drsmall17 - Slashdot User

Russia's New Official Holiday — Programmer's Day 306

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday September 12, 2009 @12:15PM from the feel-free-to-take-sunday-off dept.

Glyn Moody writes "Russia's president, Dmitry Medvedev, has decreed a new holiday for his country: Programmer's Day. Appropriately enough, it will be celebrated on the 256th day of the year: September 13th (September 12th for a leap year). Do programmers deserve their own holiday ahead of other professions? Should the rest of the world follow suit?"

Pigeon Protocol Finds a Practical Purpose 113

Posted by timothy on Saturday August 29, 2009 @03:37PM from the fly-away-little-one dept.

Selanit writes "Since David Waitzman wrote his tongue-in-cheek Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers, there have been occasional attempts to actually transmit information via pigeon. One group back in 2001 successfully sent a PING command. But now there's a practical use for pigeon-based communications: photographers working for the white-water rafting company Rocky Mountain Adventures send memory sticks full of digital photos via homing pigeon so the photos will be ready when the rafters finish up. The company has details on how the pigeons are trained and equipped. It may not be a full implementation of the Pigeon Protocol, but it works in narrow canyons far off the beaten path — and just as David Waitzman presciently predicted, they occasionally suffer packet loss due to hawks and ospreys."

Comment Your privacy (Score 1) 230

by drsmall17 on Monday February 23, 2009 @08:59AM (#26956295) Attached to: European Crackdown On Skype "Loophole"

"Who Poses the Greatest Threat To Your Privacy?" ... without a doubt, Your Government. This probably would not be a problem had Skype instituted peer to peer encryption with either openSSL or GnuPG keys.

Comment No crashes here.. (Score 1) 480

by drsmall17 on Thursday January 01, 2009 @09:43PM (#26295601) Attached to: Anyone Besides Zune Owners With New Year's Crashes?

1 system running ArchLinux and 3 machines running Ubuntu 7.04 survived the leap second :)

20:41:38 up 61 days, 5:26, 0 users, load average: 0.07, 0.08, 0.09
20:41:47 up 56 days, 17 min, 0 users, load average: 0.05, 0.03, 0.00
20:42:04 up 21 days, 11:31, 1 user, load average: 0.16, 0.37, 0.49
20:42:17 up 4 days, 6:08, 1 user, load average: 0.04, 0.06, 0.02

Comment Retarded (Score 5, Interesting) 369

by drsmall17 on Thursday January 01, 2009 @02:33PM (#26291971) Attached to: Security Checkpoints Predict What You Will Do

This is retarded. Suppose I have to go to the bathroom and look nervous like I won't make it time? I'll probably set off the scanner as a suspected terrorist.

Comment Let them stalk me... (Score 1) 395

by drsmall17 on Saturday October 25, 2008 @03:55PM (#25511407) Attached to: Packs of Robots Will Hunt Down Uncooperative Humans

I carry a baseball bat.

Bookmark Interview with Mark Shuttleworth (linux-foundation.org)

by drsmall17 on Monday February 25, 2008 @08:46PM

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