Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:this already exists (Score 1) 288

Saying "We're sure he had..." without evidence is not evidence. They have to have the evidence that he actually *did* have what is claimed.

That's the hard part. They have to gather the evidence to get the conviction. Without evidence, they can't get a conviction. At least if you have a competent attorney. If you have a crappy one, you'll get the 5 years because they talked you into taking a pre-trial plea agreement. That's how innocent people go to jail.

Comment Re:Everyone's a programmer. Even dead people! (Score 1) 425

Hell, you wouldn't ask a psychiatrist to give you an appendectomy, would you?

The only thing I'd ask a psychiatrist is "please leave."

Wow wow wow.

You probably want to get that turntable checked. One day it's only wowing, then suddenly tomorrow there's flutter, rumble, tracking error, and cookie crumbs blocking the strobe light.

I'm just needling you, of course.

Issues much?

Nah. Just perpetually amused. :)

Comment Everyone's a programmer. Even dead people! (Score 2) 425

A variation of it is quite prominent on Slashdot, with many users inexplicably believing that programming requires a "special mind", dividing people in to two groups: "can program" and "can never program".

Some of us just have different metrics for drawing a line between "programming" and "stumbling around in a programming language doing dangerous, stupid, and occasionally functional things."

But, hey. If you can set your digital alarm clock, or interact with your microwave in such a way as to involve more than one button push (even if you're going to destroy the comestible), you're a programmer, right?

It's like kids with crayons. They're all artists! Special butterflies! Call the Louvre!

Now get off my nursing home's lawn

Comment Come on. What tripe. (Score 3, Insightful) 425

From TFS:

If you could measure programming ability somehow, its curve would look like the normal distribution.

Since you can't measure programming ability "somehow" or otherwise, you don't know what the curve would look like. Which reveals the entire set of claims here as utter garbage. If you don't know what the distribution is, you don't know what the distribution is. How difficult is that to understand?

Comment Re:intentional (Score 1) 416

Iain M. Banks had the notion of a 'mind state abstract', where you'd send a copy of (part of) your mind and then either discard it or reintegrate. It would either be downloaded into a drone or biological construct, or just used in VR. It made a lot more sense to me than the transporter, as long as you solve the reintegration problem. Especially on a dangerous mission, I'd prefer to send a copy down and then merge their memories into mine if they survived...

Comment Re:Technically C++ (Score 1) 230

General hint: If your functions are so long that having to (suppose this was indeed the case) declare/define all your variables at the top becomes a serious annoyance, then chances are that your functions are too long/do too much. Fix that instead.

More general hint: The principle of minimum scope exists for a reason. Declare your variables at the point where they can be initialised, not at some arbitrary point and you make life easier for people trying to understand the lifetime of the variable.

Comment Re:They reall don't mean this (Score 1) 78

AI is actually far different to data analysis, it is all about different layers or levels (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQyXeLSL0II ;) ) of decision making. So you start off with very simple solutions and if they are good enough you stop there, if not enough you use those outputs in the next higher or adjacent level or and add more different levels for more outputs, until your arrive at the answer. Not based upon the current level of analysis only but also on all the previous ones, it becomes a composite solution, which readily varies processing time with regard to the complexity of the question and complexity the final solution. The greater the number of possible solutions you can generate, the greater the ability of the artificial intelligence, by using composite outputs from different levels analysis, you greatly increase the number of potential outputs.

Comment Re:The 30 and 40-somethings wrote the code... (Score 1) 553

You do understand in the world of statistics and reality, you represent the trailing edge of the bell curve for your age group. You can readily guess my age and I distinctly remember for decades going through that cringe when people my age and quite some years younger seemed to want brag about their lack of computer skills, how their children knew more, a badge of ignorance. Things are tough out in the employment market and there are a whole bunch of unemployed, past middle age computer illiterates and you don't want them clogging up your recruitment process. Having been on the other side, all those applications are a real pain and the reality is you want only one application and one interview, the right one and how quickly you can thin down hundreds or even thousands of apps down to that right one is useful. So yes, toss out a few of the good because you can get rid of a whole lot of the futile at the same time is going to happen most of the time. Just sucks to be associated with digitally inept but that is the way it is.

New employment question, what are your gamer tags on what game servers, we would like to see how you play (this is actually far more accurate than looking at social media and will reveal far more about a person over an extended period of interaction). Steam in reality does count for far more than other social media sites, how well people play together will define how well those people will work an old rule that works well in the digital era, if you pay attention. In a digital sense, Geeks tend to hang well together regardless of age, nerds not so much.

Slashdot Top Deals

The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and to watch someone else doing it wrong, without commenting. -- T.H. White

Working...