Slashdot Mirror


User: umghhh

umghhh's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
2,357
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 2,357

  1. Re:oh great, fucking great. on The Men Trying To Save Us From the Machines · · Score: 1

    well consider the shitty code that my group is churning out every day that I have the misfortune to test and maintain parts of I consider their job actually inspiring and worthwhile and more useful for the society. Even if it were not so it would not amaze me at all that they got funding. In country I live in there are parties that are or were part of the nationwide government that failed to show any sign of intelligent activity except drive for good money after the years 'serving' the nation and I have intelligent hard working friends supporting them with their money - how amazing (and scary) is that?

  2. Re:oh great, fucking great. on The Men Trying To Save Us From the Machines · · Score: 1

    I think you are both right and wrong. Yes we are intelligent. We can figure out all the smart things but we cannot figure out how to get a bit more peace on this planet or how not to completely destroy our planet while making another attempt to produce more of more tasteless burger or more of more useless gadgets so no we are not all that smart just smart enough to figure that life in the cave with fire is better than on the tree and without - not much intelligence needed for that. There is also another take on this - one of these gays said at Economist conference that we are the dumbest of to get the technology going simply by the virtue of inventing technology as soon as it was possible for our simple glue based brains. In a sense something of a law of nature.

    Another thing they said is that this machine apocalypse does not have to be due to intelligence difference per se but due to autonomous agents that can execute our orders too well without looking at consequences. There are many ways the progress can go wrong and quite frankly all the crises that this has caused are not new - there many civilizations before our modern one which used up resources to move forward which just destroyed their livelihoods. Back then there was always another place to go which in a world that is so interconnected is not really true.

    I am not sure if the institution in question produce no value. In our history there have always been a lots of 'waste' spent on producing things and ideas of no apparent value yet after years gone buy suddenly such ideas started appearing useful. In other words maybe - if you only do things that satisfy your current direct needs and optimize all your economy and society in order to do that, in good case you achieve system that is unstable and prone to collapse when pushed by changing of environmental conditions or internal structure.

  3. Re:In conclusion on Google Respins Its Hiring Process For World Class Employees · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Correct. I am not a great fan of Google but I must admit they have guts to admit inefficiency of their solution and move on and possibly even learn from mistakes as some of us do.

  4. Re:Misses the point on Android Fragmentation Isn't Hurting Its Adoption · · Score: 1

    It is part of developers life. You do not have to love it but it is there.

    You can also look at this in the following way: If you have only one version it is also called monoculture i.e. something that is potentially very efficient but potentially bad at adapting to change.

  5. Re:This is.... on US and Russia Set Up Cyber Cold War Hotline · · Score: 1

    yes it is TO article and the now famous hotline is just two skype accounts.

  6. Re:So long truckers on How Ubiquitous Autonomous Cars Could Affect Society (Video) · · Score: 1

    Nice dream that is. I think namely that because huge parts of each society think such ideas are garbage and there is also a problem of accessing these goods that are automatically produced far away and owned by somebody. Even if unit cost would be low (which is not/will not be always the case) all these things still need somebody to put the money upfront and they would expect return on this investment. I am not judging it now - it is just how society is working now and such change if not gradual is bound to cause revolt by owners and their lackeys and others that possess money and things. If gradual there will always stay something that you are going to pay for - it would be a pity if that were clean water or stuff like that.

    I think namely that this gradual change leading to some stuff being provided by general services for 'free' is either going to provide things on basis that is now not acceptable for us (do senseless things for little or no compensation only to get cheap food from support organisations as is the case now in Germany) or will not be provided at all.

    Not sure where is this change you mean to come from if current trends are the opposite?

  7. Re:No thanks. on How Ubiquitous Autonomous Cars Could Affect Society (Video) · · Score: 1

    that is not entirely true albeit sucking the last drop of blood of large populations around globe by some big corporation (or privately owned company - the ownership does not matter only real big ones are usually public) is taking place as we speak. The rules society lives on are less and less taken to serve the society and people, the tax money are more and more spent on things a common man does not have any influence on (not to mention capacity to decide whether it makes sense or not). This all is true and is a result of optimization of processes (production and management ones etc), accumulation of capital (funny how old classics come true - enough to see how the wealth is distributed in the land of the free to understand 1% is a gross understatement), growing complexity (things get more complicated but also bigger which makes them more difficult to manage and understand) and growing understanding that an individual has nothing that matters. It is technological progress that makes it all possible: good and bad things. The assumption that only good things come to the fore is just plain wrong. The result is what Germans call entfremdung or alienation) - partially unavoidable partially something that big parts of the society just accept because they do not understand consequences or accept the costs as a step to benefit. Bad thing is that this benefit phase occurs only to the few.

