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Comment Re:CMMI is a scam (Score 1) 228

by sbjornda (#45824797) Attached to: US Requirement For Software Dev Certification Raises Questions

I would fucking kill for software developers to be licensed like an engineering displine

Out of all your rant, I agree with this. Engineering got licensing because of human deaths attributable to lack of enforceable standards. I think the same will have to happen in I.T. - some huge disaster will happen that kills thousands of people, and then the population will arm itself with torches and pitchforks and require us to police ourselves adequately and put our very livelihoods on the line each time we claim something is ready to promote to production.

--
.nosig

Submission + - You Are What Your Dad Ate

Submitted by Freshly Exhumed
Freshly Exhumed writes: What a father eats before his child is conceived may influence the chance a baby will be born with a birth defect, a new study suggests. Much of the focus on how diet relates to birth has been done on moms. A father's diet before conception plays a crucial role in the health of his offspring, researchers in Canada suggest. Sarah Kimmins, a researcher at McGill University in Montreal, said the study focused on vitamin B9, also known as folate, which is found in green leafy vegetables, cereal, fruit and meat. The researchers found that the mouse offspring of folate-deficient fathers had a 30 percent increased risk of birth defects, compared to those offspring who had received a sufficient amount of folate.

Comment Re:No, it's both (Score 4, Interesting) 275

by sbjornda (#45586241) Attached to: How Much Is Oracle To Blame For Healthcare IT Woes?

The Oracle Identity Manager appeared to be rolled out with default settings

Rumour within my organisation is that Oracle themselves have admitted to our architects that they don't know how their own Identity Management suite really works. They advised us to hire a systems integrator that had worked with all the pieces prior to Oracle's acquiring them.

Submission + - SF Commuters Stared at Phones, Oblivious to Murderer 3

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: A security camera shows a man raised a .45-caliber pistol several times and pointed it across the aisle on a crowded San Francisco Muni train, but not one of the dozens of passengers looked up from their phones and tablets until the man fired a bullet into the back of a SF State student getting off the train. "These weren't concealed movements," said District Attorney George Gascón, "the gun is very clear. These people are in very close proximity with him, and nobody sees this. They're just so engrossed, texting and reading and whatnot. They're completely oblivious of their surroundings."

Submission + - Dice Ruins Slashdot (slashdot.org) 12

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In an attempt to modernize Slashdot, Dice has removed everything that made Slashdot unique and worthwhile and has turned it into a generic blog site. User feedback has been unanimously negative, but this is to no avail, and users will have to head elsewhere for insightful and entertaining commentary on tech news.

Submission + - Microsoft Responds To Pressure Over Canceled TechNet Subscriptions (zdnet.com)

Submitted by alancronin
alancronin writes: Microsoft's decision earlier this year to shut down its TechNet subscription service was sudden and unpopular among some of its most loyal customers. An online petition to "Continue TechNet or create an affordable alternative to MSDN" now has nearly 11,000 signatures. Today Microsoft addressed some of those concerns. No, the governor hasn't shown up with a last-minute reprieve for the program, which stopped accepting new orders on August 31. But Microsoft has made a few changes that address some of the complaints from those soon-to-be-ex-TechNet subscribers.

Submission + - Amazon bundles ebooks with print copies for the first time (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by nk497
nk497 writes: Amazon is bundling ebooks with print copies for the first time, via its Kindle MatchBook programme, admitting that "bundling print and digital has been one of the most requested features from customers".

The digital copies won't all be free — as with AutoRip, which offers free MP3s for selected CDs and records — but Amazon promises to charge no more than $3 per digital copy. The programme will apply to books bought as far back as Amazon's 1995 launch. So far, only 10,000 books are listed as being part of Kindle MatchBook, but Amazon hopes to add more, telling publishers it "adds a new revenue stream".

Submission + - Twinkind Takes the Ultimate 'Selfie', a 3-D Model of Yourself (wsj.com)

Submitted by pbahra
pbahra writes: It is, perhaps, the ultimate “selfie”—a self-portrait snapped with a digital camera. But why be content with taking a picture of yourself, what about a three-dimensional miniature model of yourself reproduced in unnerving accuracy? A German startup is offering just that.

Customers of Twinkind can get a 3-D figurine ranging in size from around 15cm (6) to 35cm and costing between €225 ($297) and €1,290.

