Comment Picture / Screenshot or it never happened (Score 0) 325
Followed links from TFA but could not find any images.... intrigued to see aerial/satellite images of this.
Goes without saying that I, for one, welcome our new plastic bottle overlords
Comment Did the same with Dell Last Year (Score 5, Informative) 284
I did the same with Dell last year when I ordered my XPS M1330. It came with Vista + MS Works (at the time they had no pretend Linux alternative - with lower specs and same price as a Vista laptop).
I wrote to Dell for a refund and enclosed a printed out screenshot (via digital camera) of me ticking the "I reject license" on Vista bootup and another screenshot of Kubuntu running on the laptop.
A month later I was refunded £120 + vat for both Vista and Works. Not bad considering the laptop cost £520 - minus M$ Tax = £400.
Comment X-WING (Score 1) 1120
Or even better, networked X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter
Comment Re:Who would guess (Score 1) 345
>..without their stupid JavaScript alerting you that their site is their content, blah, blah
FF + NoScript = WIN!
Submission + - Google to launch operating system
An anonymous reader writes: Google to launch operating system
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8139711.stm
Google is developing an operating system (OS) for personal computers, in a direct challenge to market leader Microsoft and its Windows system.
Google Chrome OS will be aimed initially at small, low-cost netbooks, but will eventually be used on PCs as well.
Google said netbooks with Chrome OS could be on sale by the middle of 2010.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8139711.stm
Google is developing an operating system (OS) for personal computers, in a direct challenge to market leader Microsoft and its Windows system.
Google Chrome OS will be aimed initially at small, low-cost netbooks, but will eventually be used on PCs as well.
Google said netbooks with Chrome OS could be on sale by the middle of 2010.
Submission + - Google Announce Chrome OS Plans
Neil writes: "The official Google Blog features an
announcement this morning
that the company is going ahead with plans to develop the Chrome browser into a fully-fledged operating system distribution, targeted at x86 and ARM netbooks. The project is separate from Android, but is also based on a Linux kernel and will be open sourced. It is lated for release to consumers in the second half of 2010."
Submission + - New job, new software, new problem?
Nicros writes: So I just got a good paying job as a senior software engineer at a biotech company. When I was hired, I was told that I would be leading a project, coding and re-architecting a legacy application which they wanted to 'productize'. Sounded cool! So then I started, and discovered that although all of those things are factually correct, the reality is a bit different.
The code base is over 180,000 lines of really complex unmaintainable code. Several files (this is C# btw) have over 25,000 lines per file (!). And that is for 1 class with 125 methods- so you can do the math how big each method is. Additionally, this is scientific software, so it is very, very complex.
I'm having a hard time even running metrics on these things because they are such memory hogs for the tools available.
So okay, thats a lot of work to refactor and rearchitect that, maybe even for a team. Oh yeah, I have probably less than a year.
I came from a position where I was a project lead, technical lead and a manager. This new position would seem to be me, coding, alone, for a very long time. Not learning that much, and Im not seeing much career enhancement other than becoming a crack C# programmer (which would be one good thing anyway). So I guess Im still a lead. But overall, I feel I have taken a step back career wise. The company is also, of course, resource limited so I may or may not be able to hire some help.
So, I would be very interested in hearing what others thing about this situation, and possible ways to deal with it in a positive manner. Are there career risks here? I do need the job, so I cant just bail. I also would not like to let them down, they hired me to do a job and I accepted- I want to do it well. So I really would like to make the best of this and help my career at the same time, but Im having a hard time seeing any path that leads to success.
Thoughts? Suggestions?
The code base is over 180,000 lines of really complex unmaintainable code. Several files (this is C# btw) have over 25,000 lines per file (!). And that is for 1 class with 125 methods- so you can do the math how big each method is. Additionally, this is scientific software, so it is very, very complex.
I'm having a hard time even running metrics on these things because they are such memory hogs for the tools available.
So okay, thats a lot of work to refactor and rearchitect that, maybe even for a team. Oh yeah, I have probably less than a year.
