Most of the survey calls I've encountered do offer monetary compensation.
The funniest of these was a conversation similar to this:
Caller: Hi, we're conducting a survey and will offer you five dollars for your time. (I was caught off gaurd by the pitch but realized that any info I offered could be used to further target me for telemarketing) Me: Uhh, well, thanks but not interested. Caller: I can offer you ten dollars for completing the survey, sir. (So the compensation isn't a fixed sum, hmmm...) Me: Well, since we're now haggling over the price what's the highest you're authorized to offer? Caller: Twenty five. (Interesting, five times the original offer. Again re-evaluating the price of further telemarketing but now considering the real possibly of divulging personal info to a complete stranger - at a minimum they would need my address and when the check clears they'd have my banking info too) Me: You know what, no, thank you. Caller: Very well, sorry we couldn't work this out. (Wow, an apology!) Me: Thank you. Good bye.
Anyway, in that case, your $25 charge would have been enough to continue the conversation. I personally don't like the idea of giving out personal info to cold calls, but "to each their own" I guess. From my POV, some company you've never dealt with called you out of the blue - are they a legitimate operation? The only reason to play along is that you'd be acting on the belief that a check will eventually be delivered - plenty of scams begin like this. Thanks, but not for me.
There is more to risk assessment than death rates. Your asthma example is inappropriate in a number of ways.
Since asthma killed more people in 2001 than died in 9/11, I would suggest that we should lose as many or fewer of our rights as Americans, than we do in our reaction to asthma. A lot of people object when I make this argument, but other than ad hominem attacks nobody ever refutes it or explains why it's wrong.
Using these death rates to validate anything against terrorism is naive - even if you ignore the emotional contribution (which actually is very significant).
In your comparison, you fail to account for at least two major issues associated with terrorism:
the amount of casualties involved (along with the localization) create an enormous stress on rescue services within the immediate community. Are the hospitals in your area able to accommodate a huge influx of emergency cases at an unpredictable time?
the open-endedness of such attacks. How do rescue services know that it's over? Do neighboring rescue services assist or brace for an attack within their own community? Do they know what type of treatment to provide?
Additionally, I'd expect that many of the people who died of asthma, knew of their condition and were taught how to properly react to an attack. Terrorists usually don't offer warnings and even act with intent to cause more harm, if possible. Does asthma do that?
Actually, I have a more appropriate way of comparing the two subjects...
Asthma is a problem that causes panic on an personal level: - one cell in your body stops working? No big deal, happens all the time. - a large part of an entire organ stops working? The individual can stop functioning.
While terrorism causes panic on on a community level: - one person in your jurisdiction stops working? No big deal, happens all the time. - a large part of an entire district stops working? The government can stop functioning.
To treat asthma, a patient needs to establish monitoring and lifestyle restrictions. To treat terrorism, a community needs to do the same. The level and focus/direction should be agreed to by both parties (patient/doctor, public/government), determined by the risk posed. Unfortunately, the comparison fails here because the safeguards and histories that exist allow patients to trust their doctors infinitely more than the public can trust their government.
...getting back on topic...
The problem currently witnessed is less about the monitoring, than the secrecy and unknown scope. Any patient would be distressed if they knew that their doctor was monitoring them and still wouldn't tell them anything. Likewise, any patient would be distressed if they independently found out that their ENT was extensively monitoring their reproductive system.
... but I do not worry about terrorism at all because...
Sort of appropriate: the concern about terrorism should be shared by the public at large (which includes the government), not the individual. I should point out that you should be worried, but only within the limit of that shared public concern - save the rest of your worry for asthma, or some other personal medical conditions.
Three years ago (almost to the day actually) a Quantum harddrive did the same. I thought it was funny that it was a "Fireball" model, almost as if I was asking for the result (it came preinstalled on that machine).:)
The burn was a lot cleaner than the one in the article, following the length of one of the chip's legs. It looked like someone used a narrow drill near the middle and then routed a path across the surface to the nearest edge.
Fortunately, they manufacture the controller card to be easily replaceable. Just buy a used harddrive of the same model, swap the card and transfer whatever data you need away from that drive (would you still trust it?).
Of course, the offsite backups I had were relatively new (6 days) so the situation wasn't dire. I was mostly upset that the failure occurred a couple hours before the next backup session.
