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Comment: MA-no waiting (Score 1) 821

by omission9 (#41899527) Attached to: U.S. Election Day In Progress: What's Been Your Experience?

I went to the polling place with two other people. They were the only two people in front of me in line. ;)
Smooth process. Ballot was 1 long 2-sided sheet.
I asked a friend that lives in NC and was told that long lines in other states are likely due to 10+ page ballots combined with large turnouts.

Comment: IAMA PDL user (Score 5, Insightful) 94

by omission9 (#38944445) Attached to: Perl Data Language 2.4.10 released

I was happy to be reading /. on my lunch break and see PDL mentioned. I use PDL and am glad to see it get some notice.
I am disappointment in the comments so far though. The anti-Perl froth is strong in this thread and I am not sure why?
Here is my point of view:
        -Use whatever programming language suits you and your task the best. Maximize for total productivity which is a function of both of these things in varying degrees.
        -Perl suits me best, personally, as a comfortable tool This is kind of squishy...it just feels right to me. MANY MANY people agree with me. But maybe you don't. meh.
        -My tasks involve (a) parsing data from a variety of sources and (b) number crunching. Perl is already fantastic at (a). PDL makes Perl fantastic at (b).
        -The people behind PDL use it for even more numerically complex tasks than I. Check out the docs and mailing lost archives and see. http://pdl.perl.org/?page=mailing-lists
        -If you are already writing code in C, Python, Fortran or whatever else than you should stick with it. Moving over to PDL just because it exists doesn't make any sense, of course.
Now, as a Perl and PDL user could someone please explain to me the string visceral reaction shown by people in these comment threads whenever it is mentioned? Did Larry Wall challenge you to a bar fight once or something? (Probably not, I met him once and he doesn't seem like a bar fight kind of guy.)

Comment: Re:"many developers are so intrigued" (Score 1) 434

by omission9 (#31319774) Attached to: Google Go Capturing Developer Interest

I have personally seen python run very very well on an open-mosix cluster.
I have no idea of python's inherent support for multiple processors but
with open-mosix it migrates the jobs to the different processes for you anyway.
This use of python with open-mosix is fairly common within various high throughput computing
niches. Or at least it was. I haven't worked in a scientific workplace in many years.

The Almighty Buck

+ - Where to go from here? Mid-Career Anxiety.

Submitted by omission9
omission9 writes "My software development career got started at about the same time as /. itself. I am happy that I have made it this far. The past 10-12 years have had some major bumps(.com implosion, two recessions)! A lot has been written about how to break into the IT biz but not much gets written here for people that are facing some mid-career anxiety. The options, based on that I have seen other do, are:
(1) becoming a contractor
(2) trying to start my own Micro-ISV
(3) Keep "playing the game" and tenaciously try to get a mid-level management position.
(4) Keep "playing the game" and work towards a "Principle" or "Architect" position.
The bottomline is that I find that the software business is quite cut-throat at this level. A great many people I started out with after college have completely left IT. As time goes on there are a variety of powerful selection forces at play, most of which are out of my control. IT is such a vast field I am not looking for specific advice but rather some case studies. For all of you out there with 10-15+ years in the software industry what is your story and what have you done specifically to survive this long? What has your career trajectory been like?"

Comment: Netbeans! (Score 1) 1055

by omission9 (#28114349) Attached to: What Free IDE Do You Use?

Netbeans is the best IDE I have ever used. Netbeans is written in java so it will run on multiple platforms. While it has lost some
"street cred" to Eclipse it is still wildly popular and attracts developers to volunteer their time to add support for many languages.
Plus, Netbeans in and of itself is a development platform which can help you create some very nice apps.

Comment: Definition: trifecta (Score 1) 188

by omission9 (#27992073) Attached to: Finding a Personal Coding Trifecta

A "trifecta" is a wager whereas you win money if you correctly bet on the way the top three "performers" finish. So, suppose there is a horse race and horses Joe, Bob, and Sam finish 1,2,3 and you bet on Joe, Bob, and Sam to finish in that order YOU WIN!
The "trifecta" bet is used in greyhound, horses, and jai-alai. There are variants such as "boxing" and "wheeling" but these are advanced lessons...

Education

+ - How much does it matter where you go to college?

Submitted by
omission9
omission9 writes "I am a software engineer with a decade of experience in the field. I went to a public
university. At various points in my career I have worked with people
that have gone to Ivy League schools as well as similar "good schools" such as Johns Hopkins and MIT. I know this because they enjoyed discussing this. Based on how few they are in
relation to the number of people with at least a Bachelor's degree I
would say the representation was proportional.
We had the same job, same skills and knowledge, made the same money.
So, I am wondering just what the advantage they had was? I suppose the
old saw about "ivy league connections" could be true but I have plenty of great connections just from being a nice smart guy that gets along
with people!
Seriously, are there some avenues in life that I simply don't know about
because I didn't go to the right school and are forever shut off to me?
If so, what are they?"
Movies

Kaleidescape Triumphant in Court Case, DVD Ripping Ruled Legal 213

Posted by Zonk
from the only-when-you-own-it-netflixers dept.
Jim Buzbee writes "Ever wanted to rip all your DVDs to a big network server so that you could select and play them back to your TV? Up until now, manufacturers have been wary of building a device to allow this type of usage because they've been afraid a lawsuit. The DVD Copy Control Association had claimed this was contractually forbidden, but now a judge says otherwise stating, 'nothing in the agreement prevents you from making copies of DVDs. Nothing requires that a DVD be present during playback.' Kaleidescape has finally won their long-standing lawsuit, a case we first talked about early in 2005."
Television

Where Are All of the HDTV Tuners? 208

Posted by Cliff
from the in-case-you-forgot-to-buy-one dept.
An anonymous reader asks: "Today I read about rabbit ears making a comeback with OTA HTDV. I want to purchase a standalone ATSC HDTV tuner to go with my projector, but I am having a very hard time finding one. The big-box stores seem to only stock one or two models and are frequently sold out. Searching online yields similar results. It would seem that there would be ever increasing demand for these tuners given that many HDTVs were sold without internal tuners in years past, and these tuners will be necessary for all old NTSC TVs after the February, 2009 shutdown of analog broadcasts. Where should I look to buy one of these devices? Of the currently available models, which are the best? Will the standalone HDTV tuner become a ubiquitous item as the 2009 deadline approaches?"

Trouble always comes at the wrong time.

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