Tim2 - Slashdot User

Comment Too bad google doesn't have "blind auditions" (Score 4, Insightful) 546

by Tim2 on Monday August 07, 2017 @07:15PM (#54959489) Attached to: Google Grapples With Fallout After Employee Slams Diversity Efforts

Prior to 1970 most symphony orchestra musicians were men. Then around 1970 blind auditions (when you don't know who is playing or their gender) started to become common, and are now nearly universal. As a result, symphony musicians today are nearly evenly split between genders. See: http://gap.hks.harvard.edu/orc...

I have interviewed prospective software developers in my career, and know that it was very difficult, if not impossible, to counteract my own prejudices even when I wanted to be fair. To be a woman interviewed for a job by someone with the views of the Google employee who believed women are genetically inferior for engineering would be devastating. Even someone with more even handed views undoubtedly harbors some bias.

I don't know if "blind interviews" for engineers will ever be practical, so maybe we are stuck with perpetuating our prejudices on hiring decisions indefinitely.

Comment Extreme Deep zooming is very old news (Score 1) 157

by Tim2 on Monday April 20, 2015 @12:20PM (#49511551) Attached to: Mandelbrot Zooms Now Surpass the Scale of the Observable Universe

I'm coming in on this very late, but just wanted to comment that the headline that "Mandelbrot Zooms Now Surpass the Scale of the Observable Universe" is pretty misleading. The DOS-based program Fractint (which you can still run under DOSBox) achieved zooms of 10^1600 over twenty years ago. See http://www.nahee.com/spanky/ww...

That said, the animation linked with this post is remarkable and a worthy effort, and 10^227 is nothing to sneeze at.

Sharks Seen Swimming Down Australian Streets 210

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday January 19, 2011 @03:03AM from the we're-going-to-need-a-bigger-sidewalk dept.

As if the flood waters weren't bad enough for the people of Queensland, it now appears that there are sharks swimming in the streets. Two bull sharks were spotted swimming past a McDonald’s in the city of Goodna, Butcher Steve Bateman saw another making its way past his shop on Williams street. Ipswich councillor for the Goodna region Paul Tully said: "It would have swam several kilometres in from the river, across Evan Marginson Park and the motorway. It’s definitely a first for Goodna, to have a shark in the main street."

IT Worker's Revenge Lands Her In Jail 347

Posted by samzenpus on Friday December 10, 2010 @02:19PM from the bad-idea dept.

aesoteric writes "A 30-year-old IT worker at a Florida-based health centre was this week sentenced to 19 months in a US federal prison for hacking, and then locking, her former employer's IT systems. Four days after being fired from the Suncoast Community Health Centers' for insubordination, Patricia Marie Fowler exacter her revenge by hacking the centre's systems, deleting files, changing passwords, removing access to infrastructure systems, and tampering with pay and accrued leave rates of staff."

Comment Re:Experience is a Gift... (Score 1) 602

by Tim2 on Monday August 30, 2010 @03:01PM (#33418198) Attached to: Tech's Dark Secret, It's All About Age

Anyone in the field who hasn't figured this out yet needs to be let go.

What a laugh! Another slashdot story about how a development career is over when you are 50 (or 40, or 30, or 22)! I have no doubt ageism is a reality in our field, but ...

I am about to turn 64, have intentionally avoided management my entire career (although I have had plenty technical lead assignments), and have learned an entirely new language and development environment in the last two years.

The secret is simple. I have bothered to learn about the technical domain of my industry, and am not just a programmer. This makes me valuable to my employer, a NASA contractor.

Comment Re:He IS Innocent! (Score 2, Interesting) 1017

by Tim2 on Saturday August 21, 2010 @01:50PM (#33326068) Attached to: Julian Assange Faces Rape Investigation In Sweden — Updated

Someone just leaked the entire plot on Wikileaks.

You joke, but if this were true, it would be poetic justice. If the (likely bogus) rape allegations were posted, this would just be what Assange does to others. Why are most Slashdotters so outraged by the rape allegations, but not outraged by what Wikileaks posts that can literally destroy lives?

Ray Kurzweil Responds To PZ Myers 238

Posted by Soulskill on Friday August 20, 2010 @11:27AM from the dem's-fightin'-woids dept.

On Tuesday we discussed a scathing critique of Ray Kurzweil's understanding of the brain written by PZ Myers. Reader Amara notes that Kurzweil has now responded on his blog. Quoting: "Myers, who apparently based his second-hand comments on erroneous press reports (he wasn't at my talk), [claims] that my thesis is that we will reverse-engineer the brain from the genome. This is not at all what I said in my presentation to the Singularity Summit. I explicitly said that our quest to understand the principles of operation of the brain is based on many types of studies — from detailed molecular studies of individual neurons, to scans of neural connection patterns, to studies of the function of neural clusters, and many other approaches. I did not present studying the genome as even part of the strategy for reverse-engineering the brain."

Girl Quits On Dry Erase Board a Hoax 147

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday August 11, 2010 @08:30AM from the take-this-job-and-shove-it dept.

suraj.sun writes "It's the same old story: young woman quits, uses dry erase board and series of pictures to let entire office know the boss is a sexist pig, exposes his love of playing FarmVille during work hours." Story seem too good to be true? It probably is, at least according to writer Peter Kafka. Even so, Jay Leno and Good Morning America have already reached out to "Jenny."

