It depends on how sensitive you are. I would definitely try one before you buy it if you can.

4k is certainly going to be amazing for standard desktop usage. The extra vertical height means you have 2x 1080s in terms of height and you can split your windows in thirds horizontally which basically gives you 6 panels to work with.

I'm looking for some suggestions for my 5th year project (graduate work). It should be something related to android and opencv, something like face recognition etc. Basically anything about computer vision (my mentor is involved in this field of CS), i can't think of anything fun that i could do on android with opencv.
For my 3rd year project i used opencv to make my web camera act like a mouse (object tracking).

1) A better face gen tool. Face gen is used in video games like Out of the Park Baseball and Football Manager. I'm sure it's used in other places too. For example it's annoying in Madden Football when generated players have similar faces.

2) Those tools that take 2 people and generate face of the kid. Most of them are terrible. My wife and I played around with these when she was pregnant.

I remember old CRT monitors that had to go slow / interlaced for max lines. They definitely sucked for normal computer usage, even though NTSC seemed fine to me for TV. I would not touch 30 Hz.

None of the 30hz ones are compatible with the Mac Pro, hopefully that will drive better panels to market for less than the 3k Sharp that's out...

Some sort of body language or facial expression emotion / tell / lie detector.

Detect tilt (anger?!) while playing poker (camera pointed at yourself) and play a warning sound or something.

I don't think I'd ever buy a Dell anything at any price, tbh. Just terrible experience with their computers all around. I had one for home and it was constant issues and eventual mobo spark. We use Dells at our current job, and aside from all the other issues I ran into, I had to force shut down multiple times a day, and this is running i5s w/ 6g of Ram. My current job isn't that demanding on it, though I guess Excel + Macros is a memory and processor hog, but it was the same crap at the last job and all we did was some data entry and a bit of Illustrator and PhotoShop.

I don't get it. One of my coworkers brought in his HP laptop and the thing blazes circles around his brand-new Dell. The Alienware I am using is a decent step up from the last computer I was using, but I would never think of doing on the Alienware what I am doing on my laptop.

It's also sort of cool to work with 4 people that build their own computers. All that stuff that means nothing to me is like plain English to them. Their opinions of the Specs vs Price is pretty interesting. To say the least, the prevailing opinion of Dell / Alienware isn't kind.

Our company is all Dells. Mine is 6 core workstations with 24 GB ram. Runs windows 7 without a hitch. The only thing that kills it is trying to compile google chrome.

I bought a Dell desktop back in 2009 to play poker on my 30 inch monitor. Its connection to the video card was screwy, so I would always have to turn on the comp, THEN plug in the monitor. If I did the monitor first it wouldnt realize it could handle higher resolution. That was literally the only problem with it though, and probably could have been easily fixed if I wasn't a lazy poker player, but the idea that was the only reason I bought it pissed me off so **** dell!

Off topic, I have a windows laptop I want to convert to Linux. I've never tried linux before and figure this is a good chance. Any recommendations besides Ubuntu? (I believe Ive seen Dave explicitly say dont get Ubuntu)

My first laptop was a dell and it was a tank. I think it went almost 10 years before finally giving up completely.

I am far from an expert, thus you should not listen to my opinions on this matter.

Fine, then Im doing Ubuntu and you cant stop me. Or maybe Mint.

Every Dell I have ever had overheats. I just had to fix a buddy's Dell laptop because it was getting so hot it was shutting itself down. Had to take the entire thing apart, take out the motherboard and flip it upside down just to get to the heatsink.

Get Xubuntu (with an X). The new Ubuntu is "Windows 8 like" whereas Xubuntu is more "classic desktop".

If it's your first one something Ubuntu-ish like Xubuntu is probably a good idea because you'll find the most support etc.

You can always spend a couple of hours browsing
http://distrowatch.com

[Mint is also a good choice, have heard about some issues with upgrading between releases but that was a while back no idea what their current status is]

I built my own computer 4-5 years ago and it was awesome. Super easy to do and a pretty good learning experience.

I used to do it all the time in the pentium pro to about 2Ghz single core ones. These days I have to research a bit to even know what's inside. All those crazy buses and whatnot...where's ISA :P
Also fried a CPU due to improper isolation so probably -EV lifetime building PCs

Yea, I kinda worded that badly. It is super easy to do once you look up everything and make sure it is all going to work together. First time I turned it on the power source died as soon as the OS booted.

http://www.businessinsider.com/a-goo...y-year-2014-1#!

Google engineer lols at startup offering 500k, since Google is paying him 3 million.

I'm debating whether to start a new "Poker/Resume Gap to IT Career" thread (I'm honestly not quite sure how "IT" is defined, but I'm talking mainly about development and QA).

I'm in my early 30's, Bachelor's in Business/Finance, live a train ride away from NYC. Worked in Finance for 2 years before poker, played poker for 5 years. Now have spent 2 years at a service industry job and it's about time to put effort into moving along.

I think my best path, in general, would be programming and/or QA. My thinking right now is that I should do whatever is necessary to get a halfway decent tech job, and then grow from there with what I learn on the job, self-study, schooling, etc. Become a developer is what appeals to me, but it's difficult to say what I'll want once I see how things work in the industry so I'm not committed to any one path.

I started learning to code on my own in 2013, but got sidetracked and haven't done much in recent months. The coding bootcamps are appealing, but they're expensive and highly exclusive. I was rejected by one of them (my schooling and experience weren't interesting/good enough I'm guessing).

Has anybody heard of the Portnov Computer School? http://www.portnov.com They teach QA and appear to be highly successful and well-regarded in Silicon Valley. There are dozens of glowing reviews (Google) with only a couple of negatives - and those tend to be from non-Americans who apparently don't speak the language well enough to have thrived after the school. The school is run by Eastern Europeans and the main focus seems to be immigrants and people making a career change.

Portnov is $3K for the 2 month full-time program. There is an essentially guaranteed internship with a company in the area as long as you're competent, and in general it looks like a fairly easy path to a QA job - they also claim to help you out quite a bit with job placement and also focus on pragmatic skills such as interviewing. There's an online learning option as well but that would not include the internship.

If Portnov is definitely legit I would move to California for the program and see what happens from there. I'm willing to relocate almost anywhere in the U.S. and can do so on relatively short notice.

My thinking is that perhaps before committing to schooling I should tap contacts on Facebook/LinkedIn etc. who work at tech companies to see if any would hire me as entry-level QA (or something else). If it's all dead-ends, then take the next stop.

Any recommendations on other possible certifications/paths that could lead to a job quickly?

Did your work in finance involve Excel and maybe Macros/VBA? Access? Excel VBA I think is the easiest way for a non-programmer to get a programming job, because it's both valuable and undesirable to other programmers. Microsoft botching .NET/Office integration also ensures that VBA will survive for at least another decade.

No unfortunately it only involved basic Excel. Not really anything relevant to an IT job.

I just did this last night. Make sure to look up the wifi firmware so you can download it before hand. I just installed Debian onto my old laptop I got in 2006

I'm a bit new to the software field, but from what I've seen so far I don't think you need something like this to get your foot in the door doing QA, esp. at somewhere small which is where you probably have the best shot.

Speaking of being new to the software field, I popped my cherry today having to decipher and rewrite another developer's spaghetti code .

My brain hurts.

Also, I'm not 100% sure who originally wrote it, but as the day went on and after talking to a senior developer some more about it, I think I have a good idea who it was. He sits in earshot of me and most likely heard me say something negative or two. Should I feel bad?

What made it spaghetti code? Goto's?