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Comment How to totally screw up my ability to code: (Score 1) 181

How to totally screw up my ability to code:

(1) Play music
(2) There is no step 2

I find that code is processed through the same part of my brain that processes music. If you play music, my code will go to crap, since I'm trying to do two things with the same set of neurons.

I totally can not understand how people can produce code while listening to music.

OK, I lied; what I can't understand is how people can produce GOOD code while listening to music.

Comment Apple has been talking about this for a long time. (Score 5, Interesting) 98

Apple has been talking about this for a long time.

You really don't want your security people to be contract workers; they have access, at least at the supervisory level, to all sorts of sensitive areas of your building, including Jony Ive's office in the design wing, where they could happily use their phones to photograph prototypes.

Google began talking about doing this about three years ago, when they switched to the same contract security firm Apple used, and the Apple/Google relationship started to become more and more adversarial on top of that (I knew the supervisory staff, and many of the individual contractors at Apple, and recognized them when they came to work for Google.

I think this is being done more to prevent industrial espionage, than anything else.

At both Apple and Google, we moved our trash outside explicitly sensitive secure areas at night, so that the janitorial staff avoided entry. For a lot of it, it was honor system (if you count being on camera but not having a lurking linebacker ready to take you out if you make a wrong move, as "honor system"), where the secure offices without physical electronic security locks has a red sticky dot placed above the room doorknob to prevent people trying to go in.

This also has dick-all to do with any kind of "gentrification" issues that the article claims, since most of the people I know who worked security lived East Bay, and many of them owned their own houses.

Comment Re:Yes. What do you lose? But talk to lawyer first (Score 1) 734

You have no idea of what you talk about. I am citizen of Colombia, Spain, Panama, and the United States. When I am in any other country of the US, I lose all support of US consular services, because I am beholden to the laws of those countries. I cannot commit a crime in Colombia and scream for US help... Please stop giving bad advice on the internet.

Comment Oh Come On, it's a Press Release (Score 4, Insightful) 88

OK, no real technical data and some absurd claims here.

First all-digital transceiver? No. There have been others. Especially if you allow them to have a DAC and an ADC and no other components in the analog domain, but even without that, there are lots of IoT-class radios with direct-to-digital detectors and digital outputs directly to the antenna. You might have one in your car remote (mine is two-way).

And they have to use patented algorithms? Everybody else can get along with well-known technology old enough that any applicable patents are long expired.

It would be nicer if there was some information about what they are actually doing. If they really have patented it, there's no reason to hold back.

Comment Not old enough, apparently. (Score 1) 164

I know you're right. It's the fairly-contemporary definition of the word "nauseous" now, due to the length of time it has been used improperly.

I'm just being an old fart.

Not old enough, apparently. If you were a pre-2007 revisionist history "old fart", you'd have two spaces after your period, like the older version of the Chicago Manual of Style demanded, before they pretended that we have always had proportional fonts.

Comment Dual passports is usually a win. (Score 2) 734

Dual passports is usually a win.

Not only are there some countries that won't like one or the other of your kids citizenships (solution: travel there on the other passport), some countries will give you a really hard time if you try to go there, but have a stamp from another country they don't like.

In addition, if you have a stamp from some countries, other countries won't let you work there. For example, it used to be that if you had an Israeli stamp in your passport, you were barred from Egyptian archeology.

Note that your kids need to do this before they are 18; after 18, they can be required to renounce U.S. citizenship to obtain alternate citizenship, and vice versa; a lot of children of Irish immigrants to the U.S. have found this out the hard way, for example, when they decided after age 18 to claim their Irish heritage, and use that to take advantage of opportunities to study in Europe, rather than going to a U.S. university.

Finally, they can always renounce later, if they become Internet billionaires, like Eduardo Saverin, who the U.S. effectively paid $700M to renounce his citizenship, although there's a 15% "exit tax", so if they go this route, they should do it *before*, rather than *after* the IPO - he'd have been another ~$300M richer if he'd done that and left the country before the actual IPO.

Comment Re:What is the point? (Score 2) 340

Sorry, you're out-of-date. Federal Appeals Court last year ruled that border guards DO need probable cause to search such things as computers and phones under most circumstances. The only exceptions are circumstances which would also be exceptions away from the border.

The current legality of border searches of electronic property isn't fully settled (see e.g. wikipedia), but the case you're linking is completely unrelated to that issue. The decision doesn't discuss border exceptions -- from the court's perspective, it's a regular arrest and search, and they follow the Supreme Court's recent ruling in Riley v. California (requiring a warrant for searches of a cell phone found during an arrest).

Comment Re:Custom ... nipples? Actual custom nipples? (Score 1) 61

TeVido, which aims to 3D print custom nipples

Hmmm ... apparently I am unversed in the realm of custom nipples, as I've never conceived of it before. Is this a thing I've been missing?

Why don't you find a breast cancer survivor who has had a mastectomy and ask her about the subject?

At the same time, you may want to ask why they would be willing to go to a company that can't even spell correctly, to get body parts, given that they've demonstrated poor quality control already.

From the front page of the TeVido web site:

"Our first product is targeted to improve nipple reconstruction and later fill lumpectomies and other fat grating needs."

I suppose that this is supposed to be "fat grafting", unless they plan on pulling a full-on "Dr. Lector", or they are 3D printing parmesan cheese.

Comment Re:I'm dying of curiousity (Score 1) 188

So binary only drivers violate the GPL?

No, but they really piss off people who disagree with Linus' interpretation of the GPL when it comes to binary only drivers.

I imagine this case actually hinges on an EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL symbol that VMWare uses, or an API underneath one of those as an API aggregator, to which the aggregator would like to force all sub-APIs to reverse-inherit the label. Which is more or less similar to const-poisoning all the way down.

My expectation is that (1) If there is not explicit user, or (2) it's possible to recompile the drivers, which is what's really in question, that if VMWare themselves don't do the compilation, it's going to be fine.

One of the reasons for bringing this action in the venue where it's being brought is that it's extremely unlikely to get a sympathetic hearing elsewhere, as people will quote Linux ad infinitum, and Helwig would almost certainly lose his case. He may lose anyway, as a matter of "standing", before they even make it to any other arguments.

Comment Re: Try and try again. (Score 2) 445

You must have lost your mind. I used Windows Mobile for years. I had to install task managers to kill apps before they killed my battery. I had to install a registry editor and fiddle with settings to get even basic functionality working. IE on WM was a sick joke. I rebooted the phones every other day just to keep working.

  iOS was better in every way. It had a real grown up browser. Shit just worked. The fluid animations were just icing on the cake.

Powerful but flaky is useless.

Comment Faith-based approach to law making (Score 5, Informative) 517

If you want a faith based approach to law making, just be forthright about it.

One of the sponsors of the Secret Science Reform Act was Rep. Paul Broun from Georgia. Here's what he's had to say on that topic:

God's word is true. I've come to understand that. All that stuff I was taught about evolution, embryology, Big Bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell. It's lies to try to keep me and all the folks who are taught that from understanding that they need a Savior. There's a lot of scientific data that I found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth. I believe that the Earth is about 9,000 years old. I believe that it was created in six days as we know them. That's what the Bible says. And what I've come to learn is that it's the manufacturer's handbook, is what I call it. It teaches us how to run our lives individually. How to run our families, how to run our churches. But it teaches us how to run all our public policy and everything in society. And that's the reason, as your congressman, I hold the Holy Bible as being the major directions to me of how I vote in Washington, D.C., and I'll continue to do that.

He does want a "faith based approach to law making", but at least he's been "forthright about it".

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