That situation reinforced the need for external backups. Having them offsite also helps, but I haven't yet experienced a similar situation that would have benefitted from it.
Maybe we could have a not-so-bloody revolution? Just this once? You know, we can try it out, see if we like it. I mean, if we don't like it, we could always go for number two, right?
There have been numerous not-so-bloody revolutions. It's just that those aren't as memorable as the terrible ones. For example, which of the following is more widely known: (a) the Bolshevik revolution in Russia or (b) the Solidarity revolution in Poland? Both were very significant, with the first ushering in Soviet Communism and the other its decline, but only one of them directly witnessed the deaths of thousands/millions (that number depends on how you define the time range).
It should have some funny game action in the form of tons of minigames but, each of these minigames must be preceded by an enormous back-story.:)
For those who don't know: The leading newspost is considered to be part of the comic so much so that, occassionally, the comic might not make any sense without it. Sometimes those posts can go on for what seems to be forever.
Running the elections as polls on/. would be much better. The respondents would be at least 2% smarter. But then CowboyNeal would probably end up president.
I was ready to comment on the lack of CowboyNeal options in/. polls, but about 60% of the polls from the past 10 months actually have one. Weird.
Others have already noted the abuse such a system facilitates and that other convenient reporting systems exist. So here's something else.
Users of Microsoft's Messenger email service will be able to report suspected sexual predators directly to the police at the click of a mouse.
I hope there's a confirmation dialog box and not just a single click. I mean, who hasn't made honest accidental clicks?
And assuming that this does involve a few steps, do the police investigate you if you stop at any point? Like when quickly hanging up on 911, they still have to check if the call wasn't interrupted by an attacker.
The article doesn't address specifics and I don't use Messenger.
Lastly, which authority? UK, Brazil, Germany, somewhere else? The article does mention the anonymity issue, but doesn't address this related problem. Microsoft may have a good guess using the contact info and IP addresses, but the/. crowd knows that those measures can be circumvented.
You are right that FISA was included. I was commenting after reading only a few summaries and didn't see it mentioned. Thanks for providing a more complete one.
They'll fight this every way they can because this looks like the initial phase for impeachment. The Constitution does not provide punitive measures against individuals violating it, but the laws written by Congress often do include such measures. So the Judicial branch can use the FISA sanctions to compell those individuals to offer evidence which can then be used in impeachment proceedings (to address the actual Constitutional violations).
The current Congress may not be interested in holding impeachment hearings, but mid-term elections are still three months away. If more politicians recognize this (and with more politicians distancing themselves from this administration), debates could get very interesting.
These are huge companies we're talking about. On that scale, creative design is very hard while marketing is much easier.
If you could get the same number of sales either by creating a new quality product or by giving "Malibu Stacy" a new hat, which would you do? Consider that people prefer familiarity, and the sales figures for that new product will probably not even come close to that of the rehashed one. Overall, the risks involved in the rehash concept are much lower.
Lastly, the quality issue is a completely subjective one. Sometimes, the lack of quality is the actual driving force. Anyway, contracts become insanely difficult or impossible to manage if they rely upon important non-quantifiable variables. Also, doing so in such an industry can destroy you.
He has hidden a dozen $100,000 stashes of gold (and one $1 million one) around the country, and sprinkled clues to their location inside various... media properties.
Realistically, they will have to implement the same policy - using tokens instead of leaving the actual prize on site. Given that this is purely a publicity promotion, they lose much of its value if nobody ever publicly claims a prize. If they force the participants to accept the prize at a network studio, they have the added opportunity to effectively promote the remainder of the game (which indirectly promotes the actual products).
This also prevents a huge problem: the chance that someone randomly finds the prize, without knowing its purpose (leaving the company at an even bigger loss).
I don't like that specific comic because it's very hard to see the details. For example, where are either of the "two clocks"?
But the real reason I'm writing this post is that, since you're linking to a recent PA comic, there's actually a better example from their newspost archives.
I'd like to be able to read the text in the BlockBuster image, but at least you can get the gist of the advertisement without those details.
Anyway, Gabe's post there is a must read, even though he's a cheeseball.:)
Who'd have thought 'puppies' was a genre that would effectively carry a market launch of a handheld?
Not suprising when you look at the appeal of puppies. Go to any mall that has a pet store and note the demographic that pause to look at the puppies in the front display - the only people who don't stop are the ones that weren't going to notice the store anyway (mostly focused on getting to their destination). The puppies don't even have to do anything! Other stores can only hope for a small fraction of that type of attention.
