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User: Darinbob

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  1. Re:I prefer a tablet for some things to a smart ph on The iPad Is 5 Years Old This Week, But You Still Don't Need One · · Score: 1

    The only person I know who regularly uses an iPad is also a small plane pilot. It seems like a good solution for that environment. Easy enough to put on the passenger seat or to use in your lap to follow maps and update plans, slides into a backpack, etc. Mostly not being typed on, but you can when you want.

  2. Re:Best short programs on Computer Chess Created In 487 Bytes, Breaks 32-Year-Old Record · · Score: 1

    The chess program in question uses the BIOS of a Bochs emulator, which is not included in the size calculations.

  3. Re:Best short programs on Computer Chess Created In 487 Bytes, Breaks 32-Year-Old Record · · Score: 1

    How about Forth, which can usually result in smaller code than 8086.

  4. Re:Apple Integer BASIC Chess on Computer Chess Created In 487 Bytes, Breaks 32-Year-Old Record · · Score: 1

    I'd go for a Forth version of Chess to really get small code (assume the Forth interpreter is in ROM which isn't cheating since these tiny demo programs use ROM and BIOS as well).

  5. Re:Incredible! on Computer Chess Created In 487 Bytes, Breaks 32-Year-Old Record · · Score: 1

    Today though "bytes of RAM" is vague. A lot of chips have very tiny RAM but a (relative) lot of Flash. Ie, the Microchip PIC has instruction lengths of 14 to 18 bits, so these don't even fit into common notions of bytes.
    Then again the instruction set you work with is incredibly important as well. Faster is not necessarily smaller here. Also if there's ROM you can leverage that (the program in question most definitely uses the BIOS for a normal 16-bit 8086, the Sinclair also had ROM).

  6. Re:first, FCC has to pave the way for wireline yan on FCC Fines Verizon For Failing To Investigate Rural Phone Problems · · Score: 1

    VoIP still requires some form of service to the house, and that's almost always copper in rural areas.

  7. Re:This doesn't sound... sound on Valve's Economist Yanis Varoufakis Appointed Greece's Finance Minister · · Score: 1

    Borrowing and spending their way out of it, combined with a national past time of cheating on the taxes. Combine with politicians elected based on angry backlash instead of logic and there's going to be a lot of upcoming economic troubles to make austerity look like the good old days.

  8. Re:This doesn't sound... sound on Valve's Economist Yanis Varoufakis Appointed Greece's Finance Minister · · Score: 1

    Economics is a soft science, woven throughout with politics and ideology.

  9. Re:Honestly... on Valve's Economist Yanis Varoufakis Appointed Greece's Finance Minister · · Score: 2

    EU is a fail by allowing Greece to join in the first place. Greece would have been far worse off today without joining the EU, and the EU would have been better off.

  10. Re:Boston Representing on "Mammoth Snow Storm" Underwhelms · · Score: 1

    For people who live in NYC, all other locations in the universe are purely theoretical, including Boston.

  11. Re:Invasion Of The Pink Unicorns on "Mammoth Snow Storm" Underwhelms · · Score: 1

    No, there is no statistically significant modeling of ping unicorns invading. However there was an extremely good prediction of a major snowstorm using state of the art science. The prediction was *correct*, only it skipped NYC.

  12. Re:jessh on "Mammoth Snow Storm" Underwhelms · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    That's money. What about lives if the storm was big (which is actually was, just not in NYC)? Money is easily recovered, and should never be considered the most important factor. So people don't go to the grocery store today, but they will go tomorrow. Maybe we should cancel all holidays and really make huge amounts of money because those expendable workers will be productive instead of plotting with their unions. Cancel weekends too. Even better, make those CEOs *work* for a living by working on the assembly lines or flipping the burgers.

  13. Re:Stronger regs ? Try a better radar on White House Drone Incident Exposes Key Security Gap · · Score: 1

    Maybe a bigger issue is how to stop them without having collateral damage to the constitution.

  14. Re:Looks UGLY on Windows 10: Charms Bar Removed, No Start Screen For Desktops · · Score: 1

    I always found much of it distracting. Not necessarily the translucent windows and things but the overall look. Why do we still need window borders? We've got MacOS without borders, xfce windows w/o borders, etc. Similarly, shrink down that title bar and don't make it glossy. The fake 3D look is pretty archaic.