I came from a position where I was a project lead, technical lead and a manager. This new position would seem to be me, coding, alone, for a very long time. Not learning that much, and Im not seeing much career enhancement other than becoming a crack C# programmer (which would be one good thing anyway). So I guess Im still a lead. But overall, I feel I have taken a step back career wise. The company is also, of course, resource limited so I may or may not be able to hire some help.
So, I would be very interested in hearing what others thing about this situation, and possible ways to deal with it in a positive manner. Are there career risks here? I do need the job, so I cant just bail. I also would not like to let them down, they hired me to do a job and I accepted- I want to do it well. So I really would like to make the best of this and help my career at the same time, but Im having a hard time seeing any path that leads to success.
Thoughts? Suggestions?
Submission + - Atari 1200XL vs Dell Inspiron: My 1st vs my latest
Bill Kendrick writes: "My first computer was the short-lived 1200XL model of the Atari 8-bit computer line. I finally got ahold of one again, after having to settle with a lesser Atari system. My immediate reaction was: "damn, it's as big as my Dell Inspiron laptop!", and I couldn't resist doing one of those side-by-side comparisons, complete with photos of one system sitting atop the other. (I also put the 1983 storage and speeds in 2009 terms, for the benefit of the youngin's out there.)
While, in many ways, the Atari pales in comparison to the latest technology they cram into laptops, I do get to benefit from SD storage media. It also still boots way faster than Ubuntu on the Dell, has a far more ergonomic keyboard, and is much more toddler-proof."
While, in many ways, the Atari pales in comparison to the latest technology they cram into laptops, I do get to benefit from SD storage media. It also still boots way faster than Ubuntu on the Dell, has a far more ergonomic keyboard, and is much more toddler-proof."
Submission + - Is there a zero-day OpenSSH exploit in the wild? (dshield.org)
eefsee writes: sans.org reports 'Over the past 24 hours we've had a number of readers tell us that there is an OpenSSH exploit in active use.' It is not clear if this is a real exploit or sysadmin CYA masquerading as exploit, but some web hosts have already turned of SSH in response. On 7/5 HostGator shut down SSH on all its shared servers. Site5 did the same thing the next day. The loss of SSH, of course, kills SFTP on these hosts as well, forcing customers to fall back on FTP. Now that is security!
Comment Re:Real geeks (Score 1) 436
telnet??!!11
I dumped telnet for browsing once I discovered Gopher. Try it. You'll never look back.
Submission + - Xbox 360 Error? Why did it happen? (squidoo.com)
Xbox 360 Repairer writes: "Some people seem to think that it's an overheating problem. And while it is triggered by an xbox that is too hot, that is not the main cause. The XBOX 360 should not have a 50% failure rate, no matter how long you play it. After some research, I've found that it was an engineering flaw in the production of the XBOX 360. Actually it's an electrical malfunction, built right in to the XBOX 360. It's a definite flaw, but it has an easy fix, if you know the right steps. Xbox 360 Repair....."
Submission + - Linux kernel 2.6.29 released 1
diegocgteleline.es writes: Linux kernel 2.6.30 has been released. The list of new features include NILFS2, a new log-structured filesystem, a filesystem for object-based storage devices called exofs, local caching for NFS, the RDS protocol which delivers high-performance reliable connections between the servers of a cluster, a new distributed networking filesystem (POHMELFS), automatic flushing of files on renames/truncates in ext3, ext4 and btrfs, preliminary support for the 802.11w drafts, support for the Microblaze architecture, the Tomoyo security MAC, DRM support for the Radeon R6xx/R7xx graphic cards, asynchronous scanning of devices and partitions for faster bootup, the preadv/pwritev syscalls, several new drivers and many other small improvements.
Comment Re:Noo!!! (Score 1) 183
Book 11 was not bad (if you read every 10nth page). The story does start moving along (an old character comes back for example).
Plot didn't move along enough though. Considering that the 12th book was to be the final, it had to be over 2000 pages long to conclude the story.
Comment Re:Noo!!! (Score 2, Funny) 183
Book 8?.. Hmm... not sure. Was that the one where 800 pages were dedicated to progressing the story 20 minutes? You know... where they nuked the
Thankfully its all a blur.
Comment Noo!!! (Score 1) 183
Oh Frak! Wrong series!
