Comment Missing Option (Score 2) 164
Away from my mother, because the courts mandated she never be in contact with me again for life, and I'm happy about it.
Submission + - ISIS "Message to America" Planned Attack (vocativ.com)
KermodeBear writes: A group of hackers affiliated with ISIS are threatening to carry out a cyber attack—dubbed “Message to America”—against a number of targets 2 p.m. EST today. The targets were not identified on ISIS forums and social channels but the hackers are promising something “surprising” that “will frighten America”.
Comment Knowledge and Experience Won't Save You (Score 4, Insightful) 420
"knowing the business" or "being the best in what you do" would save one's derriere
Except that it won't, except in very special circumstances.
Let's be honest here: Most IT jobs - being a sysadmin, writing software, setting up a network - are not complicated. Most systems don't need much other than some some packages and configuration handled by something like Puppet. Most software doesn't do anything remarkable - it just shuffles data from point A to point B and displays a few things to an end user. Etc., etc.
A vast majority of IT jobs only require mediocre skill and knowledge. Most H1-B folks I know have rarely been mediocre, but they ARE cheap and management doesn't know the difference anyway. All they know is eventually their widget does the new X they've been asking for. So what if the code is a terrible mess and deployment is a gigantic pain? The management doesn't see or care.
Knowing the business? That's what project managers and other management-y types are for (or so they think). You and I know that a software engineer who is well versed in a certain business will design better systems, for example, but I've not once seen a manager that believes this way.
Management sees IT staff as nearly a commodity with people easily interchangeable. They're not entirely wrong - not entirely - but they think they're not wrong at all.
Remember: It isn't what YOU think that is important when a company is doing the hiring. What is important is what THEY think and how cheap they can get you and how much they can work you before you burn out.
Comment Re:Are we sure these are parodies? (Score 4, Insightful) 148
Yeah, it's pretty amazing. It reminds me of so many "Web 3.0 Hipster Startups" that bastardize a word and make some kind of vague hand-wavey promise by using a buzzowrd or two and adding "in the cloud".
Ugh. The modern tech industry makes me want to puke. Maybe I'm getting too old for this...
Comment Re:Ob missing option (Score 1) 109
Remove steps 2 and 3 and you're getting close to reality!
Comment Re:Fuck No (Score 2) 199
Can we also get rid of the fucking obnoxious TLDs? I learned that
Comment Hackers? (Score 2) 249
I really would like the media to stop referring to people who DDoS as "hackers". All they're doing is sending a pile of requests to a service and overloading it. I'm not impressed, neither is anyone else here.
Comment Re:How would you promote job growth (Score 1) 238
I sure would. I would love to only pay 20% on my income tax, especially if it meant I didn't have to spend money on software to do my taxes for me every year because the tax code keeps changing.
Comment Re:Lies, bullshit, and more lies ... (Score 1) 442
Hey now. As a bear, I am horribly offended that you would want to put either one of those fools near any of my kin. Stick them in the lion cage. Cats are a lot less fussy about these things and they have a proclivity for torturing their prey before killing it.
Comment Re:The average person thinks they've above average (Score 1) 220
I used to think I was a good programmer. Then I started to learn about how much I didn't know, new techniques and frameworks and languages, and then I saw that I had a lot to learn.
Ten years later, I've learned a lot - but I've also discovered even more that I don't know and that I can improve upon.
So, I consider myself "average". In my domain I'm pretty good, I can crank stuff out that works well, is easy to understand and set up, has tests and documentation, etc., but there's a really, really big world out there.
Hugo Awards Turn (Even More) Political 587
An anonymous reader writes Last year, the Hugo Awards went to mostly minorities and women. In response, a fan group decided to fight back against what they saw as a liberal attack on their medium. It appears that they have succeeded, as the 2015 nominees are predominantly chosen by a group called "Sad Puppies. Now a counter-counter group is trying to ensure that no one wins any Hugo awards in any category except Best Novel.
Rare Ideopathic Encephaly Tied to Higher IQ, Not Lower 58
Timothy writes Cranial deformation is commonly linked to brain dysfunction; it is one of the most common serious conditions affecting fetal growth. Multiple factors are involved, but in nearly every case on record the result is debilitating; stillbirth or neonatal death are common. A mutation, though, has been observed among members of a New Jersey family which represents a rare case of heritable encephaly tied not to dysfunction, but to higher-than-average intelligence, and with no evident negative health consequences.
