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User: Ami+Ganguli

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  1. This is indeed very cool. I just skimmed the paper (so far), but I fundamentally like the idea that not treating dx/dy as a fraction is just a historical artifact.

    Bought your book.

  2. I get way too many spam calls for this to work. It takes time to listen to voicemail.

    I just turn my ringer off, and disable my voicemail. People who really know me understand that I can be reached through email or text message.

    Unfortunately a lot of companies aren't set up for this. They demand a phone number and try to call me. If it's important and I'm expecting a call, I might turn on my ringer temporarily. Mostly I just let them ring, though.

  3. Re:We need to consume less and better on France To Close Four Coal-Fired Power Plants By 2022, 14 Nuclear Reactors By 2035 (cleantechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    Only true if you're releasing stored energy (as iwith fossil fuels).

    The light that hits your rooftop will end up as heat regardless of whether you have solar panels on your roof. The difference is that the solar panels capture that energy and do something useful with it before releasing the heat.

  4. Re:Dear Slashdot management on Robin "Roblimo" Miller, a Long-Time Voice of the Linux Community, Has Passed Away (wikipedia.org) · · Score: 1

    I don't think they're doing badly, but I don't think they're living up to the potential of the site either.

    Slashdot used to be a place where the comments were worth reading because, often, you'd see experts on the given topic debating the finer points.

    Nothing like that exists now, anywhere. Smart people don't discuss real issues online in a respectful, informed manner because there's no forum where that's realistic or fun.

    I'd try to turn Slashdot into a place like that (again).

    [Disclaimer: I haven't forgotten about the days of goatsex, etc. And trolling has been around forever. But I also remember a lot of interesting and informative discussion. ]

  5. Re:I hope the world survives this madman . . . on Trump Cancels Singapore Summit With North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un (cnbc.com) · · Score: 1

    You appear to be upset about something. Sorry you're having a bad day.

  6. Re:Dear Slashdot management on Robin "Roblimo" Miller, a Long-Time Voice of the Linux Community, Has Passed Away (wikipedia.org) · · Score: 2

    I'd chip in too.

    I've actually been wondering how much it would cost. Probably not as much as we might think.

  7. I'm with you.

    RIP RobLimo. Thanks for the memories. Obsessively reloading Slashdot was once a huge part of my life.

  8. Re:I hope the world survives this madman . . . on Trump Cancels Singapore Summit With North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un (cnbc.com) · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If we survive (and I think we have a decent chance), we might actually look on this as a positive turning point.

    Europeans have, for various historical reasons, been unwilling to stand up the United States for the past 70 years. Sometimes they've tut-tutted loudly, but in general they've let the US get away with whatever they wanted. Now it's become abundantly clear that you can't give anybody a free pass that way.

    During the Bush II years there was already rumbling, mostly centered around Iraq. Then Obama came, and he made the US seem sane again. Now the world's only superpower has gone completely insane.

    Democracy is a great thing, but it means you can't trust any country to be consistently sane, and you need to structure your institutions and foreign policy accordingly.

  9. Re:Why is this a problem? on US Congressmen Reveal Thousands of Facebook Ads Bought By Russian Trolls (mercurynews.com) · · Score: 1

    Wish I could vote this up.

    I'm seeing a lot of commentary in various places about how small the ad by is, and half these things don't seem political, etc. Most people are missing the overall strategy entirely.

  10. I guess it's about 2 decades, now. As far as I remember, there weren't any accounts at all when I started reading.

  11. I don't know if it would work, but I would try it for random articles and see.

    In the good old days there were fewer trolls, and for a long time the moderation system worked well enough to keep them under control. This might be enough to thin the troll ranks, and tip the balance back towards informed discussion.

  12. Re:Aren't you talking rubbish? on YouTube, the Great Radicalizer (nytimes.com) · · Score: 1

    True. I'm not suggesting that the solution would be easy. Just that the problem is legit.

    Keep in mind, though, that the building blocks for such an algorithm are there. YouTube does automatic closed-captioning, for example, so they could easily do deeper analysis of the video transcript.

  13. Re:Aren't you talking rubbish? on YouTube, the Great Radicalizer (nytimes.com) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The thing is, it doesn't need to take you to more extreme content in order to give you more info. The "autoplay" after a conspiracy theory video could just as easily be another video debunking it.

    However, the algorithm has determined that people are more interested in (in other words, more likely to watch) something more extreme than what you've just watch.

    The intent isn't nefarious, but the overall effect is that you emerge knowing less about the topic than when you started.

  14. Re:Even More Simple on Ask Slashdot: What Would Happen If a Hyperloop Train Failed? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A containment failure doesn't need to implode - it can just leak. Depends on the materials and the details of the design. And if it leaks, then everything slows down and stops.

    I can't imagine they'd build this thing without any sort of safe failure mode.

  15. Business logic !== logic.

    You put logic into the data model that's tightly-coupled with the model. If this is code that must change when the data model changes, then it should live with the data model. It can then be re-used by different applications, and it helps isolate those applications from changes to the data model.

    The "re-use" bit is really key. If you have multiple applications, with different teams of developers, all accessing the same database, then you can assume that none of the application teams really understands the data model as well as the DBA does, and really they shouldn't need to. Stored procedures provide a higher-level abstraction, and protect the database from developers who might not know exactly what's going on with the data.

  16. Assuming you're looking for a cord replacement... on Cord-Cutting Still Doesn't Beat the Cable Bundle (wired.com) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Bad assumption.