  8. Re:grand father laws? on How Ubiquitous Autonomous Cars Could Affect Society (Video) · · Score: 1

    traffic jams will be gone - oh and cancer too? Possibly even world peace materializes when this gen3 comes about right? You are a dreamer. It is not bad but dreamers have caused not only good. I do not mean every dreamer is Pol Pot or such bad ass but somehow feel uneasy when too much good things are supposed to happen and all easy...

  9. Re:So long truckers on How Ubiquitous Autonomous Cars Could Affect Society (Video) · · Score: 1

    You have a reasonable points here. There will be a lot of niches where the automatic cars would not get in or get in but not quite so - for instance I can imagine a low skilled hardly ever paid immigrant worker installed in small cabin on the said lumber trucks that just jump out of it and do stuff only to be put back into their small cabin - big companies surely will notice that there are less accidents if said log position assistants have better conditions in their small cabins - and so the progress goes.

    I find it interesting how the improvements in technology gives us all some benefits and at the same time cause a lot of headaches elsewhere. Take punching addresses in. How many times did it happen to you that you gave only rough description of the destination and settled on jumping out on a side of the road (which could but did not have to have an address at all). I guess this can be circumvented by having a map and pointing an address or having some additional algorithms for verbal communication but I guess what this means is less useful service for me. Seems to be common path we are going here: the general improvement in technology let some skim cream more efficiently while letting the suckers drink coloured water and deal with the rest of the shit that stays there. How nice. I am not against progress of course but it pisses the hell out of me when I read all this glorious - 'hurrey end of the geek violating red necks!' or 'this is so great that it will cure cancer and provide for world peace too' nonsense that /. is full of (this rant is not meant for the parent's post tho).

    I also wonder about other things like - how far this let us call it optimization really goes. What will happen with our societies when majority of people will not be needed for work - this is not today or in 10 years time but still. Is it an effect of stagnation and getting old as in the West while younger societies can still have good job market because they are simply more lively or or is it general problem? What to do then - I guess putting 'not needed' people in camps outside of city centres has been tried and is not seen as progress, giving them money to live is not working either but living with the slums is also not so much fun with all the suffering and potential for conflict. Maybe technology will fix it too - automatic police units can contain demonstrations and riots much better than a traditional button men. I guess people like Assad and revolutionary councils in different countries (Iran, NK etc) would appreciate this progress.... It is indeed a side discussion about development of our societies. Maybe I just worry too much and maybe things will sort out themselves eventually.

  10. Re:please don't censor on Revisiting Amdahl's Law · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Normally I get just pissed off and do something else when reading /. for too long - thanx to this AC post I laughed for a while. Give him some points!

  11. Re:Misdiagnosis on Too Many Smart People Chasing Too Many Dumb Ideas? · · Score: 1
    GMI (Guaranteed Minimum Income) has never worked. Communists tried and failed. Maybe technology can help but I think such systems fail on some basic points: there is always a significant minority that disagree with such policies and would fight them with violence if need be (because it is not right or because it is a commie idea etc. does not matter that much). Assuming you could convince those people and indeed introduce such a system, there are some economic factors that may undermine such society as globalization make costs comparison easy and an economy where such policy is in place must raise taxes to cover those that do not work but still need the food and other goodies. Assuming again you manage to overcome this problem how about motivation of the actual working people to support the rest? So we can shorten the working week maybe so that more people can get employed? I suppose similar experiments are currently running in countries like Saudi A. where population has outgrew the work market - government can spend money and in fact it does to create jobs. The problem is motivation of prospective employees, those lucky ones that actually have a job - they did not have motivation to learn stuff (why would they) and now they have no motivation to work. This is not a nice picture. You will of course find people that are motivated but if I can just rest and get a minimum wage why should I pick up job of say garbage collector? I mean somebody has to do that still or? Or some other interesting job like this.

    Bottom line - I have thought as you did that future is in this money from gov but I think this is not working.

  12. Re:Lots of hot smart chicks on Ask Slashdot: How Can I Make a Computer Science Club Interesting? · · Score: 1

    now you did it - I just spit on my laptop (evenly on display and keyboard). Good that I was drinking mineral water - last time it did happen (long time ago) it was beer and I had to buy a new keyboard because of that. As for the light and chicks. I read somewhere that this is a known problem. They are scared of anything with dick so you need alco so that they do not notice. A proper amount of smoke does help too. I guess this should be some aromatic stuff possibly also intoxicating and maybe we can skip the girls altogether.....

