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User: akunak

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  1. Original Slashdot post on SNO Results on Neutrino 'Flip' Discovery Earns Nobel For Japanese, Canadian Researchers · · Score: 1

    I think this is the original 2001 Slashdot post from SNO (Sudbury Neutrino Observatory) in Sudbury, Ontario. It did not attract much Slashdot discussion at the time.

    http://science.slashdot.org/st...

  2. James Gosling on The World's Best Living Programmers · · Score: 1

    I am the same age as Gosling (and even went to the same university as a kid.) I have worked with and observed many world-class programmers in my career, and have never seen the likes of James. He is the Wayne Gretzky of programmers.

  3. Sounds a bit like sickle-cell anaemia on Tooth Cavities May Protect Against Cancer · · Score: 1

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sickle-cell_disease

    This is a disease (an inherited disease, perhaps like dental caries) that conveys a fitness against something else that is more serious.

  4. tellico: a reasonably good book library manager on Ask Slashdot: High-Tech Ways To Manage a Home Library? · · Score: 1

    http://tellico-project.org/

    I own around 3000 books and have used it for several years. It may not do everything you want, but it is probably close.

  5. Re:Like an ID for a database record on Suitable Naming Conventions For Workstations? · · Score: 1

    I'm with bokmann on this. But I go with both a numeric id and mnemonic. The details can be looked up. And just to get away with the crushingly boring aspect of workstation / names and to help with communication (Was that 'frodo' that died or workstation '431234'?), I've picked a large namespace from some mythology or other. The most fruitful has been Tolkien. In general I use place names for servers and people/elves/hobbits for workstations. Tolkien has a *lot* of characters.

    In past incarnations of hardware, I've used Greek and Norse mythology and even names of stars ('polaris','algol', etc.)

  6. Re:Seriously? on RAID Trust Issues — Windows Or a Cheap Controller? · · Score: 1

    OpenSolaris ZFS
    Free and the best.
    see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS

  7. Daemon is good beach-reading on Daemon · · Score: 1

    Well, I bought the hardback in the SF section last weekend and also could not put it down. It is a thriller, with a bit of out-there tech that doesn't jar the bs detector too much. It'll make a great movie script but it is certainly not going to win any writing awards.

    For tech and truly original ideas as well as actual good writing, go for Stephenson: Cryptonomicon, Diamond Age, Snow Crash.

    For beach reading though, I await Suarez's 2010 sequel,

  8. Re:Ewwwww on Python-to-C++ Compiler · · Score: 1

    I too used f2c and had to put up with the unreadable code. For me it was an issue because I was using f2c to facilitate a conversion of a small amount old Fortran code to a Unix platform (i386 DG/UX) that had a free C compiler but an expensive or non-existent Fortran compiler. The issue was maintenance; the generated code became part of our production system.

    In a previous generation we converted a major system from an odd dialect of Pascal to C using a heavily and brilliantly modified (as in convert a big program, compile, link, test with no errors) version of (I think Caltech's) p2c. In this case the win was no hand porting of several tens of thousands of lines of Pascal, but the loss was several years of dealing with at least some completely unmaintainable code. Imagine nice Pascal sets implemented with C bitfield operations (now that's total ewwwww.)

    I think a code converter or generator can generate good code if the author actually thinks about it. Further, if the code generated is of high-quality, it makes debugging the code-generator or converter that much easier.

  9. back up again on Canadian Domain Registry Pulls Plug on Free Speech · · Score: 1

    www.youthforvolpe.ca seems to be alive and well again (and it is very funny)

  10. Re:Atwood's best? Maybe, but maybe not. on Oryx and Crake · · Score: 1

    Science Fiction is my thing and has been for close to forty years. For me, the best writers and best writing in the world take place within this genre.

    I read extensively outside the realm, too. Atwood is in the top tier of all current non-science-fiction English-language writers and may end up with the Nobel someday.

    I was therefore pretty smug after reading 'The Handmaids Tale'. To me. this was an unoriginal, although well-crafted, American theocracy story done first and better by Heinlein in 'Revolt in 2100'. It made a great movie, however (well worth renting.)

    I was therefore all prepared for a similarly unoriginal dystopian effort with 'Oryx and Crake'. Wrong, wrong, wrong! Atwood has done her research. The science is good. The ideas are original. And you get Atwood's wonderfully concise and brilliant imagery too. Atwood takes 50 words to paint a picture, not a 1000. For me, this book is her best and surefire Hugo material.

  11. Re:Well, mine is on Which Organizations Have Standardized on Mozilla? · · Score: 1

    I am the IT manager for a 70 employee service company in the Canadian petroleum industry. We have standardized on Moz for email and browsing because:
    a) It works well enough.
    b) I have both Linux and Windows desktops (soon to be all Linux).
    c) I need to support this stuff and one browser/email client is more than enough.
    d) It's pretty close to being GPLed.

    Weirdly, I also have a wack of serial terminals that will (Real Soon Now) end up being Linux desktops. For those, we use elm (and have since 1990).

    For certain things, like mass editing/distribution of my inbox, or very precise setting of attachments'
    mime types, elm is still the way to go.