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Comment: Re:Easy (Score 2) 157

by dintech (#43749957) Attached to: How To Talk Like a CIO

If you don't understand the details of the technology, you're highly likely to miss a bunch of nuance in understanding how (and how much) it can solve your business problems.

As a CIO, this is what you have underlings for. You build a relationship of trust with people who DO understand the technology. You'll tend to like these people if they can deeply understand the technology and can describe it in language you are used to. "Is this good, yes or no."

This way you can then repeat that information to other people. If you get burned later because they were economical with the truth, you replace them with someone you can trust. This is is how non-technical people work.

Comment: Re:Whats really amazing. (Score 3, Insightful) 108

Here in the UK the main domain has been blocked by the major ISPs several months ago. Immediately there were no end of proxy alternative domains by which to get access to the same content, no one particular domain really matters at all. I think it's cute that they keep going after the main domain. It keeps them distracted while the main event is going on elsewhere.

+ - Genetically Modified Plants To Produce Natural Lighting ->

Submitted by kkleiner
kkleiner writes "A team has launched a crowdsourcing campaign to develop sustainable natural lighting by using a genetically modified version of the flowering plant Arabidopsis. Using the luciferase gene, the enzyme responsible for making fireflies glow, the researchers will design, print, and transform the genes into the target plant. The project, which was recently launched on Kickstarter, has already raised over $100k with over a month left to go."
Link to Original Source

+ - HR as a bot: Hiring developers by algorithm->

Submitted by Strudelkugel
Strudelkugel writes "WHEN the e-mail came out of the blue last summer, offering a shot as a programmer at a San Francisco start-up, Jade Dominguez, 26, was living off credit card debt in a rental in South Pasadena, Calif., while he taught himself programming. He had been an average student in high school and hadn’t bothered with college, but someone, somewhere out there in the cloud, thought that he might be brilliant, or at least a diamond in the rough. “The traditional markers people use for hiring can be wrong, profoundly wrong,” says Vivienne Ming, the chief scientist at Gild since late last year. That someone was Luca Bonmassar. He had discovered Mr. Dominguez by using a technology that raises important questions about how people are recruited and hired, and whether great talent is being overlooked along the way."
Link to Original Source

+ - Canada Revenue Agency To Tax BitCoin Transactions->

Submitted by semilemon
semilemon writes "The Canada Revenue Agency has started paying attention to BitCoin transactions, as it says users will have to pay tax on all transactions using the currency. From the article, "The CRA told the CBC there are two separate tax rules that apply to the electronic currency, depending on whether they are used as money to buy things or if they were merely bought and sold for speculative purposes. "Barter transaction rules apply where BitCoins are used to purchase goods or services," Canada Revenue Agency spokesman Philippe Brideau said in an email. In this situation, that means whatever you've received in exchange for your $1 worth of vegetables must be documented as a taxable gain of at least $1 somewhere. When it comes to trading BitCoins for profit, the tax man says there are tax implications there, too. "When BitCoins are bought or sold like a commodity, any resulting gains or losses could be income or capital for the taxpayer depending on the specific facts," ruled the CRA."
Link to Original Source

Comment: Re:His works will (hopefully) grow in stature in t (Score 1) 150

by dintech (#43347323) Attached to: Iain Banks: Extremely Ill With Cancer
I've read all of his books and have grown quite attached to his writing style. Even the more difficult to follow ones such as The Bridge were still pretty good in their own right. I'm a Scot who doesn't live in Scotland any more, so I take particular joy in his books set in Scotland like The Wasp Factory, Complicity and Stonemouth.

Also, You don't have to look far to find a few Culture references in the Halo games.

Comment: Re:Nothing really changed (Score 3, Informative) 156

by dintech (#43289755) Attached to: Has Kickstarter Peaked?
I am one of the backers for the Elite Kickstarter. I think the 'strings attached' bit is probably quite important for an elderly game like Elite. Lets say hypothetically that worst case, someone like EA was the publisher. Everything would be micro-transaction, autolog bullshit with an annoying soundtrack you can't turn off and a 'hey radical' southern-california commentator giving you a mind-meltingly droll tutorial on how to be the hottest, slickest new pilot in the galaxy with pats on the head every 5 minutes. It would need to be themed on a music festival, surf exhibition, frat party or some other 'down-with-the-kids' irrelevance. Of course there has to be a leader board from which some 16 year old ass-hat leaves an audio-message for everyone declaring his teabag is the biggest.

You would have to deal with the fallout from some EA Exec demanding that every time you destroyed another ship, crashed in to one or came with a few metres of one, you get a 3 second cut scene that pauses the action because "it's more 'Michael Bay' that way". When you finally dock after many, many, wooshing, spinning, exploding menu options, you get the pretty much compulsory option of using real money to get rid of your wanted status or whatever, which is probably the only way to progress since like an Ikea store, there seems to be no way to circumvent what you don't want. Every couple of AU that you travel you'll get.... an achievement! Awesome! You will be able to buy 50 achievements with your real money and then sell them for new ships or some other weird artificial game mechanic, all while enduring commercials from "out trusted partners". This certainty was all but avoided because of Kickstarter. I rest my case.

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