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Comment It's ironic... (Score 1) 187

... how people that cause automobile accidents aren't usually criminally charged, even though the accidents are all preventable and damages are usually in the felony range if it were vandalism or theft. It sure feels like computer people are being singled out. People don't even die when data breaches occur like they do in autos when people screw up and 99.99% of the time, someone screwed up in an auto accident.

Comment Re:Wrist slap. (Score 1) 239

the entire deterrent idea fails because criminals either don't think about the consequences before they commit the act, are or stupid enough to think they can get away with it and won't be punished.

That being said, the death penalty or penal colony isn't intended as a deterrent, it's purpose is to remove dangerous people from society permanently so they don't harm anyone else.

Both are supremely effective at this purpose. Putting their heads on a spike or rotting bodies in a cage in public is the deterrent part of execution. This hasn't been done for a very long time in most countries because, like you said, deterrents don't work.

I disagree that destroying them or locking them up permanently doesn't make the world a better place. After all, there's one less criminal out in the world.

Comment Re:Spaghetti sells ..... (Score 1) 329

the only problem with the outsourcing approach is they'll simply steal your idea, present it as their own after they code it and screw you over. Go ahead and try to enforce an NDA signed with a foreign company.

After all who is going to believe that it was your idea after they've coded it and added it to the app store as their own?

You can't outsource boxed software coding unless you are already established and have a product for sale. Outsource V2, but V1 needs to come from  your own blood sweat and tears.

Comment Re:5% is doing badly? (Score 1) 349

overall unemployment in the US is 9.1%. However that number only includes people that are collecting unemployment. If your unemployment has run out and you are living on the street, you aren't counted.

Unemployment is much much worse than 5%. Maybe not in IT... but it's pretty bad.

If people knew the _actual_ percentage of people with no job, there'd be a wall street panic and we'd go straight to depression.

That's why the government cooks unemployment figures.

Comment Re:The problem for UK IT graduates (Score 1) 349

Yep. My job was being moved to another state, and then the team got laid off. I started looking as soon as I heard the ceo mention "consolidation" non-specifically in a presentation.

That is corporate speak for "you might be fucked in 6 months". I started looking. The day they had the meeting where they told us we were getting moved or laid off, an interview panned out and I had a start date for my next job. My boss wanted me to transition my stuff over to other people over the next 2 months. I said "Well I'd love to have the luxury of giving you 2 months, but you have 2 weeks, and the last 3 days of that I will probably be fucking off, so pick out what you want me to teach someone and lets get on it.". Your employer has no qualms about fucking you over. Now is not the time for morality and doing the right thing. Get a new job ASAP.

You (the parent) need to start looking NOW. You get to pick your employer if you do. Otherwise you will take whatever salary or position you can get after you are laid off and starving. Not a good position to be in. I've been there too. At the first sign you might have a shot of losing your job eventually you need to begin sending out the resume, then take the first job that meets your requirements.

Comment Re:Minimum experience required... (Score 2) 349

maybe you should specify "MCSE required" in your ad. I'm an engineer that doesn't know squat about windows 7, has barely a grasp on nt domains etc. FSMO? What is that? Is that some kind of fancy z-rated tire?

My area of expertise is linux software development. I know how to talk to LDAP (the underlying technology of windows domains) but as far as which buttons to push in the oujia board known as windows to make something happen? Pfft, you'd be better off asking a desktop support wienie. You need me to make a content filtering whitelist proxy by forking TinyProxy and build a php gui to control it? I'm your man. I can even build administrative roles into it using your NT groups. Setting up those groups in the domain is someone else's job.

Maybe your problem is you don't know enough about IT in general to know what to ask for in  your candidates. I sincerely doubt it's the candidates. It's likely as much the candidates fault as it is when a auto mechanic uses the wrong tool and damages a car.

Comment Re:Which illustrates what we already knew (Score 2, Insightful) 298

yea but the average FreeBSD distribution is lot more optimized than the average bloated linux distro such as Ubuntu. Ubuntu is made for the masses and I'd be surprised if the number of drivers NOT in the ubuntu kernel is more than the count of fingers on my left hand.

FreeBSD is made by engineers for engineers in most cases. Ubuntu is built so some uneducated guy in Bangladesh can load it on his crap whitebox laptop with random hardware and it JustWorks(tm) and has him up and surfing the internets within 20 minutes. Ditto for windows. That takes a lot of kernel bloat to accomplish.

Ubuntu's mission is admirable and they do a bang up job. However you don't want to use Ubuntu for any task where the best performance possible is required. Squeezing every last ounce of performance out of your hardware and software takes a little more work than "pop the disk in and wait". Install Gentoo, strip the bloat out the kernel and you'll see what I'm talking about.

Comment Re:Which illustrates what we already knew (Score 1) 298

Linux hasn't lost it's way. It's kernel is still configurable. You can turn off the stuff you don't want in there and recompile it.

Try using Gentoo, which makes this very easy, compared to redhat, Ubuntu etc. which have dependencies on the bloat in their packages. Ever tried to recompile a red hat kernel? It's not pretty.

Ubuntu is the problem, not linux.

The article (as is often the case) has a misleading title. It should be "Linux 3D Games Run Faster On PC-BSD than they do on the Ubuntu distribution of linux"

I'm sure that it would be a different story on a kernel without the bloat. People need to realize that often linux distros are far less than optimal. They are trying to be like windows and have everything and the kitchen sink in the kernel. Ubuntu is NOT linux. They are a company that simply packages linux in a distro and make it "easy" though for any specialized application, using Ubuntu is anything but easy. It's meant to be a general purpose desktop os that anyone can install.

You'd see much higher gaming performance in Gentoo, which like FreeBSD, is compiled from source for your processor with your options. FBSD uses ports, which is very similar to portage used in Gentoo. It downloads source, looks at your kernel and compiles the code with the right options for your system.

I strongly suggest that if you want to get the most performance out of linux, use a compiled-from-source distro like gentoo. It makes a HUGE difference. It takes a lot longer to set up your system (since you compile the entire thing from source) but the end result is worth it if performance is your #1 goal.

Comment Re:Wrong idea (Score 1) 281

yea but murder requires a human. Glaciers which used to cover as far south as new york and paris 5km thick started melting before gasoline. Read about the "last glacial maximum".

Global warming is a huge factor responsible for humans being smart enough to debate the cause of it. As far as humans _being_ the cause of it? It would certainly be a paradox. If humans didn't cause it there must be natural factors that are mostly responsible.

Comment Re:Not Dead Yet? (Score 1) 152

Well the "system" is designed _by lawyers_.

Getting congress (or any legislative body, federal or state) to change it would be just about as likely as getting congress to impose term limits.

Ain't gonna happen because they are screwing themselves if they do it. Never mind what's "right" for the country and it's legal system... they are all far too greedy to do what's right. Law is big business and so is elected office. Our entire government is designed in such a way that it makes as much money as possible for those in the legal and elected government business, and that's what it is exactly, a business.

The country and states are run by lawyers so they run them and design laws in a way that serve their own best interests. I'm actually surprised that this is news to anyone. "Right", "Fair" and "Just" are concepts they don't care to implement in the law because they don't make any money by doing things the simplest and fair way.

It's quite possible for someone that's done nothing wrong and hurt no one to be bankrupted by the courts and lawyers. That's pretty fucked up and it happens every day.

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