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Comment Tell stories instead of advices (Score 1) 698

Advices are tricky, people are different.
My dad died as I was about to leave college and the best thing he left me with are his stories and not advices - all sorts of stories. He was a tech guy, I'm a tech guy but we're different. What 'the kid' wants are stories, stuff that will give you the feeling like you were sitting together to have a coffee/beer and sharing stories. Way better than telling your daughter *what to do*, tell her *what you did*.

Tell her how you got your job, what was the hardest thing for you before college, during.. how was the first time you got wasted. How did you get the first job.. about that time you changed jobs.. or got promoted or got laid off.. Tell her about how you felt when you were getting married, when she was born.. Tell her a story about how/when your heart was broken.. (I'm going a bit random here but you get the idea)

Tell her of dreams you had but that you never accomplished. Tell her your opinions about a bunch of things that might or might not apply to her in the future; moving countries, sports vs. work, being homosexual.. dunno.. think about a bunch of stuff..

Oh, and tell her a bunch of your favorite books/albums/films and why they are so.

If you give plaintext advice she'll just argue something back to the video and you won't be there to counter-argue so it's a bit of a dead conversation. Tell your stories and she'll take them in as they are.

Comment Push Snowboarding (Score 1) 220

Work in something that brings Computer Science and tech to a sport you love. You'll end up having to test your own code by yourself. I worked a while on Push Snowboarding (www.pushsnowboarding.com) and got a lot of snowboarding together with it. Now I'm working on another project that also makes me be active to test my own stuff.

Yes, I love my job.
Math

Submission + - Research Says Which Is Best Change Lanes or Stick In Heavy Traffic (i-programmer.info) 1

mikejuk writes: We all know the problem — stick with a slow moving lane or change to the other lane, which usually then slows down even more than the original lane. Now we have a definitive solution via a Monte Carlo Simulation.
And you might not like the answer:
It all depends on what everyone else is doing. If more than 50% are changing lanes then you don't win if you change lanes but you do if you're in the minority. This mirrors many of the results in game theory where a selfish strategy works well, but only if it is the minority strategy. Given most drivers stick in a lane then swapping is probably a good choice — unless this news gets out.

Comment Re:Agile is not the problem (Score 1) 491

Not the problem but is neither the "golden solution".

I work on an Agile team that because they are agile they believe they can change things, requirements & focus every two weeks. Plus, anyone that says waterfall doesn't work is ignoring ALL *critical* software we depend on. Do you think airplane control systems are developed using agile? Bankin systems? Stock exchange? Power grid... your OS for fuck sake (be it linux, MacOS or the other one).. none of them were fully developed using Agile.

Agile ADDs a lot of good stuff on top of waterfall and is more transparent and flaws/problems become apparent earlier - that's all. It doesn't solve *the problem of sw development*.

I bet you that in 10 years there'll be another *agile* with a different name and book that will promise that THEY are solving the problems. Smart people take agile and try to make it better, dumb people follow it like religion (and like any religious one, they sin).

Comment Fake! Publicity stunt! (Score 1) 68

They cut the video pretty much before any single jump. Plus, they don't have a good shot of the last flight. The jumps are cool but any of us could do a jumping machine that "just jumps". The hard thing is to make the whole package.

Come on, don't tell me they didn't had time for it. They are a big company and should watch what they release.
This reminds me of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXJZVZFRFJc

Maybe Boston Dynamics is just taking a piss out of DARPA.

Comment Re:Fear the mighty script kiddy (Score 1) 215

I kind of agree with you on the press thing but saying they are "just silly kids" is a bit too far. You mention the obscure term "silly tools", but then WHO makes the SILLY tools? And what makes you think that whoever built the SILLY TOOL is not using it.

It's not that simple. If it was that simple the "mafias/organized crime" would dominate this "for profit". If you really don't acknowledge that some of this kids work HARD and are indeed quite skilled than I'll assume you have never tried hacking anything while a teenager and that you don't use online banking.

Some of these kids are indeed brilliant. Admiring them or not is the only matter here.

Comment Re:Are you doing this because of Steve Jobs??? (Score 1) 1521

Maybe it was a pub bet... I can hear it almost:
Hemos: I wonder what'll happen when Jobs leave apple!
CmdrTaco: What do you mean? He'll never leave.. he'll die CEO!
Hemos: I don't think so, we both know all this corporate overlords stuff, stock market and all.. He will eventually leave!
CmdrTaco: NO! The day Jobs resigns I resign from Slashdot (and go to google)! ..

Comment Trying to be relevant? (Score 1) 343

Dunno, but all this seems bullshit.
First, I believe all this kinds of riots are just group/herd behaviour ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_behaviour ) and any blackberry "coordination" was probably some innocent people inviting others to join the protest.
Come on those are just a bunch of angry kids that thought they were "doing the right thing" by raising hell and going against each and everyone...
No major coordination.. no major plots or conspiracies.

Going after everybody's bbms just to try to find out who were the rioters is just plain Orwellian.

Finally, blackberry stepping up publicizing that on twitter looks just like "hey hey people! Look at us! We want to protect you! We still exist and we are responsible!"
If it was that important they wouldn't make their support public...

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