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Comment Re:how 'bout some gun control... (Score 4, Insightful) 1706

I everybody in the theater was armed, maybe the shooter would have survived, but in my own personal opinion, the attack would have not happened. Shotting sitting ducks is a business, engage in a shooting whith 200 hundreds armed man on your own, it's a whole different history. Gun control only benefits wrongdoers, and only harm law abiding citizen. Legal drugs will end the black market and drug mafia, they will pay taxes instead, USA proved that with the alcohol in the '29. All "good" citizen crying for gun control, drug control, and so on, are in my own personal opinion, just being childish and trying to twart their own personal responsability on keeping Freedom. They don't want freedom, they want to be slaves, controlled and "protected" by their master... and, allas, USA citizen are getting what they want. In my own personal opinion, this episode is another chapter in the war against USA Citizen freedom, brought to you by the same company that gave you TSA and pats down. Old good USA is dead, what remains is a tumbling zombie with a lash. Full disclaimer: I'm not a USA citizen, and I don't live in USA. You were a country to imitate, now you are a pitty, man up gentleman. Even third world countries citizen have now more freedom that the average overweight and scared USA citizen who is controlled by his own cowardice.

Comment The oriental filosophy has the answers (Score 1) 1134

by sanotto (#40517187) Attached to: Has the Command Line Outstayed Its Welcome?
Some words of wisdom of ancient programmers will clarify the issue...

Master Foo Discourses on the Graphical User Interface One evening, Master Foo and Nubi attended a gathering of programmers who had met to learn from each other. One of the programmers asked Nubi to what school he and his master belonged. Upon being told they were followers of the Great Way of Unix, the programmer grew scornful. “The command-line tools of Unix are crude and backward,” he scoffed. “Modern, properly designed operating systems do everything through a graphical user interface.” Master Foo said nothing, but pointed at the moon. A nearby dog began to bark at the master's hand. “I don't understand you!” said the programmer. Master Foo remained silent, and pointed at an image of the Buddha. Then he pointed at a window. “What are you trying to tell me?” asked the programmer. Master Foo pointed at the programmer's head. Then he pointed at a rock. “Why can't you make yourself clear?” demanded the programmer. Master Foo frowned thoughtfully, tapped the programmer twice on the nose, and dropped him in a nearby trashcan. As the programmer was attempting to extricate himself from the garbage, the dog wandered over and piddled on him. At that moment, the programmer achieved enlightenment.

The point raised by master Foo is clear, text is the only way you REALLY understand what is being said, in this case, to your computer. The GUI guy could not understand what was going on. For more Master Foo wisdom, see http://catb.org/~esr/writings/unix-koans/gui-programmer.html

Government

Submission + - US physicists fight to save neutrino experiment (nature.com)

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: The future of a pioneering project to study the lightest matter particles known was thrown into jeopardy last week (http://www.nature.com/news/us-physicists-fight-to-save-neutrino-experiment-1.10305), when officials at the US Department of Energy (DOE) announced that they were reluctant to fund the Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment (http://lbne.fnal.gov/) in its current form. The experiment's leaders will meet this week at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois, to discuss ways to allay the agency's concerns.
The LBNE would use more than 30,000 tonnes of liquid argon housed 1,480 metres underground in the Homestake Mine near Lead, South Dakota, to detect a beam of neutrinos or antineutrinos sent from Fermilab, 1,300 kilometres away. The experiment would measure the rates at which neutrinos and antineutrinos oscillate between their three different types, or flavours, and so test a hypothesized asymmetry between matter and antimatter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP_violation#CP_violation_and_the_matter.E2.80.93antimatter_imbalance). Detecting asymmetry could explain why there is so much more matter than antimatter in our Universe.
At a cost of between US$1.2 billion and $1.5 billion, the LBNE was expected to come online in 2022–24, and to have a construction budget peaking at roughly $200 million per year. But that is now considered too great a slice of the DOE’s annual high-energy physics budget, which was cut by $6 million to $757 million in US President Barack Obama’s 2013 budget request (http://politics.slashdot.org/story/12/02/13/1931223/obama-budget-asks-for-1-boost-in-research).
Science

Submission + - James Cameron's Solo Dive to Deepest Spot on Earth (pics) (fellowgeek.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: ames Cameron, director of epic films like Avatar, Titanic, The Terminator 1 and 2 and Aliens, happens to have a bit of a love affair with the ocean. So much so that he decided to make a solo dive to plume its deepest depths.

