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User: Durandal64

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  1. Re:... and? on C++ the Clear Winner In Google's Language Performance Tests · · Score: 2

    C? Compiled with clang? Or maybe more than one algorithm?

  2. ... and? on C++ the Clear Winner In Google's Language Performance Tests · · Score: 3, Informative

    Wow, they compared a whole four languages: C++, Java, Go and Scala, of which, C++ is the fastest. Is this seriously a surprise to anyone?

  3. Re:iAnything on Apple Sued Over Use of iCloud Name · · Score: 1

    iRiver -- The MP3 player that predated the iPod...

    The iMac was the start of the 'i' trend, not the iPod.

  4. Re:Tell Me About It.... on NVIDIA Gets Away With Bait-and-Switch · · Score: 2

    Asus EEE T101MT-EU37-BK

    Holy shit, that's a real model name? Jesus Christ.

  5. Re:I'll be first to say WTF on Polynomial Time Code For 3-SAT Released, P==NP · · Score: 1

    You can represent the same number with different glyphs. It's better said that 1 and 0.999... represent the same number. Just like how 1/3 and 0.333... are different representations of the same number. Or how 1000 and 8 are different representations of the same number.

    Numbers are abstract concepts. We represent them with a standardized system, sure. But at the end of the day, we can represent them however we want. It just happens that the most useful representation is a standardized one.

  6. Re:It just works. on Gentlemen Prefer Androids, Ladies iOS · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm a software engineer, and even I'm not interested in any of that crap. I have a life outside of tweaking shit on my phone.

  7. Re:Bizarre choice on Sony Adopts Objective-C and GNUstep Frameworks · · Score: 1

    Yes, because the "static" keyword hasn't been overloaded at all.

  8. Re:cyber attacks are launched from botnets, ergo.. on Europe Simulates Total Cyber War · · Score: 1

    No, we need OS that don't give every app access to the full system. Why is there no OS today that allows you to run an application in an isolated sandbox?

    It's called iOS. Also, Mac OS X has sandbox-exec(1).

  9. Re:declining oil production on Thorium, the Next Nuclear Fuel? · · Score: 0, Troll

    Except for the fact that Israel is accountable to the free world.

    The United States has never threatened to yank the Israeli Defense Fund, and if it did so, it would be an empty threat. They enjoy an accountability-free existence. Sure, Europe pisses and moans, but the United States' veto power on the UN Security Council virtually guarantees that there will never be any UN sanctions on Israel.

    Oh, and interesting factoid. No Israeli soldier has ever been prosecuted for the deaths of Palestinian civilians. Ever.

  10. Re:Only planes? on TSA Changes Its Rules, ACLU Lawsuit Dropped · · Score: 1

    As a society, we are more afraid of flying on planes than we are of riding the subway. So we've exchanged our freedoms for what we perceive as security.

  11. Re:The problem is not an efficient algorithm on What Computer Science Can Teach Economics · · Score: 1

    Even science has some untestable working assumptions.
    1) There is no old guy with a beard in the sky who arbitrarily changes the rules.

    Before science came along, most people actually did assume that there was an Old Man in the Sky changing the rules around. That's why they developed rituals to please the Old Man in the Sky, based on patterns they thought they observed. Whenever the patterns were disrupted, they assumed that the Old Man in the Sky had changed his mood and tried something else.

    How far did that model get us for the thousands of years it prevailed? How far has science gotten us in the past hundred?

    2) Humans have enough intelligence and sensory input to build a consistent model of the world.

    Actually, it's fundamental to modern science that humans don't have enough sensory input to model the universe. That's why we have things like electron microscopes. As to the intelligence angle, I'll refer you to Einstein's quote regarding infinite stupidity and an infinite universe.

  12. Re:One flaw on An Inbox Is Not a Glove Compartment · · Score: 1

    Yes, and there's a manager at your bank who has the power to open your safe deposit box. Does that mean anyone storing stuff in a safe deposit box is exposing his stuff to the bank on a regular basis?

  13. Re:Virtualization on Psystar's Rebel EFI Hackintosh Tool Reviewed, Found Wanting · · Score: 1

    ... but since there is no Apple-approved way to virtualize OS X...

    Wrong.

  14. Re:Typo in summary: detectability vs deductibility on Student Loan Interest Rankles College Grads · · Score: 1

    And only if you make less than $65,000/year.

  15. Re:Experience from academia on Student Loan Interest Rankles College Grads · · Score: 1

    It's even worse than that. They factor in how much your parents made the year before, which is the available tax data. I wound up being denied for a FAFSA loan in 2003 because my dad was employed in 2002 but lost his job after that. So because my parents had a large combined income the year before, I had to get a loan from ShittyBank and pay it back at a variable interest rate. But I put a bunch of money toward it per month and paid the sucker off within 2 1/2 years after graduating. And then, six months after I'd settled my debt, my tax dollars went to ShittyBank to bail them out of bankruptcy caused by their own sheer recklessness.

  16. File size or density? on Choosing Better-Quality JPEG Images With Software? · · Score: 1

    Have you tried just comparing the files' sizes with respect to the images' dimensions? It'll vary from encoder to encoder, but higher-quality JPEGs will be larger than lower-quality ones. You could just use the number of pixels in the picture and the file size to obtain a rough approximation of "quality per pixel" and choose the image with the higher value. It won't be perfect, but it's a lot easier than trying to pick out JPEG artifacts.

