idea. You may want to thank him for being such a mindless rube to create a commercial showing him steal physical things from a file sharer ... as this is indeed easy logic to defeat (in file sharing, nothing physical is lost to someone). Just something to consider--without Ulrich, you may still be trying to argue against a mob of RIAA lawyers with no face or debatable ideas and the law on their side? I think we need more Ulrichs so we can start to analyze the real heart of the problem with file sharing.

  22. You Have Stolen From Your Bandmates & the RIAA on Lars Ulrich Pirates His Own Album · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I figured if there is anybody that has a right to download "Death Magnetic" for free, it's me.

    Wrong. I'm going to apply your logic here and say that the real victims are the rest of the members of Metellica that worked hard day and night to make "Death Magnetic." You would have had to buy that in a store to get it and therefore the $18 ripoff that you avoided took money away from your bandmates who did not receive the fifteen cents they normally would have from that sale. On top of that, what about the profit your label would have made or the amounts payable to the RIAA lawyers? You have stolen something physical and real from them and they no longer have it. Those sound engineers at your studio will have to eat at Olive Garden tonight instead of Buca De Beppo.

    So Ulrich's logic is that he never would have paid for this album in the first place and therefore it's ok for him to download it ... yet the many file sharers that have no intent(or in some cases the means) to pay for it are thieves?

  23. Cough Up Some Hard Evidence, Buddy on Calif. Politican Thinks Blurred Online Maps Would Deter Terrorists · · Score: 1

    All I'm trying to do is stop terrorists ...

    And all I'm asking you to do is show me the increase in terrorist attacks since Online Maps have become available ... or really anything at all backing the idea that blurring online maps will "stop terrorists."

    I know I'd give it up right away if I was set on killing all Americans and when I got onto Google maps the local Wal-Mart was blurred out. There would be no other way to figure out its location or the lay of the land around it. None, I would be thwarted.

  24. It's About Time on Amazon Releases iPhone Kindle Software · · Score: 5, Funny

    Amazon Releases iPhone Kindle Software

    Finally I won't have to huddle around a pile of tinder in the forest, rubbing two iPhones together just to get a spark to light my campfire.

    We lived like cavemen before iPhone software.

  25. At Least It's Humorous on Star Trek Fragrances · · Score: 4, Funny
    *squirts some "Red Shirt" cologne on himself*

    You smell that? That's ambergris from the original humpback whales they used in Star Trek IV:The Voyage Home.

    I will admit, though I hate the idea, at least the "Red Shirt" has some humor to it--the box has "Red Shirt: Because tomorrow may never come" on it. And the article subtitles the picture with "Live every day as if it could be your last, with 'Red Shirt' cologne." The hilarious marketing slogans basically write themselves though:
    • Be the first to investigate a hostile planet--and smell good doing it with Red Shirt cologne!
    • Let that blood sucking vampire cloud know how you roll with the wafting fragrance of Rid Shirt cologne!
    • Go out in style with the scent of Red Shirt cologne!
    • If they don't remember your name, at least they'll remember how you smelled--like Red Shirt cologne.
    • etc.