Comment Re:Indians in a nutshell (Score 5, Interesting) 241
now what you have to hope is those indian doctors/engineers didnt do the same on their exams
Sadly as somebody who is a CS graduate student at a university whose CS graduate program is dominated by Indian students, I can tell you that this is absolutely the case. They see no problem with cheating, even after the professor has told them that he knows they are cheating and explains the consequences. Doesn't matter if it was homework, projects or tests they always cheat.
Comment Re:The USPTO is holding roundtables (Score 2) 211
I'll just leave these here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church-Turing_thesis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry-Howard_correspondence
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church-Turing_thesis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry-Howard_correspondence
Comment Re:cant wait (Score 2) 76
He was probably reflowing the solder. Crappy solder / soldering jobs (such as those in the Xbox 360) are often fixed by heating up the solder to the reflow temperature. This liquifies the solder allowing it flow back into its proper place.
Submission + - Small ISPs to challenge CRTC ruling (financialpost.com)
silentbrad writes: 'The country's independent Internet providers are challenging a regulatory ruling that allows large network operators such as BCE Inc. to raise rates on smaller providers and their customers. ... A request from the Canadian Network Operators Consortium Inc. (CNOC), a trade group representing dozens of smaller ISPs, was filed Wednesday with regulatory authorities asking a Nov. 15 decision allowing higher rates based on "capacity" be revisited, with an aim to lowering fees smaller providers will have to start paying by Feb. 1.' Another article focussing specifically on TekSavvy gives some more details.
Submission + - JP Morgan in serious financial IT law breach (computerworlduk.com)
DMandPenfold writes: PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) has been fined £1.4 million ($2.2 million) by regulators, after it signed off accounts containing serious rule-breaking client money practices at JP Morgan Chase – the result of a major IT switchover that failed to keep pace with changed business processes.
The Accountancy and Actuarial Discipline Board (AADB) issued the fine as it ruled that PwC wrongly reported over a seven year period that JP Morgan had maintained the right systems to correctly separate clients' money from its own.
The "highly automated" systems processed up to £15 billion of assets, and by not separating the money appropriately, there was a risk of clients' losing their assets if JP Morgan had gone bust, the regulator stated.
In 2010, JP Morgan Chase was fined £33.3 million over the issue by the Financial Services Authority, prompting this investigation of PwC's auditing.
The AADB ruled today that PwC had failed to obtain evidence that JP Morgan had the right systems in place, but nevertheless signed off the accounts.
The regulator described the breach and the value of money at risk as "very serious".
The Accountancy and Actuarial Discipline Board (AADB) issued the fine as it ruled that PwC wrongly reported over a seven year period that JP Morgan had maintained the right systems to correctly separate clients' money from its own.
The "highly automated" systems processed up to £15 billion of assets, and by not separating the money appropriately, there was a risk of clients' losing their assets if JP Morgan had gone bust, the regulator stated.
In 2010, JP Morgan Chase was fined £33.3 million over the issue by the Financial Services Authority, prompting this investigation of PwC's auditing.
The AADB ruled today that PwC had failed to obtain evidence that JP Morgan had the right systems in place, but nevertheless signed off the accounts.
The regulator described the breach and the value of money at risk as "very serious".
Comment Re:Reverse the tables (Score 1) 209
Where I live, I can only get Suddenlink (which involves paying for cable)...
I don't know where you live, but I know that Suddenlink does offer internet without bundled cable here in West Texas. A buddy of mine just canceled his cable tv while keeping his 10 Mb internet.
Comment Re:Why? (Score 2) 56
Twitter and social networks are more likely to be used by the average person. Whereas IRC has been getting a (undeserved) bad rap for nefarious things.
Comment Re:Old Aggie joke (Score 1) 234
That is I thank you for making my morning.
Comment Re:Old Aggie joke (Score 1) 234
And as a Red Raider I thank you.
Comment Re:And that attitude is the whole problem (Score 1) 773
never mind that if he actually understood that underlying database, he'd know that a VARCHAR is not padded to that max length. If someone just entered "Alex", the same 4 bytes will be actually used in the database, regardless if the field is a defined as maximum 4, 32, 256 or 2000 characters.
That is not entirely true. While you are correct VARCHAR does not pad the string (char does), older versions of MySQL and other RDMS had/have an upper limit of 255 characters. Newer versions do allow for varchar of a larger length, however the storage size of each value increases.
Comment Re:Value (Score 1) 178
I pay $30 per month to AT&T. For that insanely high price, my wife, our two kids, and I can all send unlimited text messages, including MMS messages with attached pics. Each of us sends an average of about 1000 messages per month; that works out to 0.75 cents per message. Not 75 cents, 0.75 cents. I honestly don't get where the hate on SMS charges comes from.
FTFY, units are always helpful.
Comment Re:I like it because it's crazy (Score 1) 236
I don't think anyone here is going to argue that Dell makes a better server, workstation, or laptop of various styles than HP.
Umm, I will. At least when it comes to laptop I have had horrible experiences with Dell. Of the three laptops that my company has from Dell each has had serious problems. 2 laptops of the same model failed at roughly the same time with a bad motherboard / graphics card. The third has had to be repaired by Dell on no less than 4 occasions in the past 2 years. Again for motherboard and other card failures. About the only good thing about Dell is their on-site repair and support (which does not come cheap mind you.) On the other hand my HP laptop has had next to no problems in the same time frame, other that a crappy AC adapter that is starting to fall apart.
Comment Re:Patent risks (Score 1) 421
That said, I definitely think something like the RSA algorithm was as worthy of a patent as most anything else out there.
You do the realize that at the heart of the RSA algorithm (and most if not all cyptography algorthims for that matter) is a series of mathematical equations (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA#Operation). Therefore under US law it should not be patentable, yet for some reason because it relates to computing it is was granted a patent.
Comment Re:Don't they have (Score 5, Informative) 135
Dude RTFA (I know, I know, shame on me). The backup generators kicked in, but 25% of the machines in data center did not receive power before crashing.