Many people may hate dogs, but everyone loves puppies.
Never underestimate the power of cuteness. (The most obvious commercial example.)
The question: In a world that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally, how can the human race sustain another 100 years?
My answer: We need to force someone into a spaceship and make it travel at close to the speed of light. Schedule the trip to last an hour (or whatever the proper conversion is for the expected speed) and then have them return to our world.
That time spent up there should be enough to make 100 years elapse on earth. Even if everyone else is dead, we still have that one space cadet - so the human race will have survived.
That is, at least until that one person dies, but that's beyond the scope of the question.:)
For example, when you speak, what do you do to separate words form one another? The surprising answer is, nothing. Take a tape of ordinary conversation. Run it through an oscilloscope. Look for the breaks. You won't find them. We "blur" words together in sentences. (I suspect this is why anyone speaking a different tongue always sounds like he/she is speaking very quickly... your brain hasn't learned to put the "spaces" back in by context.)
All this talk about Best Buy apparel reminds me of this.
Reading the accounts, it's obvious that the group could have used some yellow shirts and black shirts in the mix, but no mention of white shirts with black ties.
But I would also like to point out if that punishment for loosing is too great, then the game gets pretty tedious pretty fast (otherwise known as loosing over 15 hours worth of leveling when you die at level 59 in EQ arrrrgh!!!!)
Perhaps you don't realize that some people actually enjoy such punishment.
The challenge here is trying to convince you that I was not advocating any opinion on the topic, and was instead focusing on problems I had with your comment. There are at least three sides to a debate: two opponents and the non-participant. Attacking the non-participant (however justified), does not score points against the opponent. In fact, I actually agree with you that this tech is not applicable to typical law enforcement environments. Anyway, much of your followup comment is interesting but inapplicable, from my POV.
I agree that ABS is not a completely appropriate analogy. ABS is an additive feature (failsafe = revert to original setting) while the example being discussed is a restrictive feature (failsafe = disable unit).
At best, they introduce a lot of additional complexity to the weapon, and might lower the chance of it being useful when it needs to be (forget to change the battery? Too late now, you're dead!).
This only illustrates environments where this tech is inappropriate. While hunting, the safety has kept me from firing when I needed it to do so, with no serious consequence. I needed the gun to fire, it didn't, I'm not dead. However, an accidentally dropped gun lacking the tech may discharge and kill me instead (my most probable emergency case). Given my situation, this tradeoff may be deemed acceptable.
Safety procedures that I am familiar with include unloading a weapon prior to storage. This forces you to be certain of the loaded state of the weapon, at all times. Otherwise, one could assume that the ammunition is still in the gun, and you may find yourself in a 'Too late now, you're dead!' situation. Following similar rules, a battery would be an extra piece of equipment associated with the weapon and, as such, a dead battery situation in a properly designed device would not occur.
As for the statistics, I mentioned above that I was not offering an opinion on the topic - burden of evidence is still on your side. The belief that I'm implicitly supporting the opposing view is misplaced. Admitting no evidence was honest, though.
And as for your last point, you decided to deprecate another safety system which probably could have helped your argument, since it's an example of a worthwhile complexity/safety tradeoff.
Again assuming that I was advocating an opposing view. Perhaps this example best illustrates it.
At best, they introduce a lot of additional complexity to the weapon, and might lower the chance of it being useful when it needs to be...
ABS in cars introduce a lot of additional complexity. ABS is therefore too risky to be trusted in emergencies.
(forget to change the battery? Too late now, you're dead!)
(forget to load the gun? Too late now, you're dead!)
For the amount that these things cost, owners, both civilian and police/military, would be better off simply learning how to retain their weapon more effectively (or don't let the suspect/attacker get close enough to you to grapple for the gun; if there's a hostile person within an arms-length of you and you haven't shot them or somebody else isn't pointing a gun at them, something's already wrong).
Good thing the police don't have to be within arms-length when detaining and/or handcuffing suspects.
Not to mention that although I've yet to see the statistics, I think that..
(This space intentionally left blank)
... and where more traditional safety procedures (such as double- or triple-retention holsters) were in use is even lower.
Police never have their guns withdrawn, so we shouldn't even need to discuss this.
