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User: d_lesage

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Comments · 48

  1. Re:A wise man once said on Young Listeners Opt For Streaming Over Owning · · Score: 1

    According to Marillion, it's

    He who dies with the most toys is still dead.

  2. Re:But did they LISTEN? on US Losing R&D Dominance To Asia? · · Score: 0

    Don't forget: 10: Pitting religion against science.

  3. Re:Luck favors the prepared on Your Best Exam Stories? · · Score: 1

    Similar story: final exam for my very first programming class (undergraduate CS degree) : Pascal (granted, this is long ago). Very tough course, the professor was a maniac. We're allowed to bring in any documentation we want to the exam.

    The summer before, I had worked in a book distributor's warehouse. They were going to destroy slightly defective books, and gave us all a chance to pick up any book we wanted out of those piles. I took all the computer books they had, inlcuding a Pascal book. So I show up to the exam with the textbook, whatever notes I had, and that one extra book.

    There is no way anyone can finish this exam withing the allocated time. There's just too many questions, and long ones too. I finish the easier questions first, then try to decide which one to tackle next. One of the tougher ones is about doubly-linked lists, sorting, and some other stuff. Flipping through the extra book I have, I find the exact same question as an exercise, with the answer. Jackpot! I ended up with a 57%, while the average was around 35%. Nice!

  4. Re:Invisible Ink Cheatsheets on Your Best Exam Stories? · · Score: 1

    When we had one of those on-notesheet exams, I'd usually end up on photocopying duty: photocopy all relevant pages, reducing to 25%. Layout 4 reduced sheets at once on the machine, copy them at 25% again. Repeat until sheet is almost-but-not-quite unreadable. I'd usually stuff 4*4*4 pages and it'd still be usable (needed good eyes though!). Then make copies for everyone.

  5. Re:Naval Gazing? on The Rise of Digg.com · · Score: 1

    That's not a problem at all if you're using RSS to "read" Digg.

  6. Re:GUI on OpenOffice Bloated? · · Score: 1

    Agreed. Four for four, in my experience.

  7. Re:Not a designer on French Designer Ordered to Give up milka.fr · · Score: 1

    You must be a lawyer to think there was any kindness to the letters she got.

  8. Re:Yet another reason for the US to switch to metr on The Logic Behind Metric Paper Sizes · · Score: 1

    Divide a pound of meat into six patties. How heavy is each patty? Divide two kg. of meat into six patties. How much meat is in each patty?

    Divide a pound of meat into five patties. How heavy is each patty?

    Divide two kg. of meat into five patties. How much meat is in each patty?

    *shrug* Toma-to, tomah-to.

  9. Re:Starting salary? feh. on Computer Engineering Degree Most Valuable · · Score: 1

    Wow, we worked for the same company, and I don't even know you ?! *grin*

    Seriously, me losing my job with those bozos (they didn't like it when I flatly stated I was not going to work unpaid hours outside version release periods) was the best thing that happened to me; I'm now working for a larger company that actually (imagine that!) pays for overtime.

  10. Just great on Trojan Horse Caused A Siberian Explosion · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Let's cause an explosion that could cause the death of hundreds (if not more), and then gloat about it.

    Cold war or not, this is just callous disregard for human life.

  11. Re:key component of IBM's Lotus Software on Remail: IBM is Reinventing Email · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Security, schmecurity.

    Notes is painful to use. Why develop a secure client if none of your users is going to want to use it?

  12. Spamcop on Another Whack at Spam · · Score: 1

    Pick this one apart, people.

    I've been thinking about the problem for a while, and here's what I got. You forward an email to spamcop (or paste it on their web site), and it analyses the headers for you to figure out where the email originally came from.

    Now, what prevents SMTP servers from running a similar check when receiving emails? Walk the IP list in the headers, see where it originally came from, check whether is matches the domain on the "From:" line, and bounce it if the results differ.

    Time/Bandwidth overhead? Mailing lists? Anonymous mailers?

  13. Re:Non-DnD MUDs on What MUDs Do You Play? · · Score: 1

    Kobra is a Star Wars-themed one.

  14. Re:Yawn... on Initial Half-Life 2 Benchmarks Released · · Score: 1

    Anyhow, just who runs Half-Life or anything with all the eye candy maxed up? No serious gamers that I know of, that's for sure.

    Not many people who play multiplayer FPS games will do so at max eye-candy, but I (and many others) want max eye-candy when playing them single-player. And I fully expect HL2 to be the best single-player shooter ever.

  15. Re:April Fools? on Programming .NET Components · · Score: 1

    The programming community should wake up and see the obvious fact that Java provides everything that .Net provides, but in a platform neutral and sane manner.

    And .Net provides everything that Java provides, but in a language-neutral manner. Much more desirable in my opinion.

  16. Re:MXER? on Using Sling Shot Power to Hurl Into Orbit · · Score: 1

    I thought the same thing when I read the writeup. When did it become "cool" in scientific circles to use "X*" for anything spelled "Ex*" ?? Xtreme Astronomy ?

    On the other hand, I guess they did not want this project confused with "Mir".

  17. Re:The bright side on Widespread Use of Hydrogen May Hurt Ozone Layer · · Score: 1

    ... or Nitrous Oxide.

  18. Uniquely American?? on Why Johnny Can't Handwrite · · Score: 2, Interesting

    [...] computers are speeding the demise of a uniquely American form of expression [...]

    Begging your pardon ? Cursive writing is "Uniquely American" ??

  19. Re:Shooting their own foot. on Inside Microsoft's New F# Language · · Score: 1

    Good programmers choose C, C++ or java and stick to it for the rest of their lives

    Actually, no. That's lazy programmers.

    Real good programmers know that programming languages are just tools. For every task, there are many tools you can use; some are better than others. By using the same tool for every task, you are doomed to use an inefficient one in some cases.

  20. Re:Obligatory joke on Trend Micro Quarantines Letter P · · Score: 3, Funny

    This spam is brought to you by the letter P and by the number 3.

  21. Re:By design? on Hijacking .NET · · Score: 1

    I completely fail to see what's nasty about it. If it's not documented, you just plain should not rely on it. Isn't hat the way all code works?

  22. Re:Yeah, right... on Making Change · · Score: 2, Funny

    If you get on a trin travelling *east* from *Boston*, it's going to take you a hell of a lot less than 30 minutes not to care. You're more likely to care about the lack of oxygen.

  23. Re:Nice moves on Earthlink Deploying Challenge-Response Anti-Spam System · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It drives network traffic as well up to the sky

    But wouldn't the added traffic be more than compensated by the reduction in traffic that would ensue when the spammers go out of "business"?

  24. Re:*pfft* Hungry Bears, on PDA/Radiation Detector · · Score: 1

    I'm more worried about angry pandas myself....

  25. Sea horse on Brain Prosthesis Ready For Testing · · Score: 1

    ... wait, what? They stick an artificial sea horse in your head?

    What's that all about?