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User: Dino

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  1. Summary on The 'Trick' To Algorithmic Coding Interview Questions (dice.com) · · Score: 2

    Be able to understand and evaluate Big-O notation and use hash maps and sets. Which if you don't already know, you should!

  2. As someone who has built automated test frameworks on Ask Slashdot: Building a Software QA Framework? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I have built and seen succeed and crash-n-burn spectacularly a variety of automated test frameworks for large enterprises. Let's start with the successes:

      - High availability / Robust
      - Staging environment for automated test developers
      - Performance metrics
      - Easy to understand test results

    The failures were due to:

      - Brittle and poorly designed tests which don't run the same in the CI system versus the tester's machine
      - Testers committing bugs into the test environment
      - No performance metrics
      - Hard-to-understand failure results require duplication and deep analysis

    As you can tell, the failures are the opposite of the successes. Allow me to further explain.

    The most important item is that the tests always work and always be running. This means test machines and back-up test machines. Running the same test on three different machines is even better because you can throw away or temporarily ignore outliers. Outliers need to be addressed eventually, but for day-to-day developers and managers just want to know if the code they committed causes failures. Having the test be in any way unreliable causes faith in the tests to disappear. The tests must run, and they must run well. Test environments go down or require maintenance and you want to be able to continue to run tests during these downtimes. Treat the tests like a production system.

    Next, a big improvement I've seen is to have automated test developers contribute new work to a separate-but-equal staging environment. Automated test teams run on an Agile/Scrum iteration and only "release" their new tests at specific times. Another thing which reduces faith in test results if the tests are breaking due to the fault of automated test developers-- which happens all too often.

    Automated tests are the ideal platform for generating performance metrics.

    Lastly, a big pet peeve of mine is for understandable test failures. Test failures should obviously describe the set-up, expected and actual result. If test failures are obtuse and require a lot of time to analyze and triage-- that is wasted time that could have been spent fixing the root cause.

    Good luck! If past experience is any indicator, you will be spending far more time and money than you ever imagined to create a robust system that developers and managers will have faith in.

  3. Windows 95 was still a joke to me on The Long Reach of Windows 95 · · Score: 1

    Though at the time, I was a long time user of Commodore Amiga. Most PCs at the time were extraordinarily difficult to configure and keep running. I remember the multi-tasking in Windows 95 being really bad-- explorer.exe getting blocked. Other things that stick out to me were over use of modal dialogs and that lower-right notification tray filling up with animated distracting icons.

    Don't get me started on clippy, or DOS, or file system naming conventions. Sure, compared to Windows 3.1 it was bliss-- but other computing platforms were years ahead.

  4. And? If there's no middle man then ultimately someone (in this case it sounds like the buyer) has total control over the transaction. It doesn't matter what UPS says, if they don't want to release the funds they don't have to.

    In a dark market like this the ONLY protection you have against fraud is the other party's reputation.

    Did you even read the article? It describes how a third party (arbiter) is agreed to by each party. It takes 2 out of 3 signatures to finalize the transaction (minus arbiter fee).

  5. As a USA consumer on Jolla Announces Sailfish OS 1.0 · · Score: 1

    I am mostly interested on when the phone will be released for USA markets and what bands it will support.

  6. Re:Props to all sticking it out and trying Qt out! on Wireshark Switches To Qt · · Score: 1

    Activities are just workspaces. They might offer a little more customization than a workspace-- but that's all they are.

    I used XFCE for many years on this same machine-- without compliant. What I liked about KDE is that it ran as well as XFCE and came with everything I needed for Qt development. Also I don't need to double-load application frameworks. Iv'e been able to use KDE or pure Qt apps for everything I need.