The process starts with capturing your likeness in the company’s offices in Hamburg. According to Mr. Schaedel, over 100 images taken from all angles are shot in a fraction of a second using technology designed by Twinkind.

Submission + - The STEM Crisis Is a Myth 2

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Forget the dire predictions of a looming shortfall of scientists, technologists, engineers, and mathematicians, advises IEEE Spectrum contributing editor Robert Charette — the STEM crisis is a myth. In investigating the simultaneous claims of both a shortage and a surplus of STEM workers, Charette was surprised by "the apparent mismatch between earning a STEM degree and having a STEM job. Of the 7.6 million STEM workers counted by the Commerce Department, only 3.3 million possess STEM degrees. Viewed another way, about 15 million U.S. residents hold at least a bachelor’s degree in a STEM discipline, but three-fourths of them—11.4 million—work outside of STEM." So, why would universities, government, and tech companies like Facebook, IBM, and Microsoft cry STEM-worker-shortage-wolf? "Clearly, powerful forces must be at work to perpetuate the cycle," Charette writes. "One is obvious: the bottom line. Companies would rather not pay STEM professionals high salaries with lavish benefits, offer them training on the job, or guarantee them decades of stable employment. So having an oversupply of workers, whether domestically educated or imported, is to their benefit...Governments also push the STEM myth because an abundance of scientists and engineers is widely viewed as an important engine for innovation and also for national defense. And the perception of a STEM crisis benefits higher education, says Ron Hira, because as 'taxpayers subsidize more STEM education, that works in the interest of the universities' by allowing them to expand their enrollments. An oversupply of STEM workers may also have a beneficial effect on the economy, says Georgetown's Nicole Smith, one of the coauthors of the 2011 STEM study. If STEM graduates can’t find traditional STEM jobs, she says, 'they will end up in other sectors of the economy and be productive.'"

Submission + - The iPad Can't Hold a TI-83 Plus' Jockstrap 1

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Writing in The Atlantic, Phil Nichols makes a convincing case for why educational technologies should be more like graphing calculators and less like iPads. Just messing around with TI-BASIC on a TI-83 Plus, Nichols recalls, 'helped me cultivate many of the overt and discrete habits of mind necessary for autonomous, self-directed learning.' So, with all those fancy iPads at their schools, today's kids must really be programming up a storm, right? Wrong. Nichols, who's currently pursuing a PhD in education, laments, "The iPad is among the recent panaceas being peddled to schools, but like those that came before, its ostensibly subversive shell houses a fairly conventional approach to learning. Where Texas Instruments graphing calculators include a programming framework accessible even to amateurs, writing code for an iPad is restricted to those who purchase an Apple developer account, create programs that align with Apple standards, and submit their finished products for Apple's approval prior to distribution."

Submission + - What Snowden and Manning Don't Understand About Secrecy 4

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Investigative journalist Mark Bowden writes in the Atlantic that what is troubling about Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden is not that they broke the oaths they swore when they took their classified government jobs, but the indiscriminate nature of their leaks proceeding from a Julian Assange-influenced, comic-book vision of the world where all governments are a part of an evil plot against humanity. Bowden, the author of "Black Hawk Down" and "The Finish: The Killing of Osama Bin Laden", says there are many legitimate reasons for governments to keep secrets among them the need to preserve the element of surprise in military operations or criminal investigations, to permit leaders and diplomats to bargain candidly, and to protect the identities of those we ask to perform dangerous and difficult missions and the most famous leakers in American history were motivated not by a general opposition to secrecy but by a desire to expose specific wrongdoing. "Mark Felt, the “Deep Throat” who helped steer Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s Watergate reporting, understood that the Nixon Administration was energetically abusing the powers of the presidency. Daniel Ellsberg copied and leaked the Pentagon Papers because they showed that the White House and Pentagon had never really believed the lies they were telling about the Vietnam War." There have been a few things in the Manning and Snowden leaks that might have warranted taking a principled stand says Bowden, but the great bulk of what they delivered shows our nation’s military, intelligence agencies, and foreign service working hard at their jobs — doing the things we the people, through our elected representatives, have ordered them to do. "Both Manning and Snowden strike me not as heroes, but as naifs. Neither appears to have understood what they were getting themselves into, and, more importantly, what they were doing."

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Understanding is always the understanding of a smaller problem in relation to a bigger problem. -- P.D. Ouspensky

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