After reading your anecdotes (fraught with danger) and noticing that link to an image named "MerritPkwy_Fall.jpg", I thought I detected sarcasm in the words "rural charm" - reenforced by all the criticisms found in your post.
Foolishly, I thought: maybe the picture is a road that abruptly ends off a cliff (ala the classic Far Side cartoon's "Lookout ahead") or some enormous hole in the road or, really, anything that one could "fall" from!!!
So I guess it shouldn't be much of a surprise that I'm somewhat disappointed right now. I was really hoping for a real life version of that Far Side thing too. Maybe next time...
Actually, I'm pretty sure that Americans overall are not that bad, especially South Americans. But the ones living in the US portion of North America do tend to have geography problems.
What do you mean? "Estados Unidos Mexicanos" or "United States of America"?
When are people going to start programming contests where the award is given for something that's actually useful, such as fewest bugs, most readable, best re-use of existing code, etc?
There's no point to it, the best has already been done - I can't find any bugs or anything confusing in the source (somewhat ironic considering that the 'O' in "IOCCC" stands for "Obfuscated").
Well, maybe not re-use of existing code but one could very easily apply the source to any application with minimal impact to a program's speed or even its size - that level of adaptability is extremely rare.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Most of the survey calls I've encountered do offer monetary compensation.
The funniest of these was a conversation similar to this:
Caller: Hi, we're conducting a survey and will offer you five dollars for your time.
(I was caught off gaurd by the pitch but realized that any info I offered could be used to further target me for telemarketing)
Me: Uhh, well, thanks but not interested.
Caller: I can offer you ten dollars for completing the survey, sir.
(So the compensation isn't a fixed sum, hmmm...)
Me: Well, since we're now haggling over the price what's the highest you're authorized to offer?
Caller: Twenty five.
(Interesting, five times the original offer. Again re-evaluating the price of further telemarketing but now considering the real possibly of divulging personal info to a complete stranger - at a minimum they would need my address and when the check clears they'd have my banking info too)
Me: You know what, no, thank you.
Caller: Very well, sorry we couldn't work this out.
(Wow, an apology!)
Me: Thank you. Good bye.
Anyway, in that case, your $25 charge would have been enough to continue the conversation. I personally don't like the idea of giving out personal info to cold calls, but "to each their own" I guess. From my POV, some company you've never dealt with called you out of the blue - are they a legitimate operation? The only reason to play along is that you'd be acting on the belief that a check will eventually be delivered - plenty of scams begin like this. Thanks, but not for me.
Using these death rates to validate anything against terrorism is naive - even if you ignore the emotional contribution (which actually is very significant).
In your comparison, you fail to account for at least two major issues associated with terrorism:
- the amount of casualties involved (along with the localization) create an enormous stress on rescue services within the immediate community. Are the hospitals in your area able to accommodate a huge influx of emergency cases at an unpredictable time?
- the open-endedness of such attacks. How do rescue services know that it's over? Do neighboring rescue services assist or brace for an attack within their own community? Do they know what type of treatment to provide?
Additionally, I'd expect that many of the people who died of asthma, knew of their condition and were taught how to properly react to an attack. Terrorists usually don't offer warnings and even act with intent to cause more harm, if possible. Does asthma do that?Actually, I have a more appropriate way of comparing the two subjects...
Asthma is a problem that causes panic on an personal level:
- one cell in your body stops working? No big deal, happens all the time.
- a large part of an entire organ stops working? The individual can stop functioning.
While terrorism causes panic on on a community level:
- one person in your jurisdiction stops working? No big deal, happens all the time.
- a large part of an entire district stops working? The government can stop functioning.
To treat asthma, a patient needs to establish monitoring and lifestyle restrictions. To treat terrorism, a community needs to do the same. The level and focus/direction should be agreed to by both parties (patient/doctor, public/government), determined by the risk posed. Unfortunately, the comparison fails here because the safeguards and histories that exist allow patients to trust their doctors infinitely more than the public can trust their government.
The problem currently witnessed is less about the monitoring, than the secrecy and unknown scope. Any patient would be distressed if they knew that their doctor was monitoring them and still wouldn't tell them anything. Likewise, any patient would be distressed if they independently found out that their ENT was extensively monitoring their reproductive system.
