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  1. Re:What site do YOU think this is?? on Ask Slashdot: Can You Convert Old iPods Into A Home Music-Streaming Solution? · · Score: 1

    Bro, do you even 5-digit UID?

    Bok bok bok! Just barely!

  2. Re: Requirements, requirements, requirements... on Software Error Releases Up To 3,200 Inmates Early (seattletimes.com) · · Score: 1

    Case law could be considered LD_PRELOAD.

  3. Re:Get a Pair of Headphones on Ask Slashdot: Hacking Urban Noise? · · Score: 1

    Seconded. I bought a pair of the HD-280's 6-7 years ago. They're durable and comfortable with and without music. I still use them 5 days a week at the office.

  4. Re:Don't count this out yet on Startup Combines CPU and DRAM · · Score: 2

    You must be thinking of some other processor. The first released Alpha silicon, Alpha 21064, had a pipelined FPU for adds/subtracts/multiplies and a non-pipelined floating-point divide unit.

  5. Re:linode on Ask Slashdot: Best Inexpensive VPS Provider? · · Score: 4, Informative

    And yet another plug for Linode. I have been with them for over four years. Their infrastructure staff knows what they're doing (tech support has responded in 3 minutes on a Sunday night!) and they're hands-off with respect to how you want to run your box. Disk space is a little expensive, but it's not oversubscribed. Even the smallest accounts are well worth the money.

  6. Re:Overhead of checking the tax code on Google Warns Irish Government Against Tax Increase · · Score: 1

    Companies already do for collecting sales tax in states where the companies have a physical presence.

  7. Re:How about this comparison on The Environmental Impact of PHP Compared To C++ On Facebook · · Score: 2, Funny

    Alright wise guy. Explain twitter.

  8. Re:Why stop there? on The Environmental Impact of PHP Compared To C++ On Facebook · · Score: 1

    Minor nit: fetch prediction logic in modern processors has to deal with unconditional procedure calls. Fetch pipelines aren't shallow anymore, so you need to predict the target address and speculatively fetch that cache line. Often this is before you even know you've just fetched a branch/call/jmpl.

    The jump tables/switch statements in Ruby/Python/PHP make target prediction a necessity. The target of this jmpl is rarely the same twice in a row.

  9. Re:Nothing to hide... on Google CEO Says Privacy Worries Are For Wrongdoers · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Or they have something to sell you. Marketers: Shooo! Go away! Leave me alone.

  10. Re:gotta filter the applicants somehow on Are You a Blue-Collar Or White-Collar Developer? · · Score: 5, Funny

    Let me guess, you inadvertently also found the candidates who eat candy constantly while at their desks.

  11. Re:Related site... on Comparing the Size, Speed, and Dependability of Programming Languages · · Score: -1, Troll

    There is no beauty in perl. Period.

    Your example is spot-on, though. It can be completely obfuscated ASCII art or an unreadable single line.

  12. Re:have your own domain-get universal forwarding on Spam Replacing Postal Junk Mail? · · Score: 1

    Someone tell that to Verizon. They seem to think it's best practice to send the same marketing email to both the original address with the + and the same address without. Better yet, their unsubscribe facility refuses to accept the +.

    I wish more people understood the +. I've used it to make incoming mail self-sorting for well over a decade.

  13. Re:money is not the way on How Do I Start a University Transition To Open Source? · · Score: 2

    File a bug report on it. .tsv files renamed to .csv work as you might expect.

  14. Re:money is not the way on How Do I Start a University Transition To Open Source? · · Score: 1

    I'm not sure how you have StarOffice configured, but it opens .csv files in calc for me with 'soffice foo.csv &' on Unix.

    In Windows I had to change the default handler from Excel. That's a simple one-time switch by right-clicking and changing the "Open with..." setting.

  15. Re:Bank balance on Sacrificing Accuracy For Speed and Efficiency In Processors · · Score: 2

    There's rounding in virtually every transaction you already encounter. Do you live in a location with sales tax?

    In pay periods where my paycheck is mathematically supposed to be consistent, it also fluctuates by a cent sometimes. The value averages out but there's still rounding and it's quite obvious.

  16. Re:And I thought it finally safe... on Midnight Commander Development Revived · · Score: 1

    The one more common typo that comes to mind--and the one alias that I do have to fix it up--is "dc" to "cd". The mind boggles.

  17. Re:Profit Margins in Publishing on Tech Publisher O'Reilly Slashes Jobs · · Score: 1

    For the purposes of this argument, why does it matter at all who runs it?

    Reed Elsevier does not get its content for free. Part of my thesis made it into one of their textbooks. The author/editor of the textbook does, in fact, get royalty payments from them. I neither know how much, nor if he also received an advance or other lump payments upon reaching various editing milestones.

  18. Re:Profit Margins in Publishing on Tech Publisher O'Reilly Slashes Jobs · · Score: 1

    Okay, I'll bite: Reed Elsevier. Net profit margin: 23%.

  19. Re:Freeze the CPU on Solution Against Cold Boot Attack In the Making · · Score: 1

    This initialization is called BIST (built-in self test) and it has been a standard feature on processors since caches were introduced.

  20. Re:Obscure services on Google Terminates Six Services · · Score: 2, Funny

    Clearly this is a problem that can be fixed with appropriate AdWords

  21. Re:Grad School on How Will Recent Financial Downturns Affect IT Jobs? · · Score: 1

    At least in engineering and computer science, Lou Dobbs is completely wrong. Heck, as a grad student at a top-tier research university, you can get ~$24K (and a highly tax-advantaged $24K, at that). Depending on the location, that can mean a comfortable five years.

  22. Re:Deck Chairs on SCO Proposes Sale of Assets To Continue Litigation · · Score: 1

    Sure, except Balmer thinks ahead: he ties a rope to the deck chairs. That way, he can pull up whatever muck gets dredged up, slap a dictionary word on it, and sell it as the next New Thing.

  23. Re:What is weird is... on Steve Jobs Issues Update On His Health · · Score: 1

    I beg your pardon. It's typically all dead weight.

  24. Re:Oh bull on Data Mining Rescues Investigative Journalism · · Score: 1

    Finding these blips is the easy part. Any first year grad student can do it. They will even learn something from the process.

    The interesting part is figuring out which blips are important and which don't matter, then explaining why. Pushing the identification part to an algorithm is a waste of time and I don't expect computers to be taking over research part any time in the foreseeable future.

  25. Re:crashing database == lost data on Sun's Mickos Is OK With Monty's MySQL 5.1 Rant · · Score: 1

    Good to see Rumsfeld invoked to explain databases. It really warms my heart.

    If only he had remembered the unknown knowns--the data your DBMS just lost--the set would be complete.