Comment: Re:Cyanogenmod, (Score 1) 101
The amazing thing would be if Cyanogen managed to wrest control of Android away from Google. Suddenly there is a fork, and they are running the AOSP2.
Comment: Ender's Game (Score 3, Interesting) 115
Not a hip movie to like right now, but Ender's Game is almost all about project management and leadership.
Ender sees the great potential in his team, even in the misfits and castaways, but he also has high expectations for them to reach that potential. That is what I try to do as a leader.
Ender sees the great potential in his team, even in the misfits and castaways, but he also has high expectations for them to reach that potential. That is what I try to do as a leader.
Comment: Re:Bill Gates reads Reddit? (Score 2) 90
No, you don't understand.
The possibility that I might have flamed and insulted Bill Gates without knowing it really brightens my day. It makes my diminutive heart grow 3 sizes larger all at once. It's like Christmas for me.
The possibility that I might have flamed and insulted Bill Gates without knowing it really brightens my day. It makes my diminutive heart grow 3 sizes larger all at once. It's like Christmas for me.
Comment: Bill Gates reads Reddit? (Score 2) 90
Do you think he reads Slashdot, too?
Comment: Re:I used to have respect for the WSJ and Walt ... (Score 1) 90
Richard Stallman must be turning in his grave.
Curious, because you seem like a native English speaker, what exactly do you think the word 'grave' means?
Comment: Re:oh boy... (Score 1) 223
(I have two kids in elementary school dealing with the whole Common Core/EngageNY/high stakes testing nonsense so I know first-hand what this is doing to our kids and teachers.
I don't know NY specifically, but every 'common core' exam I've looked at so far has questions so simple that kids should be learning them without too much trouble....
I met some kids from Japan who swore they were bad at math. Then I found out they'd gone through calculus in High School. We're not exactly pushing the envelope with what we're requiring kids to learn.....
Comment: Re:Very different code (Score 1) 209
Any commercial product for which you don't have access to source code is an integration and performance risk.
So true, I've run into the same problem. It doesn't mean you need to only use GPL, but you should try to get the source code when you sign the contract to use the product (you're probably paying enough, anyway).
Comment: Re:Without looking (Score 1) 233
Yeah, you only need to read the full sentence (abbreviated in the summary) to see how things will 'change':
....an end to bulk retention of telephone "metadata" by the spy agency, by keeping those records in private hands subject to specific queries from the NSA or law enforcement.
Comment: Re:4th amendment? (Score 2) 233
It's possibly worth noting here that the United States is a republic, not a democracy.
It's both, get over it. Specifically it's a representative democracy, as opposed to a direct democracy.
Comment: Re:Remember TEMPEST? (Score 1) 259
Thus far, it seems theoretical more than practical. Not only is it a chosen-plaintext attack, it also requires the user repeatedly decipher the text many times before the key can be extracted. I can't think of any practical way of getting people to do that (unless you can somehow get to the key in a Visual Basic Outlook script or something). That's my understanding of the paper, with this relevant quote:
In a nutshell, the key extraction attack relies on crafting chosen ciphertexts that cause numerical cancellations deep inside GnuPG’s modular exponentiation algorithm. This causes the special value zero to appear frequently in the innermost loop of the algorithm, where it affects control flow. A single iteration of that loop is much too fast for direct acoustic observation, but the effect is repeated and amplified over many thousands of iterations, resulting in a gross leakage effect that is discernible in the acoustic spectrum over hundreds of milliseconds
Since microphones can't grab frequencies in the Ghz range (where CPUs operate), they can't directly observe individual instructions. But with multiple passes over the same operation, they can use statistics to determine what the instructions were.
Comment: Re:Fuzzy Logic anyone? (Score 1) 151
FWIW a typical Intel processor now uses huge tables for multiplication and division.
Comment: Re:Always a little creepy (Score 1) 98
Ask any Jehovah's Witness and they'll tell you this over, and over, and over.............
Comment: Re:So, which is it? (Score 2) 98
Anyone who believes "developed by experts" is a stamp of quality, is in no position to judge others.
Wow, that is a great quote.
Comment: Re:The Group of 4? (Score 5, Insightful) 98
Those aren't the four things I look for in a program. I look for this:
1) Does the code work/fill the requirements? (high efficiency might be a requirement, or it might not. Same with cross-platform compatibility).
2) Is the code readable? If not, it doesn't matter how great your design is, people who come after you will rewrite it.
3) Is the code flexible? If not, your design is more a hindrance than a help.
Code that fills all three of those is rare and beautiful.
1) Does the code work/fill the requirements? (high efficiency might be a requirement, or it might not. Same with cross-platform compatibility).
2) Is the code readable? If not, it doesn't matter how great your design is, people who come after you will rewrite it.
3) Is the code flexible? If not, your design is more a hindrance than a help.
Code that fills all three of those is rare and beautiful.
A good programmer is busy writing / testing code and doesn't have the time or the need to read and remember books
A good programmer is always looking to improve his skill in any way available, including reading.
Comment: Re:A bit obtuse (Score 3, Insightful) 98
You can tell roughly at what time he became a software engineer. Everything invented before is "universally accepted truth." Everything after is in the 7th circle of hell.
Now, get off my lawn, if it's not vacuum tubes in accumulators, it's useless! We don't need these newfangled 'registers' and 'assembly languages,' we have patch wires!
Now, get off my lawn, if it's not vacuum tubes in accumulators, it's useless! We don't need these newfangled 'registers' and 'assembly languages,' we have patch wires!