    As for drop-shadows, bouncy cursors and business-- that's both accepted and came be done tastefully. (**Cough** Unity **Cough) Like any environment, customization is both available and desirable. IMHO it was easier for me to get KDE where I wanted then Unity or XFCE

  7. Props to all sticking it out and trying Qt out! on Wireshark Switches To Qt · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is a big win for the Qt ecosystem. Between KDE libraries reworked into portable Qt modules and official iOS and Android support even with support from Digia-- Qt is gaining momentum. They even managed to survive being gobbled by Nokia, then being sold to Digia-- it has been a bumpy ride.

    I recently tried out the latest Kubuntu and have been loving it installed on an old Dell D410 (12inch, 1.8Ghz SC Pentium, 1.5G RAM) laptop and it runs well and does everything I need (which in this case is Qt related application development :-)

  8. Re:Really big news for Qt on Frameworks 5: KDE Libraries Reworked Into Portable Qt Modules · · Score: 1

    > As I'm getting back into C++ after almost 20 years and trying to start with Qt, I'd love to see some practical examples.

    Sure. new signal slot syntax covers how to create anonymous lambda handlers for signals. No longer is it required to create methods on our public interface for a slot. This is pretty much The Big News (tm) when it comes to closures in Qt. But in general, I have late taking towards creating methods and interfaces which expect and rely heavily on callbacks-- and the new C++11 lambda expressions are now a very terse way to accomplish callback mechanisms in C++. Conceptually, it has always been possible, and the C++ 11 lambda extensions are effectively code inliners to accomplish the same task as creating a class to wrap state with a callback method-- which needed to be done by hand previously or attached to an existing class (further muddling its interface).

  9. Really big news for Qt on Frameworks 5: KDE Libraries Reworked Into Portable Qt Modules · · Score: 4, Informative

    There are many things Qt does very well, some not so well and some pieces completely missing. Opening up KDE as plug-in frameworks will fill in the holes in Qt for bringing very strong applications to a whole new generation of embedded and X-platform tools. Also, C11 C++ extensions and more specifically closures have really helped me fall back in love with C++ primarily through Qt.

  10. Stole five years from my family on Myst Was Supposed To Change the Face of Gaming. What Is Its Legacy? · · Score: 1

    After our family got together and played Myst over winter holidays, there was much discussion that we could do better. My dad, uncle, aunt, cousin and others worked for 4 years to make Morpheus which was released in 1998 by Piranha interactive. Piranha very shortly went broke and paid little of what we owed. We all went back to our lives, but there are still background attempts at rebooting the game.

  11. As a professional white hat... on Ask Kevin Mitnick · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What would you recommend to organizations to curtail the sort of social engineering break-ins for gaining unauthorized entry?

  12. Won't budge iTunes market share one iota on Microsoft Confirms New Music Player · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    At least not on my Mac....

  13. I'm honestly surprised then even had to ask! on U.S. Government Wants Google Search Records · · Score: 1

    Couldn't they just ring up the NSA or their international Echelon contacts? I guess a formal request looks better in Court documents. ;-D But seriously, to think that the NSA at the very least doesn't already have this information....

  14. Last time I tapped out a drive? on Solid State Memory on the Rise · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Most of my hard drives are already full. Let's review.

    ShuttlePC Red Hat box: ~120G on a 200G hard drive. (old IDE controller) Full.
    G4 Apple Mac, 3 hard drives totalling ~ 620G. Aproximately 60% full, and that's only because I recently added a hard drive.
    PC Laptop, 80G hard drive. 25% full. And that's only because the hard drive was recently formatted and reimaged.
    120G external hard drive. 75% full
    27G external hard drive. Full
    60G iPod. Full

    So I'm a little shy of a terrabyte of active hard drive space. It would all be full if I didn't have multiple binders full of CD-Rs and DVDs.

    But I guess not everyone regularly edits and encodes video on their computers, or routes their entire entertainment system through their computers.

    I don't think hard drives will ever be big enough because data files will continue to grow as well. Solid State memory is and will always been a niche technology for areas that suite it best such as high reliability, small packages and extreme environments.

    IMHO the market is already awash in solid-state storage microcomputers. They're called PDAs.

