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Hardware Hacking

Ask Slashdot: Projects For a Heap of Tech Junk? 210

Posted by Soulskill
from the build-a-robot-army-and-send-it-to-texas dept.
yenrabbit writes "A friend has just told me he has 80 CRT TVs, a stack of DVD players and hundreds of VCR machines, all broken and all mine free of charge. I can already think of a few awesome components I can extract (flyback transformers for high voltage contraptions and so on) and have a few ideas, such as DVD lasers, that I can build. But what else can be made from such a treasure-trove of components, and how would one go about processing such a large volume of stuff with the least amount of effort? Also, I don't have access to online shopping so I'd also like a pain free way of salvaging many simpler parts such as resistors as well." Another reader sent in a similar question: "The other day I went down to my University's property disposition center for the first time. In addition to mundane things like chairs and desks, it also had a wealth of technological devices, from old PCs and monitors to obscure medical and chemistry equipment. Honestly, I was a bit overwhelmed. I just don't know what I'd do with a old gene sequencing machine or a broken oscilloscope. Any ideas for fun projects? Or better yet, suggestions on how I can figure out which machines (or their components) are worth playing with?"

Comment: Re:Allah Akbar, Han Solo? (Score 1) 514

by Slime-dogg (#42693261) Attached to: Lego Accused of Racism With Star Wars Set

And here I was thinking that Jabba was a caricature of American politicians - fat, stupid, lazy, ready to kill on a whim, and unable to speak anything but nonsensical gibberish.

I would take it differently. Jabba was incredibly intelligent, fat, lazy and ruthless. You don't come to control a major criminal element without being intelligent.

Comment: The second test is pretty bunk. (Score 1) 437

by Slime-dogg (#42618247) Attached to: Java Vs. C#: Which Performs Better In the 'Real World'?

This is a really strange article. MVC vs. JSP / static content is not apples to apples, like the first test was.

When you return a view, it isn't static content. Making a call to a controller is also not the same as serving up an HTML page - the controller is instantiated, the action is invoked, and depending on the type of action, a model could be instantiated and bound. It isn't like creating a simple ASP.NET page that has "Response.Write" in the page load, since the ASP.NET page itself is much closer to what a JSP page is.

There isn't really a circumstance for static HTML in ASP.NET, since it all gets rolled into a Response.Write method in the end. I imagine a JSP page does the same thing, and on both ends, the resulting HTML gets cached. This would be the "optimization" he's witnessing from Tomcat. ASP.NET does the same thing.

You'd have to do some stuff in Java to get to the MVC level of complexity, and not just use Tomcat. Vanilla ASP.NET is a more appropriate tool for comparison. As noted in an above comment, you'd probably have to compare ASP.NET MVC to Spring.

Hell, classic ASP performs better than ASP.NET MVC.

Comment: Re:blah blah Capitalism Evil blah blah (Score 1) 227

by Slime-dogg (#42465847) Attached to: Reason On How and Why 38 Studios Went Bust

Wrong.

The regulation we applied to capitalism made higher standard of living for a population.

You might want to actually read up on capitalists.

"Tax payer money was wasted by loaning it to a business nobody else would touch." while true with studio 38, usually that isn't true. In fact, a lot of case it as helped. but success in government isn't really reported. You know why? it's not unusual.

I think the argument is more one of "should government be investing in not-for-public-use private entities?" rather than one of regulation. Regulation is setting boundaries for capitalism to live within - it's generally a good thing. Government investment in the private sector, however, is something that needs to be monitored. It makes sense when investing in private companies to the end of the public good (military spending, roads, "utilities"), but that's about it.

Comment: Re:Ditching strong partners -- smart move! (Score 1, Troll) 172

by Slime-dogg (#42450923) Attached to: TSMC Preparing To Manufacturer A6X Chip As Apple Looks to Ditch Samsung
  1. Company A supplies Company B with chips for Company B's products.
  2. Company A decides the money made off supplying parts is not enough and decides to compete with Company B directly by supplying products with very similar designs to Company B.
  3. Company B files suit against Company A for infringement.
  4. Company A insists they're fine, but doesn't realize a good chunk of business still comes from Company B
  5. Company B does the logical thing and divorces all business from Company A.

Samsung is not a victim, here. This is the logical conclusion of bad business done by Samsung. They could have done it differently, and coexisted with Apple. Now, they reap their reward. I don't really understand why this is so hard for the Android fanbois to understand.

