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Comment Re:I'm curious to see how many retailers actually (Score 1) 732

by hendridm (#42702101) Attached to: Credit Card Swipe Fees Begin Sunday In USA

You are already being penalized for credit card purchases. It's an expense that is currently spread over all customers

This is how it should be. We want to encourage getting rid of money.

This would just allow those people who want to pay cash to not pay the credit card cost.

That's fine. I'll be shopping elsewhere, but apparently you have enough cash-carrying customers so you won't miss me anyway.

I understand that people who love carrying around cash don't like to pay credit card fees, just like we credit card users don't like to be additionally penalized for not carrying around assloads of cash.
Businesses

Google Fiber Draws Startups To Kansas City 123

Posted by samzenpus from the doing-business dept.
Google's super fast internet has turned Kansas City into an unlikely incubator for startups and tech entrepreneurs. One small neighborhood where a group is working on their ideas has been dubbed, the "Silicon Prairie." From the article: "The advantage here for startups is simple: A fast Internet pipe makes it easier to handle large files and eliminates buffering problems that plague online video, live conferencing or other network-intensive tasks. Though the Kansas City location presents challenges for startups, including the ability to raise money outside the traditional Silicon Valley venture capital scene, entrepreneurs like Synthia Payne believe it's the place to be right now for up-and-coming tech companies. Payne is one of those entrepreneurs hoping to launch her startup dream — an Internet subscription service for musicians who want to collaborate online — on the cheap. She shares the State Line Road house, known as the 'Home for Hackers,' with other startups under a deal that allows them to live rent-free while they develop their business plans."

Comment Re:Putting untested undocumented work into product (Score 1) 457

by hendridm (#42562213) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: What Practices Impede Developers' Productivity?

cowboy devs who think that "practices" interfere with their "creativity," and the "users" (aka THE PEOPLE YOUR JOB EXISTS TO SERVE) are somehow beneath notice.

Lol, such bullshit. I am the most customer-focused individual on my team, and I am constantly getting yelled at for not ping-ponging tickets back at the users for pedantic reasons.

The goal isn't to actually do any work or help people. The goal is to make sure you close the tasks in your queue before the end of the sprint so that the productivity reports are stellar. This makes the boss look good. It's also easier to justify his budget if you're constantly putting out fires rather than actually installing some fire prevention.

HOW MANY TIMES have I been forced to close a ticket even though it isn't done, and then have to work on it later because the shit is still broken. Obviously, this system requires a bit of planning, so you have to way overestimate projects to allow time for fixing shit that was prematurely closed but not actually fixed.

Madness!
Programming

Ask Slashdot: What Practices Impede Developers' Productivity? 457

Posted by Soulskill from the mitten-mondays dept.
nossim writes "When it comes to developers' productivity, numerous controversial studies stress the differences between individuals. As a freelance web developer, I've worked for a lot of companies, and I noticed how some companies foster good practices which improve individual productivity and some others are a nightmare in that regard. In your experience, what are the worst practices or problems that impede developers' productivity at an individual or organizational level?"
Data Storage

Ask Slashdot: Keeping Your Media Library Safe From Kids? 307

Posted by timothy from the sound-of-eyes-getting-really-big dept.
Serenissima writes "I've spent many hours building my Media Library in XBMC and scraping all the DVD Covers and Fanart. And I love it, I can pull up movies on any computer or device in the house. I played a movie for my son the other day so I could get some cleaning done without him being underfoot. I noticed shortly after that the sound coming from the other room was from a different movie than I played for him. I snuck up and watched for a few minutes and saw him use a trackpad to navigate to the stop and play buttons of different movies in his folder. I know it's only a matter of time before he realizes he can see all of the movies. I don't want him to have nightmares because he saw the T-1000 stab someone in the face. The quickest solution I can think is a screen saver with a password. It's mildly inconvenient to me, but would stop him from accessing anything. However, I remember how much more I knew about computers than my parents when I was a kid, and I have a feeling he's going to surprise me one day. There's a lot of ways out there to stop it, the way we do it now is to not let him watch anything unless we're there (but there are only so many times I can watch the same kid's movie). How do YOU guys find yourself dealing with the convenience of running your own server while keeping your media safe from prying eyes?"
Hardware