Sort of appropriate: the concern about terrorism should be shared by the public at large (which includes the government), not the individual. I should point out that you should be worried, but only within the limit of that shared public concern - save the rest of your worry for asthma, or some other personal medical conditions.
Three years ago (almost to the day actually) a Quantum harddrive did the same. I thought it was funny that it was a "Fireball" model, almost as if I was asking for the result (it came preinstalled on that machine). :)
The burn was a lot cleaner than the one in the article, following the length of one of the chip's legs. It looked like someone used a narrow drill near the middle and then routed a path across the surface to the nearest edge.
Fortunately, they manufacture the controller card to be easily replaceable. Just buy a used harddrive of the same model, swap the card and transfer whatever data you need away from that drive (would you still trust it?).
Of course, the offsite backups I had were relatively new (6 days) so the situation wasn't dire. I was mostly upset that the failure occurred a couple hours before the next backup session.
That situation reinforced the need for external backups. Having them offsite also helps, but I haven't yet experienced a similar situation that would have benefitted from it.
It should have some funny game action in the form of tons of minigames but, each of these minigames must be preceded by an enormous back-story. :)
For those who don't know: The leading newspost is considered to be part of the comic so much so that, occassionally, the comic might not make any sense without it. Sometimes those posts can go on for what seems to be forever.
I hope there's a confirmation dialog box and not just a single click. I mean, who hasn't made honest accidental clicks?
And assuming that this does involve a few steps, do the police investigate you if you stop at any point? Like when quickly hanging up on 911, they still have to check if the call wasn't interrupted by an attacker.
The article doesn't address specifics and I don't use Messenger.
Lastly, which authority? UK, Brazil, Germany, somewhere else? The article does mention the anonymity issue, but doesn't address this related problem. Microsoft may have a good guess using the contact info and IP addresses, but the
See this for the only successful impeachment of a Supreme Court justice.
You are right that FISA was included. I was commenting after reading only a few summaries and didn't see it mentioned. Thanks for providing a more complete one.
They'll fight this every way they can because this looks like the initial phase for impeachment. The Constitution does not provide punitive measures against individuals violating it, but the laws written by Congress often do include such measures. So the Judicial branch can use the FISA sanctions to compell those individuals to offer evidence which can then be used in impeachment proceedings (to address the actual Constitutional violations).
The current Congress may not be interested in holding impeachment hearings, but mid-term elections are still three months away. If more politicians recognize this (and with more politicians distancing themselves from this administration), debates could get very interesting.
FISA? You mean, US Code Title 50: Chapter 36?
The judge here deemed the program unconstitutional. You're pointing out something different: that the program violates FISA.
So, let's see what criminal sanctions exist for violating FISA. Up to five years per offense? Interesting.
These are huge companies we're talking about. On that scale, creative design is very hard while marketing is much easier.
If you could get the same number of sales either by creating a new quality product or by giving "Malibu Stacy" a new hat, which would you do? Consider that people prefer familiarity, and the sales figures for that new product will probably not even come close to that of the rehashed one. Overall, the risks involved in the rehash concept are much lower.
Lastly, the quality issue is a completely subjective one. Sometimes, the lack of quality is the actual driving force. Anyway, contracts become insanely difficult or impossible to manage if they rely upon important non-quantifiable variables. Also, doing so in such an industry can destroy you.
Realistically, they will have to implement the same policy - using tokens instead of leaving the actual prize on site. Given that this is purely a publicity promotion, they lose much of its value if nobody ever publicly claims a prize. If they force the participants to accept the prize at a network studio, they have the added opportunity to effectively promote the remainder of the game (which indirectly promotes the actual products).
This also prevents a huge problem: the chance that someone randomly finds the prize, without knowing its purpose (leaving the company at an even bigger loss).
There's no way they're burying all that gold.
I don't like that specific comic because it's very hard to see the details. For example, where are either of the "two clocks"?
:)
But the real reason I'm writing this post is that, since you're linking to a recent PA comic, there's actually a better example from their newspost archives.
I'd like to be able to read the text in the BlockBuster image, but at least you can get the gist of the advertisement without those details.
Anyway, Gabe's post there is a must read, even though he's a cheeseball.
Hmmm... A "little accident involving a fork" and a toaster?
:)
I had the last laugh that day.
I'm sure you did, as I am reminded of the adage: "he who laughs last is the slowest".
Who'd have thought 'puppies' was a genre that would effectively carry a market launch of a handheld?
