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User: swilly

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Comments · 207

  1. Re:Yawn on "Feline Herd" Offers Easier Package Management For Emacs · · Score: 1

    Okay, I have a really stupid question - what do Emacs aficionados use for the "Meta" key?

    Emacs will usually use either the Super key (usually called the Windows key) or the Alt key with the Esc key as a fallback (Esc doesn't use cording). I prefer the Super key but in the last few years distributions have been reserving that key for the window manager, so they intercept the key before it gets to Emacs. The real problem with Alt is with the terminal, where Alt+F opens the file menu instead of moving forward one word, which forces me to turn off the menu bar to use Emacs mode in bash. It isn't a big deal, and it is a lot easier to adjust to than wrestling with the WM and xmodmap.

    Alt isn't the ideal key to be chording, but after a little practice it becomes second nature. I have to say, I have seen people buy vi friendly keyboards with the Esc key above the tab, but I've never seen anyone actually use Ctrl-[ when they didn't have to.

  2. Re:Garbage Collection is not O(GC)=0 on Former Sun Mobile JIT Engineers Take On Mobile JavaScript/HTML Performance · · Score: 1

    The original claim is that performance is worse by orders of magnitude in a memory constrained environments. It doesn't sound like the mobile optimized GC is orders of magnitude worse than a desktop optimized GC, so in a memory constrained environment the mobile GC would perform better than the desktop GC.

    Of course, the author doesn't provide any numbers, so all we have to go by are his expertise and that his arguments are reasonable. Further research will be necessary.

  3. Re:Manufacturers seriously missing the point on AOC's 21:9 Format, 29" IPS Display Put To the Test At 2560x1080 · · Score: 1

    In 1985 I liked a 19" monitor because of the amount of information could be relayed. 1280x1024 was huge compared to the 13" monitor I had (800x640 or whatever).

    Unlikely. VGA was introduced in 1987, and it only offered 640x480. Perhaps you meant to type 1995?

  4. Re:Sure it can. Watch. * on Baseball Software Can't Score What Jean Segura Did Friday · · Score: 1

    To indicate that a record is somehow tainted, right?

  5. Re:Actually, the problem is... on Baseball Software Can't Score What Jean Segura Did Friday · · Score: 1

    To quote professor Frink, "Baseball is a game played by the dextrous, but only understood by the pointdexterous."

    Unfortunately, I couldn't find a Youtube clip to link to. The episode is "MoneyBart" (Season 22, Episode 3).

  6. Re:All notebooks on Ars Reviewer is Happily Bored With Dell's Linux Ultrabook · · Score: 2

    It depends on the Zenbook. The earlier ones had bad keyboards and even worse trackpads. Apparently, ASUS was embarrassed enough by the reviews that they made a real effort on later models. I have a UX31A and it is just awesome. The backlit keyboard and trackpad are roughly equal in quality to a Macbook Air (which means they're better than everything else I've used) and the display is a wonderful 1080p IPS display with a matte finish that is the nicest 13" display I've ever seen. Throw in an i7 processor, 256GB SSD, and the Ultrabook form factor, and I just love this thing.

    My only complaint is that it was limited to 4GB of RAM when I bought it. And the memory is not upgradable (not surprising for an Ultrabook) so I'm stuck at 4GB until I buy another notebook. That cuts its usable life somewhat, but I still have no regrets on the purchase.

    I'm using the stock Windows 7 on it right now, but I'm hoping to get Linux Mint on it eventually. The only application keeping me on Windows in Netflix (yes, I know it can be made to run on Linux). And it seems that while Linux support is good, ASUS does something funky with power management and Linux or vanilla Windows 7 (without the ASUS drivers) gets about half (!) the usable battery time of the ASUS optimised Windows 7 install.

  7. Re:Problem fixes itself on S. Korea Says Cyber Attack From North Wiped 48,700 Machines · · Score: 1

    Destructive malware stopped being common simply because it is more profitable to keep the machine compromised. (And perhaps because with the death of DOS and Win9x, destruction became harder to do.) Unless you are a government or other political entity, most hacking is done for money or for lulz. For governments and terrorist organizations, destruction is still a valid goal.