Programming

Ask Slashdot: Do Coding Standards Make a Difference? 430

Posted by Soulskill
from the everybody-do-it-wrong-the-right-way dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Every shop I've ever worked in has had a 'Coding Style' document that dictates things like camelCase vs underscored_names, placement of curly braces, tabs vs spaces, etc. As a result, I've lost hundreds of hours in code reviews because some pedant was more interested in picking nits over whitespace than actually reviewing my algorithms. Are there any documents or studies that show a net productivity gain for having these sorts of standards? If not, why do we have them? We live in the future, why don't our tools enforce these standards automagically?"

Comment: Re:could be usefull for other things (Score 4, Insightful) 422

by Slime-dogg (#42076103) Attached to: Could Testing Block Psychopaths From Senior Management?

You've just suggested that an individual company be allowed to restrict the ability of some users to post whatever they want. Cue screams involving the first amendment and a /. article phrased as a question.

The first amendment doesn't apply to a company's ability to censor content on a site they own.

Comment: Re:America leader on clean energy, not Europe (Score 2) 341

by Slime-dogg (#42075205) Attached to: The World Falls Back In Love With Coal

Well, to be fair, after a short google expedition, America does seems to be an accepted name for the United States of America, but it is so ONLY in the United States of America.

This isn't really true. When you say that you're an "American" to nearly anyone in the world, the valid assumption they make is that you're from the USA. It only follows that an "American" would be from "America," being the USA.

Comment: Re:$128,000? (Score 1) 342

by Slime-dogg (#41698523) Attached to: Google's Engineers Are Well Paid, Not Just Well Fed

I assure you that neither of those things has EVER come up in a job interview.

But they have in the salary planning. They know what they're getting, and pay accordingly.

Perhaps in larger or .gov shops, but certainly not in the small shops I have experience with.

They show up in determining whether to consider a candidate for an interview. Many places will not interview someone with short experience and an associate's. I've been on the interviewing end of that equation.

Comment: Re:You Tell Me If You're Too Old; What Is Your Goa (Score 0) 418

by Slime-dogg (#41562957) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Am I Too Old To Retrain?

I'm a 40-year-old developer, and it's become apparent that my .NET skillset is woefully out of date after five years of doing various bits of support.

I'm sorry. Honestly, I really am sorry. I don't like that framework, I don't like that language. Also when I was growing up it was largely a "pay to play" realm and largely still is (although I know I can get my hands on an express IDE).

This really is less than helpful, albeit typical for the longer-run members in this community. It's .NET, pay-to-play, and therefore irrelevant. That, in truth, is political garbage.

To answer more fully - age is irrelevant. If you desire to pick up the variations between .NET 2.0 and 4.0, just put in the time necessary to practice some of the newer things. You could also pick up C#, though it isn't absolutely necessary, because the positions open on the market lean more heavily toward C# than VB.NET. It's primarily syntactical sugar, you'll find, but some of the newer things are performed a little more easily in C# than VB. Some of the more exciting aspects of .NET lie in the direction of F#, too, which is pretty easy to experiment with (and fully supported by Mono/Monodevelop).

Social Networks

Decentralized Social Networking — Why It Could Work 128

Posted by Soulskill
from the keeping-your-face-off-the-books dept.
Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton writes with "a response to some of the objections raised to my last article, about a design for a distributed social networking protocol, which would allow for decentralized (and censorship-resistant) hosting of social networking accounts, while supporting all of the same features as sites like Facebook." Social networking is no longer new; whether you consider it to have started with online communities in the mid-90s or with the beginnings of sites many people still use today. As its popularity has surged, it has grown in limited ways; modern social networks have made communication between users easier, but they've also made users easier to market to advertisers as well. There's no question that the future of social networking holds more changes that can both help and harm users — perhaps something like what Bennett suggests could serve to mitigate that harm. Read on for the rest of his thoughts.

Comment: Re:Statistically Meaningless Conclusions (Score 1) 203

by Slime-dogg (#41553279) Attached to: New Study Links Caffeinated Coffee To Vision Loss

On top of this, why were people drinking so much coffee? Because they were working long days? Staying up late? Other activities that can lead to eye strain? Sorry but this sounds like correlation rather than causation.

While a decent point, I'm pretty sure coffee is very much a cultural thing for those up near the arctic circle. It might have something to do with the lack of sunlight, so compensation is made with caffeine.

"And do you think (fop that I am) that I could be the Scarlet Pumpernickel?" -- Looney Tunes, The Scarlet Pumpernickel (1950, Chuck Jones)

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