Donald R. DeCicco (not his real name) and his wife Prymaat of Paramus, both French-born naturalized U.S. citizens, were born with unremarkable physical characteristics, apart from a specific constellation of physical abnormalities affecting maxillofacial and brain development. In both of their cases, brain development appears to be ordinary, but with all brain lobes occupying a volume that is both larger and narrower than typical. All medical tests (and the couple's success as educated, productive members of society) make it clear that their condition has not prevented ordinary life, and may even have enhanced it; a series of MRI and PET scans conducted by Johns Hopkins researchers indicated that their above-average cerebella are at least as active and neuron-rich as are more run-of-the-mill subjects' brains, and tests of memory, cognition, and reasoning place both DeCicco and Clorhone in the top percentile of American rest subjects. A daughter, Connie, shares both their unusual skeletal growth pattern, and is similarly highly intelligent; perhaps this form of heritable encephaly should be thought of as akin to Marfan syndrome, for its pairing of both high intelligence and a characteristic bone-growth pattern. At least one researcher quoted in the linked article believes that less extreme forms of the same anomaly can be observed in some historical and contemporary figures, citing as examples both Vladimir Putin and actor Richard Belzer as bearing some tendency toward the same characteristic shape.
First described by a family physician and described in the Journal of the Society of the Federal Health Professionals,the condition has been labeled Sandler's Syndrome.
Donald R. DeCicco (not his real name) and his wife Prymaat of Paramus, both French-born naturalized U.S. citizens, were born with unremarkable physical characteristics, apart from a specific constellation of physical abnormalities affecting maxillofacial and brain development. In both of their cases, brain development appears to be ordinary, but with all brain lobes occupying a volume that is both larger and narrower than typical. All medical tests (and the couple's success as educated, productive members of society) make it clear that their condition has not prevented ordinary life, and may even have enhanced it; a series of MRI and PET scans conducted by Johns Hopkins researchers indicated that their above-average cerebella are at least as active and neuron-rich as are more run-of-the-mill subjects' brains, and tests of memory, cognition, and reasoning place both DeCicco and Clorhone in the top percentile of American rest subjects. A daughter, Connie, shares both their unusual skeletal growth pattern, and is similarly highly intelligent; perhaps this form of heritable encephaly should be thought of as akin to Marfan syndrome, for its pairing of both high intelligence and a characteristic bone-growth pattern. At least one researcher quoted in the linked article believes that less extreme forms of the same anomaly can be observed in some historical and contemporary figures, citing as examples both Vladimir Putin and actor Richard Belzer as bearing some tendency toward the same characteristic shape.
First described by a family physician and described in the Journal of the Society of the Federal Health Professionals,the condition has been labeled Sandler's Syndrome.
Scientists Discover Meaning of Life Through Massive Computing Project 123
First time accepted submitter Rabbit327 writes In a stunning announcement today scientists have announced that after millions of cycles of computing time on some of the largest super computers that they have discovered the meaning of life. On April 1st 2015 at approximately 03:42 GMT scientists discovered that a long running program had finished. The results stunned scientists who were having tea in the other room when the alarm went off. According to the scientific team the answer was stunning yet confusing. Quoting one scientist "It's amazing. It worked! But what does it mean?!? For heaven's sake we spent all this time calculating the answer to the ultimate question about life, the universe, and everything. This is the answer we get?!? This is the bloody answer we get?!?!??!?" after which the scientist promptly threw a keyboard across the room. According to inside sources the answer given by the computer was "42". What this means will be announced later according to a research representative.
Leak Reveals Government Conspiracy, Atrocity 37
First time accepted submitter Sigmon writes An unauthorized wave recently broadcast on the Cortex has revealed not only the existence of a previously unknown settlement on a far away border world called Miranda but also that the entire population of settlers was inadvertently wiped out by a top-secret Alliance program. Miranda was purportedly used as a testing ground for G-23 Paxilon Hydrochlorate, or simply "Pax" — a chemical agent designed to calm the population and weed out aggression. It seems the test did not go as planned. Also, reporters have been dispatched to the location of a battle not far from Miranda's location where the Alliance fleet has apparently suffered significant losses. It is unknown if the two events are related at this time. When contacted for comment on these events, government officials were very tight-lipped, however one official responded with a confusing statement about "Damming a river."
Madman: Proximity To Black Hole "Not a Big Deal" 53
Conventional wisdom says you want to stay as far away from a black hole as you can, but according to one scientist turned madman being close to or even inside one is "not a big deal". Former lead scientist and current overlord of the Cygnus Dr. Hans Reinhardt says he's spent the last 20 years studying the black hole within sight of his ship and is unconcerned. His napkin written manifesto reads in part: "....In addition we have to remember that the main backer of this mission is a company best known for children's movies and theme parks. I find it highly unlikely that they would put us in a situation where we would be in danger of imploding. The black hole is not a big deal. I theorize that a trip through would result in nothing more than a musical montage with fever-like lens effects and eventual plot resolution." According to Reinhardt new visitors trapped by his null gravity field should remain calm, still, and never question his authority. "Once you've been fitted with the mandatory Cygnus crew goggles, you'll see things my way," He says.