  13. Re:So, not a Tepco site on Monju Nuclear Plant Operator Ordered To Stop Restart Preparation · · Score: 1

    Well I donno but it seems there is a problem with storage of contaminated water and this is not being dealt with. I would not know but it was in the news few weeks back as TEPCO I think found out that some of the water already liked into the ocean. There are different articles about this in variously trustworthy media you can have a look here or here (nice picture of the tanks with polluted water that I meant)

  14. Re:Ownership != Operatership on Monju Nuclear Plant Operator Ordered To Stop Restart Preparation · · Score: 1

    this costs/profit structure poses interesting dilemma to any supervision authority. Huge profits every year and if something happens like it did in Fukushima gov simply jumps in and pays. The worse that can happen the company is broke and administrators take over. Perfect or?This looks to me like privatization of profits and nationalization of costs. The best way it seems would be mandatory insurance but who is silly enough?

  15. Re:So, not a Tepco site on Monju Nuclear Plant Operator Ordered To Stop Restart Preparation · · Score: 1
    Let us see. Tsunami can be a major disaster also from smaller earthquakes - it all depends how the earth moves and where, so your argument that this strength of a quake only shall be considered for risk assessment is false.

    While we talk the risk assessment that you mentioned in your earlier post - the probability of an event is not the only factor unless your risk assessment is politically motivated BS. You consider impact of an event too as well as other things like feasibility&costs of protective/preventive measures as well as clean up costs (i.e. what if scenario) etc.

    TEPCO was once one of the biggest companies on our planet and the potential clean up costs almost broke its 'neck'. The clean up costs that TEPCO is facing is a concern to any nuclear facility. BTW: you already figured out what to do with all the polluted cooling water there in Fukushima? It seem the best way is to let it mix into Pacific ocean. I do not care as it is far away. I guess if it happened in France I would. All this go into risk analysis.I guess you know all this but it would disturb your argument would it?

    Quite frankly I think that we have almost no other way as to use nuclear power as much as I hate the possibility. It would be good if we went into it with facts instead of BS. These would include: plans for evacuation in potentially affected areas if an accident indeed happens. You cannot argue this was low probability when it really happens or? IIRC the only way mining companies in USA would take care of removing of negative impacts (poisonous sediments and such) was to get money from them upfront so that in case they dissolve after all the profit is gone then there is something to fund the recovery actions. I guess the same should be done with nuclear industry. The insurance is a possibility but who would insure them now that they are so safe..... Another thing - waste - were is all the waste to go. I do not care if this is just stupid people that do not want to have nuclear waste dump around the house or there is in fact a good reason why we have a problem there but the waste does not get taken away. If even Germans do not get this right who does? Or is Finland going to sell storage capacity in their underground storage facility?

  16. Re:Good employees are scarce and may get scarcer on $30,000 For a Developer Referral? · · Score: 2
    I salute you Sir.

    Not that I am that excellent but I am good enough and I see few of those better than me suffering from insults from below (refuse to improve the product and then scolding because somebody else did etc) all the time as well as from (hopefully only moderate) idiocy of management stuff too.

  17. Re:What's that saying about agile? on World's Biggest 'Agile' Software Project Close To Failure · · Score: 1
    This is actually quite thoughtful. The deficiencies of a project (whatever which type) needs to be cured and this needs to be done continuously. This especially for large organizations is a problem so you need to do reorg and change your way of work from time to time to adjust to what you have learned. You need these nice fashionable slogans to make some change trough the whole company. I think it works to a degree actually. I just find it funny when they tell me that from now on we do it in completely different way. We change everything so that everything stays the same. Maybe I should become a guru too? I guess my spelling and grammar is a bonus then?

    OT of course but this thread is a nice flame! Much better than all these others flames apple v. ms or c++ v. java etc. This is good: everybody has (usually uninformed) opinion, we all disagree and it is irrelevant enough to be a reason for a heated debate but without throwing abuse. I like it!

  18. Re:Agile doesn't mean that the project won't fail on World's Biggest 'Agile' Software Project Close To Failure · · Score: 1

    things tend to work better when done properly. Hurrey sounds like we have found another guru!!!

