Comment Re:worked for me (Score 1) 688
success = failures + 1; // how to be good at any job.
Comment Learn to be a pro.... (Score 1) 688
.....air conditioner repairman in a few interactive web sessions per week for a year?
chef at a 5 star greasy spoon? TV sitcom writer ? What professionals (esp unions) would be insulted by such a trivializing of their careers?
Computers are the most complex machines every devised. How good could such a 'professional' be?
(claimer: I am pro developer)
Comment yup. (Score 1) 3
I knew it. I've known it all along, but was afraid that it was true.
Comment Re:op said it was misattributed (Score 1) 5
orig post said the seller is claiming it as their own code, which is a violation of pretty much any license I'm aware of. If the seller is honest, they'd correctly credit the author. Lying about the author upfront suggests they probably removed previous copyright notices and intentionally are violating the license.
Comment Happened to me at NASA... (Score 4, Informative) 312
I worked 30 years in astronaut training facility (full-fidelity simulators), and wrote many many documents on software that I wrote. I always kept my own digital copies, of course. Over the years, the contracts changed hands many times, and different document systems were implemented, and "all" documents were "always" converted from old to new. I was never able to later re-locate *any* document I had submitted to *any* of the document systems. So my copies of my documents were the only ones that actually existed that I knew of. This included meeting minutes, peer review notes, design and 'as-delivered' documents. So I think institutional amnesia is more the norm, and actual memory beyond 3-5 years is rare.
Journal Journal: in which i am a noob all over again 17
I haven't posted a journal here in almost three years, because I couldn't find the button to start a new entry.
So... hi, Slashdot. I used to be really active here, but now I mostly lurk and read. I've missed you.
Comment Re:security? What about.... (Score 1) 195
"each phase of the code compilation process is exposed as a service that can be consumed by other applications."
How bout if the 'other app' is a web browser window? TFA suggests this will be possible with MS's product.
How bout if the 'other app' is a web browser window? TFA suggests this will be possible with MS's product.
Comment Re:security? My first thot, too... (Score 1) 195
I was thinking cpu-specific, not OS-independent. Sorry for ambiguity. CPU-specific compilation may allow for use of idiosyncratic features/bugs in the production of invasive code, something a little more difficult if the target hardware is unknown.
Comment Re:security? My first thot, too... (Score 1) 195
Now malware can be shipped in various partially-compiled steps and in different packaging (one,two,three modules, arriving from different vectors, etc), making detection harder, and can then be compiled targetting the cpu it lands on. Oh, what a fricken great IDEA! platform-independence for malware just got easier! It''s really getting hard to distinguish between the bad guys and producers of ideas like this.
Comment Re:Do new names really stick? (Score 1) 176
Astronomers, as a group, are every bit as smart as rocket scientists. I've worked with both at NASA. I think they can handle the name change.
Submission + - Stephenson Mentions Slashdot in Reamde (cmdrtaco.net) 1
CmdrTaco writes: "It's total navalgazing and I wouldn't post it if I was still working here, but I thought my heirs would be pleased to know that Slashdot got a mention in Neal Stephenson's Reamde. Be proud and keep up the fight. It's page 161 if you have the hardcover."
Comment CERN IS faster than light (Score 4, Funny) 1088
I searched for 'faster than light' on the CERN website, got articles posted in 2012, 2014. They put this new discovery to work right away!
Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda Resigns From Slashdot 1521
After 14 years and over 15,000 stories posted, it's finally time for me to say Good-Bye to Slashdot. I created
this place with my best friends in a run down house while still in college. Since then it has grown to be read by
more than a million people, and has served Billions and Billions of Pages (yes, in my head I hear the voice).
During my tenure I have done my best to keep Slashdot firmly grounded in its origins, but now it's time for someone else
to come aboard and find the *future*. Personally I don't have any plans, but if you need to get ahold of me for
any reason, you can find me as @cmdrtaco on twitter or Rob Malda on Google+. You could also update my
mail address to be malda at cmdrtaco dot net. Hit the link below if you want to read some nostalgic saccharine crap that I need to get out of my system before I sign off for the last time.
NASA Discovers 7th Closest Star 137
Thorfinn.au says "Scientists using data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) have discovered the coldest class of star-like bodies, with temperatures as cool as the human body. Astronomers hunted these dark orbs, termed Y dwarfs, for more than a decade without success. When viewed with a visible-light telescope, they are nearly impossible to see. WISE's infrared vision allowed the telescope to finally spot the faint glow of six Y dwarfs relatively close to our sun, within a distance of about 40 light-years. 'WISE scanned the entire sky for these and other objects, and was able to spot their feeble light with its highly sensitive infrared vision,' said Jon Morse, Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington. 'They are 5,000 times brighter at the longer infrared wavelengths WISE observed from space than those observable from the ground.'"
Sports Bars Changing Channels For Video Gamers 351
dtmos wrote in to say that "This summer, StarCraft II has become the newest bar room spectator sport. Fans organize so-called Barcraft events, taking over pubs and bistros from Honolulu to Florida and switching big-screen TV sets to Internet broadcasts of professional game matches. As they root for their on-screen superstars, StarCraft enthusiasts can sow confusion among regular patrons... But for sports-bar owners, StarCraft viewers represent a key new source of revenue from a demographic—self-described geeks—they hadn't attracted before."