    We bought cable as part of a bundle with Internet access when we moved two years ago. We've never used it - not even once. Next house we won't bother, no matter how cheap it is. Lifestyles change.

    Broadcast TV was always annoying, and gradually better forms of entertainment have emerged.

  17. Sounds like a problem with flight planning on Delta Air Lines Grounded Around the World After Computer Outage (cnn.com) · · Score: 5, Informative

    I used to work on one of these systems.

    The flight planning system takes inputs from several sources - weather forecasts, notices about airspace closures, etc. (NOTAMs), and booking info - and creates an optimal flight plan for the aircraft.

    A modern airline doesn't have enough flight planning staff to take over manually if the system fails, so if your flight planning goes out, your fleet is gradually grounded.

    The large number of servers is due to the optimization problem. You need to take into account the flight conditions and fuel costs in different locations in order to decide your route, altitude, and fuel loading. Since fuel is a huge percent of the operating cost of the airline, it pays to invest a little extra computing power into optimizing these and save a bit fuel on each flight.

    Our system had lots of redundancy but, with all the data feeds, there are lots of moving parts. It's not hard to imagine a scenario where, for example, you get everything transferred over to your disaster recovery site, but for some reason the weather feed isn't coming in and you can't make flight plans.

  18. Incompetent staff with no authority. on World's Rudest Robot Set To Simulate the Fury of Call Center Customers · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That's not hard to answer. Nobody wants to spend hours on the phone with somebody who:

    • Can't say anything that isn't on their script.
    • Has no authority to fix the problem even if they could understand it.

    Modern call centres appear to be designed specifically to infuriate people by politely wasting their time without solving any problems.

  19. Re:What is the point? on Quebecker Faces Jail For Not Giving Up Phone Password To Canadian Officials · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The violation of privacy requires some reasonable counterbalancing objective. Inspecting physical goods has the reasonable objective of preventing smuggling. And it's reasonable that if you have something you really want to keep private (say you're a transvestite and don't want to come out), you'll leave the embarrassing material at home.

    A phone or other electronic device, on the other hand, can contain all manner of private information. It's a much deeper invasion of privacy than just searching somebody's luggage. Deleting all that information just to be able to travel would constitute a considerable burden for most people.

    The counterbalancing objective (I guess preventing the smuggling of child porn or something like that?) is much weaker. There are so many other ways of smuggling data that these inspections aren't likely to lead to any positive results.

    So you have a much greater invasion of privacy vs. and a much weaker reasonable objective for needing to perform the search. I don't think the crown will win this, or at least I hope they won't.

  20. Leave the PhD off your CV for a couple of years. on Ask Slashdot: Finding a Job After Completing Computer Science Ph.D? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's not fair, but it's probably better to just list your master's for now.

    Right now they figure you won't be happy with a junior position, but you don't have the experience from them to trust you with something more senior. Once you've got a bit of experience put the PhD back on. It will help you land more senior jobs later.

  21. Re:You are not a racist, you are ignorant... on Nokia Takeover In Jeopardy Due To Alleged $3.4B Tax Bill In India · · Score: 1

    Off topic, but in case you're following this thread... there was an interesting study on racism in Europe some years ago. They found that racism is about the same everywhere, but the effects of racism are quite different.

    In a country like Finland, everything is "by the book". There are rules, and they are followed strictly. That means that if I, as a foreigner, am applying for a loan, the loan officer might be a horrible racist, but if I qualify I'll get the loan anyway. In a country like Italy the loan officer has more discretion and is more likely to find some reason to deny the loan if they happen to dislike me personally.

  22. Re:You are not a racist, you are ignorant... on Nokia Takeover In Jeopardy Due To Alleged $3.4B Tax Bill In India · · Score: 2

    I didn't actually say that every Indian is corrupt, but most are complicit. They might not like the bribes, but they pay them (because they also need to get things done) or they say nothing when others take them (because they don't want to lose their jobs). And there's the problem - the only thing that can change the system is a massive change in attitudes. And it can't be just a few people - it pretty much has to be everybody at once.

    I'm guilty too - I've paid my share of bribes. I don't feel good about it, but I can't afford to be the hero - I need to get stuff done.

    I do know lot of honest, hard-working people in India - I wouldn't bother to try to do business there otherwise. But my dealings with government always leave a bad taste in my mouth.

  23. Re:corruption on Nokia Takeover In Jeopardy Due To Alleged $3.4B Tax Bill In India · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's not racist. The Indian government is pathetically corrupt. It's truly awful, and goes from the very bottom (police, petty local officials) right to the top. Finland, on the other hand, is one of the least corrupt countries in the world.

    I know nothing about this case, but I'm going to trust the Finns on this one until proven otherwise.

    (Disclosure: I'm a half-Indian who's lived in Finland and done a lot of work with Nokia. I also have business interests in India.)

  24. Re:This is neat and all on Dell's New Sputnik 3 Mates Touchscreen With Ubuntu · · Score: 1

    Then it's not really similar hardware is it :-).

    My requirements were: light, long battary life, at least 8Gb RAM, at least Full HD screen. The Vaio was the only ultrabook I could find that fit my criteria and was available in Canada when I needed it.

  25. Re:This is neat and all on Dell's New Sputnik 3 Mates Touchscreen With Ubuntu · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I just bought similar hardware from Sony in order to run Linux. I would have considered this one if it had been available three weeks ago.

    Some of us really don't want a Mac. Obviously we're a niche market, but presumably Dell thinks there might be enough of us to justify one or two models.