Slashdot Mirror


User: plalonde2

plalonde2's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
324
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 324

  1. Re:3 - 5 years? on Judge Lowers Jammie Thomas' Damages to $54,000 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Sure, her kids should suffer a lower lifestyle to please the RIAA and "deter" file sharing. Your country is fsck'd.

  2. Re:no on Bruce Schneier On Airport Security · · Score: 1

    The munitions ship Mont Blanc blew up in Halifax harbour during WWI - the event is recalled as the Halifax Explosion. It was about 3 kilotons of explosives. It razed 2 square kilometers of the town. So we do know what such a ship might do.

  3. Re:True that on The Duct Tape Programmer · · Score: 1
    I also avoid categorical imperatives.

    There is testing that isn't unit testing. Knowing when it's sufficient is one of the things that separates good coders from highly productive coders.

  4. Re:True that on The Duct Tape Programmer · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I'd avoid the false dichotomy.

    Only unit test what needs to be unit tested. If it needs to be tested the testing will pay for itself. If it's simple enough that it doesn't need testing, then you're wasting your time writing those tests.

    Half the benefit of the unit tests/test-first methodology is that they force you to design even your internal interfaces in a reliable way. The other half is knowing you didn't introduce regressions in that oh-so-clever code.

    For most projects you don't need a whole lot of tests but there will be a couple of subsystems that you almost can't manage without them.

  5. Re:To be more specific on Fear of Porn URL Exposure Discourages Firefox 3 Upgrade · · Score: 1

    They are called personal computers for a reason.

  6. Re:More like a safeguard on Social Networking Behavioral Agreements At Work? · · Score: 2, Informative

    It just makes it more expensive to fight your suit against the megacorp. Since justice belongs to the party with the deeper pockets, megacorp gets away with it until some defense lawyer can carry the whole thing through, which reduces how many attorneys might take on what might be an otherwise open-shut case.

  7. Re:Intellisense and Debuggers on Old-School Coding Techniques You May Not Miss · · Score: 1
    You need to learn to use a command-line debugger. IDE debuggers "work" for simple bug and code flow tracing, but they are useless for anything subtle.

    There's nothing I hate more than the IDE deciding to display the new value of a variable by overwriting the old one, making it impossible to track the history of a variable without a piece of paper. Try debugging tricky races without that history.

    Real debuggers give you a log, in your window, of all your actions and of the previous state you examined. No IDE I know of gives you that.

  8. Meccanno? on Where to Find Axles, Gears For Kinetic Sculpture? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Meccano is made for small scale kinetic sculpture.

  9. Re:TFA perpetuates voodoo explanations on The Rise of the (Financial) Machines · · Score: 1
    You're missing the key part: so long as each individual packaged risk was an independent variable, this risk packaging made sense. The problem is that mortgage defaults are not independent variables: they are closely tied to not only to general economic performance but also to one-another. A defaulting mortgage in a poor economy tends to nearby property values down, leading to more defaults.

    Bankers were fools and frauds to believe that "the fundamentals of the economy are strong". There are reasons for regulation in these markets.

    It is amusing, though, to see the anti-socialist United States nationalizing its banks. If only they believed in socialism for anyone other than bankers.

  10. Re:AWSD on Slashdot Discussion System Updates · · Score: 1

    The one true bindings are, of course, HJKL

  11. Re:ARM is RISC in name only on RISC Vs. CISC In Mobile Computing · · Score: 1

    The shifter doesn't have to be on the ALU path as such, it can be wired to write-back register bus at relatively low cost. You can set up the variable shift in parallel to the ALU work. I don't know ARM's instruction encoding, but throwing 5 bits at that shift register seems like it might not be a bad tradeoff, considering how nice it is to have power-of-two manipulations for free.

  12. Re:This dude is so awesome! on Jack Thompson's Letter To Take-Two Exec's Mother · · Score: 1

    Thanks for your sig. Reminded me to cancel my account :-)

  13. Re:Canadian Coins Too on OLPC Announces Buy-2-Get-1 XO Laptop Sale · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This differs from the greenback how? Cash isn't money, it has no intrinsic value - confidence in the cash is the money. All paper currency is "money stamps".

  14. Re:I don't want much more on What Do You Want In iPhone 2.0? · · Score: 1

    Feeding the troll: because the iphone fits in my pocket better, replaces my ipod and my cell phone, and has a decent web browser. The treo (for example) is bigger, with less screen. It does do pdf, but that's less of a priority for me than the phone/ipod combo.

  15. Re:I don't want much more on What Do You Want In iPhone 2.0? · · Score: 3, Funny

    12) PDF reader 13) mpeg player 14) cut/paste (again) 15) split screen so I can see some data I have to retype because of lack of 6/14

  16. Re:Doesn't happen here? on Another Man Dies After Marathon Gaming Session · · Score: 1

    Um, in the west we do autopsies, and usually figure out the dead person had a pre-existing condition. And then it stops being news.

  17. Re:Negative image on Schneier Talks to the Head of TSA · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Once the terrorist decides to suicide, there's nothing to stop him. Risk/reward doesn't come into it then. And any action against an airliner is now suicide. My water bottle isn't the problem with this thinking. The grandparent nailed it.

  18. Re:More elements of simulation needed on Richard Garriot Argues Against Stagnant MMOG Design · · Score: 1

    Didn't you know? That's known exploit.

  19. Re:More elements of simulation needed on Richard Garriot Argues Against Stagnant MMOG Design · · Score: 1

    Hunh? I have a difficult time getting it into hardcore mode, and when I do my in-game partner disables the screen-shot feature.

  20. Re:State's Fault? on Slot Machine with Bad Software Sends Players To Jail · · Score: 1

    Because the slots involve chance: You can reasonably expect a slot machine to return a different amount. You can't expect that from a bank machine. L2T

  21. Re:I know blackjack is faulty and will abuse it on Slot Machine with Bad Software Sends Players To Jail · · Score: 1

    The house wins on a tie. That's what keeps the player's "perfect play" from having an expected positive outcome. Yes, it's rigged for the house.

  22. Re:Well, they're technically correct, of course... on FCC Rules Open Source Code Is Less Secure · · Score: 1

    Surely you must have learned to read assembly at some time? The performance constraints of most encryption code reduces the algorithms to relatively small amounts of code. It's not difficult to disassemble code. Source code makes it a little easier, but only for amateurs.

  23. Re:Which study do you believe? on Firstborn Get the Brains · · Score: 1

    Then she has to cross-dress while you write another novel.

  24. Re:Canada in bed with U.S. corporations on Behind the Scenes of Canada's Movie Piracy Law · · Score: 1

    You think that? You write that and you're too chicken to even put your name to it. Go back to the Globe and Mail boards where tory apologists (oops, "it was all the liberals' fault") hang out. Go to hell you racist prick.

  25. Re:What about building your own? on Puncturing the "PCs Are Cheaper Than Macs" Myth · · Score: 1

    Cheaper if you don't value your time. It's easily 5 hours work to choose components, order them, unpackage, integrate, install the OS, find drivers, and get running. Even at $30/hour, that's $150 dollars more for you build. And don't forget what you paid for shipping on all those separate pieces. And you had better install linux on that; if you need to run windows you'll go out and buy a copy right? You just lost on the cost of your build vs buy debate.