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Comment Invalid Benchmark - Who Cares (Score 3, Insightful) 132

Benchmarking compilers on how long it takes to compile would be like benchmarking cars based on how long it takes to fill the gas tank.
There are so many things that can affect compile time more than the compiler - and the end customer really doesn't care anyway. Frankly, if you want a 3-5x speedup, just put the whole thing on an SSD and let it fly.

Comment Re:Yet Another CGI Superhero Movie (Score 0) 233

Not quite... like many scarce resources - Hollywood only has so many decent writers. This pool is capable of writing a few good movies every year. By sending out more movies than that - the pool is thinned so you can't get a solid writing team that you need (Think Scotty Pippin having to lead a team instead of being the best #2 man in Basketball). This also causes rates for these people to go up to the point that movies can't be profitable - so they have to raise the price of admission.

Comment Re:About bloody time! (Score 1) 142

Don't know why ANYONE would vote for TweedleDee or TweedleDum. I mean really - different sides of the same coin. Frankly - if you are in office now - YOU are the problem and should be voted out. I have voted against every incumbent for the last 10 years and intend to continue to do the same thing until the radicals on BOTH sides realize there is a huge benefit for working together in the middle and get rid of these one party votes. Frankly - the fact that the republicans had to get enough votes in their own party to pass anything earlier this month because nancy pelosi wouldn't let any democrats vote was a waste. Means the republicans have to go more conservative instead of more liberal to attract democrat votes that they won't get.
The senate is a wreck - and frankly, I won't negotiate doesn't cut it as a president. If he can't deliver democrat votes in the house - he isn't worth it.

Comment Re:why not just raise the gas tax instead? (Score 1) 658

Frankly, the number of full electric cars is almost non-existent (and frankly - what driver of an electric car would volunteer for this program?). That is a non-starter, don't even care about this corner case. Want to generate more tax revenues from full electric cars, simply stop subsidizing vehicles for the 1% and you have generated more money for the government than any tax increase ever could.
Biotech

Reprogrammed Bacterium Speaks New Language of Life 141

wabrandsma writes "New Scientist reports that 'A bacterium has had its genome recoded so that the standard language of life no longer applies. Instead, one of its words has been freed up to impart a different meaning, allowing the addition of genetic elements that don't exist in nature. ... The four letters of the genetic code are usually read by a cell's protein-production machinery, the ribosome, in sets of three letters called codons. Each codon "word" provides instructions about which amino acid to add next to a growing peptide chain. Although there are 64 ways of combining four letters, only 61 codons are used to encode the 20 amino acids found in nature. ... The three combinations left over, UAG, UAA and UGA, act like a full stop or period – telling the ribosome to terminate the process at that point. ... A team of synthetic biologists led by Farren Isaacs at Yale University have now fundamentally rewritten these rules (abstract). They took Escherichia coli cells and replaced all of their UAG stop codons with UAAs. They also deleted the instructions for making the release factor that usually binds to UAG, rendering UAG meaningless. Next they set about assigning UAG a new meaning, by designing molecules called tRNAs and accompanying enzymes that would attach an unnatural amino acid – fed to the cell – whenever they spotted this codon."

Comment Re:Turn off your devices (Score 2) 477

Very similarly - I worked for a company that had a very strong commitment to being in the office by 8AM. During a particularly bad crunch time, engineering was working until 2-3AM, then getting critical e-mails sent to them (and their managers) about showing up "late" at 8:15 in the morning. Engineering solved the problem by watching the clock and leaving at 5. Management lost out on the additional 10 hours of work a day, and quickly removed the late list.

There is no excuse for management not tracking what their employees are doing and rewarding them for the work they are doing rather than the chair they sit in or hours they spend on Slashdot.

Comment You are kidding right? (Score 5, Informative) 274

You want "Someone Else" to manage your data that is classified under ITAR? Uhmmm... Why don't you build your backup solution - put links in to remote data centers and handle the problem correctly and professionally. The last thing we need is some external entity getting a hold of this stuff because you don't want to have the budget to do things right instead of at a consumer level.
Gah - I can't believe this is even a question

Comment Re:Return on investment (Score 1) 331

Yes,
Seems like a pretty big ROI to me. Spend 500,000 dollars on a project to fund the full value of the companies revenues. Lack of revenue/profits is what sinks so many projects. Lets do a thought experiment. Lets all go refactor our code for 3 years to make it perfect. Chance of being done - almost 0, value to the company - still there at almost 0.

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