totalforge

Succinctly explains why programming can be rewarding to do.

It also describes the playground people of a certain age had: 'READY>'

I hear kids these days can do well learning Python - if they can get an adult to install the dev tools. There's got to be something as accessible and interactive as BASIC was, and that should be everywhere.

The recruiters are usually contractors, and they have a lot of turnover. Not that you should have gotten silence, but it's possible that's why.

All North Koreans that are not in the elite inner circle are slaves. China, though annoyed, cannot act, since NK is a fellow Communist nation, though they are the goofy pseudo-Stalinist type.

Eventually the regime will collapse, and NK will become a humanitarian project that will dwarf anything that has come before it.

You can take a bus tour of military boneyard in arizona from the Pima Air Museum close by. The whole northeast section of the property is the tooling and jigs for the B-2, if making more ever gets funded.

Sadly, the F-4 Phantom population there continues to dwindle as they are refitted to be unmanned missile test targets, which tends to blow them up.

If they're on Windows, I send them to www.ninite.com to get antivirus, anti-malware, and Firefox to browse with. All their selections will be packaged into a single, slick installer by the site. This handles a lot of problems. I often have them do it themselves while I supervise. This reduces dependency.

Woz went back once before, and at one point his manager actually gave him a bad review. Good thing it was pre-internet, or the mgr would never live it down.

The book 'Testing computer software' by Cem Kaner is an excellent introduction to the field.

You will make less than a programmer while being expected to possess extensive programming skills. Where developers produce code, therefore product, therefore generating earnings and profits, QA is a cost center and does not put revenue on the books. Thus, QA gets laid off more often and you can expect to work more as a contractor with no benefits.

Be prepared to spend much time explaining how the job provides value to managers and engineers over and over and over again. You need to present good data often, and be a strong salesman for your work. Expect to hear things like 'You mean you just play with the software?'. Have a good answer ready at all times.

At many shops, if a customer finds a single bug and you missed it, even though it won't reproduce on your test configurations, everyone will consider you a failure, in spite the value of your overall contribution. For some reason this never affects the developer who created the bug.

Now, if a legal precedent is ever set that software companies are held liable for their products, QA will become front line in a damn hurry.

ISP's don't enter into it. The goal is to have exclusive tech in movie theaters only.

Douglas Trumbull's 'Showscan' fprmat shot and projected 70mm film at 60 fps. The huge cost kept it from succeeding, though the visual impact was supposed to be amazing.

Cameron's proposal will introduce similar perceptual problems to HD video - fake stuff will look more fake, every tiny detail of a performer's face will be apparent, and scenes that play a certain way at 24fps might fall flat at 60. One study showed that physical comedy was funnier in low res/low frame rate, and the same action looked painful to the audience in greater definition and detail.

I'll watch a good story in any format, thanks.

The demo video has a few screenshots of the UI, and the rest is text. Perhaps they should have shown some 3D animation!

Using the tilt sensor for flight control? One sneeze and an expensive model is destroyed. If I have experience with traditional RC flight transmitters, I have muscle memory in my thumbs for flying, and I can't use that here. No snark intended, best of luck to the OP.

The NSA are drowning in data. They have a constantly changing target list from the other intelligence agencies, and whatever crisis is, or will soon be in the news is keeping them quite busy.

They really have more important things to do than monitor the geeks. Unless you come up with some nifty new crypto.

p.s. SPLITTER!

The perks are a lovely set of golden handcuffs designed to keep workers at work as much as possible. Some of the ones I know work so much they use their badge to go in to the bank.

Winter 2010, taught by Paul Hegarty, is the best introduction I've found. I have some books, I've watched some Apple videos, but I was still confused. Mr. Hegarty really explains things the right way. Highly recommended.