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User: sjames

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Comments · 34,276

  1. Re:why? on Empirical Study On How C Devs Use Goto In Practice Says "Not Harmful" · · Score: 4, Insightful

    1 and 3 are certainly true. 2 is not always. For example, if an error condition requires unwinding such as releasing resources. Compared to deeply nested ifs and having to essentially duplicate the entire control flow in the bottom half of the function, gotos can make things much more readable and even improve performance.

    Perhaps a better statement is that goto will be found in code that is either very well designed or very poorly.

  2. I think that's likely. It became such a taboo that developers tend to think it over thoroughly before actually using it.

  3. Re:No on Ask Slashdot: Panic Button a Very Young Child Can Use · · Score: 1

    Not in evidence.

    It could as easily mean she had one seizure after 10 years without and in an abundance of caution they want to add monitors.

    What is it these days with making assumptions that would explode William of Occam's head and then condemning people for it as if it was verified fact?

  4. Re:No on Ask Slashdot: Panic Button a Very Young Child Can Use · · Score: 1

    That's not in evidence. Perhaps the wife had a single seizure break through followed by an increase in medication and the doctor has said he expects no more but can't guarantee it 100%.

    We don't even know what type of seizures she has.

  5. Re:FU! on Ask Slashdot: Panic Button a Very Young Child Can Use · · Score: 1

    No. I asked for an agency that could help with the suggested home care and or quit working situation. You now admit that you have no idea if the one you named will or will not do so and in the process had to brush aside that they suggest exactly the measure you claim to be irresponsible.

    You then rant about the poster not doing what you obviously didn't do.

    Not a great showing there.

    It turns out they are a fine organization that provides a good bit of support including education, funding research, doctor referrals, and help getting compassionate discounts on the prescription drugs, but it doesn't happen to include help in this situation.

    TL;DR version: BZZZT!

  6. Re:The button isn't the problem on Ask Slashdot: Panic Button a Very Young Child Can Use · · Score: 1

    It's really a lot more for the child than the parent, I would think. A way for the child to quickly contact her other parent.

  7. Re:No on Ask Slashdot: Panic Button a Very Young Child Can Use · · Score: 2

    The fact is that any person can unexpectedly drop at any time. Thankfully, it's uncommon but if we're being honest nobody can preclude the possibility. At least his house will have a ready made "Daddy! button".

    As for CPS, they are essentially an unpredictable predatory force. Nobody can guess what might set them off or when they will ignore an obviously harmful situation.

  8. Re:FU! on Ask Slashdot: Panic Button a Very Young Child Can Use · · Score: 1

    Name one!

  9. Re:I love you man on Alcohol's Evaporating Health Benefits · · Score: 1

    I skimmed through the paper and I doubt it will amount to much. None of the results were terribly strong statistically. It read a bit like massaging the analysis until the effect goes away (but it didn't).

    So, moderate consumption still good, superhuman consumption still won't make you immortal (quite the opposite).

  10. Re:Already legal? on DMCA Exemption Campaign Would Let Fans Run Abandoned Games · · Score: 1

    Because they like that game AND they paid for it. Shutting down the server is just a super lame excuse to trick/force them to buy another game.

    Copyright is a grant from the public domain for a limited time to promote the useful arts and sciences ONLY. That is, to make more works available. Using it to make something unavailable is the ultimate in abuses and absolutely should cause loss of the copyright. I would go so far as to actually require the release of the source once the term is up (it should probably have to be placed into escrow to get the copyright in the first place).

  11. Re:Already legal? on DMCA Exemption Campaign Would Let Fans Run Abandoned Games · · Score: 1

    IMHO, they should have that right, but the way they say no is keep a server running the code and accessible to the users. If there's only 100 users, it wouldn't take many resources to keep a VM running the server somewhere. Alternatively, they could buy back the licensed clients.

    Copyright should have a use it or lose it provision.

  12. Re:Great on DMCA Exemption Campaign Would Let Fans Run Abandoned Games · · Score: 2

    No, that's abandonment. If the property owner abandons the property such that it becomes a health and safety hazard for the neighborhood (not to mention a property value destroying eyesore), then there is a risk that a squatter will come in, properly maintain the property, and gain rights to it.

    That law exists in many places in the U.S. as well.

    We have similar laws to cover other sorts of property as well.

  13. Re:I don't think this [release] matters at all... on Xfce Getting a New Version Soon · · Score: 1

    My first Linux install was SLS downloaded over a 9600 bps modem from a dial-up BBS. In all that time, I have never seen as many lies, damned lies and half-truths surrounding a project as I have seen around systemd and pretty much the rest of freedesktop.

    That's what bothers me. If they want to be dependent on systemd, it's their cliff to jump off of but I do wish they would be honest about it.

