djwavelength - Slashdot User

Comment Two ways... (Score 1) 373

by djwavelength on Friday January 15, 2010 @08:18PM (#30786064) Attached to: How To Get a Job At a Mega-Corp

Method 1
Step 1: Pay the Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, Waterloo, Harvard, IIT, Beijing University,Oxford, or a similar school lots of money for a piece of paper (or get lucky and get financial aid)
Step 2: Pay the school even more money to get an "advanced degree"
Step 3: Put all kinds of keywords on your resume/CV, but highlight the school name in bold and make it a few font sizes larger then everything else

Method 2
Step 1: Build successful company
Step 2: Get acquired ...

Profit?

Comment PR/Viral marketing? (Score 5, Interesting) 315

by djwavelength on Thursday December 17, 2009 @01:58PM (#30475970) Attached to: $300 Sci-Fi YouTube Video Lands $30m Movie Deal

Am I the only one who thinks that the whole situation was setup as a viral marketing/PR stunt? Maybe I'm just naturally distrustful of Hollywood.

It is easier to sell tickets to another run of the mill Sci-Fi movie if it has a story like this behind it.

DNA Suggests Three Basic Human Groups 459

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday June 24, 2009 @07:14PM from the primary-people dept.

Death Metal writes "All of Earth's people, according to a new analysis of the genomes of 53 populations, fall into just three genetic groups. They are the products of the first and most important journey our species made — the walk out of Africa about 70,000 years ago by a small fraction of ancestral Homo sapiens."

Wine Project Frustration and Forking 470

Posted by kdawson on Monday May 25, 2009 @01:56AM from the new-bottles dept.

Elektroschock writes "Wine attempts to implement the Windows API layer on Linux. There are some limitations and an important one is the missing DIB engine, bug 421. Chris Howe comprehends the dissatisfaction of core developers with the arbitrary project governance: 'Sorry to sound like a stuck record but the Wine website still lists "write a DIB engine" as a requirement, and every time someone does, the patches disappear down a hole because they're "not right." Someone document what "would be right," or take "write a DIB engine" off the list. I'd love to have a go at documenting it myself, but I don't have the time to reverse engineer it from a few years' worth of rejected solutions.' The latest attempt of Massimo Del Fedel satisfied all requirements set previously for the long standing bug 421, and his optional engine seems to work fine by all Wine quality standards. He seems to be extraordinary stubborn and insusceptible to mobbing. Usually it is extremely frustrating for developers when the goalpost is constantly moved. When is the right time for project members to fork when their chief maintainer does not respond anymore or pursues an adverse commercial agenda?"

Google Map To Real Piracy 262

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday November 24, 2008 @05:03PM from the not-the-pretend-kind dept.

An anonymous reader noted that you can now see a Google Map of piracy. Not the pretend kind, the real kind with boats and stuff. Considering how much time we spend talking about the other kind, I think it's worth paying attention to the real problems out there.

Are MMOs Time-Release Vaporware? 193

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday November 01, 2008 @10:36PM from the going-going-gone dept.

KKnDz0r writes "Australian technology and gaming site 'Atomic' raises an interesting question about the dangers of MMOs that go bust. Are they part of a new breed of games that render themselves completely useless and without value if the parent company goes belly-up? It certainly seems that way in some cases, with Fury and now Hellgate: London both going to software heaven, leaving a player base holding relatively useless client software." While it's certainly not an issue for the large, continuously successful MMOs, we've lately seen a huge influx of companies trying to grab a slice of the MMO pie, some of which will inevitably fail. It would be great to see a dying company at least open up the server software, but how can we give them incentive to do so?

Comment Re:Why do people place such a sucker bet anyway? (Score 1) 427

by djwavelength on Tuesday September 30, 2008 @05:36PM (#25210345) Attached to: "Back Door" Cheating Scandal Rocks Online Poker

It doesn't matter how many players there are that can beat you - it isn't a game of winner-takes-all in the long run.

