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User: Erik+Corry

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Comments · 114

  1. Re:Heartbleed on Rust-Based Redox OS Devs Slam Linux, Unix, GPL · · Score: 1

    C's safety features?

    You crack me up!

  2. Re:Proposed solution on uTorrent To Build In Transfer-Throttling Ability · · Score: 1

    The relevant information is the cost to the ISP. It's using that information that will help protect network neutrality. You can't scrape that from anywhere. What the torrent client does with that information is then the next issue. I can see that introducing an element of randomness may be useful.

    Note that my suggesting is very simple to implement and costs nothing at run time (one failed or succeeded http request). If it turns out that the ISPs don't implement their side of it then that a) gives you an argument against them in the net neutrality debate and b) doesn't stop you going crazy with the heuristics.

  3. Proposed solution on uTorrent To Build In Transfer-Throttling Ability · · Score: 1

    I agree that this is a huge problem with BitTorrent. The calls for the preservation of net neutrality should go hand in hand with efforts to fix the one protocol that is causing most pain for ISPs. BitTorrent is 'efficient' from the point of view of the person hosting (seeding) the content. That's great, especially if the hoster isn't making any money from hosting (perhaps because they don't own the rights!). But from the point of view of the ISPs bittorrent is horrendously inefficient, sending the same file fragments across expensive undersea connections again and again.

    I think any solution is going to involve the ISPs proving some way for the Bittorrent client to judge the proximity (in terms of $$) of a peer. Since the ISP controls your DNS that could be as simple as downloading an XML file from a server with a fixed name. Eg http://network-config/proximity-ipv4.xml

    It could be implemented in clients now. If it was enabled by default I think ISPs would soon start providing the info. There's money involved after all. It would probably improve download speeds too!

  4. Re:Unless you have a majority multilingual ... on Language Tempest At Orkut · · Score: 1

    Yeah, only Tørvalds is not his name. Torvalds is correct.

  5. Shameless Googling on Warriors Of Freedom Prompted Rampage Attempt? · · Score: 1

    I think this may be the first known case of shameless Googling. I'm not sure what that means, but apparently it means that if you know there is a game and you know what it is called, then you can find it using Google. That's pretty shameless, I'll agree!

  6. Re: Yes, this is parity! on Apple Hardware VP Defends Benchmarks · · Score: 1

    It's parity because all companies had the same opportunity to submit improvements to gcc.

    I think it's great that they are using gcc, because gcc is the compiler I use, whether on an Intel or an Apple machine. That surely applies to most Open Source and MacOS users (whether or not they do their compiling themselves). Who cares what performance the Intel compiler can deliver when most PCs don't have a single app compiled with that compiler on them?

    If Intel are dissatisfied with the x86 back end then they know what to do - contribute a better one. If they are dissatisfied with Apple's SPEC scores then they can submit their own gcc-based SPEC scores. AMD already did for Opteron servers (and they are better than Apple's by the way!).

    Open Source advocates should be cheering about this - at last, a benchmark that shows the performance WE get from OUR hardware on a day to day basis.

  7. Why do I even need to install it on Red Hat? on Sun's Last Stand · · Score: 1

    Is it Red Hat's or Sun's fault that there isn't a Java runtime environment RPM on my Red Hat CDs? Or have I just overlooked it?

  8. Re:SELL SHORT.....SELL SHORT NOW.... on Did SCO 'Borrow' Linux Code? · · Score: 1

    [i]Regardless of whether or not the stock rises in the near future, if you short now, you'll make money when it falls later.[/i]

    Unless it rises so much that your broker closes out your position (buys stock to cover the short position) in order to limit their liability.

    They can close it out for other reasons too (like the person they borrowed stock from wants it back) at any time.

    Good luck with the SCO short. Lets hope IBM doesn't buy them.

  9. This man is a git! on Barbra Streisand, Miss Vermont, And Your Website · · Score: 2, Insightful

    He keeps telling you at the start of the story how amazing it's going to be, and when you get to the end you realise it's just a standard girl-meets-bastard, girl-gets-treated-like-dirt story. The only amazing thing is that he has no shame, so he isn't embarassed to admit how nastily he treated her.

