amplesand - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Advanced is good enough (Score 1) 220

by amplesand on Monday April 06, 2015 @10:40AM (#49414105) Attached to: How would you rate your programming skills?

You propose:

Look upon me with horror and beware, kids: Don't wait for your job description to change before you start learning new technology. Dive into it NOW, so you'll be ready when your current skill set is obsolete.

without telling us what we should learn. I guess kids today have the same problem prediciting the future as you have had. In other words, there are too many crossroads for any one track to be the safe bet, as was always the case. So, becoming obsolete is the future of being oh-so-l33t

Comment Imagine - Lennon (Score 0) 64

by amplesand on Monday March 30, 2015 @12:03PM (#49371025) Attached to: India Mandates Use of Open Source Software In Government

Imagine:

1. US/Russia/China

2. France/UK/Japan

3. Canada/Norway/Austria

4. Ecuador/Israel/Palestine/

5. Somalia/Bolivia/Vatican

Transparency?! Probably no. None of these would dare that at full speed ahead. Not even Norway.

Besides, many more countries have too many politically influential people which have "secret" money hidden, where an open source transparency may ultimately remove too many hidden money sources.

Here is an example researched by the New York Times, "Billions in Hidden Riches for Family of Chinese Leader".

Chinese leaders, however, deny (two years later) to be that rich, acording to an article, "China's former PM denies role in family's 'hidden riches'", in The Telegraph.

The Jeb B tribal/clan politicos? US is getting more inbred than Europe ever was at the political top :D

Tough fighting for open source at all levels? Yes. Just a guess.

Comment My first pocket calculator (Score 1) 23

by amplesand on Thursday March 26, 2015 @02:40AM (#49342505) Attached to: The 2015 Vintage Computer Festival East is April 17-19 (Video)

When I was a twelve (or so) I was given my first pocket calculator, the entry level Citizen 800D (version 1 or 2).

http://ernst.mulder.com/calcul...

It is at my parents home and my father still uses it for everyday calculations, as I've upgraded many time since then. :)

I'm not sure exactly which version it is, version 1 or 2. They used different processors for each version.

version 1 http://mycalcdb.free.fr/main.p... unlisted processor
version 2 http://mycalcdb.free.fr/main.p... NEC uPD940C (1975)

A friend later had the model 801D which had memory buttons. Awe.

Didn't touch a computer until four years later.

Memories :)

Comment When available as 16nm, yes (Score 1) 110

by amplesand on Tuesday March 17, 2015 @08:46PM (#49280075) Attached to: NVIDIA's GeForce GTX TITAN X Becomes First 12GB Consumer Graphics Card

Nvidia GM204 Maxwell GPUs May Jump From 28nm to 16nm, Skip 20nm http://www.eteknix.com/nvidia-... At 601 mm2 the Titan X will never be cheap because of the low yield. At 16nm this would be something.

Comment What sticks? (Score -1, Troll) 95

by amplesand on Sunday March 15, 2015 @01:57PM (#49262355) Attached to: BlackBerry's Latest Experiment: a $2,300 'Secure' Tablet

" BlackBerry has been throwing everything they can at the wall to see what sticks". Children round the world, put camel shit on the walls They're making carpets on treadmills, or garbage sorting And it's no game.

Comment infrared telescopic contact lenses, now, please (Score 2) 21

by amplesand on Monday February 16, 2015 @04:35PM (#49068925) Attached to: Telescopic Contact Lenses Unveiled

I am one of those who never picked up any of those 700 000 infrared Sony camcorders in 1998. Could we, please, have infrared telescopic contact lenses now!

Comment Historical time series for OECD (Score 0) 495

by amplesand on Thursday January 29, 2015 @04:31PM (#48934253) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: When and How Did Europe Leapfrog the US For Internet Access?

An exerpt from www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/oecdbroadbandportal.htm

Country 2003-Q4 2008-Q4 2013-Q4
Australia 3,49 24,56 25,98
Austria 7,62 21,26 26,15
Belgium 11,70 27,67 34,39
Canada 15,06 28,23 33,47
Chile .. 8,49 12,94
Czech Republic 0,48 16,97 17,38
Denmark 13,10 36,27 40,01
Estonia .. 20,97 25,49
Finland 9,48 27,89 30,82
France 5,89 27,64 37,65
Germany 5,59 27,44 34,84
Greece 0,10 13,41 26,23
Hungary 1,99 17,11 23,07
Iceland 14,31 32,47 35,77
Ireland 0,83 19,94 24,43
Israel .. 22,70 25,12
Italy 4,17 18,86 22,27
Japan 10,90 23,51 28,06
Korea 26,16 31,61 37,47
Luxembourg 3,44 29,39 32,52
Mexico 0,41 7,06 11,43
Netherlands 11,79 35,61 40,44
New Zealand 2,57 21,37 30,20
Norway 8,18 33,71 37,04
Poland 0,78 10,48 15,64
Portugal 4,81 15,94 24,12
Slovak Republic 0,35 11,45 15,63
Slovenia .. 20,77 25,12
Spain 5,25 20,08 26,31
Sweden 11,15 31,51 32,43
Switzerland (2) 10,55 32,73 44,86
Turkey 0,29 8,07 11,19
United Kingdom 5,37 28,14 35,20
United States (2) 9,59 25,48 29,79
OECD 7,03 21,95 26,97

It all depends on which part of Europe one thinks of.

