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Comment Plentiful cheap keyboards (Score 1) 2

by rwa2 (#49272513) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Good Keyboard?

So far my favorite keyboard has been the Dell SK-8135 . Quiet keys, modern minimalist design, but it has fairly ergonomic multimedia keys and a USB hub which I find convenient for minimizing clutter.

My aunt bought me a nice Logitech G510 keyboard, but... I don't really care for it all that much. Uh... you can change the backlight color, and there's a little mono LCD panel that you can download apps to display extra things on. There are a bunch of programmable macro buttons on the side, but I don't find them convenient to use in any of my games compared to keeping my fingers near the WASD home row with the default keyboard layouts, and maybe using an autohotkey macro where necessary. It also has a built-in USB audio headset/mic jacks, which I guess is nice for eliminating system noise from your mic if you don't already have something better. The G510 looks damn impressive, but if I really needed its features, I'd have optioned for the G13 and a normal keyboard.

Comment Re:Look for work you are going to be surplussed so (Score 1) 15

by rwa2 (#49271173) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Do ITIL hates skilled people?

Eh, some fairly big companies use ITIL to run their service desks too, and it's sorta a necessity once you go past a certain scale. Could just be that some high-level manager finally got around to reading "The Phoenix Project".

But all the same, make sure you don't have some kind of severance package coming before you willingly jump ship.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Do ITIL hates skilled people? 15

Submitted by ulzeraj
ulzeraj writes: First of all I would like to apologize about the language. I’m not a native english speaker.

I've been working with Linux and in a lower extent Windows setups for 10 years now. During most time of my career I've been involved with IT consulting firms. Last year I've joined a retail store company that was in dire need of someone with good debugging skills. Their team is awfully unskilled and during the course of the year I was able to improve a lot of their network and server systems including automation, backups and restore strategies, complicated image deployment strategies and so on. I've also worked in improving the performance of their database and ERP systems and solved every fucking problem they’ve thrown at my direction including some they didn’t really knew they existed. The company office was a great bazaar and overall fun to work and comfortable to boot because their needs were always simple for someone with my skills so in the end I would always blow their minds with the results. I should note that I never have problem with knowledge sharing and documentation.

But recently the managers were replaced and the new guys don't seem to like me. They are pushing for ITIL doctrine on the IT department (and the whole company afterwards). For starters they keep pushing me administrative tasks that I'm not really fond of like keeping in touch with our suppliers and managing project dependencies so I’ve been spending more time attending meetings and mailing people than typing on a terminal. I've heard somewhere that the cult of ITIL somewhat hates the "hero culture" and people like me are not really healthy for their dogmas and I’m considered a “risk". I feel that even as I have so much that I can do for the company I'll probably be cockblocked by their new "project management" department and whatnot.

As this is happening it seems that people on the IT consulting firms really like my job and there are plenty of oportunities around. I know many slashdoters like me that are more experienced have encountered similar situations. Do ITIL really creative and skilled people? Is my kind doomed to oblivion and I’ll face stuff like this anywhere I go?

Comment Re:GCHQ Does Something Retarded (Score 1) 68

by rwa2 (#49269477) Attached to: GCHQ Builds a Raspberry Pi Super Computer Cluster

Heh, back in the first dotcom boom I was working for some company that was making supercomputing clusters that were recursively scaleable. Back then you could get all the dumb, fast 8-port switches you wanted for cheap, but if you tried scaling it up with a big flat Cisco backplane for more than a few dozen nodes, you'd easily start paying more for switches than for computers. Plus if any of that infrastructure broke, you'd be out of a huge part of your cluster.