Driving his own custom submarine called the ‘DEEPSEA CHALLENGER’, Cameron descended 35,756 feet, or 6.77 miles, to the deepest discovered spot on the bottom of the ocean, known as the ‘Challenger Deep.” His dive was part of ‘DEEPSEA CHALLENGE’ (they love their capitals in oceanography, apparently), an ocean exploration initiative by National Geographic, Rolex and Cameron. His dive makes him the first person to ever make the dive solo and only the second to ever make a manned dive.
Software

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: How to Get Better Developers out of less-than Average Ones (fluther.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I've asked this before in other places, and I'm now turning to you guys to see what sort of advice you can offer.
Some background: I'm a project manager at an offshore company. I don't get to choose the people I work with (can't hire or fire people). We are using all sorts of methodologies (agile, scrum, waterfall, RUP, you-name-it). We are holding both weekly and milestone meetings in which we are trying to learn what went wrong/right. So,this is not a question of motivation (my employer is paying them more than fair, they get full employment benefits, etc ), nor one of simply teaching them new skills. This is more about addressing a problem within the mind-set of the average developer.
I've worked with a lot of people both good and bad during the years. There were a few of them exceptional, but most of them were less-than average. Most of the times I'm usually confronted with guys that are getting stuck way to often, guys that are skipping solutions as they are not careful enough to see past their own coding mistakes and guys that are simply drifting away from the tasks to wherever their day-dream takes them.
I was wondering if (and how) can they be determined to properly pay attention to their work, to be able to determine solutions and to unstuck themselves without me having to check on their work 24/7.
I would really love to worry myself that I'm intervening in their work too much, that I'm always giving them the solution without letting them think. But at this point, I can't see this happening

Some ways I've been suggested to try so far are:
1. Make them read “Addison Wesley – Pragmatic Programmer”
  and "Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship" – hold periodic meetings for each chapter and discuss what they have learned so far.
2. Hold some sort of "Quick&Great Code of the Week competition", using a new/unknown language for implementation – given that this would be a new language for everyone, this should give me/us an idea over who is missing what.
3. Get the rest of the management team to analyze "a great TED talk about motivation by Dan Pink" and see if we find anything that works for further motivating them.

So, I'm now wondering: is there anything else? would this approach work?

Comment Stop considering the wrong issus please (Score 5, Interesting) 366

by sanotto (#39356151) Attached to: Interview With Suren Ter From 'You Have Downloaded'

Yeah yeah, 'when I steal your DVD, you have no DVD, but when I copy a file, you still have a file'

The real issue here is not that copying is stealing or otherwise a lost sale, the real deal is that the world has changed and the business model for media creation and distribution is DEAD. FULL STOP. No ammount of lobbying, no matter how many laws Hollywood can get of their payed puppets will change that. It's like the railroad owners of 19th century were sen't on destroying that new "invention" called automoviles and trucks that let anybody achieve transportation without giving them their share. Let's face it, I can go to the west coast without needing you, train company. Let's face it, I can get content without needing you, big media company. BUT!!!!! Big media produces the media I want, and the actors, directors producers etc. etc. needs their food too, so... What is needed is a new way to monetize content CREATION, note the word creation, not DISTRIBUTION. Nowadays distribution is FREE, as the roads are "FREE"... you owned the railroads, but you don't own the roads anymore, so for everybody's sake, stop trying to charge me for using the road and go invent some new way to get my money (Sell gas, sell insurance for my car, and so on). Because, like it or not, being fair or not, being legal or not, charging for distributing media is NO LONGER POSIBLE, and trying to "regulate" this is like trying to pass a law that abolishes gravity... it will not work.

Comment Re:Freeze and play dead? (Score 1) 803

by sanotto (#28246419) Attached to: How Do You Greet an Extraterrestrial?
We allready got all we need to keep an alien invasion out of question... atomic bombs... may be these weapons could not destroy them, but can and will destroy the entire earth, making it an inhospitable radiactive rock, not different to mars by example...that will preclude any posibility of colonization... on a side note: Humans are crazy enough to blow out their own planet to avoid been conquered... and in any case... if the alien try to exterminate us, and they are so advanced we can not stop them... well... see you in hell bastards...

Comment Re:I must not use it? (Score 1) 715

by sanotto (#27737049) Attached to: RMS Says "Software As a Service" Is Non-free
"If there are privacy issues, we should look for ways to avoid them, by using cryptography or legistlation where necessary." Yeah!!! legislation will protect you ... except from the government and your lawyer... I'll rather read a thousand tutorials to set up my own server than facing a "simple" trial to protect my rights... If you don't agree... please shut down your car alarm system and hope that the law will protect you from being stolen ...

Comment Re:Wow (Score 1) 508

by sanotto (#27574333) Attached to: He's a Mac, He's a PC, But We're Linux!
You've said you just need to do your work... and later you've said You need somebody to blame!!! And you've said that linux will never be a product because you do't have somebody to blame... It seems to me that you are the kind of people who just need somebody to blame when thing go wrong, doing the work is just incidental to you. You are a whining teenager ... Please... get out of the boat ... Real men wanted!!!

Comment First day in job and a wreck comming (Score 1) 1127

by sanotto (#27562347) Attached to: Worst Working Conditions You Had To Write Code In?
Just finished 3 weeks of RPG III training I've got a Job in a Truck Factory... I was assigned to maintain the Imports (Foreign trade) System... The first day, after being introduced to the rest of the staff, Two Manager (Foreign trades manager and Factory manager) called me because the system wasn't working, they sitted behind me and did'nt leave until the system produced the desired customs documents necessary to retrieve some engines from the customs deposit... It was 2 am when the printer printed the last page... That was my first day ... I was 19... Everybody I asked for help replied me "It's your problem boy..." I still wonder why the hell I didn't change career back then.

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