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User: jmaline

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  1. Re: News? on Russia Moves From Summer Time To Standard Time · · Score: 1

    And it takes zero effort to get updated tzdata on 'n' different platforms that a company might run? Including outdated ones (sad, but common).

    I was involved in the project to manage fan out the last time US changed DST rules a few years back. It's a project.

    At the time I would occasionally read the tzdata mailing list. I was amazed at how many countries kept changing the rules willy-nilly. No one in government has any understanding of computer systems. I assume these countries with frequent rule changes get used to half of their computerized systems showing the wrong time.

  2. Re: Why not update your JRE? on Oracle Discontinues Free Java Time Zone Updates · · Score: 1

    Correct. A key point most are missing here is that tzupdater tool's purpose is to update TZ data on an existing java runtime. Install latest java runtime and you don't need this tool.

    And "refactor" of your code to latest java is typically a bit of testing effort. It's not like there are frequent compatibility breaks version to version...

  3. Re:Software Related on 2011 MacBook Pros Confirmed To Crash Under Load · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Smcfancontrol is 3rd party software, not Apple.

    I've long wanted macfixit.com to have some prominent indicator on stories about problems. The indicator? I'M AN IDIOT AND I INSTALLED SOME LOW-LEVEL "HAXIE" AND IT CAUSED PROBLEMS. BECAUSE WHO COULD IMAGINE THAT PATCHING CHANGES INTO SOMEONE ELSE'S SOFTWARE COULD HAVE BAD SIDE-EFFECTS. AS I SAID I'M AN IDIOT.

    OK, maybe a little wordy. But it'd help me quickly skip articles reporting "problems" where the "fix" was to uninstall some crazy low-level hack.

  4. yes: XML Catalogs; no: DTD document hosting on Is Dedicated Hosting for Critical DTDs Necessary? · · Score: 1

    Kind of, but not really.

    Yes, XML catalogs are the answer.

    Nothing in the XML specs says that any actual document is hosted at the URI. It's a mechanism to specify a globally unique identifier. It's an identifer, not a promise to host a document. Some folks host the DTD document at the URI, but there's no requirement to do that.

    While I'm sure not every RSS client uses a high-quality XML implementation, it seems clearly true that every RSS client is an XML processor. RSS is an XML format. So an RSS client is, um, processing XML...

    As for checking for updates, that's a non-issue. Remember, the URI is a unique identifier. If you ever update the DTD, you'd generate a new URI.

  5. Arthur Murray/Mentifex - as kooky as he seems? on Ask Jordan Pollack About AI - Or Anything Else · · Score: 1
    Sorry, the most frequent mention I see of AI is from a guy who goes by the nickname Mentifex. Seems like an annoying if fairly harmless kook. He posts to usenet group comp.arch and others about his mentifex project (public domain AI written in Forth!), trying to drum up support.

    Is there anything there? Do folks like this cause much PR harm to folks doing serious work on AI?

  6. Re:What's happened to PC Mag? on Are Computer Magazines Dead? · · Score: 1
    I agree on the reviews. Any product category containing a MS product results in an MS win. The tech columns are all MS too. I just don't use that stuff in my professional life. Plus I can get my computing news fix from the web.

    I just received my check in the mail after cancelling the remainder of my subscription. The straw that broke the camel's back is how far off the deep end John Dvorak has gone. Formerly entertaining, but now he's just kind of a loony ranting guy.

    (boldface above is inside joke, for those not familiar with JD's column)

  7. Re:Gemstone www.gemstone.com is good object DB on Ask Slashdot: Pure Object Databases in Linux? · · Score: 2

    Ditto on prior poster about GemStone.

    The original response didn't really stress one point that may be significant. GemStone/S has a C++ client interface (as well as Smalltalk, Java and C), but "its centered" on Smalltalk. C++ isn't its primary strength.

    Great product, but if you're looking for a C++-centric solution (which your post sounded like), GemStone isn't ideal.

    They do have a free non-commercial download of GemStone/S at http://smalltalk.gemstone.com/Linux/