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User: GWBasic

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  1. Re:Works fine on The Misleading Fliers Comcast Used To Kill Off a Local Internet Competitor · · Score: 1

    On the other hand, you have touched the damned dirty communism, and now have cooties.

    I chose to move back to my hometown based on the quality of its services. There's plenty of towns to choose from!

  2. Re:Works fine on The Misleading Fliers Comcast Used To Kill Off a Local Internet Competitor · · Score: 1

    My hometown has municipal broadband, it's had it since 2000.

    Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your postcards.

    When I finally moved back a few months ago, the technicians who set me up kept raving about how awesome it is to work for my town's municipal broadband. We have municipal electricity, TV, and phone too!

  3. Works fine on The Misleading Fliers Comcast Used To Kill Off a Local Internet Competitor · · Score: 3, Informative

    My hometown has municipal broadband, it's had it since 2000. It works much better than Comcast, and they're much easier to work with.

  4. Syncplicity solves it! on Dropbox Head Responds To Snowden Claims About Privacy · · Score: 1

    Syncplicity lets enterprises store files on their own servers, with an extra layer of authentication that prevents Syncplicity staff from getting to the files. It still allows for access to these files through a web browser. When enterprises use single-sign-on, users don't even realize that they're authenticating multiple times.

    This is a very hard problem to solve for consumers, though. Most people don't have the time to set up their own cloud servers.

  5. Re:One disturbing bit: on Supreme Court Rules Against Aereo Streaming Service · · Score: 1

    Aereo's implementation doesn't feel like watching live TV. It buffers for about 60 seconds; channel surfing is impossible...

    What I wonder is how "Aereo-specific" this ruling is? What if I rented a room in Boson and let you mail me a tiny device that I'd plug into a power supply and ethernet port?

  6. Just in! on Microsoft's Cloud Storage Service OneDrive Now Offers 15GB For Free · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Just in! [Major hard drive manufacturer] is now offering [large amount of space] for [small amount of money]. This is amazing because, just [a short period of time] ago, they used to charge [small amount of money] for [almost as large of an amount of space].

  7. Re:Tragedy of the commons on Fiat Chrysler CEO: Please Don't Buy Our Electric Car · · Score: 2

    The free market didn't build the roads.

  8. Tragedy of the commons on Fiat Chrysler CEO: Please Don't Buy Our Electric Car · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Sadly, environmental issues, and limited resources, isn't something that the free market will handle when left to its own devices. I have no sympathy for automakers that need to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

    Now I want to buy an electric Fiat out of spite!

  9. Re:It's hard to judge competancy on Ask Slashdot: Minimum Programming Competence In Order To Get a Job? · · Score: 1

    I'd think that most could pass with flying colors; now that they've done the work so frequently!

  10. What's the balance between being a lawyer? on Interviews: Ask Travis Kalanick About Startups and Uber · · Score: 1

    Uber seems to hit a lot of legal challenges. It seems like, in every city, the incumbent taxi market has a different set of legal hurdles for you to pass through. It's kind of a shame, too, because everyone involved with Uber is making an honest living providing a needed service.

    What's tends to be your day-to-day balance of being lawyer versus entrepreneur? Would you say that you have more legal woes than a normal startup? Do you think this is "par for the course" any time someone's starting an interesting company?

  11. Re:It's hard to judge competancy on Ask Slashdot: Minimum Programming Competence In Order To Get a Job? · · Score: 1

    I disagree. American doctors have to take standardized board exams before they specialize. The exams are significantly more rigorous, and better-designed, than the job interviews that I run.

    Specifically, in the American medical system, specialization happens with on-the-job training after taking a standard exam. Students seeking to be pediatricians, heart surgeons, and dermatologists all take the same standardized exam. The score is then presented when students apply to programs to specialize.

  12. Re: Eight years? Might work if... on New Battery Tech From Japan Could Supercharge EVs · · Score: 1

    Did your cars ever have a major repair? Owning a car for 200k miles and doing a major repair at 100k is fine. Besides, people are still throwing around the idea of battery exchange.

  13. It's hard to judge competancy on Ask Slashdot: Minimum Programming Competence In Order To Get a Job? · · Score: 1

    I find it very hard to judge skill when I interview candidates. I can easily filter out incompetent people. Someone I work with says, "when you interview people, all you find out is if the person interviews well."