  15. Re:Microsoft would be onto a winner if... on Windows 10: Charms Bar Removed, No Start Screen For Desktops · · Score: 2

    You can skip it, it's just clear at first glance how to do so. This feature convinced me that the primary goal for Windows 8 was to push their store, they want a piece of the pie that Apple was getting with their store (which no one on the mac would ever have dreamed of using at the time). Consider that even after installing without getting their Microsoft account, that some apps still want to use it. Ie, Mail refuses to work without also giving your Microsoft account in addition to your real mail account, you can not download any free apps without the account (though you can get the free 8.1 upgrade w/o out it).

  16. Re:New name: 'Windows Auschwitz 9-11 happy' bar on Windows 10: Charms Bar Removed, No Start Screen For Desktops · · Score: 2

    And you know this place must exist somewhere. If not San Francisco then in Portland.

  17. Re:Terrible names on Windows 10: Charms Bar Removed, No Start Screen For Desktops · · Score: 1

    They've had silly FOSS names for some time now, over a decade. Not just code names for a release but actual daily use programs. Orage, synaptic, avahi, thunar, dolphin, konqueror, etc.

    Not like good old classic Unixy names like grep, man, awk, sed, and the like. Everyone know what those meant.

  18. Re:Looks UGLY on Windows 10: Charms Bar Removed, No Start Screen For Desktops · · Score: 1

    I like the flat looks. Aero was the thing I liked least about Windows 7.

  19. Re:That's a nice democracy you have there... on Omand Warns of "Ethically Worse" Spying If Unbreakable Encryption Is Allowed · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Doing things the old fashioned way is expensive. That's a good thing. This means the government should stop and think first before bugging someone. They can't bug every single person, especially with a warrant for each, which is why they want the inexpensive solution of tapping into the central phone system. So pay for the tech, send actual technicians into the field, do a lot of undercover work, and the government will start focusing on the important targets.

  20. Re:We don't on How Do We Know the Timeline of the Universe? · · Score: 1

    That explains the lag I had all weekend.

  21. Re:Modula-3 FTW! on Ask Slashdot: Is Pascal Underrated? · · Score: 1

    I like Pascal, it's what we taught before C took over. The biggest problem for Pascal overall is that it was not well standardized early on. There have been standardization efforts, but the earliest ones took out too much useful stuff (ie, better string handling), and by the time of better standards it had dropped popularity enough that it never caught up.

    The extra typing is a non issue really. By that regards, everyone should love Python yet people complain about not having to put in braces... I found Pascal to be highly readable and C takes a lot more familiarity before you can read it easily.

  22. Re:Popcorn time! on Behind the MOOC Harassment Charges That Stunned MIT · · Score: 2

    No, I don't think someone should "just get over the fact that...". Don't excuse your fellow troglogdytes, hold them to account.
    In many cases things cross the line from being creeped out and into very clearly illegal territory, and this case sounds like one.
    This is not about some construction workers whistling at someone walking by, this is about one's own professor coercing a student.

    In real life you can't say "fuckoff" because the response may be "you're fired" or "I thought you wanted to get that A" or other things like that. The "fuckoff" response very often leads to a much more intense harrassment. As long as we tolerate this it will continue, we need to point fingers at people who do the harrassment and stop telling women to ignore it. Bosses of these harassers should fire them (whether construction worker or senior partner), their friends should not make excuses for them, and so forth.

    This should NEVER be something one gets used to and deals with, it should NEVER be a case of students having to grow a thicker skin.

    Equality does not mean that one side has to emulate the dominant side: ie, women shouldn't have to act like men to be equal, racial minorities shouldn't have to "fit in" to get jobs.

  23. Re:Good news on Disney Turned Down George Lucas's Star Wars Scripts · · Score: 1

    Though by many insider accounts, Lucas did not have an overall story arc planned from the start, but that is how he likes to present himself. The first movie stands by itself, he was absolutely uncertain there would ever be a sequel, he wasn't even sure it would be popular. The other movies were tacked on later and people who worked on the films said that major script changes were happening during filiming. I will admit that he probably had some larger vision imagined but I seriously doubt it was at any level of detail.

  24. Re:Good news on Disney Turned Down George Lucas's Star Wars Scripts · · Score: 1

    Personally, I don't see the big deal about the second movie. The first one was great; it stood on its own, it kept a consistent thematic feeling, etc. The second one was just a bridge, no beginning and no end. Lucas still had an ego in check on the first movie and felt like it was written by someone who loved movies. The second movie felt like a sequel.

  25. Re:Good news on Disney Turned Down George Lucas's Star Wars Scripts · · Score: 1

    Don't forget the second two movies, Lucas was making major plot changes during filming. The whole bit about Vader being Luke's father was one such last minute addition. The first movie was the best because it was the only one that was intended to stand on it's own and not just as a part of a continuing-but-unplanned series.