Submission + - $56,000 Speeding Ticket Issued Under Finland's System of Fines Based on Income

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Joe Pinsker writes at The Atlantic that Finish businessman Reima Kuisla was recently caught going 65 miles per hour in a 50 zone in his home country and ended up paying a fine of $56,000. The fine was so extreme because in Finland, some traffic fines, as well as fines for shoplifting and violating securities-exchange laws, are assessed based on earnings—and Kuisla's declared income was €6.5 million per year. Several years ago another executive was fined the equivalent of $103,000 for going 45 in a 30 zone on his motorcycle. Finland’s system for calculating fines is relatively simple: It starts with an estimate of the amount of spending money a Finn has for one day, and then divides that by two—the resulting number is considered a reasonable amount of spending money to deprive the offender of. Then, based on the severity of the crime, the system has rules for how many days the offender must go without that money. Going about 15 mph over the speed limit gets you a multiplier of 12 days, and going 25 mph over carries a 22-day multiplier. Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Austria, France, and Switzerland also have some sliding-scale fines, or “day-fines,” in place, but in America, flat-rate fines are the norm. Since the late 80s, when day-fines were first seriously tested in the U.S., they have remained unusual and even exotic.

Should such a system be used in the United States? After all, wealthier people have been shown to drive more recklessly than those who make less money. For example Steve Jobs was known to park in handicapped spots and drive around without license plates. But more importantly, day-fines could introduce some fairness to a legal system that many have convincingly shown to be biased against the poor. Last week, the Department of Justice released a comprehensive report on how fines have been doled out in Ferguson, Missouri. "Ferguson’s law enforcement practices are shaped by the City’s focus on revenue rather than by public safety needs," it concluded. The first day-fine ever in the U.S. was given in 1988, and about 70 percent of Staten Island’s fines in the following year were day-fines. A similar program was started in Milwaukee, and a few other cities implemented the day-fine idea and according to Judith Greene, who founded Justice Strategies, a nonprofit research organization, all of these initiatives were effective in making the justice system fairer for poor people. “When considering a proportion of their income,people are at least constantly risk-averse. This means that the worst that would happen is that the deterrent effect of fines would be the same across wealth or income levels,” says Casey Mulligan. "We should start small—say, only speeding tickets—and see what happens."

Submission + - The Church of TED

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Megan Hustad writes in the NYT that while it’s not exactly fair to say that the TED conference series and web video function like an organized church, understanding the parallel structures is useful for conversations about faith, how susceptible we humans remain to the cadences of missionary zeal, and how the TED style with its promise of progress, is as manipulative as the orthodoxies it is intended to upset. According to Hustad, a great TED talk is reminiscent of a tent revival sermon, a gathering of the curious and the hungry. "A persistent human problem is introduced, one that, as the speaker gently explains, has deeper roots and wider implications than most listeners are prepared to admit," says Hustad. "Once everyone has been confronted with this evidence of entropy, contemplated life’s fragility and the elusiveness of inner peace, a decision is called for: Will you remain complacent, or change?" TED talks routinely present problems of huge scale and scope — we imprison too many people; the rain forest is dying; look at all this garbage; we’re unhappy; we have Big Data and aren’t sure what to do with it — then wrap up tidily and tinily. Do this. Stop doing that. Buy an app that will help you do this other thing. "I never imagined that the Baptists I knew in my youth would come to seem mellow, almost slackers by comparison," concludes Hustad. "Of course they promoted Jesus as a once-and-done, plug-and-play solver of problems — another questionable approach."

Submission + - Russia abandons super-rocket designed to compete with SLS

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Russia has decided to abandon an expensive attempt to build an SLS-like super-rocket and will instead focus on incremental development of its smaller but less costly Angara rocket.

Facing significant budgetary pressures, the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, has indefinitely postponed its ambitious effort to develop a super-heavy rocket to rival NASA's next-generation Space Launch System, SLS. Instead, Russia will focus on radical upgrades of its brand-new but smaller Angara-5 rocket which had its inaugural flight in Dec. 2014, the agency's Scientific and Technical Council, NTS, decided on Thursday, Mar. 12.

