Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Not job offers (Score 1) 227

Having 30 solid offers per month for even entry level programming jobs would be reassuring if nothing else. These are just generic position postings though, with no special inside track to get an actual job.

Having said that, I got a new job by replying to one of LinkedIn recruiting e-mails a couple of years back, and got a nice salary hike as well as more interesting project and less stress than my previous gig. After that, I usually reply by declining politely and thanking the recruiter for asking. If someday myself or a friend needed a new job, I would probably have a slightly better chance with recruiters who had a positive experience with me before.

Comment Re:Criminals are dumb (Score 1) 105

That's not most people's risk profile. An average user is more likely to have personal data lost or stolen from their personal devices than a cloud provider with a professional IT department. Even in terms of legal risk, you could be jailed for contempt of court for failing to produce documents in what is otherwise a civil matter. Or not have access to favorable evidence.

You absolutely should have legal right to run whatever software you want. I just disagree with article's premise that most criminals would go install custom ROMs and sideload apps. Anyone with enough wits and self control to do this consistently is likely smart enough to achieve their goals in legal ways.

Comment It depends on definition of 50mbps (Score 1) 170

Is this going to be the practical bandwidth I can get to Netflix and other popular services 99% of the time, including Saturday night? If so, it's a wonderful service and could be well worth upgrading to 75mbps or even 1gbps. I would love to do a time machine backup of my laptop to a cloud storage provider that wouldn't burn in a house fire.

On the other hand my "30mbps" Comcast connection frequently ends up buffering a single HBO now stream. To be fair, this could well be problem of HBO or network intermediaries rather than Comcast. But in either case "smoother playback" advertising is misleading if this is not the experience I would have in most cases.

Comment Criminals are dumb (Score 2) 105

Lots have been caught with plaintext browser history on their hard drives listing Google queries like "how to dispose of a body". That despite tools to clear or not record such history are easily available. To such end, having a half hearted, optional key escrow may do a lot of good. Let smartphones be encrypted by default, with a copy of the key encrypted with a public key of a cloud company that has an excellent security record. Then if someone forgets their password, and shows up at Apple or Verizon store with a valid ID, they can have their vacation photos back. So can law enforcement if they produce a valid and narrow scope search warrant.

At the same time, people can install custom ROMs that support encryption that is potentially impractical to crack. That's important for many reasons including personal freedom and keeping country's technological edge by encouraging people to develop and understand software. Whistleblowers will get to keep their privacy, and so will a few criminal masterminds. But chances are, the later will have dumb associates who will set their password to 12345. I think a bet that smart people are generally also well intentioned is a good one for our society to make. In the meantime, we don't have to make life of the next Scott Peterson too easy.

Comment ChromeOS Lightbar support should not be in kernel (Score 1) 232

For all the noise about systemd, we are totally ignoring the fact that it's the Linux kernel that is the most egregious violation of UNIX modular philosophy. ChromeOS Lightbar has no place in main kernel distribution. System should at least provide enough of a stable binary interface for users to get a binary from outside developer and use it for a couple years. It's not crazy for a non-critical driver like this run in userspace, where a crash is less likely to bring down the whole system.

Anyone interested in learning system programming, or getting their pet gadget to work with Linux, should be able to maintain the project without having to convince Linus Torvalds to take it on or make monthly patches to accommodate ever changing kernel interface. For that matter, someone should be able to write a new kernel and have it work with a decent subset of Linux drivers. In the meantime, core Linux maintainers can focus on fundamental projects like kdbus rather than making LED lights on one particular laptop blink.

Comment Open source one, of course (Score 1) 484

Get an Android phone with unlocked bootloader and install a custom ROM based on older/better debugged KitKat AOSP release and focused on stability rather than features. Think Debian of Android. If you can't find one to your liking, you only have yourself to blame. It's impossible for a release with hundreds of brand new features and UI refreshes to be stable for the simple reason that nobody actually tried it before. But if there is enough interest in the community, they can take a snapshot and focus on fixing bugs.

Comment If safe, any more controversial than vaccines? (Score 1) 407

If you get immunized, you also get ahead in live and work by unnaturally avoiding diseases. Lately there has been noise about forcing people to get shots no matter what they think. Personally I think you should have a choice. But if there are drugs for which beneficial effects dramatically outweigh side effects, I am all for their use becoming widespread. Adderall is definitely not it - current drugs are too blunt and uniformly carried thoughout the body, causing side effects to organs. The future is gene therapy or nano capsules that deliver active ingredients to only a targeted group of cells. On the other hand, people taking it now are volunteer guinea pigs who will help us one day come up with better and safer drugs.

Comment Re:Start with basics (Score 1) 216

Good to hear there is some attention to these subjects (I went to school abroad). For child raising/relationships I don't mean "look how much it sucks", but rather normal things to do and what should raise red flags. If people knew when to give a baby solid food or let them take a bus alone, there would be much fewer accidents and health problems.

Comment Start with basics (Score 1) 216

C.Sci is a good career, it's not the only career. I would rather teach kids:

  • Optimum health management, including providing healthy food and needed daily exercise during school time
  • Balancing checkbooks, with some mock loans/saving money for stuff in school shop and so on
  • Basic relationship/child raising skills.
  • Politics and being a good citizen
  • Protecting environment

If kids have basic life skills, they will also choose their own career paths wisely. By all means, offer a great C.Sci elective and ensure it's available to all willing and able. But pushing one single career on everyone seems overboard. By the time they graduate, other jobs will be in top demand.

Comment Don't understand the problem (Score 1) 89

If you use SSL with certificate pinning and type www.gmail.com into browser, you are safe from man in the middle attacks and root certificate compromises. The only attack vector is gmail itself or your computer being compromised. The former problem applies to any website - it obviously can serve malicious crypto code that copies plaintext elsewhere. The tradeoff is that you can use any public terminal to access your stuff, making it unlikely that someone compromised it in advance. It's comparatively easier to penetrate your personal hardware, even SD cards with secure Linux distros.

Comment Time for a knowledge-based political party (Score 1) 538

Educated people have ability and moral obligation to become political leaders, and yet we do nothing. There are many inexpensive ways to motivate people on Internet. 90% of public will go with whatever they see on Google, Facebook or Twitter and only 0.01% of talented individuals know how to make the information easily discoverable and understandable among all the noise on Internet. If smartest people refuse to work for Republicans and Democrats, the later will lose all ability to reach anyone under the age of 60.

There are a lot policy decisions that are dictated by simple facts and have little room for ideological debate. Global warming is either happening or it's not. Cutting taxes on the rich either stimulates economy or hurts it. Banning anarchist cookbook from Internet is either feasible or it isn't. Once we get all the nutcases out of office, we can start solving problems in areas where all reasonable debate has been settled long ago. And move on to issues where more intelligent debate is actually needed.

Slashdot Top Deals

Do you suffer painful elimination? -- Don Knuth, "Structured Programming with Gotos"

Working...