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User: Fulcrum+of+Evil

Fulcrum+of+Evil's activity in the archive.

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Comments · 9,475

  1. Re:JACK THOMPSON DEAD AT 56 on Jack Thompson's Letter To Take-Two Exec's Mother · · Score: 1

    Better yet, they play video games, but it's only Madden06 and the like.

  2. Re:Uses on Stealth Paint From German Inventor Werner Nickel · · Score: 1

    It's actually quite simple. Intentionally interfering with the operation of a licensed wireless communications device through the use of any unlicensed device is automatically your fault, in violation of FCC bullshit

    Copper mesh doesn't count as that. It's perfectly legal to shield a room with mesh, although it's reasonable to post prominent signs to that effect.

  3. Re:Blog spam. Link to actual article. Nvidia loss? on NVIDIA Shaking Up the Parallel Programming World · · Score: 1

    Nvidia is showing signs of being poorly managed. CUDA is a registered trademark of another hi-tech company.

    Who cares? Medical equipment != parallel computation.

  4. Re:Security comes first always. on Disillusioned With IT? · · Score: 1

    look it up yourself. the bls website is available, and you haven't provided any yourself.

  5. Re:Security comes first always. on Disillusioned With IT? · · Score: 1

    Talk about a logical fallacy. The murder rate and overall rate of violence has been dropping for 30 years or so. Also, kids are generally not killing each other - the stats that say otherwise are talking about gangbangers and sometimes include people up to 25 years old as 'kids'.

  6. Re:You can't change the world. on Disillusioned With IT? · · Score: 1

    Nice bunch of platitudes. The sort of ignore the lessons of history: people do not act in their best interest, capitalism is good at providing cheap services, but not at everything we need from it (our present system is not really capitalistic). Your whole post reads like the sort of thing I'd expect from a well paid engineer who thinks that he is solely responsible for his success.

  7. Re:Security comes first always. on Disillusioned With IT? · · Score: 1

    No it isn't, it's safer than it was. Sending your kids out to play in the summer when they're 13-14 is just fine these days.

  8. Re:Really? on Microsoft Helps Police Crack Your Computer · · Score: 1

    Unless they use the rubber hose decryption tool, that is.

  9. Re:Literate programming... on Donald Knuth Rips On Unit Tests and More · · Score: 1

    hehe, you should see the stuff where I work. We've started in on proper quality, but it's only been a couple of years.

  10. Re:Literate programming... on Donald Knuth Rips On Unit Tests and More · · Score: 1

    yeah, I'm simplifying. the basic idea is that a physicist need not be a perfect coder, but avoiding certain egregious habits will help the refactor stage go faster and work better.

    i? Surely your company did code reviews?

  11. Re:Medical 'insurance' is an extended warranty on Bill Prohibiting Genetic Discrimination Moves Forward · · Score: 1

    Yup. Freedom that doesn't include the possibility of failure isn't Freedom. Freedom includes the right to do things you (and me) think are dumb/wrong/etc. or it isn't Freedom.

    Freedom with a gun to your head is slavery; lots of people are chained to their jobs because quitting is a death sentence due to medical conditions. a national health care system would change this.

  12. Re:Medical 'insurance' is an extended warranty on Bill Prohibiting Genetic Discrimination Moves Forward · · Score: 1

    This sort of blurring of terms is dangerous because we are on the brink of doing something really stupid, nationalizing the entire medical industry. As if the outright socialism of it doesn't scare ya, or the drop in quality that has occurred EVERY time it has been tried around the world doesn't disuade you from supporting this BS then I got one last argument.

    The entire world is not the UK. We spend more that anyone else and have mediocre care at best.

    Look at the latest (but totally predictable) development in countries that have gone this way. Because they pay for your poor decisions they are claiming the power to totally control your life. Diet police ascendent.

    They also ban guns, then swords. Whaddya know - au is a different place. Do they do this anywhere that isn't a former crown colony?