  19. Re:Agile doesn't mean that the project won't fail on World's Biggest 'Agile' Software Project Close To Failure · · Score: 1
    but but but if the team works better when the daily standups/situps are done once a week then surely agile framework would allow it or?

    It looks to me that you are obsessed with these routines or ceremonies as they call it in scrum whereas the teams out there work in different ways and we all have to deal with real humans and not models of them made up by some agile guru. The whole framework is purposely left vague to allow exactly that, so almost anything goes. It is I admit appealing idea but agile Taliban (I mean the folk that is easy to recognize because they end discussion with simple 'it is not agle' as soon as they cannot provide any common sense argument) make it unworkable or at least extremely painful more often than not. It is not that agile is evil or something it is just a tool. Quite frankly I do not even care - agile, waterfall, iterative or chaos/cowboy way - I think I can do it all and succeed and in fact I did but only as long as I felt I was a member of the team and we all behaved like grown ups. I think I can go as far as to say that the most important things in a project are: good people that understand each other as well as good luck so that specifications do not change all too often as quite frankly if you change basic requirement for a complex new system after 95% of it is already done then there is almost nothing that can save the project. Of course you can claim it is a success anyway by ignoring :schedule, budget and quality criteria of a success. I do not even say that we have to be so strict with these criteria but there is a thin red line out there which makes project a failure and it has to do with these three factors and bad change in requirement specification late enough means you cross it.

  20. Re:Because on World's Biggest 'Agile' Software Project Close To Failure · · Score: 1

    I think you will burn in agile hell. It still remains to be seen whether that is a good thing :)

  21. Re:Addendum: on World's Biggest 'Agile' Software Project Close To Failure · · Score: 1
    It was meant to be so. Not sure if agile gurus did it consciously or not but there are different project types and sizes combined with all different people in different team settings etc this all means that there is no one efficient and good practice for all. Come to think of it the whole concept allows also waterfall like way of doing things if that fits into project and makes team work efficiently.

    The bottom line is majority of engineers I worked with and managers I worked for could not tell me what waterfall is/was, what was its main characteristic. what was the difference between waterfall, different agile, iterative and chaos frameworks and which of the four ways mentioned was used in last project. They all however had a strong view on all these frameworks agile or not.

  22. Re:Observation vs model on Physicists Create Quantum Link Between Photons That Don't Exist At the Same Time · · Score: 1

    Interesting argument. Come to think of it current physics are so complex, difficult to comprehend and counter intuitive that our ape's brains usually fail there. What this means to me is that we really are apes and have problems understanding the reality as it appears to be in its quantum and other aspects or maybe the reality is not measurable with our means at least currently. In both cases the poor soul on top of the ape brain has a problem with tools - only the tools in each case are different: one is brain the other technical methods of measuring and proving our ideas. Come to think of it nothing has changed from times Plato wrote about men chained in the cave watching the wall and shadows on it. It may be that this is more accurate theory of everything than anything else we have devised since. Utility of this theory of everything is that we should be very skeptical about things that we think are real.

  23. Re:Have any of the people griping USED COBOL? on IBM Takes System/z To the Cloud With COBOL Update · · Score: 1

    surely it can be written first time right so what is the point of testing except to pay for expensive testers?

  24. Re:Greed on Hanford Nuclear Waste Vitrification Plant "Too Dangerous" · · Score: 1
    You mean the nuclear waste _from nuclear powerplants_ is processed and safely disposed off in all nuclear power plants? For the sake of reasonable discussion we can limit the range of disposable crap we discuss to waste from Western power plants - is it handled properly and if not are there financial resources allocated to do this task later?

    You see I too think that most likely our energy problems would not be solved by renewables, efficient and considerate energy consumption, smart grid and what not - we may really need nuclear energy at some point. It would be better if the morons that store all the waste in little pool here and the little pool somewhere else started thinking already what to do with this shit but I guess they wait till states decide on a law forcing them too and who can blame them - if only one company did it it would be out of market in no time I guess. So yes there is lots of morons among opponents of nuclear energy and what scares the shit out of me is that there is at least as big proportion of morons dealing with nuclear energy and its waste as well as a not insignificant group of people who think only about their own bank account when discussing this subject.

  25. Re:Hopeless on Hanford Nuclear Waste Vitrification Plant "Too Dangerous" · · Score: 1

    But I am sure that exporting the crap out to some sufficiently sophisticated processing facility say in Zamunda (Somalia would also do I guess as they have experience in sinking toxic waste from Italy in the Indian Ocean) could save quite some money.....