    Many professional fields have long professional exams. Civil engineers need to be certified, as well as doctors. Frankly, I wish I could look at some kind of a score, and spend most of the interview on "soft" topics.

  14. Re: Who would have guessed? on Harvard Study Links Neonicotinoid Pesticide To Colony Collapse Disorder · · Score: 1

    Not true at all! Organic food is routinely sprayed with plant-derived compounds. The FDA only requires that a spray gun sit idle for 3 years before it is fit for organic spraying.

  15. Re: Activist investors on Stanford Getting Rid of $18 Billion Endowment of Coal Stock · · Score: 1

    The endowments serve the university's interests . Stanford might think that coal is a bad investment.

  16. Re: Undefined on Autonomous Car Ethics: If a Crash Is Unavoidable, What Does It Hit? · · Score: 1

    Because every hypothetical answer has so much context that there's no way for a programmer to anticipate the situation. Instead, if we let the computer be greedy, the answer is simple: do what's best for the occupants!

  17. Re:It's a great car on Will the Nissan Leaf Take On the Tesla Model S At Half the Price? · · Score: 1

    It's the range, though, that's making me consider the electric BMW that's coming out in a few months. My wife will have a short 10-mile round-trip commute, but I will have a combination of telecommuting and 80-mile round-trip commute. A car that can safely do the 80-mile commute purely on a battery is a very attractive car!

  18. I like the questions on Blowing Up a Pointless Job Interview · · Score: 1

    I like the questions in the linked article. Sometimes you need to ask a fluff question to make the candidate feel comfortable, or see if the guy has a sense of humor.

  19. Re:Allow me to burn som Karma by saying on Goodbye, California? Tim Draper Proposes a 6-Way Split · · Score: 1

    Southern CA depends on the Colorado River for its water, and all of CA depends on imported electricity. Much of the US depends on CA for food. That dependency is too strong just to sever over a few dollars.

  20. Examples? on Why Reactive Programming For Databases Is Awesome · · Score: 1

    Are there any examples of real-world reactive databases in production or development?

  21. I think you can upgrade them on Ask Slashdot: Best Laptops For Fans Of Pre-Retina MacBook Pro? · · Score: 1

    I've heard that a co-worker of mine upgraded his MBP's SSD and RAM.

    This website, http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook-air/macbook-air-faq/macbook-air-mid-2012-how-to-replace-upgrade-ssd-storage.html, seems to imply that the only thing you need is a funky screwdriver.

    Back in the 90s, when computers cost $5,000-$10,000 in today's dollars, it made sense to keep upgrading them. Now the top-of-the-line computers are cheap enough that it's easier to just buy one that you can afford to replace every 4 years or so.

  22. Re:Old news on How To Develop Unmaintainable Software · · Score: 1

    Let's not forget how bug free a framework used widely by thousands will be - there's no job security there at all if there's no bugfixing! But if we write our own, then there will surely be some horrific bug in the field that we can work until 4AM to fix, and management will call us heroes!

    Counter that with the amount of time I've spent wresting design flaws due to well-known but poorly-chosen frameworks.

    Don't pick a framework because you assume that you're supposed to:

    • Choose correct design patterns
    • Prefer well-encapsulated libraries with clear purposes
    • Only use frameworks that directly add value to your chosen design patterns

    The issue with frameworks is that they often touch all layers of a program, or product. If the wrong framework is chosen, (or built,) then the entire project must be refactored to recover from the mistake. That is why it's critical to understand the correct design pattern before choosing a framework or building your own.

  23. I wanted a BlackBerry, but they didn't run Android on How BlackBerry Blew It · · Score: 1

    18 months ago, I wanted to buy a BlackBerry that ran Android, but they didn't exist!

    IMO, I think it would have made sense to test-market a BlackBerry that ran Android. I'd really like real buttons on my phone.

  24. EMC Syncplicity on Ask Slashdot: Cloud Service On a Budget? · · Score: 1

    If all you want is simple folder synchronization, (computer in TN writes a file to a folder, computer in PA downloads it 10-20 seconds later,) than you might want to look at EMC Syncplicity. (I'm the desktop lead.)

  25. EMC Syncplicity on Ask Slashdot: How Best To Synchronize Projects Between Shared Drive and PCs? · · Score: 1

    EMC Syncplicity. Note: I am the desktop client lead.