  13. Re:Literate programming... on Donald Knuth Rips On Unit Tests and More · · Score: 1

    Well, actually, once you've programmed in Python for a while, all of those spurious '}'s to close blocks really start to look as annoying and useless as "} //end while". I hate 'indentation is scope'. If your editor disagrees with your runtime on how many spaces are in a tab (or if it changes), your code breaks.
  14. Re:Literate programming... on Donald Knuth Rips On Unit Tests and More · · Score: 1

    Well I did physics, and we weren't really taught how to program. We just did it and solved some Physics problems in Fortran. Most of us went through the whole of university writing programs (on and off) without even knowing the difference between passing by value or by reference. In Computer Science degrees, I trust things are better, but even then, the code they write is probably far removed from the shear volume and inter-relational complexity of business software.

    The other problem is that by the time people become really skilled, they feel like it's time to move on. The thing here is that properly engineered code is easier to maintain. In your case, partnering with an engineer would help; you write the first version and make it go, then you and the engineer build test cases that exercise its behavior. After that, the engineer refactors your code and makes it pretty, then consults on changes in a pair sort of situation. Something like 2:1 physicists to engineers should work reasonably well. All you really need to do is avoid piles of global variables named aa..az.
  15. Re:The way things are going on Humans Nearly Went Extinct 70,000 Years Ago · · Score: 1

    They used DDT a bit, but cut back before eradicating the mosquitos. This resulted in a population of resistant bugs, which are kept around by continued use. Of course, stopping would be even worse.

  16. Re:The way things are going on Humans Nearly Went Extinct 70,000 Years Ago · · Score: 1

    quite possibly. As i recall, the link between bird population decline and ddt is hardly a proven thing, and the DDT ban itself succeeded largely on hype and scare tactics.

  17. Re:Goddamn BonziBUDDY on The State Of Grayware On the PC · · Score: 1

    I would've made a policy of reimaging any computer with Gator installed. If they want kittens, go get some plush ones and put them in your cube.

  18. Re:The way things are going on Humans Nearly Went Extinct 70,000 Years Ago · · Score: 1

    It's terrible. The book itself is fine, but the massive overreaction is completely unsupported. The thinner eggshells mentioned in the blurb you cited are at best secondary causes.

  19. Re:Are we SO sure? on Humans Nearly Went Extinct 70,000 Years Ago · · Score: 0, Redundant

    ...Could it have been a cataclysmic flood and not a drought?...

    Unlikely; there would be evidence of something like that.

    Now you don't HAVE to believe the things written in the Bible, but what if the above and everything else therein is true after all? Something to think about.

    And really, who in their right mind would treat the collected stories of a bunch of nomadic tribes as the literal word of god? I may as well go in for scientology...

  20. Re:The way things are going on Humans Nearly Went Extinct 70,000 Years Ago · · Score: 2, Informative

    Do you have anything to back that up? Last I checked, hunting was the major reason for the drop in bald eagle population. The DDT ban did screw Africa - they used enough of the stuff that DDT resistant skeeters are around, but not enough to kill them all.

  21. Re:Visual Basic at #3? on Are C and C++ Losing Ground? · · Score: 1

    VB.net would be my guess. Really, .Net should be its own thing, since it all uses the same runtime and differs only in syntax.

  22. Re:Weird disjoint on Bill Gates On the GPL — "We Disagree" · · Score: 1

    Tesco disagrees with home gardening, they think people should be able to charge for their vegetables.

    By people, they mean Tesco, and by their, they mean your.

  23. Re:3 cores sounds "wrong", but... on AMD's Triple-Core Phenom X3 Processor Launched · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Honestly, that's a stupid strategy that assumes that oil is the only viable energy source. Nuclear power and reasonable urban architecture can make for a sustainable society well into 2500.

  24. Re:More important things on Blogger Successfully Quashes Subpoena · · Score: 1

    Easy - lord != lady. Lord and Lady are terms of nobility, while Lady and Gentleman are terms of good breeding/class.

  25. Re:More and more problems on Woman Sues Blockbuster for Facebook Privacy Violations · · Score: 1

    Isn't this the place that decided out of the blue to show everybody everything that their friends were doing? If it's in their hands, better be sure you trust those hands.