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Comment Re:These are analogous to successful GRACE pair (Score 1) 42

2) One of the fascinating things about GRACE, that has proven more exciting than would have thought possible, is that the Earth's gravity is a function of time. GRACE is able to detect when large areas of earth are saturated with water, or changes in ocean currents, from the change in gravity. The Moon probably doesn't change at all. If they do detect changes, though...that would be exciting!

I wonder what will happen if they find a strong magnetic anomaly near Tycho crater?

Comment Already been done (Score 1) 141

Trade chat in World of Warcraft during the Superbowl or World Series or World Cup. Heh. (Of course, IRL I doubt I would have *any* of most of the people that troll trade chat in WoW over to my house, at least not without a plan to dispose of their corpses).

Comment Re:If your ./ user number is 5 digits or less... (Score 1) 582

Most managers are idiots. Sorry but thats the reality.

Not necessarily, but I do agree that few of them are as good at what they do as the people they manage, at least in the tech world - only companies I've found who break that rule tend to be exceptionally good places to work (and rare). The "old" HP for example.

Of course I exaggerated the management aspects of my times as a lead, so that helped open the doors

So you lied.

Saavik: You lied.
Spock: I exaggerated.
-- "The Wrath of Khan," stardate 8130.3

What's next, murder?

Overstating the depth of my management experience (as a tech lead and systems architect on large projects) is akin to murder? Tell me, what color is the sky on your world?

Oh I forgot, many people lie to each other as a matter of getting through the day. And no one sees a problem with this?

Welcome to the Human Race, Mr. Spock.

I'm happy for you - but management? Couldn't you find something honest to do?

Unlike, say, a deathcamp guard, management can be an honest occupation if you choose to make it so. I take it as a primary function to get the best out of my staff and try to be sure they have fun and rewarding times doing so. That means keep all the company BS off of the people I manage, and to stay the hell out of their way for the most part, listen to the complaints (and act on them when possible and reasonable), and fight for them when it comes to things like working reasonable hours and flexible schedules, realistic timelines (still havent forced any upper management to choke that down yet) and sane work estimates. As a manager, I regularly take ass chewings, seldom give them. Praise in public, correction in private is the way to go. And please do recall - I manage as a STOPGAP when the coding well is dry, as it tends to be when you are an "older" coder. I much prefer engineering a system and beating on a keyboard (preferentially on a Linux box, with little more than ratpad UI, bash, vi and gcc) to sitting in endless conference calls, meetings and death by powerpoint. I am convinced that PowerPoint causes rational and cognitive degeneration, based on observation of management meetings. But managing does pay the bills and sliding into management has gotten me past layoffs, when its become necessary to go over to that side of the house. I don't enjoy it all that much, but management experience is good to have and understand when your primary job is a tech lead, lead coder, or systems architect/engineer; it lets you know what kinds of games are being played behind the scenes and you can sometimes look like a clairvoyant or (to continue with the Star Trek riffs), Mr Scott. RIght now, I am working as a "software systems engineer", which gives me some management duties (mainly budgetary for hardware for our lab, and the sys admins), but I still get to code even if it is mainly hacking together scripts and little C progs the programming staff is too busy to deal with (I'm threatening to use Scheme just to be abstruse). And that makes me happy enough, and pays the mortgage and the retirement fund. For us lower digit user number types, staying "in the tech" is becoming increasingly rare and difficult.

Comment Re:If your ./ user number is 5 digits or less... (Score 1) 582

Come on over to the dark side (management)... I've done that as a stopgap between coding projects, when necessary. Of course I exaggerated the management aspects of my times as a lead, so that helped open the doors, and one of my employers actually paid my tuition and books to go back to school at night and get an MBA. But I'd still rather be learning, designing answers to problems, and then coding them.

Comment Re:What about Guam? (Score 1) 97

It has more bandwidth running through it than Hawaii. Is that for the world's largest K-Mart?

One explanation is the US Dept of Defense. Guam is a large military logistics center

Another point is that Guam is legally US territory, so US law applies there, whcih can be handy for certain commecial ventures, as well as for military/defense/intelligence data transit

Plus Guam looks to be a handy location in terms of landing a cable there as a reshape/regent/retransmission (3R) redistribution point prior to going back into the water (look at the geography)

Comment If they actually accomplish this impact (Score 1) 419

... then they are dead. Government and other types will come down on them like a ton of bricks. Recall that only a week ago they used a SWAT team on defaulted student loan - what do you think they will do with these losers if they do disrupt important government and economic activity? They will possibly be shot dead if they do this. But that's nto the worst part: they will be giving the government all the excuses they need to take tight control of the internet, destroying net anonymity and controlling access. Damned fools. If anyone knows anyone that is in Anonymous or Lulzsec and who is planning to take part in activities, do us all a favor - beat them in the head with a shovel until they change their mind.

Comment Re:Seriously? (Score 2) 607

Same reason TechTV died - when the cable operators bought it out, they moved it to LA, it became G4, they killed much of its original programming, and they picked up crap reality shows like Cops, Campus PD, Cheaters, a pile of Japanese humiliation game shows, and endless reruns of Ninja Warrior.
News

Submission + - A sticky touch screen lets you feel the buttons (i-programmer.info)

mikejuk writes: I don't know about you but I have a problem with sticky touch screens — whenever I try to clean the jam off I activate and use a lot of apps I never intended to. However it looks as if sticky is the way of the future. A prototype screen has been shown that varies the friction as you move your finger across it. The result is that you can "feel" the buttons and notches on scroll bars. It sure beats having to build real buttons...
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft to acquire Skype for $8.5 billion (bbc.co.uk)

An anonymous reader writes: According to BBC news "Microsoft has confirmed that it has agreed to buy internet phone service Skype. The deal will see Microsoft pay $8.5bn (£5.2bn) for Skype, making it Microsoft's largest acquisition."

What will this mean for Mac OS X and linux versions of Skype? Does this confirm the rumors that Skype is evil?

Android

Submission + - Online App generates DB Code for your Android App (appspot.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Give this web application your schema and it will generate DBAdapter source code in Java for your Android app. One less bit of tedium for Android developers
Linux

Submission + - LDR (Linux Done Right) (tommed.co.uk)

An anonymous reader writes: LDR stands for Linux Done Right. It is an Arch Linux derived GNU/Linux distro which has many software components pre-configured so you can just install and get on with it!

LDR is based on the Open Source (GPL v2) distribution Arch Linux. All modifications made are also available under the same license, so I'm sure even Rich Stallman himself would agree LDR is open and free!

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