Posts by tuzza

Philando Castile death-by-cop vid mysteriously vanishes from Facebook

Re: Uninitialised memory referenced during execution

Maybe they should just send the police that kill people to prison?

Maybe that will be enough to train the animal mind to obey the logical mind in times of stress? It works for the rest of society, doesn't it?

We have a similar issue on a much smaller scale in the UK, in that no police officer has ever had a conviction upheld for killing someone in the line of duty.

The problem is that governments are scared to send cops to prison for killing civilians in the line of duty, because police violence is, at the end of the day, their ultimate method of population control.

UK needs comp sci grads, so why isn't it hiring them?

Re: java was a bad idea

so i'm wrong to resent spending the majority of the "coding" aspect of my degree doing mickey mouse java exercises in a web browser rather than something more challenging and useful?

anyone can go and get any grounding they want outside of university, we're talking specifically about CS degrees and what they teach.

java was a bad idea

well you say this, but coming out of a three year CS degree with only a very small amount of experience with coding c-like languages but tonnes of useless other stuff doesn't make much sense to me. maybe the problem was the move to java. they didn't even teach php for web stuff because they could stick to java with JEE.. yet what, 80% of the net uses php. no scripting languages except for a little bash. yet two years of maths, AI, systems architecture. at least we used linux i guess. I suppose the java is useful for android dev these days, but really I would have much prepared a proper grounding in C - which is where the systems architecture and programming would have been linked up.

The fact is that 90% of the stuff I learnt in my Comp Sci degree has never been useful, hardware architecture, AI, 3d graphics algorithms.... christ all the maths I learnt, matrix manipulations and predicate logic - never used any of it. really, who needs to know how to perform matrix manipulations by hand..

They should just do degrees in programming and accept that people can get their heads around if statements and while loops without having a deeper understanding of advanced mathematics, set logic etc. felt smart learning it at the time but it doesn't stay in your head when you never use it, the first two years of my degree was half A-level maths.. how many people actually go into critical systems..?

we're so far abstracted from the basics of computer science now it really is a bit of a waste of time, enjoyed my degree but couldn't help but feel it hadn't moved on much from the 1970s. now that would have been the time to do it.

Asus ZenBook UX305: With Windows 10, it suddenly makes perfect sense

Mint 17.2 is supposed to fix UEFI support

I've just bought one of these from PC World with their 10% cashback offer, got them to order in the black one which will take a week but it actually works out cheaper at £630.. then with the cashback it's £567 - a bit more reasonable considering the lower specs of the UK version. Also a lot, lot cheaper than a Dell XPS 13 which everyone is saying is the nearest comparison.

I'll be installing Mint on it when it arrives and it hopefully 17.2 should fix install issues as they've fixed support for UEFI and are running under Ubuntu's Secureboot signature (http://linuxmint.com/rel_rafaela_cinnamon.php).

Had my EE701 for years and it's still going strong so have been impressed with Asus build quality. Was waiting for an affordable ultra portable from them without all that touch screen nonsense. Had a look at the Yoga 3 in the shop but I don't need a touch screen, didn't like the shiny screen and the keyboard didn't look as good either.

UK.gov recruiting 400 crack CompSci experts to go into teaching

So what happened in the 90s?

I'm aware of the "golden age" of the BBC Micro etc. and anyone over 40 seemed to actually be taught real computer science in schools, what changed? By the time I got to secondary school in '95 ICT had become as described here - a chance to mess around on the internet and "write a database" in Access. Such a nothing subject that even as someone who went on to do a CS degree I think I barely passed it just from being unable to bear the tedium. The only reason I got the programming bug was because my dad picked up a 10 year old BASIC book at a bootfair which was probably actually taught in schools when it was originally published.

Spanish cops tweet handy dope-smuggling advice

When in Spain...

It's worth pointing out that Marijuana is (at least partially) decriminalised in Spain, so this cop's laissez-faire attitude is not so unusual.

ATM hacker Barnaby Jack's death blamed on accidental drug overdose

According to the autopsy report he had a history of using opiates. Not sure what his girlfriend says about that though. I don't find it unbelievable that a talented person was also drug user.

It's also been in the BBC and the Guardian, as well as web based outlets, is that not enough media for you?

'F*** off, Google!' Protest blockades Google staff bus AGAIN – and Apple's

Why not follow the lead of that other chocolate factory?

Cadbury built a whole town for their factory workers (Bournville) in order to "alleviate the evils of modern more cramped living conditions". Sounds like a familiar problem, 100 years on.