Not suprising when you look at the appeal of puppies. Go to any mall that has a pet store and note the demographic that pause to look at the puppies in the front display - the only people who don't stop are the ones that weren't going to notice the store anyway (mostly focused on getting to their destination). The puppies don't even have to do anything! Other stores can only hope for a small fraction of that type of attention.
Many people may hate dogs, but everyone loves puppies.
Never underestimate the power of cuteness.
(The most obvious commercial example.)
The question: In a world that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally, how can the human race sustain another 100 years?
:)
My answer: We need to force someone into a spaceship and make it travel at close to the speed of light. Schedule the trip to last an hour (or whatever the proper conversion is for the expected speed) and then have them return to our world.
That time spent up there should be enough to make 100 years elapse on earth. Even if everyone else is dead, we still have that one space cadet - so the human race will have survived.
That is, at least until that one person dies, but that's beyond the scope of the question.
For example, when you speak, what do you do to separate words form one another? The surprising answer is, nothing. Take a tape of ordinary conversation. Run it through an oscilloscope. Look for the breaks. You won't find them. We "blur" words together in sentences. (I suspect this is why anyone speaking a different tongue always sounds like he/she is speaking very quickly... your brain hasn't learned to put the "spaces" back in by context.)
... younger ... Shatner ... would ... disagree.
A
All this talk about Best Buy apparel reminds me of this.
Reading the accounts, it's obvious that the group could have used some yellow shirts and black shirts in the mix, but no mention of white shirts with black ties.
I agree that ABS is not a completely appropriate analogy. ABS is an additive feature (failsafe = revert to original setting) while the example being discussed is a restrictive feature (failsafe = disable unit).
This only illustrates environments where this tech is inappropriate. While hunting, the safety has kept me from firing when I needed it to do so, with no serious consequence. I needed the gun to fire, it didn't, I'm not dead. However, an accidentally dropped gun lacking the tech may discharge and kill me instead (my most probable emergency case). Given my situation, this tradeoff may be deemed acceptable.
Safety procedures that I am familiar with include unloading a weapon prior to storage. This forces you to be certain of the loaded state of the weapon, at all times. Otherwise, one could assume that the ammunition is still in the gun, and you may find yourself in a 'Too late now, you're dead!' situation. Following similar rules, a battery would be an extra piece of equipment associated with the weapon and, as such, a dead battery situation in a properly designed device would not occur.
As for the statistics, I mentioned above that I was not offering an opinion on the topic - burden of evidence is still on your side. The belief that I'm implicitly supporting the opposing view is misplaced. Admitting no evidence was honest, though.
Again assuming that I was advocating an opposing view. Perhaps this example best illustrates it.
(forget to load the gun? Too late now, you're dead!)
Good thing the police don't have to be within arms-length when detaining and/or handcuffing suspects.
(This space intentionally left blank)
Police never have their guns withdrawn, so we shouldn't even need to discuss this.
... It retains its rural charm ...
After reading your anecdotes (fraught with danger) and noticing that link to an image named "MerritPkwy_Fall.jpg", I thought I detected sarcasm in the words "rural charm" - reenforced by all the criticisms found in your post.
Foolishly, I thought: maybe the picture is a road that abruptly ends off a cliff (ala the classic Far Side cartoon's "Lookout ahead") or some enormous hole in the road or, really, anything that one could "fall" from!!!
So I guess it shouldn't be much of a surprise that I'm somewhat disappointed right now. I was really hoping for a real life version of that Far Side thing too. Maybe next time...
Licking live microcontroller-based embedded designs?
I hope you know what you're doing. Such behavior could expose you to an enormous amount of RISC.
Actually, I'm pretty sure that Americans overall are not that bad, especially South Americans. But the ones living in the US portion of North America do tend to have geography problems.
What do you mean? "Estados Unidos Mexicanos" or "United States of America"?
When are people going to start programming contests where the award is given for something that's actually useful, such as fewest bugs, most readable, best re-use of existing code, etc?
:)
There's no point to it, the best has already been done - I can't find any bugs or anything confusing in the source (somewhat ironic considering that the 'O' in "IOCCC" stands for "Obfuscated").
Well, maybe not re-use of existing code but one could very easily apply the source to any application with minimal impact to a program's speed or even its size - that level of adaptability is extremely rare.