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Comment Re:Misunderstanding headlines (Score 1) 4

No problem. It works really well, all though re-clocking isn't working yet across all devices. Nvidia has actually been helping the project in minor ways, documenting APIs here and there. It's quite the achievement really.

Comment Re:Blame Canada! (Score 1) 105

As a Canadian, I *want* to blame the USA for blazing the trail to idiotic ant-citizen laws and showing the old men who run our country how much they can screw with a lazy population with no fear of reprisals.

But it's our own fault for allowing this to happen.

So angry. The battle is engineering in the public interest versus government. We will have no victories in the halls of power, that much is clear.

Comment Re:In some businesses (Score 1) 2

In some businesses when there aren't enough job applicants, they offer more money.

This. The major companies have an interest in keeping tech wages down and they act in that interest every day.

All these educational initiatives like code.org? Those are to increase the supply of tech workers, thus lowering the value of each worker. In the meantime, they pretend they can't find applicants and bring over immigrants from the second and third world who'll work cheaply and lower wage expectations for everyone else.

Devalue a skillset while exploiting those who have it - that's the corporate way.

This is the battle of the management (generalist) class against the specialist class (us). It's a subduction game. They're pretty transparent in their methods, and they are consistently winning.

Maybe we need to go medieval, form a technologist guild, and take control of our own job market. Oh wait, that sounds like a union. Naah, tech workers hate unions - we're all precocious superintelligent individualist experts who don't need the support of our peers, right? And dues, man, we don't want to pay dues, that's for dumb factory workers, right? Riiight.

Carry on, then, let's all keep bending over together.

Submission + - Both NY and LA Times write that Silicon Valley can't find enough talent. 2

An anonymous reader writes: The New York Times has featured Zenefits in an article about the need for more H1-B visas, because they can't find enough qualified U.S. workers to fill their active positions, even after President Obama's recent Executive Actions. The Los Angeles Times has done similarly. Why are so many jobs, primarily in Silicon Valley it seems, going unfilled in 2014?
Star Wars Prequels

Sketches Released of New Star Wars Museum 65

An anonymous reader writes Chicago has some great museums, but none have architecture that excite me as much as the renderings (read "storyboards, not blueprints," but they're also called "plans," which I hope means they're pretty accurate) of George Lucas's Star Wars museum. Technically, it's the "George Lucas Museum of Narrative Art," but we know what he means, and these pictures only make the point clearer. Says the Associated Press story, "The Beijing-based principal designer, Ma Yansong of MAD Architects, released the first sketches Tuesday. The seven-story museum will be located between Soldier Field and McCormick Place on Lake Michigan. It's expected to cost about $400 million. Ma has said it's the most important project of his career to date."

Comment Re:None, seriously, none. (Score 1) 471

I get what you're saying. I just think if we ever end up with a wrist-worn device that needs a display bigger than itself, we're going to have some sort of projection trick going on along with gesture recognition rather than a physical expandable screen.

You know, tilt your watch toward you and "see" a larger "screen" hovering over it. Interact with controls by "tapping" them, tracked by depth cameras in the watch. focused puffs of air for tactile feedback maybe.

Seems out there, but given the hurdles materials science needs to get over to give us durable foldable flexible displays that will survive the beating they will take on our wrists, I bet we're looking at about the same timeline. Say, 30 years or so, assuming no nuclear war or worldwide economic collapse.

Comment Re:None, seriously, none. (Score 1) 471

How about a flexible screen that is 5" that folds up to a watch form factor. Then when you want it, it unfolds into something useful.

Nah, that would be silly. Creases in my display? No thanks. Flexible devices sound cool until you actually consider how they would work and how they might break.

Needless engineering complexity for no real purpose, sort of like Samsung's stupid flexible TV.

Comment Re: Amazing quality (Score 2) 146

Um. It's funny. I watched the trailer and all I could think was "wow, Blizzard scores are always so one-dimensional. Disappointing."

They are really good at assigning themes to races or characters. But musically, they just seem hamfisted. There's no real complexity or subtlety. Just HERE IS THE THEME. NOW HERE IS ANOTHER THEME.

Technically well executed; emotionally flat as standalone pieces. Blizzard knows that players will simply attach emotions that they are already feeling in game to the themes they hear as they play though, so it works for them.

No need to be evocative or really creative. Music in WoW is just another hook.

Comment Breaking things is how we learn (Score 3, Insightful) 116

Doing hard or unfamiliar tasks is one way we improve and grow. Mistakes improve our understanding of a domain.

Flagging code for extra review based on "struggle detection" *might* be useful. Sadly, we all know that we'd end up with clueless management punishing or even firing good people because they were stretching to meet a goal.

Comment I've been in your position (Score 5, Insightful) 246

You can never ignore office politics. You don't have to play the game actively, but you do need to be aware of what's going on around you, who is in what camp, what the major conflicts are. You have to cross battle lines regularly to do your job; you can't afford to be seen as a member of the 'enemy camp' by *anyone*.

As an IT guy you need people to trust you, which means you need to be ethical. If you see something you shouldn't know, don't go chattering about it.That kind of thing does get around, and you'll lose trust instantly.

Nothing's stopping you from making personal career decisions based on the information that you come across in your daily work. For instance, if you see that the company is about to be liquidated and you don't want to be around for the mess, by all means polish your resume and start interviewing. Just don't assume that just because you saw something you have the whole picture. You could end up feeling stupid when the private email you saw turns out to be a deliberate test of your trustworthiness. It does happen.

Keep your mouth shut about the things you see. Look after your career and reputation. Be aware of politics, but abstain from participating wherever possible. After a few years when you have trust and credibility, you can consider climbing the ladder a bit and playing the game - you'll have capital to spend.

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