Scientists Say Toads Can Predict Earthquakes 66

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday April 01, 2010 @04:38AM from the does-the-toad-think-it's-safe? dept.

reillymj writes "Researchers claim toads sensed a severe earthquake last year five days before it hit. Last spring's L'Aquila earthquake devastated the medieval city of the same name in Italy. Five days earlier, a group of biologists noticed some toads behaving strangely in a pond nearby that would later be the quake's epicenter."

New Crossover Release With Improved Compatibility 104

Posted by kdawson on Friday March 05, 2010 @11:44AM from the lin-win dept.

solanum writes "On March 2nd Crossover 9.0 was released. CrossOver 9 features a new user interface that focuses on making installation of Windows software quicker and easier than previous versions. Another new feature is CrossOver's ability to download installation 'recipes' directly from CodeWeavers online Compatibility Database. 'If another CrossOver user has figured out how to use CrossOver to install a Windows application, they can upload that installation recipe to our database,' said Jeremy White, CodeWeavers chief executive officer. 'As we go forward, and build this online storehouse, CrossOver will begin to automatically install that same application for other users. This enables us to move closer to a world where CrossOver will begin to run the majority of Windows apps, and not just an officially supported subset. In other words, our diabolical plot for world domination is going exactly as planned,' he added. Early reviews and comments are positive, and my own experience is that many more Windows applications work in this new version than previously."

Ubuntu Desktop In the Cloud 83

Posted by timothy on Wednesday March 03, 2010 @03:41PM from the free-floating dept.

jimjimovich writes "One new feature in Ubuntu 10.04 that caught my attention is the Desktop in the Cloud project. Ubuntu already has great EC2 support, and it's getting even better. Now you can launch Ubuntu Desktop instances on EC2 and connect to them with an NX client."

"Limited Edition" SSD Has Fastest Storage Speed 122

Posted by timothy on Friday February 19, 2010 @09:20PM from the genuine-leather-bits dept.

Vigile writes "The idea of having a 'Limited Edition' solid state drive might seem counter-intuitive, but regardless of the naming, the new OCZ Vertex LE is based on the new Sandforce SSD controller that promises significant increases in performance, along with improved ability to detect and correct errors in the data stored in flash. While the initial Sandforce drive was called the 'Vertex 2 Pro' and included a super-capacitor for data integrity, the Vertex LE drops that feature to improve cost efficiency. In PC Perspectives's performance tests, the drive was able to best the Intel X25-M line in file creation and copying duties, had minimal fragmentation or slow-down effects, and was very competitive in IOs per second as well. It seems that current SSD manufacturers are all targeting Intel and the new Sandforce controller is likely the first to be up to the challenge."

Eight PHP IDEs Compared 206

Posted by timothy on Wednesday February 03, 2010 @11:32AM from the colonic-extraction dept.

snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Rick Grehen provides an in-depth comparative review of eight PHP IDEs: ActiveState's Komodo IDE, CodeLobster PHP Edition, Eclipse PHP Development Tools (PDT), MPSoftware's phpDesigner, NetBeans IDE for PHP, NuSphere's PhpED, WaterProof's PHPEdit, and Zend Studio. 'All of these PHP toolkits offer strong support for the other languages and environments (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SQL database) that a PHP developer encounters. The key differences we discovered were in the tools they provide (HTML inspector, SQL management system) for various tasks, the quality of their documentation, and general ease-of-use,' Grehen writes.'"

NASA Tests All-Composite Prototype Crew Module 67

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday January 26, 2010 @12:25PM from the just-don't-try-to-take-a-slap-shot-with-it dept.

coondoggie writes "With an eye toward building safer, lighter and tougher spacecraft, NASA said today its prototype space crew module made up of composite materials handled tests simulating structural stresses of launch and atmospheric reentry. The idea behind NASA's Composite Crew Module project is to test new structural materials for possible future NASA spacecraft. According to NASA, composite materials are being looked at because they are stiff and lightweight and can be formed into complex shapes that may be more structurally efficient. In space travel, where every additional pound of weight drives costs higher, any weight savings provides increased payload capacity and potentially reduces mission expense."

Drupal's Dries Buytaert On Drupal 7 55

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday January 19, 2010 @12:57PM from the on-the-horizon dept.

itwbennett writes "The Drupal community has been working on Drupal 7 for two years, and there are 'hundreds of changes' to show for it, says Drupal creator Dries Buytaert in an interview with ITworld's Esther Schindler on the occasion of Drupal 7 going into Alpha test this week. Most notable for end users are 'some massive usability improvements,' says Buytaert, while site builders will see the greatest changes in the Drupal Content Construction Kit (CCK), which has been moved into the Drupal core. But one thing that hasn't changed is the not-so-easy upgrade path. 'The upgrade path for a Drupal site has never been really easy, to be honest,' Buytaert says. 'We do break backwards compatibility. It's a little bit painful because it requires all of the contributed modules — and there's 4,000-5,000 of them — to make changes.' But Buytaert doesn't think that's all bad. 'Innovation is key. Backwards compatibility limits innovation,' Buytaert contends. 'The rule we have is: We'll break the API if it makes a better API, and if it allows good innovation and progress to be made. Also: The second rule is that we'll never break people's data. We'll always provide an upgrade path for the data.'"

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