Never rely on 0 being a reasonable value for pointers. Use NULL.
I've seen too many programs segfault on AMD64 just because some lazy programmer wrote "0" as a pointer value to save typing the three more characters required to type "NULL". "0" is a 32 bit integer which turns out to be NOT equal to "NULL", a 64 bit pointer.
Coincidentially, I would imagine that good old command-line interface, which is well developed in Linux, compared to *cough cough* some OSes, would be the best for blind people in terms of accessibility.
I can confirm that as fact. I once was admin at a place where a (nearly) blind woman worked. Her hardware tools were a braille line which showed one line of the text console at a time and was read with the fingers, and a standard keyboard augmented with a few tactile markers at a few keycaps. On the software side, she used the shell (I can't remember whether it was tcsh or bash), vi and one of mutt or pine.
It was quite astonishing for me to see how fast she accomplished things.
She only used the screen magnification stuff for a single application with a very stupid X11-only (that is, non-text) interface, and didn't like to do that at all.
Sometimes all those screen readers and voice command systems for "modern" "accessibility enabled" GUI applications really appear just a fig leaf for software developers/companies who avoid the real problems of user interfaces -- and thus quite the opposite of progress.
I'd have to see that study to believe it. The failure rate for small businesses is incredibly high. It happens so often that we don't even blink at it. However, when a huge publically traded corporation fails, it's big news.
Assume that study is right stating that all companies have a probability of X% of surviving the next n years, depending on different factors, but regardless of the company's size. Now consider that the number of small(er) businesses is incredibly high compared to the number of huge publically traded corporations.
Then of course the number of small companies failing is "incredibly high" compared to the number of huge companies failing -- exactly in proportion. However, if you chose to depend on one particular company to be around in n years, you still cannot base your decision on its size.
The cited study's results still check out with your perception.
This is what worked for me when learning English as a foreign language ten years ago. At that point, I had already been learning basic written English at school for a few years, but never considered myself to actually "know" English. So this is what I did when I found out that I could actually use my then meagre languages skills for real:
I've read books in the foreign language. I recommend suspense literature, thrillers, and the like - this makes you go on reading even when you still have a few difficulties understanding.
Listen to radio programs in the foreign language. I'm in the lucky position that we have a local AFN affiliate radio station, but in the age of Internet Radio this is much easier.
Write stuff in the foreign language. Mailing lists and IRC work quite well for that. IRC is especially helpful as it is near-realtime and thus requires fast thinking in the foreign language, but it is still written, so you are not exposed to the problems with real world accents.
Obviously, I had to have some basic knowledge before starting any of that. When starting from scratch, you'll need some kind of structured course to get you there.
The last 10 years created two additional technologies which can assist in learning foreign languages:
View movies (on DVD) in the foreign language. Subtitles may help, as may comparing the audio in multiple languages.
Actually speaking the foreign language is more difficult. However, in the age of VoIP, finding a partner to talk to should also be easier than it was ten years ago.
All these methods don't involve any personal contact, so they should be ideally suited to the stereotypical slashdotters;-)
Timezones make it possible to quickly estimate what time it is in Singapore right now even though I'm living in New York.
Really?
With no timezones I'd have to bust out a sextant, look up some astronomical indexes for the country (sunrise, sunset statisitcs), or see if anyone remembers what the difference used to be before we quit using time zones.
And with timezones, you have to bust out some table and look up the timezone and daylight saving times for the country, or see if anyone remembers what the timezone difference currently is.
Timezones reduce the number of local times to keep track of from infinitely many local solar times to 24 timezones. gladmac was not suggesting to go back to solar time, but to consequently follow down that path: use a single global timezone.
And gladmac has a point here: Nowadays people communicate over timezone borders much more frequently than they actually travel over them. Changing to a global timezone would shift the coordination problems from the "communicators" to the "travellers", and thus create the very same headaches, but for a lot less people.
Of course, the battle over who would be allowed to make their local timezone the global one will be fierce.:-)
A "blitz" is supposed to to be fast as a lightning flash, and overwhelmingly effective. The time for any of those to apply to Microsofts PR moves against OSS has passed long ago.
If you insist on choosing a war metaphor, picturing the two opponents dug in deep and taking the occasional shot into the other's approximate direction is probably more accurate.
