LGM95223 - Slashdot User

Comment I've seen it! (Score 1) 332

by LGM95223 on Saturday August 20, 2016 @04:48PM (#52739427) Attached to: How the H-1B Visa Program Impacts America's Tech Workers

I have been working in a support tech company for 6 or 7 years which has brought me into the cubical space of many of the top tech companies in Silicon Valley. One thing I have noticed is the overwhelming majority of foreign names on the cubicles. Hardly ever a Smith or Jones and most I find totally unpronounceable. Rough estimate: 70-80 percent foreign names. No doubt H1-B visas.

Comment Re:Viva La XP! (Score 1) 641

by LGM95223 on Tuesday April 08, 2014 @04:53PM (#46698613) Attached to: Meet the Diehards Who Refuse To Move On From Windows XP

It's time for Microsoft to have a reality check: An 'operating system' is just a means to run programs/applications that do the real work on a computer. Obsoleting all that 'real work' periodically may be fine for Microsoft's bottom line, but it wins them no friends with day-to-day users who just want to get a job done. And the way they obsolete their programming languages is another whole issue. I was perfectly happy with VB6. When VB.NET came out I tried to 'convert' some simple programs to see what all the shouting was about. Nothing would automatically convert and researching the 'why' of it I find many of the fundamentals are not just missing, but totally dis-allowed. So much for getting the job done.

United States Begins Flying Stealth Bombers Over South Korea 567

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday March 28, 2013 @09:01PM from the nice-day-for-a-flight dept.

skade88 writes "The New York Times is reporting that the United States has started flying B-2 stealth bomber runs over South Korea as a show of force to North Korea. The bombers flew 6,500 miles to bomb a South Korean island with mock explosives. Earlier this month the U.S. Military ran mock B-52 bombing runs over the same South Korean island. The U.S. military says it shows that it can execute precision bombing runs at will with little notice needed. The U.S. also reaffirmed their commitment to protecting its allies in the region. The North Koreans have been making threats to turn South Korea into a sea of fire. North Korea has also made threats claiming they will nuke the United States' mainland."

Comment "High: Speed? (Score 1) 573

by LGM95223 on Thursday February 28, 2013 @03:27PM (#43037923) Attached to: Time Warner Cable: No Consumer Demand For Gigabit Internet

I once had a supervisor deny my request for a 1200 baud modem because, "Nobody can read the text faster than 300 baud". Built it and they will come.

Comment Converting WordStar files... (Score 1) 498

by LGM95223 on Monday December 27, 2010 @09:28AM (#34675432) Attached to: What's the Oldest File You Can Restore?

My oldest files are circa 1988 and were in Wordstar format. For those too young to remember Wordstar, it's native file format had the high bit set on the last letter of each word as an aid in deciding were extra spaces could be placed during print formatting. In order to use these files I had to write a small Visual BASIC program to parse the files and reset the high bits. The result is a plain text file, but still containing all of the 'dot' controls, (used for page breaks, font size, etc.). These files can be opened in a generic text editor and copy/pasted into a modern word processor for futher formatting/editing. BTW: Anybody need some ancient hard drives? The really 'big' ones I have are between 320M and 750M!

Apple Orders 10 Million Tablets? 221

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday January 04, 2010 @03:11PM from the pricepoint-better-be-right dept.

Arvisp writes "According to a blog post by former Google China president Kai-Fu Lee, Apple plans to produce nearly 10 million tablets in the still-unannounced product's first year. If Lee's blog post is to be believed, Apple plans to sell nearly twice as many tablets as it did iPhones in the product's first year."

94 New Species Described By CA Academy of Sciences 52

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday December 16, 2009 @10:37PM from the what's-in-a-name dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at the California Academy of Sciences traversed four continents and two oceans to uncover 94 new species in 2009, proving that while sometimes in this digital age the world can feel like a small place, much of it has yet to be explored. Among the 94 discoveries were 65 arthropods, 14 plants, 8 fishes, 5 sea slugs, one coral, and one fossil mammal. Why does it matter? As Dr. David Mindell, Dean of Science and Research Collections at the Academy, explained, 'Humans rely on healthy ecosystems, made up of organisms and their environments. Creating a comprehensive inventory of life on our planet is critical for understanding and managing resources. Yet a great many life-forms remain to be discovered and described.'"

Lack of Manpower May Kill VLC For Mac 398

Posted by timothy on Wednesday December 16, 2009 @05:53PM from the vlc-generally-rocks dept.

plasmacutter writes "The Video Lan dev team has recently come forward with a notice that the number of active developers for the project's MacOS X releases has dropped to zero, prompting a halt in the release schedule. There is now a disturbing possibility that support for Mac will be dropped as of 1.1.0. As the most versatile and user-friendly solution for bridging the video compatibility gap between OS X and windows, this will be a terrible loss for the Mac community. There is still hope, however, if the right volunteers come forward."

Dad Delivers Baby Using Wiki 249

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday December 15, 2009 @05:29PM from the 9cm-edited dept.

sonamchauhan writes "A Londoner helped his wife deliver their baby by Googling 'how to deliver a baby' on his mobile phone. From the article: 'Today proud Mr Smith said: "The midwife had checked Emma earlier in the day but contractions started up again at about 8pm so we called the midwife to come back. But then everything happened so quickly I realized Emma was going to give birth. I wasn't sure what I was going to do so I just looked up the instructions on the internet using my BlackBerry."'"

The Perfect Way To Slice a Pizza 282

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday December 15, 2009 @01:09PM from the equal-distribution-of-the-pie dept.

iamapizza writes "New Scientist reports on the quest of two math boffins for the perfect way to slice a pizza. It's an interesting and in-depth article; 'The problem that bothered them was this. Suppose the harried waiter cuts the pizza off-center, but with all the edge-to-edge cuts crossing at a single point, and with the same angle between adjacent cuts. The off-center cuts mean the slices will not all be the same size, so if two people take turns to take neighboring slices, will they get equal shares by the time they have gone right round the pizza — and if not, who will get more?' This is useful, of course, if you're familiar with the concept of 'sharing' a pizza."

Comment Are you kidding? (Score 1) 559

by LGM95223 on Thursday April 03, 2008 @11:34AM (#22951946) Attached to: Should IT Shops Let Users Manage Their Own PCs?

I've worked mostly in small shops, (10-35 users), and there have never been more than 2 or 3 that could be reasonably expected to maintain their own PCs. Most of those who could would not. They see such 'drudgery' as beneath their status. After all, what do we have an IT guy for?

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