shoemael - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Engineering is not a sub domain of math (Score 1) 923

by shoemael on Tuesday February 03, 2009 @12:08PM (#26710855) Attached to: Iran Has Put a Satellite Into Orbit

Ask a Mathematician and an Engineer this question: If you stand on one side of a room and each minute you close half the distance to the opposing wall, will you ever get there? Answers: Mathematician: No. Engineer: Close enough for all practical purposes.

Comment Re:$400 a month? (Score 1) 591

by shoemael on Wednesday January 14, 2009 @02:02PM (#26452217) Attached to: Switching To Solar Power — Six Months Later

The developer defines the covenents and restrictions or allocates that duty to a home owners association when the land lot is sub-divided (thus the term subdivision). The restrictions are permanently attached to the deed to the property and are disclosed to you before you buy the property. You didn't live there first.

Alan Cox Leaves Red Hat 163

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday December 30, 2008 @12:11PM from the bet-wherever-he's-going-he'll-have-electricity-and-heat dept.

ruphus13 writes "Alan Cox — one of the lead Linux kernel developers at Red Hat — is leaving the company after 10 years and is heading to Intel, where he can focus on more low-level development tasks. Some are speculating whether this is indicative of a shift to a more 'application-centric' vision at Red Hat. From the article: 'Red Hat is integrating more application related, user- and enterprise-centric tools into its well-established "low-level," "core" development and support tools. It'd be more worrisome if Red Hat neglected to strike out in this direction. Cox was with Red Hat for ten years, and regardless of any suspected change of course within the company, that's a fair amount of time.'"

The Wackiest Technology Tales of 2008 97

Posted by timothy on Sunday December 14, 2008 @11:11PM from the hindsight-is-much-better-than-20/20 dept.

coondoggie writes "Despite the daily drumbeat of new and improved hardware or software, the tech industry isn't all bits and bytes. Some interesting things happen along the way too. Like floating data centers, space geekonauts, shape shifting robots and weird bedfellows (like Microsoft and Jerry Seinfeld). What we include here is an example of what we thought were the best, slightly off-center stories of 2008."

Best Paradigm For a First Programming Course? 592

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday December 09, 2008 @11:57PM from the buddy-can-you-paradigm dept.

Keyper7 writes "The first programming course I had during my computer science schooling, aptly named 'Introduction to Programming,' was given in C because its emphasis was on imperative programming. A little before I graduated, though, it was decided that the focus would change to object-oriented programming with Java. (I must emphasize that the change was not made because of any hype about Java or to dumb down the course; back then and still, it's presented by good Java programmers who try to teach good practices and do not encourage excessive reliance on libraries.) But the practices taught are not paradigm-independent, and this sparked a discussion that continues to this day: which paradigm is most appropriate to introduce programming? Besides imperative and object-oriented, I know teachers who firmly believe that functional programming is the best choice. I'm interested in language-independent opinions that Slashdotters might have on this matter. Which paradigm is good to introduce programming while keeping a freshman's mind free enough for him/her to learn other paradigms afterwards?"

Bjarne Stroustrup On Educating Software Developers 538

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday December 09, 2008 @06:46PM from the way-it-spozed-to-be dept.

jammag writes "Bjarne Stroustrup, creator of C++ and a professor at Texas A&M, weighs in on the problems in today's CS programs. In particular, Java (there's too much of it), the quality of graduates (companies aren't happy), and the need to balance the theoretical and the practical (long overdue). Not pulling punches, Stroustrup even talks about high schools — 'High schools could teach students to work hard at something (just about anything), to search out information as needed, and learn to express their ideas in writing and orally.' He finishes by giving advice to working developers: 'Serious programming is a team sport, brush up on your social skills. The sloppy fat geek computer genius semi-buried in a pile of pizza boxes and cola cans is a mythical creature, best buried deep, never to be seen again.'" Read on for more choice quotes from the quotable professor.

Boycott Novell Protesters Manhandled In India 360

Posted by kdawson on Sunday November 16, 2008 @11:14PM from the opposite-of-freedom dept.

James Mathew writes "This is an interesting story from Kerala, India, where the ruling Communist Party organized a national conference in its efforts to hijack the Free Software Movement, which has enviable roots in the state. They got Novell to sponsor it. On the second day of the conference, a few free software activists who displayed posters against Novell were manhandled by the organizers and police — typical of what is expected from them. Most of the snaps taken during the scuffle were forcefully deleted by the organizers, after seizing the protesters' mobile phones. Still they couldn't delete all. Here is another blow-by-blow account."

Comment Re:Let me guess... (Score 1) 544

by shoemael on Friday June 29, 2007 @01:00PM (#19690689) Attached to: Ban On Price Floors Abandoned, Internet Prices May Rise

Let's get this straight. There's no such thing as *free* health care. Period. Not in the US, Europe nor anywhere else.

What you want is the government to take my money to pay for your problems. Screw you. If you spent too much of your money on double-cheeseburgers and can't afford the insurance or medical treatment, live (or die) with the consequences or your own decisions.

Open Source Network Management Beats IBM and HP 100

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday March 05, 2007 @03:29PM from the slow-and-steady-going-for-the-win dept.

mjhuot writes "Last week SearchNetworking.com announced their Product Leadership Awards for 2007. It was a pleasant surprise to see an open source project, OpenNMS, win the Gold in their Network and IT Management Platforms category. OpenNMS beat out the established players of Hewlett-Packard's OpenView and IBM's Tivoli. This was based on a user survey of all IT solutions, not just open source; it demonstrates that open source software is indeed making inroads into the enterprise."

Dell Laptop Burns House Down 405

Posted by kdawson on Sunday February 11, 2007 @12:48AM from the dude dept.

Nuclear Elephant writes "The Consumerist is running a story about a house burned down by a Dell laptop. 'My 130-year-old former farm house was engulfed in flames, with thick dark smoke pouring out of the windows and roof... Hours later, after investigation the fire marshal investigator took me aside asked me if I had a laptop computer. Yes — I told him I had a Dell Inspiron 1200.' It was determined that the laptop, battery, or cord malfunctioned after its owner left for work, leaving the fire to spread through the entire house. All attempts to contact Dell have failed. 'I have tried to call Dell to at least notify them of my problems, but each time I have called I get transferred into an endless loop of "Joe" or "Alan" all speaking a delectable version of English I presume emanates from Bangalore. I have been outright hung up on each time I get someone who speaks a reasonable version of English, or sounds like they might be in charge of something. Promises of call backs have gone, of course, unreturned.'"

Porn Industry May Not Decide Format War 185

Posted by Zonk on Friday February 09, 2007 @09:43AM from the assumptions-about-media dept.

nixkuroi writes "MSNBC Reports that the porn industry may be overstating their numbers and, as a result, may not be the decider of the next winning movie format. Even more interesting: Vivid Entertainment says that despite Sony's refusal to license Blu-ray to the adult industry, they've found a way to replicate the technology and will release Debbie Does Dallas on both formats. Film writer Jimmy Digiorgio states, in an email with MSNBC: 'In the past, porn embraced new technologies that were just gaining a foothold. DVDs are not new, and I don't think consumers perceive Blu-Ray and HD-DVD as new technologies. Instead, they see them as an evolution of an existing technology.... With Blu-ray [versus] HD-DVD, porn will go where the masses go.'"

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