  10. Re:Question for Europeans on An Unbiased Analysis of Gun Crime vs. Gun Control? · · Score: 1

    Guns aren't a problem here.

    Very few people have them. Those that have, have them for hunting animals, and there is a lot of control over them (registering, licensing, locking up, not carrying around on an everyday basis). Noone wants looser gun control over here.

    Here in Denmark even the criminals don't generally have guns on them.

    Noone commits suicide with them (we prefer to destroy our livers with nonlethal headache pills). Also very few accidental deaths due to guns.

    And as for overthrowing the Governments, the entirity of Eastern Europe overthrew their governments about 13 years ago and guns in the hands of ordinary citizens weren't necessary. What was necessary was that the Soviet Union didn't invade with tanks (like they had done earlier). I don't think anyone over here believes that those 'velvet revolutions' would have happened any earlier with an armed population.

    It's basically not an issue over here. We don't envy the Americans having to live in fear of guns, but we do send our surgeons to Washington D.C. to get training in operating on gunshot wounds. They wouldn't get enough practice here to get good at it.

    I'm not sure how the USA could get from where they are in terms of gun proliferation to where we are, and I'm not sure they want to, so I guess that's OK.

  11. Re:Try before you buy... on Ipsos-Reid: More Americans Downloading Music · · Score: 1

    So you always download in phone quality?

    If all you want to do is find out whether you like the song, I'm sure a bitrate like 24kbit/s should be plenty.

  12. Newsflash... on Ipsos-Reid: More Americans Downloading Music · · Score: 2, Funny

    ...almost a third (31%) of shoplifters claim they have paid for at least some of the goods they got our of the shop!

  13. Mini-CD (CD3) players on Apple releases iPod · · Score: 1
    Take a look at the new CD-walkmen coming out that play Mini-CDs. You can burn your own, in MP3 format, each mini CD (same size as the old CD singles) holds 3 hours, the cost per Mbyte is much much less than Flash, you can lend the CDs to your friends, and they have big buffers, so they don't skip.

    And they cost about 1/3 of the iPod price.

    There's the Philips eXpanium 401 here, the Compaq PM-1, just announced or the Q-Sonic which is being sold for about $125 by Pearl in Germany.

  14. Client-side fonts and high resolutions on A New Rendering Model For X · · Score: 1

    How about allowing the clients to provide fonts? That would also make it possible for a client to have a backup font that it could use if nothing else was available. Also you might want to consider the possibility of high resolutions like about 300DPI and how they could be supported with a minimum of pain. Display technologies are changing.

  15. Re: How would this work on A New Rendering Model For X · · Score: 1

    Do you have a more detailed description on how you want this to work? Does it increase the amount of memory needed by the server? Does it increase the amount of network traffic needed? How would it cope with for example a Netscape window that was 500 pixels by 100 thousand, which you wanted to scroll smoothly through?

  16. The death of x87 on Intel Demos Williamette at 1.5GHz · · Score: 1
    What I don't understand is WHY Intel keeps their FP instructions, it is notoriously known for complicating compiler works (if it is trying to reach big performance) and slowing down things. Why not add new instructions (as will AMD do with their future SlegeHammer CPU), it should have been done a loooong time ago.

    They did. It's called SSE2. You don't have to use it for SIMD, there are instructions that just treat it like a flat floating point register file with 8 registers. Very much compiler-targetable as far as I can see.

    Check out the PDF file from Intel about Willamette.

  17. This is gcc! SGI compiler is interesting too. on More Itanium-Linux Capability · · Score: 1
    GnuPro from Cygnus/RedHat is a version of gcc, which is kept synchronised with the official GNU gcc. So basically this is gcc.