    Also, the number of artifacts doesn't tell the full story. One image may have more artifacts, but those artifacts may all exist in the background parts of the image, while the foreground is less blocky. It's a choice each encoder makes.

  17. Re:Translation please on New Elliptic Curve Cryptography Record · · Score: 1

    Basically (if I understood correctly), an ellipse is a structure that is very easy to invert to form some random structure, but it's very difficult to take that random structure and re-constitute the ellipse from it given no other information.

  18. Re:Deliberately dishonest? on Apple's Obsession With Secrecy Grows Stronger · · Score: 1

    Actually, they do. Apple's strategic plans and trade secrets are covered by the First Amendment. They are free to say as much or as little about their strategies as they want. (By the way, there's no law against lying. There are laws about lying to the cops and federal officers (when investigating crimes), and under oath. There's no law saying that you are entitled to accurate information about a private company's strategic plans.)

  19. Re:Because they are a con on NIH Spends $400K To Figure Out Why Men Don't Like Condoms · · Score: 3, Informative

    Funny, but it's worth noting that double-bagging drastically decreases the condoms' effectiveness. Latex rubbing against latex will tear easily.

  20. Distraction? Tell that to the people in Iran on Ray Bradbury Loves Libraries, Hates the Internet · · Score: 1

    That "distraction" is being used to loosely coordinate a revolution. Not to mention that, in the first days after Iran's election, the Giant Distraction was the only way we could get information about what was happening in Iran, since the mainstream media either didn't care enough to cover it, or the reporters there were under lockdown and not allowed to report on anything.

    Great author, but sorry, he's being an idiot.

  21. Re:why would a computer "jitter and freeze" on Think-Tank Warns of Internet "Brownouts" Starting Next Year · · Score: 1

    You don't even have to read the whole sentence; the presence of the word "cyberspace" is enough to know it's bullshit.

  22. Re:sure it is on College Police Think Using Linux Is Suspicious Behavior · · Score: 1

    And under Saddam Hussein's Iraq, everyone had an AK-47. What's your point?

  23. Re:Oh they'll crash all right on Narcissistic College Graduates In the Workplace? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That was my experience as well. I did reasonably well in my computer science courses and busted my ass, but I certainly wasn't a 4.0 student. What set me apart was that I had a job working for my university developing real applications that shipped to real people, and I had real deadlines. So I spent a significant amount of time outside the classroom learning things not taught in the classroom and finding opportunities to apply what I'd learned.

    And even then, that just got me in the door at a big company. I was doing QA and tools work for a couple of years. I had free reign to explore new and interesting ideas, but I was still shackled to QA. There were a lot of times toward the end where I just got depressed, doing the same repetitive testing, over and over again, feeling my talent wasting away.

    Eventually, I found a problem that was plaguing the company's product that I could latch on to and designed and implemented a solution during a down period in our QA cycle. And even then, I had to get it in front of the right people, that is, people interested in hiring me to work on interesting problems. And even then, I had great timing on my side. They just happened to need someone to take over a major project whose previous maintainer had moved on.

    But I managed to get my project into a shipping product. And from that point, it was a (relatively) short jump to moving to the right organization within the company. And now I work on a great project within a great product. I go to work every day without worrying about whether I'll be interested in what I'm doing. I just always am. But I didn't get that overnight, without proving to other people that I was worth the time of day. It's true that some graduates do go straight into working on interesting problems and shipping code, but if you're not fortunate enough to be one of them, you have to make your own career path.

    The whole process of making that jump was (for me) incredibly long, arduous and stressful, full of insecurity and doubt. When I wasn't implementing my solution, I was busy worrying about whether I was wasting my time or whether anyone would take me seriously. And when I had a demo-able implementation, I had to design presentations, set up meetings, and justify my design choices in front of people who were way the hell more experienced than me. But it was an incredibly rewarding experience.

    Bottom line, my education didn't prepare me for any of that. The fact that I wasn't entitled to work on the exciting stuff, that I had to do the non-engineering grunt work of selling my solution ... those were things I had to learn myself.

  24. Re:This seems abrupt on Windows 7 To Skip Straight To a Release Candidate · · Score: 1

    Uh, no. An operating system encompasses frameworks and APIs used to write software for it, which live in userland, not the kernel. Please try getting your information from university courses or textbooks instead of online Linux circle jerks.

  25. Re:Correlation on What Carriers Don't Want You To Know About Texting · · Score: 1

    Text messaging has enormous utility in a lot of situations. I always text my flight number and airline to whoever's picking me up from the airport, for example. Otherwise, the person would have to (a) hear me correctly over the cell network and (b) write down what I said on a piece of paper. Texting is just better in general for sending any kind of data where it's important to be precise (flight numbers, addresses, phone numbers, etc.). It's also a lot easier to make changes to plans through a mass-texting. Instead of calling all your friends and saying, "Hey, let's meet at 8:30 instead of 8:00", just send them all a single text.

    Honestly, SMS and MMS are there as a stand-in until getting push e-mail on phones is more common. Right now, e-mail is pretty much the domain of the smart phone. If and when dumb phones get the capacity to do e-mail relatively well (not inconceivable with Android), text messaging usage and rates will probably diminish.