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User: sjames

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  1. These are radar cameras. They snap a picture of the car and the radar determined speed. No markers.

    Now, the virus caused them to reboot frequently. What effect did that have on the radar calibration? I don't know either. Did it cause the system to go to an operational state at any point when the radar wasn't ready? Also don't know and neither do you.

    Is it worth doing extensive testing under those conditions in order to re-instate 7000 speeding tickets? Probably not.

    Now, as for your case of markers on a speed camera, Determining speed is a matter of seeing how long it took a car to get from A to B which will depend on the system clock (or frame rate) being correct. It's not that hard to imagine something being a bit off there.

  2. Re:One way people could mess with this... on 90 Cities Install A Covert Technology That Listens For Gunshots (businessinsider.com) · · Score: 1

    A .22 rifle comes in more like 130.

  3. Re:One way people could mess with this... on 90 Cities Install A Covert Technology That Listens For Gunshots (businessinsider.com) · · Score: 1

    Keep in mind, a .22 isn't all that loud.

  4. Re:I call bullshit on the call of bullshit. on 'Chiropractors Are Bullshit' (theoutline.com) · · Score: 1

    Actually, I can sometimes fix my own digestive issues by working my own back through yoga. I don't see why a chiropractor couldn't do that for someone. But curing cancer, agreed. That's not very likely.

    The fact is that the back is a bit of a mystery to conventional medicine as well. It turns out most of those MRI signs of back pain appear equally frequently in people who report never having back pain. Back surgery is still a bit hit or miss with potentially devastating consequences for failure. The constant ads for the currently vogue back procedure don't exactly lend any air of professionalism.

  5. Re:I posted this yesterday, why did you reject it? on Lawsuit Accuses Comcast of Cutting Competitor's Wires To Put It Out of Business (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    Well...OK, but only if I get to play the world's smallest violin for you. :-)

  6. Re:I posted this yesterday, why did you reject it? on Lawsuit Accuses Comcast of Cutting Competitor's Wires To Put It Out of Business (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 2

    It's part of a vast conspiracy. First they drive you slowly, one invisibly small step at a time to the brink of madness. Not having the right change for the soda machine, arriving at an intersection just in time for the 10 minute red light, the guy in front of you buys the last cheese danish, the bus is 10 seconds early the one day you run a minute late so you get there just in time for it to close its doors practically in your face and pull away.

    This has been going on practically since your birth (the rest of us lead truly charmed lives :-) We're nearing the end-hame now where you'll be ready to .....

    Nah, shit happens, that's all this is.

  7. Re:Not always a bad thing on You Can't Open the Microsoft Surface Laptop Without Literally Destroying It (vice.com) · · Score: 2

    Not worth much. That makes it tamper evident, not tamper proof. If someone really wants at the storage, they'll cut it apart as required.

  8. Re:No, because meaningful whitespace on Ask Slashdot: Will Python Become The Dominant Programming Language? · · Score: 1

    So, your special program can actually comprehend the code and replace syntactically meaningful characters if I should remove some (or throw some in)? You're still hung up on the 0x09 character being somehow different simply because the tools you happen to use treat it in a particular way. Stripping the tabs from a Python program is like stripping the braces out of a C program.

    All that while extolling the virtues of a utility program that simply enforces a visual formatting rule on C code that is already intrinsic to Python.

  9. Re:No, because meaningful whitespace on Ask Slashdot: Will Python Become The Dominant Programming Language? · · Score: 1

    The tab is literally just another ascii value. Why would any of those tools have a hard time 'seeing' it?

    this is a test$
    ^I^Ihere be tabs$
    $

    From vi after telling it :set list

  10. Re:No, because meaningful whitespace on Ask Slashdot: Will Python Become The Dominant Programming Language? · · Score: 1

    Actually I just pasted in an example and stripped the white space. I didn't give a damn about the parentheses at the time (cock sucking or otherwise).

  11. Re:Nicotine is poisonous...period on E-cigarettes 'Potentially As Harmful As Tobacco Cigarettes' (uconn.edu) · · Score: 1

    Practically all of them due to workplace safety concerns. In particular, the glycerin and PG in ecigs has been well tested since those are used in medical vaporizers and stage fog machines.

  12. Re:No, because meaningful whitespace on Ask Slashdot: Will Python Become The Dominant Programming Language? · · Score: 1

    Python is one of many languages I use or have used including C, Java, PHP, Javascript, FORTH, FORTRAN, Pascal, and various assembly languages. I find IDEs annoying personally. I prefer vi, make, and friends.

