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Comment: Seriously, this... (Score 1) 228

by barfy (#39001837) Attached to: What Does a Software Tester's Job Constitute?

Create and propagate information that helps people to create and ship the software...

Everything else is details on this. I was the senior software tester for multiple projects. I got paid more than most everyone else, because I owned the above. I helped and did everything, and spent as little time as possible, NOT doing anything else.

However, most people spent tons and tons of time NOT doing the above. The created very little new and useful information, and propagated very little. The company would make up for this by hiring LOTS of people, to try and create more information. Lots of time, people were given my stuff, in an attempt to expand on it.

Personally, I spent a very small fraction of my time on regression testing. A little more on verification. But most of my time creating and propagating information.

I would spend time creating models and predictions, and watching carefully what would happen. I would look at errors, user expectations, standards, behaviors and functionality. And barf stuff out as quickly as possible. And some percentage of time was coming up with larger and better explanations.

I was never done, and I never could work enough to find them all, and I was never satisfied. There was always rich veins of information to be uncovered and passed on.

At some point it shipped anyways...

Sometimes I was there for the next version, sometimes I did other things.

My personal satisfaction, was knowing that I had a substantial impact on what shipped. And that it was better for me being there.

Comment: I hope that this is true. (Score 0) 226

by barfy (#37726772) Attached to: FTL Neutrinos Explained... Maybe

My theory maximum speed would be 2C. This would allow contemporaneous or slower information exchange at distance without causality paradox (you never get there faster than "now", and you wouldn't be able to pass information previous to now, and you couldn't pass the others information back in time as well). But it does mean that you would have wicked low latency between like here and say mars when playing doom. Or even from other stars... (you both have to invent the same device, and then be able to communicate and understand each other).

You also have this very interesting possibility of neutrinos packed with information all hitting the big bang at the same time. Possibly CAUSING the big bang. I am hoping!

Comment: Why is this a question... (Score 1) 659

by barfy (#37665156) Attached to: How Do You Educate a Prodigy?

This individual is an extreme outlier. That you would want us to have some sort of educational bureaucracy to solve the educational issues of one, is bizarre on face. It is even bizarre to be asking here, other than what do the masses think of educating such an outlier.

The fact is, that there already is an infrastructure out there of sorts. People that are used to dealing with outliers, both in their problems, their needs, and their successes. It is known that outliers like this, present their best work before the age of 25 when the shackles of wisdom start holding back the innovations of youth, innocence and ignorance of failure, and why it shouldn't be.

There is the davidson institute in Arizona I believe, but there are plenty of colleges and universities that can deal with this as well. But certainly, this isn't really an issue of the educational "system". Which needs to cover the bell curve, and not the tiny edges way out there.

And you should own a copy of Real Genius. Seriously. Really. This movie actually is genius in its understanding of young genius, and those that want to leverage it, and the social issues that come from being outside all social groups, and the success that comes in the end, even in spite of, and maybe because of genius.

Comment: I think this can explain a lot. (Score 1) 465

by barfy (#33754694) Attached to: Hawking: No 'Theory of Everything'

Imagine a world with walls and divide by zero situations. The speed of light, black holes, singularity, the big bang, absolute zero, quantum levels, differences between quarks and quasars. Tons of stuff.

It is quite possible, that the laws of the universe are different on one side of the wall than the other. And better, you can't predict the behavior on one side, based on what you know about the laws on the other side, always.

This precludes a universal answer for all our understandings of the universe, because of the difference in laws and behaviors on one side of the wall and the other.

This means finding the walls (situations), and then discovering the rules for each area.

Comment: Superfast worm... (Score 1) 448

by barfy (#33681410) Attached to: Facebook Is Down

Just before it all went haywire, a bunch of my friends started getting videos pasted to their wall "What are you doing?". I am guessing that spawned ever more pastings until it went bonkers.

The videos all pointed to apps.facebook.com but I don't remember and didn't capture the url.

Shortly thereafter the videos were gone, and the postings were gone, so I suspect that they are getting both a handle on the outage, and then shut stuff down while they fix the code.

Comment: This doesn't crack blu-ray... (Score 1) 1066

by barfy (#33610718) Attached to: HDCP Master Key Is Legitimate; Blu-ray Is Cracked

It allows you to create a device that connects the outgoing HDMI port on your Blu-ray player or computer that is going to your TV.

This doesn't allow anybody to copy a blu-ray disk at all. It allows you to make an HDMI device without a license.

A device to copy a stream is likely not to be cheap, the resultant output stream TONS bigger than the original Blu-ray, and will have to be re-ripped into somekind of hi def format and stored. All of this to take HOURS and some sophistication to pull off.

This isn't "unlocked" blu-ray like DeCss does to DVD's.

It is very unlikely that any device created will make it to market without being sued out of existence. It is very unlikely that you will get better results than the 144 dollar HDMI/VGA dongle would allow you to create.

It is interesting as a hack. As a practical thing, this isn't de-CSS. Not even close.

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