Submission + - Fish Found Living Half A Mile Under Antarctic Ice

Submitted by BarbaraHudson on Sunday January 25, 2015 @11:42AM

BarbaraHudson writes: Researchers were startled to find fish, crustaceans and jellyfish investigating a submersible camera after drilling through nearly 2,500 feet (740 meters) of Antarctic ice.

The swimmers are in one of the world's most extreme ecosystems, hidden beneath the Ross Ice Shelf, roughly 530 miles (850 kilometers) from the open ocean. "This is the closest we can get to something like Europa," said Slawek Tulaczyk, a glaciologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz and a chief scientist on the drilling project.

More pictures here.

Submission + - Microsoft are about to buy Revolution analytics (microsoft.com)

Submitted by amplesand on Sunday January 25, 2015 @05:02AM

amplesand writes: R-bloggers reports that Microsoft are about to buy Revolution analytics. From The Official Microsoft Blog: "I’m very pleased to announce that Microsoft has reached an agreement to acquire Revolution Analytics. Revolution Analytics is the leading commercial provider of software and services for R, the world’s most widely used programming language for statistical computing and predictive analytics. We are making this acquisition to help more companies use the power of R and data science to unlock big data insights with advanced analytics." This time they have indeed embraced a strategic piece of the computing community. What will the future be for the language R, and, code which typically is licensed under the GPL and available at www.r-project.org. R is also an official part of the Free Software Foundation's GNU project?

Submission + - Brought to You by the Letter R: Microsoft Acquiring Revolution Analytics

Submitted by theodp on Sunday January 25, 2015 @04:03AM

theodp writes: Maybe Bill Gates' Summer Reading this year will include The Art of R Programming. Pushing further into Big Data, Microsoft on Friday announced it's buying Revolution Analytics, the top commercial provider of software and services for the open-source R programming language for statistical computing and predictive analytics. "By leveraging Revolution Analytics technology and services," blogged Microsoft's Joseph Sirosh, "we will empower enterprises, R developers and data scientists to more easily and cost effectively build applications and analytics solutions at scale." Revolution Analytics' David Smith added, "Now, Microsoft might seem like a strange bedfellow for an open-source company [RedHat:Linux as Revolution Analytics:R], but the company continues to make great strides in the open-source arena recently." Now that it has Microsoft's blessing, is it finally time for AP Statistics to switch its computational vehicle to R?

Submission + - King Tut's Mask Damaged; Beard Snapped Off During Cleaning

Submitted by Press2ToContinue on Sunday January 25, 2015 @03:01AM

Press2ToContinue writes: One of the most priceless treasures in archaeology, the gold funerary mask of King Tutankhamun, was damaged during a cleaning attempt at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Efforts to repair the problem were also botched, according to reports.

The mask's beard snapped off during an attempt to clean the mask in October. Museum staff stuck it back on using epoxy, which leaked onto the face of the mask and dried. Then, the mask was scratched when the workers scraped off the epoxy, according to Al Araby Al Jadeed, a London-based Arabic news site.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot, Semantics: Is it "in the cloud" or "on the cloud"? 1

Submitted by Un Bsd on Sunday January 25, 2015 @01:45AM

Un Bsd writes: Language is technical. In common vernacular, we burn onto eprom. We ftp into, and, upload onto, servers. We put milk in glasses, and, put glasses on tables. So, thinking of data as a substance or thing we are interested in, and, the storage medium as a container or platform for holding the data, if the data was equivalent to the milk, what is cloud storage equivalent to? A glass or a table?
Why do people say they are putting data in the cloud? Is this a corruption of language or has there been some paradigm shift? I can't imagine that 'in' and 'on' the cloud would be used ambiguously without any technical differentiation.
Is it better to say that you are storing data in the cloud, or, to say that you are storing data on the cloud. Which form is more consistent with the way we use 'in' and 'on' respect to electronic data and devices?

Submission + - Is Pascal an Underrated Programming Language? 6

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 25, 2015 @01:26AM

An anonymous reader writes: In the recent Slashdot discussion on the D programming language, I was surprised to see criticisms of Pascal that were based on old information and outdated implementations. While I’m sure that, for example, Brian Kernighan’s criticisms of Pascal were valid in 1981, things have moved on since then. Current Object Pascal largely addresses Kernighan’s critique and also includes language features such as anonymous methods, reflection and attributes, class helpers, generics and more (see also Marco Cantu’s recent Object Pascal presentation). Cross-platform development is fairly straightforward with Pascal. Delphi targets Windows, OS X, iOS and Android. Free Pascal targets many operating systems and architectures and Lazarus provides a Delphi-like IDE for Free Pascal. So what do you think? Is Pascal underrated?

Submission + - iPhone seeks wi-fi connection when "off" 5

Submitted by rbarrphd on Saturday January 24, 2015 @10:44PM

rbarrphd writes: Recently, my university email account became locked every few hours due to repeated incorrect network login attempts. The culprit was my iPhone 5 trying to connect to the school’s wi-fi with an old password---even though its wi-fi Setting was “Off.” Therefore, iPhones must surreptitiously and repeatedly attempt connection to nearby networks even when that function is supposedly disabled. Is this well-known? Does anyone have another explanation?

Submission + - Massive chip design savings to be realized (utwente.nl)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 24, 2015 @05:24PM

An anonymous reader writes: IT researchers working at the University of Twente have developed a programming language making the massive costs associated with designing hardware more manageable. Chip manufacturers have been using the same chip design techniques for twenty years now. The current process calls for extensive testing after each design step — a massively expensive state of affairs. The newly developed, so-called functional programming language makes it possible to prove, in advance, that a design transformation is a hundred per cent error-free.

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