For Russia's space industry, it appears that these budgetary pressures have been a blessing in disguise. Rather than waste billions on an inefficient rocket for which there is no commercial demand — as NASA is doing with SLS (under orders from a wasteful Congress) — they will instead work on further upgrades of Angara, much like SpaceX has done with its Falcon family of rockets. This will cost far less, is very efficient, and provides them a better chance to compete for commercial launches that can help pay for it all. And best of all, it offers them the least costly path to future interplanetary missions, which means they might actually be able to make those missions happen. To quote the article again:

By switching upper stages of the existing Angara from kerosene to the more potent hydrogen fuel, engineers might be able to boost the rocket's payload from current 25 tons to 35 tons for missions to the low Earth orbit. According to Roscosmos, Angara-A5V could be used for piloted missions to the vicinity of the Moon and to its surface.

In a sense, the race is now on between Angara-A5V and Falcon Heavy.

Comment Re:Doubtful (Score 4, Interesting) 328

by rwa2 (#49245985) Attached to: New Crop of LED Filament Bulbs Look Almost Exactly Like Incandescents

Eh, we got a bunch of LED lightbulbs on discount through our power company.

Compared to compact fluorescents, they're pretty nice... less fiddly without the ballast issues and dimmable. The light appears warmer and flicker-free.

Compared to incandescents, they use a lot less power, and feel a lot less fragile. Haven't had one burn out on me yet.

I suppose if I wanted to use it for heat, I'd prefer an incandescent or halogen bulb.

Submission + - Tony Stark Delivers Real 3D-Printed Bionic Arm To 7-Year Old Iron Man Fan (hothardware.com) 1

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: Here's your feel-good story for Thursday afternoon. Albert Manero, who has a degree in Aerospace engineering from the University of Central Florida and is currently pursuing a doctorate in Mechanical Engineering, has made it a point to serve others. He helped found Limbitless Solutions, a volunteer foundation that uses 3D printer technology to build bionic arms for children that have either lost a limb, or were born with partially developed limbs. Seven-year-old Alex fits into the latter category and Manero, with the help of the Microsoft OneNote Collective Project, has been hard at work to develop a new 3D-printed bionic arm for him. And once the project was finished, Microsoft and Manero were able to find the most "qualified" person on the planet to deliver the arm to Alex: Tony Stark AKA Iron Man Robert Downey Jr. Awesomeness ensues, of course.

Comment Think of the children (Score 2) 192

by rwa2 (#49237301) Attached to: Steam On Linux Now Has Over a Thousand Games Available

Ironically, I finally gave up running Linux on my main home machine about a decade ago so I could play Left4Dead, which was one of the first "big" Valve titles ported to Linux. Now I'm sorta addicted to World of Tanks, which works under Linux with wine/PlaysOnLinux but isn't a very good experience.

I have 2 kids, though, and I'm not going to buy them each a Windows gaming PC, so I set them up with a multiseat Linux box for their minecraft:
http://trumblings.blogspot.com...

Steam works pretty well, so my son has started playing other stuff... TF2, War Thunder, and I think I'll gift him my extra copy of Portal 2 and Goat Simulator.

So yeah, maybe still have one Windows PC as the gaming box for the "Windows exclusive" titles, but Steam on Linux will certainly open a broader market for them for secondary / multiplayer LAN setups.

Comment Re: good glue languages (Score 2) 177

by rwa2 (#49236649) Attached to: Preferred programming paradigm?

Huh, cool post. A lot of software engineering seems to boil down to integrating other peoples' existing libraries and black box modules that does stuff well, so I'd argue that a good high-level "glue" language is critical.

I'd done stuff before using perl to extract data from a running game in C and then ferry it off to some other finite element analysis program to do stuff with it. Nowadays I like doing things using python, since it really cuts down on human development and debugging time, but is still very practical to have the machine automagically speed it up with psyco / pypy bytecode optimization, and also hook into other libraries like CUDA or rewrite performance-critical modules in C++ or something when you really need it.

Would like to start playing with llvm.org also, which appears to be pretty good at turning many high level languages into compiled code.

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