Slashdot Asks: What would you like to see at CES? 102

Posted by timothy from the car-stocked-with-food-and-blankets dept.
This year's Consumer Electronics Show has nearly arrived. Later today, I'll be hurtling (or perhaps just slogging) across the West Texas desert, bound for Vegas. CES is far too big an event to see very much of, no matter what: the endless aisles (highways!) of cheap laptop bags and e-cigarettes alone take up an incredible amount of floor space, but the good stuff takes up at least as much. The categories represented aren't necessarily new, but the trends vary each time: remote-controlled helicopters, from Parrot and others, have been been getting more capable for a few years running, along with 3D televisions, action cameras, ever-bigger displays, toys for kids, toys for adults, and the newest/slimmest/priciest/cheapest laptops and handhelds. Last year I had a chance to get close-up video views at Ubuntu TV and the successfully crowdfunded TouchFire keyboard, as well as interviews with John Ryan of Pixel Qi and Raspberry Pi instigator Eben Upton. I'll be on the lookout for some of my usual obsessions (open source in consumer products, bright LED-based projectors, interesting input devices), but what would you like to see up-close from this year's crop of exhibitors (sorry, it's a long list), and why?
Education

Why Girls Do Better At School 690

Posted by Soulskill from the sugar-and-spice-are-actually-performance-enhancing-drugs dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A new study explains why girls do better at school, even when their scores on standardized tests remain low. Researchers from University of Georgia and Columbia University say the variation in school grades between boys and girls may be because girls have a better attitude toward learning than boys. One of the study's lead authors, Christopher Cornwell, said, 'The skill that matters the most in regards to how teachers graded their students is what we refer to as "approaches toward learning." You can think of "approaches to learning" as a rough measure of what a child's attitude toward school is: It includes six items that rate the child's attentiveness, task persistence, eagerness to learn, learning independence, flexibility and organization. I think that anybody who's a parent of boys and girls can tell you that girls are more of all of that.' Cornwell went on about what effect this has had now that education has become more pervasive: 'We seem to have gotten to a point in the popular consciousness where people are recognizing the story in these data: Men are falling behind relative to women. Economists have looked at this from a number of different angles, but it's in educational assessments that you make your mark for the labor market. Men's rate of college going has slowed in recent years whereas women's has not, but if you roll the story back far enough, to the 60s and 70s, women were going to college in much fewer numbers. It's at a point now where you've got women earning upward of 60 percent of the bachelors' degrees awarded every year.'"
Education

Adafruit To Teach Electronics Through Puppets In New Kids Show 68

Posted by timothy from the needs-tmbg-as-musical-guests dept.
coop0030 writes "Wired has an article up about how Adafruit, the kit-based electronics retailer and promoter of hobbyist engineering, is aiming to teach electronics to a younger demographic. So young that they're enlisting the help of puppets. Their new online show, titled Circuit Playground, will teach the essentials of electronics and circuitry to children through kid-friendly dolls with names like Cappy the Capacitor and Hans the 555 Timer Chip. Limor 'Ladyada' Fried, Adafruit's founder and chief engineer (and 2012 Entrepreneur of the Year), will host the episodes, with her team assisting with onscreen and puppeteering duties. Episodes will premiere this March, and Fried holds hope for them to help inspire the next generation of designers and builders."

Comment Re:Is it just me? (Score 1) 346

by hendridm (#42401839) Attached to: Google Docs Vs. Microsoft Word: an Even Matchup?

The nail int he coffin for me on the Google side was the Google Drive sync client on OS X, it crashed constantly, failed to sync files all the time and used a crap ton of CPU time draining the battery of my MacBook Air

I used to have a lot of issue with Google Drive on my Mac when it first came out (the sync issues were certainly frustrating), but it's been running very smoothly for quite awhile now. I can't comment on the CPU/power consumption, though.
Android

KDE's Plasma Active Ported To Nexus 7 55

Posted by timothy from the looking-handy dept.
sfcrazy writes "KDE developers have succeeded in running the touch-optimized Plasma Active Linux Distribution on Nexus 7. Earlier Ubuntu developers managed to create a installer for Nexus 7, but those builds also showed that Unity, in its current form, is not ready for touch-based devices. KDE has an edge here as they have optimized versions for netbooks, desktops and touch-based devices so a user doesn't have to make any compromises as one has to do with other DEs or shells which are focusing more in touch-based devices only." Here are detailed instructions on how to install it.

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I tell them to turn to the study of mathematics, for it is only there that they might escape the lusts of the flesh. -- Thomas Mann, "The Magic Mountain"

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