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User: PhrostyMcByte

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  1. Re:utf-32/ucs-4 on NetHack Development Team Polls Community For Advice On Unicode · · Score: 4, Informative

    Extracting a character - trivial. Length of string - trivial.

    I don't think it's quite as simple as you think. UTF-8 is a variable-length encoding, but UTF-32 is too when you consider grapheme clusters.

    When you extract characters and and determine length, are you only talking about code points (not very useful) or are you taking into consideration combining characters to account for actual visible glyphs that most people would consider to be a character?

    The overwhelming majority of apps are only doing trivial operations -- string concatenation and shuffling bits to some API to display text. For these apps, choice of encoding really does not matter. NetHack is very likely in this category.

    Anything more and you'll have to deal with variable-length data for both UTF-8 and UTF-32. So it doesn't really matter. Choose whichever uses less storage space.

  2. Re:Use utf if you must, for character names, only. on NetHack Development Team Polls Community For Advice On Unicode · · Score: 1

    For which implimentation of UTF to use, I'd go with utf8 as it seems to have the widest adoption, or 32 because that will probably allow you the longest time before having to think about this again. I would avoid the middle ground.

    UTF-8, while originally only defined to 31 bits and now defined to 21 bits, actually has room to trivially extend up to 43 bits. One could say it's more future-proof than UTF-32. Not that it really matters -- we're only using 17 bits right now so I doubt we'll ever get past 21. Maybe when we encounter intelligent alien life.

  3. Micro-management kills this idea every time on If the Programmer Won't Go To Silicon Valley, Should SV Go To the Programmer? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    No matter what your industry is, some PHB is going to get into a position where they feel out of control and unproductive if they can't get instant gratification popping in on their people to micro-manage them. In-person meetings are a must for these people.

  4. Not 100%... but hipsters on Vinyl's Revival Is Now a Phenomenon On Both Sides of the Atlantic · · Score: 3, Interesting

    There are a few types I see doing this.

    You'll always have those insane people who think Vinyl has better quality than CDs or FLAC... but I imagine they are a pretty small group.

    You've got people who're after the experience -- maybe a more personal feel to having a big physical system that needs more interaction. Again I imagine this is larger than the first group, but still relatively small.

    And finally you've got hipsters, who'll do anything just because nobody else is doing it. Very suspicious that vinyl's popularity starts to grow with a strong correlation to this group's size.

  5. Counter-culture in full effect! on The Interview Bombs In US, Kills In China, Threatens N. Korea · · Score: 1

    So many people are panning this movie. Have you guys posting negative comments actually seen it, or are you just reacting to the press?

    I mean, I get it -- there's bound to be some sort of automatic counter-culture response to defend against the massive amount of press talking about how controversial and important it is.

    Yes, it's a little controversial to target an actual country and an actual leader so directly. But you know what, their message while embellished for comedic effect isn't really far off base. I think the world could use some more of this controversy, and there's nothing saying this type of thing needs to be in dry journalistic form.

    As far as the movie itself goes --- it's a Seth Rogan bromance dick joke movie. It really doesn't bring anything new to the table. It's not his best movie, but it's by no means bad. It's fun and entertained me the whole way through.

  6. Re:They only store them for us to read on Net Neutrality Comments Overtaxed FCC's System · · Score: 1

    They've already given word they intend to throw out comments that don't give an in-depth analysis... so the great majority of these comments that are just like "hey i use this stuff, please don't fuck with it" will just be ignored.

  7. Re:Does the cache control commands require root ac on Many DDR3 Modules Vulnerable To Bit Rot By a Simple Program · · Score: 5, Informative

    No. These are standard instructions that many apps require to function correctly when using multiple threads. Even if you aren't using them directly, at least some of the APIs you use most certainly are.

  8. Re:Waste on Minecraft Creator Notch's $70 Million Mansion Recreated In Minecraft · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Makes you wonder what kind of good could have been done or how many lives could have been saved with that $70 million.

    It's not like he's throwing bills into a fire. That money goes back into the economy which is good for everybody, and its recipients are still free to spend it on whatever good deeds they want.

  9. Can we stop the embellishment? on Hackers Used Nasty "SMB Worm" Attack Toolkit Against Sony · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I haven't seen any evidence that the mechanics of the attack itself is at all noteworthy, yet we keep hearing about how this attack was unstoppable, "nasty", etc. -- not just from Sony's PR guys, but from the FBI. As if it could have targeted literally any company and caused just as unmitigated damage.

    To me, a "nasty" worm is Stuxnet: it spread in a very standard innocuous way and seemed like any other worm, but ended up being highly targeted.

    This Sony hack just seems like your average trojan worm leaking an admin password back to someone. The only noteworthy part of this hack is that Sony had such horrifyingly moronic security practices that one attack was able to compromise such a large and varying corpus of valuable data.

  10. Re:black DNS? on Sony Leaks Reveal Hollywood Is Trying To Break DNS · · Score: 4, Informative

    Funny, Microsoft has actually had a P2P DNS system for several years: PNRP.

  11. Even the TSA knows they've become a joke on Are the TSA's New Electronic Device Screenings Necessary? · · Score: 1

    Last flight I took out of LAX, they were randomly handing out "expedited security" slips to people. Keep your shoes on, laptops can stay in bags, no x-rays or pat-downs, etc. and I was through in about 30 seconds. I even found out after I went through the metal detector that I had left keys in my pocket and my belt on.