    I GENUINELY don't get why ASCII 0x7b and 0x7d are fine but 0x09 makes people go ape shit. Next we'll see calls for trigger warnings at this rate. Just look how many people were 'triggered' by my fairly calm first posting on the topic. It's just not that hard. Gaining or losing a tab in python is no worse than, for example, losing a closing brace in C and the compiler just points you to the last line in the source file as the error.

    I do find Python to be particularly expressive and fast to develop in.

  13. Re:Nicotine is poisonous...period on E-cigarettes 'Potentially As Harmful As Tobacco Cigarettes' (uconn.edu) · · Score: 1

    I would imagine practically any processed food would make you violently ill then. That does make you a bit of an outlier.

  14. Re:No, because meaningful whitespace on Ask Slashdot: Will Python Become The Dominant Programming Language? · · Score: 1

    And why don't you understand that tab is just another ASCII character. Drop a few braces in C and you'll have a similar problem.

  15. Re:No, because meaningful whitespace on Ask Slashdot: Will Python Become The Dominant Programming Language? · · Score: 1

    Can't do that with python where a tab is mis-placed, can't do that with C where a brace is mis-placed.

  16. Re:No, because meaningful whitespace on Ask Slashdot: Will Python Become The Dominant Programming Language? · · Score: 1

    Tab is just another character, right? So why not use it?? Just make your text editor show it as a visible glyph (there are several that can do that IIRC).

  17. Re:No, because meaningful whitespace on Ask Slashdot: Will Python Become The Dominant Programming Language? · · Score: 1

    If someone screwed up the indentation years ago, it would have passed the unit test just fine (if there was one then).

    But if you're really hung up on a visible character top decide the level, just use an editor that makes tabs visible.

  18. Re:No, because meaningful whitespace on Ask Slashdot: Will Python Become The Dominant Programming Language? · · Score: 1

    No, I'll just have to do the same analysis you will when you decide which is wrong. OTOH, the python is less likely to have been checked in defective since the whitespace error should make it flunk a unit test on the spot.

  19. Re:No, because meaningful whitespace on Ask Slashdot: Will Python Become The Dominant Programming Language? · · Score: 1

    Why, if it's misformatted, it's an actual bug, not just a visual flaw.

    OPf course, with a program more complex than fizz-buzz, you might have a hell of a time deciding if the indent is wrong of the brackets.

  20. Re:No, because meaningful whitespace on Ask Slashdot: Will Python Become The Dominant Programming Language? · · Score: 1

    Find the bug. Better yet, hand it to a co-worker to find it.

  21. Re:No, because meaningful whitespace on Ask Slashdot: Will Python Become The Dominant Programming Language? · · Score: 1

    Now, mis-indent something in C. See how long it takes someone else to figure out why the code seems to not do what is plainly written.

  22. Re:No, because meaningful whitespace on Ask Slashdot: Will Python Become The Dominant Programming Language? · · Score: 1

    No because C code is easily structured to LOOK like it says one thing when it says another. Now try and find the bug.

  23. Re:No, because meaningful whitespace on Ask Slashdot: Will Python Become The Dominant Programming Language? · · Score: 1

    Even worse is a situation where convention specifies a use of whitespace so the human can read it but the compiler sees an entirely different structure. Perfect for creating a nearly invisible bug. If the compiler/interpretor also uses the whitespace to decide, at least it will do what it appears to do.

    Most projects large enough to have more than one person on them already set conventions for structuring, commenting, ets. Why not include whitespace conventions?

  24. Re:No, because meaningful whitespace on Ask Slashdot: Will Python Become The Dominant Programming Language? · · Score: 1

    So:

    #include int main(void){int i;for(i=1; i<=100; i++){if(((i%3)||(i%5))== 0) printf("number= %d FizzBuzz\n", i);else if((i%3)==0) printf("number= %d Fizz\n", i);else if((i%5)==0) printf("number= %d Buzz\n", i);else printf("number= %d\n",i);} return 0;}

  25. Re:No, because meaningful whitespace on Ask Slashdot: Will Python Become The Dominant Programming Language? · · Score: 1

    absolutelycorrect.Idon'tknowwhattheyp[osablycouldhavebeenthinking.Weneedtoeliminatealluseofwhitespaceimmediately.