  8. Re:Photovoltaics are useless anyway on Bosch Finds Solar Business Unprofitable, Exits · · Score: 1

    Solar thermal isn't without its problems, mainly that it needs cooling. A proposal for a solar thermal plant here in Arizona was opposed because of its high water usage, and water is by far our biggest environmental concern (it's currently on hold for financial reasons). Dry cooling is possible, but it's much less efficient and therefore more expensive.

    Other desert states like California and Nevada are also having problems with solar thermal. Some form of solar energy should be our future, but getting there hasn't been as easy as advertised.

    http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/water-use-by-solar-projects-intensifies/

  9. Re:What do they consider a user? on Opera Picks Up Webkit Engine · · Score: 1

    I remember using tabs in Galeon on Linux before Opera had them. Opera has always had MDI, and it was the first mainstream browser to use tabs for MDI, but it wasn't the first browser with tabs. I don't think anyone really knows who did it first.

  10. Re:Tried it on Experience the New Slashdot Mobile Site · · Score: 1

    My HTC One S was seeing the scroll interpreted as click problem, but I didn't see any lag. Perhaps that is dependent on the hardware?

    Overall, the main page sucks, but its okay for viewing articles. I'll stick with the desktop version and maybe try the mobile again in a few months.

    And I agree with the complaints about the theme. Slashdot has a certain look to it that the mobile version lacks.

  11. Re:Selection Bias? on SSD Prices Fall Dramatically In 2012 But Increase In Q4 · · Score: 1

    All these years, and I never realized that Slashdot is just a crowdsourcing tool for editing and peer reviewing news.

    I feel used.

  12. Re:Soon we'll be ordering a "Royale with cheese" on Petition For Metric In US Halfway To Requiring Response From the White House · · Score: 1

    We'll just call it a "Royale with Cheese".

  13. Re:That's a lot! on Petition For Metric In US Halfway To Requiring Response From the White House · · Score: 3, Funny

    So one American is equivalent to approximately 1.5 metric people. Yes, we Americans know we are overweight compared to the rest of the world, but that doesn't mean you have the right to poke fun. We just made a "different life choice", that's all.

    I actually once got disciplined as a kid for calling another kid fat. We can't help who we are and it isn't right to focus on peoples flaws as it prevents us from feeling good about ourselves. I wonder how much of our overweight problems and poor health is a direct result of all that PC garbage that was crammed down our throats as children.

  14. Bad Assumptions About Dates and Times on Adobe and Apple Didn't Unit Test For "Forward Date" Bugs. Do You? · · Score: 1

    Here is one that really bit me in the ass once. Daylight Savings Time happens on different days depending on which country you are in, and the operating system doesn't always know when this should be.

    Back in 2007 I was deployed to Iraq supporting military systems. In Iraq, Daylight Savings happened on April 1st and October 1st, but Windows didn't know that. Using the Baghdad time zone Windows thought that daylight savings happened on the same days that it did in the US. So, for about a week, every computer on the domain had the wrong time. The administrators of the domain controller didn't think this was a big deal, and things will fix themselves soon, so why bother adjusting our clock? Normally that would be fine, since the military has standardized on Zulu (GMT) since forever, and all military systems were required to store and transmit dates in that format. But there was one system, which I won't name, that used local time for its database and then asked Windows to convert to Zulu time for the XML data transfer. It took several days before we found out that every date and time we were given from them was a lie. This caused us all sorts of problems and fixing all of the dates was a major pain.

    After all the complaints, the meetings with developers, and so on, we naturally thought that the developers for this system had gotten their act together and fixed their problem so we wouldn't see it again. Nope. Sure enough, in October we had the exact same problem, except this time I was watching for it and modified our insert into SQL Server to adjust the time. (I'm not a fan of putting a lot of business logic in stored procedures, but it really helped that time.) I made sure that my replacement was aware of the situation before the next change in April, but apparently they finally fixed their database by then.