    Basically, it was like security used to be, pre-9/11. It was marvelous.

  12. Re:Bank Security Guy here on Bank Security Software EULA Allows Spying On Users · · Score: 1

    Let us know which bank. I'm sure some of us would switch!

  13. Re:Freenet? on BitTorrent Launches Project Maelstrom, the First Torrent-Based Browser · · Score: 3, Informative

    Freenet had some issues. Most of them won't apply to BitTorrent's offering.

    The main one is receiving content was dog slow compared to, say, Tor. This is simply an artifact of how it was routing connections and the distributed storage aspect.

    Second, but still contributing to the poor experience is that the app itself had some architectural flaws that made it and your PC run dog slow -- the choice was either use hundreds of threads or let the operations stall.

    The third, more of a security/philosophical flaw, is that the base protocol was not documented in any significant fashion. To review the protocol's security, you'd need to have an expert understanding of Java and a large part of the codebase. So it never really had many eyes on it looking for flaws.

    I haven't used Freenet in around 5 years, so this may have improved. It was pretty clear why it never caught on at the time.

  14. Re:why would I write to that? on Microsoft Introduces .NET Core · · Score: 1

    Merely needing to convert time zones is a trivial requirement. Work with them any other way and it's a nightmare. My first exposure to it was when implementing a crontab-like scheduling software, which on proper implementations has defined behavior to not fall on its face when daylight savings time wreaks havoc on the world. I couldn't find a way to do this reliably in .NET, but Noda made it possible.

    Don't take my word on why Noda should be used though... read from it's blog for plenty of examples for why the seemingly great .NET DateTime can be a minefield in far more common situations than mine.

  15. Re:why would I write to that? on Microsoft Introduces .NET Core · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why should I have to use a third party library to get decent date support?

    I've questioned that myself while working in .NET. Ever needed to write time zone aware code?

    Date libraries, as it turns out, are rather monstrously difficult to make. While .NET did a great job for the common stuff, uncommon things can be painful, error prone, or impossible.

    The fullest solution I've found so far is Noda Time, which is actually based on the Joda-Time Java library. It feels out of place with a number of Javaisms still in it, but it provides a much richer functionality and better separation of concerns.

  16. Re:Minor revision? on Microsoft Introduces .NET Core · · Score: 2

    .NET Core is the redesign.

    .NET Framework (the full big monolithic install like we've got now) remains backwards-compatible and so 4.6 is appropriate.

  17. Re:Works but it's CPU hungry on Valve Rolls Out Game Broadcasting Service For Steam · · Score: 1

    Recent video cards support encoding an H.264 stream directly from the screen without ever touching the CPU. If Steam isn't currently using this functionality, I'm sure it will soon.

  18. Snarky yet true on Ask Slashdot: Non-Coders, Why Aren't You Contributing To Open Source? · · Score: 4, Interesting
    The real question should be:

    Why aren't companies paying more people to work on Open Source projects.

  19. What's so special about Google? on The EU Has a Plan To Break Up Google · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The EU seems to have a chip on their shoulders about Google. I get it, they're huge and they need to be kept on a leash. But when are we going to see them go after other huge companies abusing their market share? We have Amazon regularly putting full-page ads for their latest electronics right on their front page.

  20. Might just get me back on Multi-Process Comes To Firefox Nightly, 64-bit Firefox For Windows 'Soon' · · Score: 1

    Multi-process is the major reason I use Chrome. One tab freezing up the entire app, or even just making other tabs slower, is unacceptable.

    Then this hits general availability I'll definitely be re-evaluating Firefox.

  21. It's the new punk on The Math Behind the Hipster Effect · · Score: 1

    Hipster culture is like a passive-aggressive punk culture. Both have a distinctive styles of clothing, music, and a strong counter-culture attitude. The main differentiation is that hipsters are less raucous, less extreme.

  22. Re:Bug in HW decoding == unwatchable on YouTube Opens Up 60fps To Everyone · · Score: 1

    I have the issue, and no other media player does this. Either everyone is working around it and being silent about how, or this is a Chrome bug.

  23. Re:I wish I'd thought of that on Car Thieves and Insurers Vote On Keyless Car Security · · Score: 2

    The implication of this is that it's possible to clone a key based only on the signal it gives off. The implication of that is that they're sending out a static password.

    Not only is it possible, but it's in common practice. Aftermarket remote starters need to clone your keys. You can get a remote starter for basically any car. It's not like you need a dealer for it either, because car electronics places that install these things will be the ones cloning the keys.

  24. So... is the LAME strategy valid? on Security Company Tries To Hide Flaws By Threatening Infringement Suit · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Some software projects like LAME, x264, and libav claim to skirt around patent issues by only distributing source code, not binaries. I've always wondered if this is a valid workaround, or just some clever devs getting their hopes up.

  25. Re:Is D3D 9 advantageous over 10? on Direct3D 9.0 Support On Track For Linux's Gallium3D Drivers · · Score: 5, Informative

    Is there a reason why it would be useful to make D3D 9 support more complete?

    Games only started using D3D 10/11 *very* recently -- the back catalog this could enable is huge, and D3D 9 games are still coming out today. It'd say it's very important to support.