    What interests me is the SGI compiler. I am guessing that it is based on SGI's own compiler technology and not on gcc, but it is GPL, so suddenly we have two big GPL compilers. I wonder whether it can compile the kernel, or whether the kernel is still gcc-only. According to Linus it shouldn't be that difficult to make a kernel port that used a different compiler, since most of the gcc-specific stuff is in the architecture dependent area. But I don't think anyone tried it.

    Anyway if the IA64 Linux ports use gcc for the kernel and the SGI compiler for everything else that would be fine, too. So does glibc compile with a non-gcc compiler?

  18. Don't filter out all ICMP on Forum: The Yahoo Denial of Service · · Score: 1
    Or at least don't filter out "unreachable"-packets for very long, because basically the Internet doesn't work without them any more.

    See this link, this link and this link for details.

  19. What are the alternatives in the UK and Germany? on Richard Stallman Calls for Amazon Boycott · · Score: 1
    I have used amazon.co.uk and amazon.de and they are both very good. Can anyone recommend alternatives?

    Just tried www.waterstones.co.uk and the site was so slow it was useless.

  20. Happy Hacking keyboard a little too radical on Interface Zen · · Score: 1
    There's a much cheaper lite version, check their website.

    I rather liked the keyboard, but it's not quite right, so I won't get one:

    • I have got used to having Ctrl down there on the left
    • I have got used to having a big enter key
    • I have got really used to the 'delete to the left' key being at the top of the keyboard. Whatever you call it.
    • I like page up and page down, and the cursor keys are good for command line editing
    • In xterm you can use Shift-Insert instead of middle-mouse-button, which is great, but the Happy Hacking keyboard doesn't have Insert
    • I want to be able to delete left and delete right. So I need a backspace and a delete key (however you call them).
    • My keyboard already has two Control keys, the Happy Hacker would be a step backwards in that respect. It even has space for them, which is unused.
    • On a Danish keyboard you need a few extra keys.

    So I would like a slightly less radical keyboard than the Happy Hacking keyboard. Cut the function keys, cut the numeric keypad, leave everything else more or less the same. No windows keys of course, no caps lock, and make it compact so it doesn't take up too much space. Putting Ctrl next to A would let me have two Alt-Gr keys which would be a godsend on a Danish keyboard, where you need Alt-Gr for ${[]}|~\ ie all the time in programming.

    Does such a keyboard exist

    A foot-operated mouse would complete the picture.

  21. Agreeing with yourself on Microsoft up to Old Tricks Again · · Score: 1
    Posting three different comments while pretending to be three different ACs is one thing, but posting more comments agreeing with yourself is just silly.

    Why are you so happy about MS? Do they pay you or is your loyalty more that of a football fan?

    I shan't deny that Linux has its fair share of football-fan supporters.

  22. Linus can't pronounce it on Linux on Jeopardy · · Score: 1
    I pronounce it to rhyme with Linus, which means it depends what language I am speaking. This seems the most sensible pronunciation. In the original wav files he seems to me to use a long vowel, not a short linnucks vowel, but in my opinion he uses the wrong one. He mispronounces his own name in English, so that is only to be expected.

    I prefer my own name to be pronounced in a way that matches the language of the sentence it is embedded in.

  23. Apparently because Word can't count on USvMS Ruling Expected Today · · Score: 1
    Legal offices have a long history of preferring Word Perfect for their document processing. I don't know the specifics of why

    Apparently it's because Wordperfect can count words, and Word can't. Word claims to, but forgets the foot notes. The Register did an article on it.

  24. Re:its out there!! on USvMS Ruling Expected Today · · Score: 1

    WLS in Chicago said that MSFT was declared a monopoly.

    Judging by the filename (I already downloaded that!) it's only the findings of fact, not the actual number of lashes or days on bread and water.

  25. It's slashdotted already on USvMS Ruling Expected Today · · Score: 1

    Now what a surprise.

    If anyone gets a copy, please let us know where we can gets it. If we all try at once, then at least one of us will get it.

    I have an idea. All throw a die three times. If it comes up 6 every time, then try to download it, otherwise just wait here for a mirror to be announced.

    Yeah, right, like that's gonna happen!