    What I learned is that databases should always use GMT and you should never ask the system for the local time and then convert to GMT, as it may lie. Instead ask the system for the GMT time.

  15. Re:postgresql? no way on PostgreSQL 9.3 Will Feature UPDATEable Views · · Score: 1

    Why didn't you use MongoDB? MongoDB is web scale.

  16. Noticed on 6900 only recently on Frame Latency Spikes Plague Radeon Graphics Cards · · Score: 1

    A few months ago I decided to do a complete replay of the entire Mass Effect trilogy with my 6900 series card, and I am seeing the occasional lag that didn't used to be there. I also revisited Skyrim when Dawnguard came out, and I'm seeing it there too. This machine didn't used to do this, and since I can't find anything else running that could cause the CPU to spike, I have been working on the assumption that some driver update (perhaps as far back as six months ago) has been to blame.

    It's nice to see that others have been seeing this as well, and I hope something is done about it. The Radeon cards are awesome hardware, but AMD/ATI drivers have never been very good.

  17. Re:Fond Memories on Linux Nukes 386 Support · · Score: 1

    I'll be in my bunk.

  18. I'll be in my bunk.

  19. Re:Use different passwords for different things on New 25-GPU Monster Devours Strong Passwords In Minutes · · Score: 1

    I used to do something like this, but I kept running into problems with sites having arcane rules. Some that I visit do not allow special characters at all, others limit what you can use, I have one very important site that limits me to 8 characters, and another (from the same company!) that requires 14 character passwords. Dealing with all the variety is a real pain.

  20. Re:Run on Twinkies? on Hostess To Close; No More Twinkies · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The first result in Google for camradery is http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/comradery. The first definition is camaraderie, so it looks like we have two valid spellings of the same word.

    It's also currently in the top 1% of lookups on the site, so the slashdot effect is still alive and well.

  21. Re:It all sounds vaguely familar... on US Air Force's 1950s Supersonic Flying Saucer Declassified · · Score: 1

    Have a group over and watch Mars Attacks followed by Independence Day. They are practically the same movie with the same plot and many of the same tropes. And they were both released in 1996.

    It's fun to talk over Independence Day and saying thinks like "and this is where Pierce Brosnan says..."

  22. Re:so all those people weren't crazy on US Air Force's 1950s Supersonic Flying Saucer Declassified · · Score: 1

    Look at it from the photons point of view. To it, it looked like you were standing still.

  23. Re:Dating a co-worker can be bad for your health on The Perils of Developers Hooking Up · · Score: 1

    Ah yes, form B, the Notification of Romantic Entanglement. Just remember to stamp it five times.

  24. Re:Hackerspace != Political Correct on Is Sexual Harassment Part of Hacker Culture? · · Score: 1

    It's hard to tell tone from something written, but it sounds like you might think that this is a bad thing. It is not. Sociopathy is little more than a failure to feel empathy, and is not a bad thing unless it causes someone to harm others. Sociopathy does have a correlation with criminal activity, and yes it may have a correlation with power, but it is also strongly correlated with antisocial behavior such as avoiding social situations, which I bet half the regular readers here have to some degree. It is what you do that makes you a bad person who should be locked up for others protection.

  25. Re:Trick question? on How Will Amazon, Barnes & Noble Survive the iPad Mini? · · Score: 1

    It's the perfect size for a e-reader. I have a Nexus 7 and the screen is about the size of a paperback, the screen resolution and display angles make it every bit as good as a paperback for reading, and it even weighs less than some of the larger paperbacks that I own, making it easy to hold. And with the wireless connection, it is an excellent device for email, web browsing, and so on. If I hadn't bought this, I probably would have bought a Kindle (with a 7" screen, I might add).

    I personally think that the 10" screen is better for some things (like movies and documents designed for 8.5"x11"), but for casual internet and book reading, the 7" screen size rules.