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Comment: Go check out sectools.org (Score 2) 116

by xanthos (#43282603) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Do-It-Yourself Security Auditing Tools?

Sectools.org has a comprehensive list of tools with explanations of what each one does. Look at the web tools and the vulnerability scanners and you will find something you feel comfortable using. Most of the other tools mentioned so far can be found there. Also, the Open Web Applicaiton Security project (owasp.org) has some good information on secure app development.

good luck.

Comment: Lead or Follow? Gnome chooses Follow. (Score 1) 387

by xanthos (#42787615) Attached to: Gnome Goes JavaScript

From the article: "Gnome, the graphical desktop environment for Linux, may not be as influential as it once was."
Add to it, "use of JavaScript in WinRT, Chrome Apps, and FirefoxOS apps" and you probably get a lot of the reason for the decision.

Pity they didn't use the Hackfest to design something innovative to energize their base and make working with Gnome cutting edge. Instead it appears that they settling into comfortable middle age.

Comment: Re:Why perl? Because .... (Score 2) 263

by xanthos (#42330367) Attached to: Perl Turns 25

There is more than one way to do it.

Perl can pretty much integrate anything with anything. Hardware or Software.

It is the Duct tape of the interwebs.

It is a swiss army chainsaw.

And yes,it can be nearly impossible to decipher what the code is doing, Oh, but the moment of enlightenment you have when you do figure out an obscure but elegant piece of code.

That, my friend, is "Why Perl?".

-Xanthos

Comment: Old Farts and Model M's (Score 3, Insightful) 201

by xanthos (#41855141) Attached to: The Evolution of the Computer Keyboard

When ever a keyboard article come along you get a bunch of old farts pining away about their venerable old Model M keyboards.

I know. I am an old fart and I have one. I love it but unfortunately it ruined me. I am totally unable to use a laptop keyboard.

They all suck. suck suck suck. The keys are in the wrong place, they don't feel right, and I keep hitting the effing touchpad with my thumbs and suddenly I am typing a porn url in the browser bar.

Now get off my lawn!

Comment: APU better than CPU+GPU for HPC (Score 1) 223

by xanthos (#41480051) Attached to: AMD Trinity APUs Stack Up Well To Intel's Core 3

from the 2011 Symposium on Application Accelerators in High-Performance Computing (http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2060321/)

"Depending on the benchmark, our results show that Fusion produces a 1.7 to 6.0-fold improvement in the data-transfer time, when compared to a discrete GPU. In turn, this improvement in data-transfer performance can significantly enhance application performance. For example, running a reduction benchmark on AMD Fusion with its mere 80 GPU cores improves performance by 3.5-fold over the discrete AMD Radeon HD 5870 GPU with its 1600 more powerful GPU cores."

So if your interest is in crunching lots of data, you can do it a lot more efficiently with an APU since you don't have to shuttle across the bus.

Comment: Needs some other name than Computer Science. (Score 2) 146

by xanthos (#40990295) Attached to: Khan Academy Launches Computer Science Curriculum

I disagree with Kahn calling these Computer Science courses, but I have to admit that I am at a loss as to what to call them. Computer Fundamentals perhaps?

It is a disservice to those looking at these to think that Computer Science is making an iPhone app or game. It really trivializes how powerful computers are and the concepts they embody.

Comment: Carry an X-37? (Score 3, Insightful) 102

by xanthos (#40641361) Attached to: Virgin Galactic Announces New Satellite Launch Vehicle

Dug around in Wikipedia a little and found that White Knight 2 has a carrying capacity of 35,000 lbs (~16k kilos). The X-37B is listed at 11,000 (5k) fully loaded, the crewcab version X-37C should be under 25,000 and even the old pre-composite X-15 was 34,000(15.4k). Now the X-15 was far shy of orbital velocity, but rocket design has advanced some in the 40+ years since the end of the program and building a standby vehicle for quick launch to orbit might be getting feasible.

I, like many, have mourned the decline of manned space exploration. However, I see the work of Virgin Galactec and SpaceX as reasons to hope that not all is dead.

Maybe the parts are coming together.

-Xanthos

Comment: Yet Another Symptom of a Flawed Business Model (Score 3, Informative) 886

by xanthos (#40158317) Attached to: IT Positions Some of the Toughest Jobs To Fill In US

American businesses cannot find the people they need because they have stopped looking. As has been mentioned here before, many HR departments are now dependant on robo analysis of electronicly submitted resumes to do their inital vetting. If you don't meet the robo criteria you don't get past square one. This results in many qualified candidates being passed over and under qualified candidates getting through because they know how to game the system.

I have personally seen several examples of both. In one instance the guy filled out an online resume form (you were not allowed to just upload your pdf), hit enter, and within a minute got a reply email saying "Thank you for applying, but after careful consideration we have determined that you are not qualified for the position." Careful consideration? Hardly. Needless to say his opinion of this particular company is less than what it was before he applied.

In another example, a guy who could not get past HR finally had a friend hand deliver his resume to the manager who was hiring. HR was furious for being bypassed, but the guy got the job.

Finally, a good friend of mine was pulling her hair out trying to find a good sqlserver admin. It seems that the only candidates that HR passed on to her happened to come from the same contracting company, with almost identical resumes, and all admitted in the interviews that they were actually programmers, but the consulting company thought they could do the job and had "tweaked" the resumes to make them look competent.

Companies that take shortcuts in the hiring process will pay for it in the end. A good HR department has to be willing to put in the effort to find good candidates.

Cheap, fast or good. Pick two.

-Xanthos

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