  15. Open Source is BAD! M'Kay?! on Open Source In Public Sector Meeting Opposition · · Score: 2, Interesting

    No where in the FOXNews.com article did James Prendergast list a specific complain against what OpenDocument doesn't have to offer. He has some quotes about how "[Open Office Calc] takes more than 100 times longer to create and load spreadsheet documents and why it uses up several more times memory that Microsoft Excel to work with the same data" and how "Microsoft keeps expanding into XML and metadata and OpenDocument may have trouble keeping up." If you read the article, you get this feeling this guy is a frothing, super-capitalist munchdog who really rates communism. Those FASCISTS!

    Seriously though, my take is that "open" standards foster competition but can supress innovation when they are unable to grow and adapt. I'm not familiar enough with OpenDocument to really comment, but I do wonder how it stacks up, feature and architecture-wise against say WordOffice/PDF. Is OpenDocument really that far away from XML and metadata? Seriously...

  16. Re:And the top post on the linked blog? on Nokia Could Make Linux Top Embedded OS · · Score: 1

    What in that list does SymbianOS not do? Maybe your old SymbianOS 6.0 era device from 2002 is lacking, or maybe the software you use is poorly designed... If you want to see where SymbianOS is going, start here http://www.symbian.com/technology/symbos-v91-det.h tml

  17. Re:Nokia calling for Linux developers in Bangalore on Nokia Could Make Linux Top Embedded OS · · Score: 1

    Symbian maintains an Indian development/test team as well.

  18. Not all S60 applications are Java on Nokia Could Make Linux Top Embedded OS · · Score: 1

    The articles make it seem that all S60 applications are Java. While many are, a growing percentage of S60 applications are written in C++. Nokia purchased and licenses pieces of freescale's (formely Motorola, formely Metrowerks) CodeWarrior for Symbian OS, which is the most popular C++ IDE for SymbianOS. You'll find that most games and heavy-duty S60 applications are written in C++ because, well, Java sux at ~133Mhz (where most entry level S60 devices run at).

  19. Re:Police taser video on Closed Source -> Charges Dismissed? · · Score: 1

    You summarized the video quite well but regarding the "over-acting" you left out one thing from the crying a moaning-- and that was that she fell of out of the car, convulsing and spazzed a second time for the second taser shot. Now obviously, she was upset and giving the cops lip both before and after, but when she was hit with the taser, there can be no doubt that she is being majorly convulsing, electrocuted and in pain.

  20. An College Paper aside on SETI@Home Faces Funding Problems · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    Around 97 I took a class on ET life at the University fo Texas. We had to write a paper at the end and I chose to write about SETI@Home and utilizing the power of distributed computing to crunch SETI data. This was before SETI@Home had released a client to the public and there was only a simple 2 page website explaining what they were working on. I was so mad because he gave me a 'C' on the paper because I didn't use any "print" sources and he couldn't "trust" Internet sources. This was also only about 6 months after distributed.net started up and it's not like there was a whole lot about this in print. I heard he know includes a bit about SETI@Home in his class, the rat-bastard!

    Anyway, this isn't exactly related but I thought it was interesting!

  21. Re:Number of Microwave sites, by state on Slashback: Segwait, Farscape, Leg-pulling · · Score: 2

    Alaska is not within 50 miles of any other state. Double-duh yourself, duh-head.

  22. Re:Pardon my cynicism on Tapping the Alpha Geek Noosphere with EtherPeg · · Score: 2

    No, that would be tresspassing, silly!

  23. It's time for a LABOR LAW LAYWER on Beware Employment Contracts · · Score: 2

    For example, if you were in Texas, you could go here.

    I'm sorry, but this is crazy.

    Run, don't walk from such contracts.

  24. Website for overworked and underpayed employees on Loki Aftermath Looks Bad · · Score: 2

    www.texasemployees.org

    Of course, Loki is not in Texas so it doesn't help their employess much :-(