Good poker play is similar to good investing - you take the information you have and make decisions based on that. It is a lot of numbers - how much money do your opponents have on the table? (This is your potential reward.)

What are the odds that they have you beat? (This is your potential risk.)

What moves do you have to make to convince them that you have them beat? (This is how you make your plays.)

Good play means making these decisions in every hand you're involved in. You will find that a large number of professional poker players are former software engineers and math nerds. It helps to be good with numbers.

Exhaustive Data Compressor Comparison 305

Posted by kdawson on Sunday April 22, 2007 @10:10PM from the pick-one-smaller-or-faster dept.

crazyeyes writes "This is easily the best article I've seen comparing data compression software. The author tests 11 compressors: 7-zip, ARJ32, bzip2, gzip, SBC Archiver, Squeez, StuffIt, WinAce, WinRAR, WinRK, and WinZip. All are tested using 8 filesets: audio (WAV and MP3), documents, e-books, movies (DivX and MPEG), and pictures (PSD and JPEG). He tests them at different settings and includes the aggregated results. Spoilers: WinRK gives the best compression but operates slowest; AJR32 is fastest but compresses least."

Security Flaw Discovered in GPG 151

Posted by CowboyNeal on Thursday March 09, 2006 @10:22PM from the enemy-within dept.

WeLikeRoy writes "A serious problem in the use of GPG to verify digital signatures has been discovered, which also affects the use of gpg in email. It is possible for an attacker to take any signed message and inject extra arbitrary data without affecting the signed status of the message. Depending on how gpg is invoked, it may be possible to output just faked data as several variants of this attack have been discovered. All versions of gnupg prior to 1.4.2.2 are affected, and it is thus recommended to update GnuPG as soon as possible to version 1.4.2.2."

Sony Denies PS3 Delay 188

Posted by Zonk on Monday February 20, 2006 @01:49PM from the fight-the-good-fight dept.

Eurogamer reports that Sony is flatly denying the delay of the PlayStation 3. From the article: "Sakaguchi was responding to allegations made by Merrill Lynch analyst Joe Osha in a report published late last week, in which Osha claimed that the PS3 could launch in autumn in Japan, with a US launch possibly being delayed to early 2007. 'There is no change in our original plan to release the console in spring 2006," Sakaguchi told the press in Tokyo, referring to the company's only stated goal for the launch so far - namely that the console will appear in at least one territory, most likely Japan, this spring.' They have lots of opportunities at GDC and E3 to change the public perception that their next console is still very much a work in progress.

Lessons GMs Can Learn from World of Warcraft 132

Posted by Zonk on Sunday February 19, 2006 @12:07AM from the fun-is-the-operative-word dept.

Martin Ralya writes "As a tabletop RPG gamemaster, I've been thinking about what GMs can learn from World of Warcraft ever since I first logged in. After close to 200 hours of WoW time, I've come up with 9 lessons GMs can learn from World of Warcraft."

Comment At least some companies are on our side (Score 2, Insightful) 139

by CLIT on Saturday September 07, 2002 @02:53PM (#4212940) Attached to: A History of the Digital Copyright Struggle

Though their motivations may not be so philanthropic, at least consumer electronics corporations are on the side of the people like you and I. After all, they know that consumers will not purchase crippled, copy-protected products. Hopefully, this will result in a somewhat more balanced result when laws are passed. Call me cynical, but I feel that the Hollywood lobby's advantage is quite large and the laws will likely get passed.

Responses from Consumer Advocate Jamie Love 159

Posted by Roblimo on Tuesday October 09, 2001 @01:00PM from the at-long-last dept.

We put up the original call for questions on September 5. Jamie's travel schedule (mentioned in one of his answers) is so hectic that it is amazing he found time to answer these questons at all. But answer he did, in detail. It's going to be interesting to see how Jamie's take on tech-oriented lobbying compares with that of "commercial" lobbyist Morgan Reed, whose interview responses we hope to see in the very near future.

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