    Given that Gnome wasn't at all dependent on systemd before, I see no reason why a reasonable development process couldn't have maintained that state in released versions. It's not as if consolekit poofed out of existence. It would surely have managed not to explode until they got a systemd free version of login (or a reasonable stub implementation) ready to go.

    I'll just be over here using xfce4 and an init that knows it's supposed to be init.

  14. Re:Google's biggest problem is IH on Google Chrome Will Adopt HTTP/2 In the Coming Weeks, Drop SPDY Support · · Score: 2

    At the same time, it makes no sense to hire armed guards to watch over a stack of flyers meant to be free to the public.

  15. Re:Might as well redesign HTML as well on Google Chrome Will Adopt HTTP/2 In the Coming Weeks, Drop SPDY Support · · Score: 2

    I think you need to think it through again. First you begrudge the few extra bytes for the markup (images and such are the bulk of http traffic, not the markup) but then you deride client side sanity checking which can save multiple transactions? Yeah, the server side should check sanity for security and the client should do it for speed and efficiency (and reducing wasted server load). Eliminate the client side sanity checking and you'll get no checking at all most of the time.

    HTML is here and it works. The JS will need some way to tell the browser what to render and HTML is as good a way as any.

  16. Re:Government! Start with thyselves! on Report: Automakers Fail To Fully Protect Against Hacking · · Score: 1

    Considering that the toll road almost inevitably relied on an exercise of eminent domain "for the public good", I would say that attaching loss of privacy to it's use is quite impermissible.

    My argument was reducto ad absurdem.

    My point stands, the ability to avoid a public resource with varying degrees of discomfort, inconvenience, or harm does not and can not excuse violation of privacy or other rights. The horse is still dead.

  17. Re:Government! Start with thyselves! on Report: Automakers Fail To Fully Protect Against Hacking · · Score: 1

    You're not required to have a car (or feet) or a home, or eat. Yes, you are perfectly free to starve in the gutter if you like.

    That poor dead horse has been whipped into a chunky sauce by now. Next lame excuse please!

  18. Re:Easy fix... on Report: Automakers Fail To Fully Protect Against Hacking · · Score: 1

    Right, so you need a device sitting on the essential bus that copies that traffic onto the auxiliary bus but never the other direction. Ideally it does it with 2 back to back controllers linked only by an opto-isolator that connects tx on the secure bus controller to rx on the auxiliary bus controller.

  19. Re:I assume the Wikimedia developers... on The Bizarre and Complex Story of a Failed Wikipedia Software Extension · · Score: 2

    Where have you been hiding? Advertisers having undue influence on content has been an ongoing concern for decades, not just for the public but among professional journalists.

    Then on the web there's the problem of ads that turn out to be drive-by trojans recruiting thousands of machines into botnets.

  20. Re:But surely... on Samsung SmartTV Customers Warned Personal Conversations May Be Recorded · · Score: 1

    The problem is that it thinks it might have heard the 'activation' phrase even when it didn't. It won't send every single utterance off to be parsed, but it will randomly send bits and pieces of conversations off to be parsed.

  21. Re:I don't think this [release] matters at all... on Xfce Getting a New Version Soon · · Score: 1

    here

    Note how he starts by claiming it isn't a dependency and never will be, then backpeddles until he's basically saying it will be.

    But your honor, it wasn't a mugging, he didn't HAVE to give me his money. Yes, it is possible that I said something about burning down hios house, goiuging his eyes out, torturing his family to death and then setting him on fire, but he could have chosen that over giving me his money!

    Constructively, it is becoming a hard dependency such that any sane person who doesn't want systemd has made plans to stay far away from gnome.

  22. Re:RMS' GNU license is a license that gives away on RMS Objects To Support For LLVM's Debugger In GNU Emacs's Gud.el · · Score: 1

    Why not? If you can't or just don't want to accept the terms of GPL, contact the copyright holder and negotiate different terms. They might refuse but they might not.

  23. Re:What do you expect? on AP Test's Recursion Examples: An Exercise In Awkwardness · · Score: 1

    Not really. Factorial practically begs for a recursive implementation and it's very simple.

    Then there's fibonacci, qsort, etc.

  24. Re:I don't think this [release] matters at all... on Xfce Getting a New Version Soon · · Score: 4, Informative

    I realize Lennert is your new god and all, but really! I know someone hacked a way to postpone the dependency, but by then a lot of people had already switched. Even more are switching now that it's been made clear that the intent is to be dependent on systemd

  25. Re:I don't think this [release] matters at all... on Xfce Getting a New Version Soon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    XFCE is seeing a resurgence now the gnome screwed the pooch and insists on depending on systemd.