After seeing that picture of TerraMax, I surely hope they'll have fighters with air-to-ground capability standing by during the race. Just in case something goes seriously wrong.
If it is possible to build gloves with heatpipes in them, there must be flexible heatpipes available commercially.
How come I cannot just buy a CPU cooler consisting of a CPU heatsink with attached flexible heatpipe and heat distributor, which I can mount between the CPU on one side and the metal outside of the computer case on the other?
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Never rely on 0 being a reasonable value for pointers. Use NULL.
I've seen too many programs segfault on AMD64 just because some lazy programmer wrote "0" as a pointer value to save typing the three more characters required to type "NULL". "0" is a 32 bit integer which turns out to be NOT equal to "NULL", a 64 bit pointer.
Definitely! Prioritizing local hard disk access according to process nice levels shouldn't even be all that hard to implement and quite useful.
Doing the same thing to network traffic is another matter, because the network has to support that in some fashion.
You do know about "powernowd -n", don't you?
I can confirm that as fact. I once was admin at a place where a (nearly) blind woman worked. Her hardware tools were a braille line which showed one line of the text console at a time and was read with the fingers, and a standard keyboard augmented with a few tactile markers at a few keycaps. On the software side, she used the shell (I can't remember whether it was tcsh or bash), vi and one of mutt or pine.
It was quite astonishing for me to see how fast she accomplished things.
She only used the screen magnification stuff for a single application with a very stupid X11-only (that is, non-text) interface, and didn't like to do that at all.
Sometimes all those screen readers and voice command systems for "modern" "accessibility enabled" GUI applications really appear just a fig leaf for software developers/companies who avoid the real problems of user interfaces -- and thus quite the opposite of progress.
Assume that study is right stating that all companies have a probability of X% of surviving the next n years, depending on different factors, but regardless of the company's size. Now consider that the number of small(er) businesses is incredibly high compared to the number of huge publically traded corporations.
Then of course the number of small companies failing is "incredibly high" compared to the number of huge companies failing -- exactly in proportion. However, if you chose to depend on one particular company to be around in n years, you still cannot base your decision on its size.
The cited study's results still check out with your perception.
This is what worked for me when learning English as a foreign language ten years ago. At that point, I had already been learning basic written English at school for a few years, but never considered myself to actually "know" English. So this is what I did when I found out that I could actually use my then meagre languages skills for real:
Obviously, I had to have some basic knowledge before starting any of that. When starting from scratch, you'll need some kind of structured course to get you there.
The last 10 years created two additional technologies which can assist in learning foreign languages:
All these methods don't involve any personal contact, so they should be ideally suited to the stereotypical slashdotters ;-)
Really?
And with timezones, you have to bust out some table and look up the timezone and daylight saving times for the country, or see if anyone remembers what the timezone difference currently is.
Timezones reduce the number of local times to keep track of from infinitely many local solar times to 24 timezones. gladmac was not suggesting to go back to solar time, but to consequently follow down that path: use a single global timezone.
And gladmac has a point here: Nowadays people communicate over timezone borders much more frequently than they actually travel over them. Changing to a global timezone would shift the coordination problems from the "communicators" to the "travellers", and thus create the very same headaches, but for a lot less people.
Of course, the battle over who would be allowed to make their local timezone the global one will be fierce. :-)
A "blitz" is supposed to to be fast as a lightning flash, and overwhelmingly effective. The time for any of those to apply to Microsofts PR moves against OSS has passed long ago.
If you insist on choosing a war metaphor, picturing the two opponents dug in deep and taking the occasional shot into the other's approximate direction is probably more accurate.
Why aren't your passwords in your legally protected last will and testament?
We're supposed to change our passwords more often than we change our wills.
After seeing that picture of TerraMax, I surely hope they'll have fighters with air-to-ground capability standing by during the race. Just in case something goes seriously wrong.
With this temperature range... why not attach some battery tester to a CPU heatsink?
If it is possible to build gloves with heatpipes in them, there must be flexible heatpipes available commercially.
How come I cannot just buy a CPU cooler consisting of a CPU heatsink with attached flexible heatpipe and heat distributor, which I can mount between the CPU on one side and the metal outside of the computer case on the other?