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User: notsoclever

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  1. Re:Why not libtcl? on Rexx for Everyone · · Score: 1

    There might be some middleware to allow that, yes. Coding it up wouldn't be too terribly difficult anyway, since you could always just write a glue layer in C which links both libtcl and libpython or whatever.

  2. Re:Warning to those who will enter on Play Blackjack with PHP · · Score: 3, Insightful
    How's it even possible for both the player and dealer to bust? I mean, if the player does their entire hand first (based only on the visible dealer card) as is normal for casino blackjack, then the player will always bust first - meaning that the dealer always wins.

    I wonder if they're just doing an "else if" in the rules even if it's a logic path which can never even be encountered to begin with.

  3. Re:new download link on Quake-Based 'Anna' Machinima Publically Released · · Score: 3, Informative
  4. Re:BitTorrent on Quake-Based 'Anna' Machinima Publically Released · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Or, better yet, FreeCache as well. (FreeCache is better for the "big picture" view of things with the assumption of lots of ISPs and universities contributing bandwidth. It's better economics in the long run than BitTorrent.)

  5. Re:Would it be cheaper? on Eminem Sues Apple for Sampling his Samples · · Score: 1

    Looks like it was both. Though I can't find any actual news stories regarding a PK Dick suit, so maybe the person I heard this from was misinformed.

  6. Re:Would it be cheaper? on Eminem Sues Apple for Sampling his Samples · · Score: 1

    Oh, really? Hm, must be one of those many cases where the news media has been all distorted and stupid and never gave the full story. Or something.

  7. My tools: on Web Site Mock-ups and StoryBoarding? · · Score: 2, Informative

    Pencil, paper, a text editor, and Lorem Ipsum filler text. I find it quicker to just knock out an HTML prototype with boilerplate HTML and CSS than it is to try to design something from a top-down approach and then have to redesign it bottom-up to begin with.

  8. Re:My understanding... on Eminem Sues Apple for Sampling his Samples · · Score: 2, Informative
    Did you know that the first couple to be married in this San Francisco torrent has been together since 1953?!

    They've been together 51 years, in circumstances which require way more dedication than a heterosexual union.

    Apply that to your stereotype. Yes, gay couples tend to break off after a short time period. NEWS FLASH: So do straight couples.

  9. Even more wildly off-topic on Eminem Sues Apple for Sampling his Samples · · Score: 1

    Is the movie as good as the original short story? The original short story is one of the few things by Asimov which I actually like, and I like it a lot!

  10. Re:Would it be cheaper? on Eminem Sues Apple for Sampling his Samples · · Score: 1
    This is why I really hate the way copyright law has gone. Pretty much anything you say could be argued to be a direct quote from something else, and since copyrights have stopped expiring thanks to corporate interests, this means that it's become impossible to make anything new without being sued for copyright infringement or whatever. And usually the money doesn't even go back to the original creators anyway.

    I mean, look at how James Cameron was sued by the estate of P. K. Dick over "Terminator" because Cameron stated that the movie was inspired in part by some P. K. Dick story, that was enough for the estate (which has nothing to do with him or his family) to sue for plagiarism, even though the similarities in stories were only superficial at best.

    Similarly, the ASCAP has successfully sued the pants off of the Girl Scouts for royalties when they sing songs around a campfire.

    Crap like this gives me a headache, and the feeling of just curling up and letting the rest of the world go away for a while.

  11. Re:Here is what I do on Visual Autopsy Of An ATM Card Skimmer · · Score: 1
    Also, another thing to note is that payments usually go against the lowest interest rate on the balance. So, if you have $1000 at 12% and then get $200 cash-back at 18%, then if you pay $200 for your bill that month then you'll have $800 at 12% and $200 at 18%, then after finance charges it's around $808 at 12% and $203 at 18% (total balance = $1011). If the $200 payment had applied to the 18% then the total balance would be $1010. Sure, only a $1 difference at first, but compound interest really adds up fast...

  12. Off-topic anecdote on SA Explorer 8000SD/HD Experiences Y2K-like Bug · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Once upon a time (1997 or so) I worked in my university's data center, performing reporting queries for various departments. One of these queries was for determining who should get a mailing for a scholarship, which required that the students graduated high school after May 1996.

    So, I did something like

    SELECT * FROM student_table WHERE hs_grad_date > '05/01/1996';
    and it spat out a whole bunch of rows, and I was about to send off the results as "complete," until suddenly I noticed quite a few entries for people who has graduated from the university in the 1970s.

    So I looked more closely at the various columns, and noticed that quite a few of them had a graduation date of 09/09/1999 and that the field indicating that they had gotten a GED instead of graduating normally was filled.

    Apparently, back then the database server they had didn't allow a field to remain blank (since it was all legacy which had been migrated between at least a half a dozen architectures by the time I'd had any part in it), so of course if there was no information available they just put in 9/9/99.

    I bet that when the report was run in 2000, a lot of students who had already gotten their degrees decades before were quite surprised to get a mailing informing them that they had qualified for the scholarship!

  13. Re:Where can I buy LinuxBIOS PCs? on Subversion 1.0 Released · · Score: 1

    Good points. I hadn't realized that it was all still handled by the BIOS I thought Linux just talked to the chipset directly for most of those things.

  14. Re:What's with that? on Subversion 1.0 Released · · Score: 1
    Yes, and that goes all the way back to MS-DOS 1.0.

    That still doesn't make the terminology correct.

  15. Re:What's with that? on Subversion 1.0 Released · · Score: 5, Insightful
    And I suppose plain text files are decimal? Or maybe they're analog?

    All files are binary. What most people mean when they say "binary file" is "non-plaintext."

  16. Re:Where can I buy LinuxBIOS PCs? on Subversion 1.0 Released · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Fortunately, the amount of support needed from the BIOS is minimal. Once the kernel image is loaded into memory the BIOS is sumarily ignored.

    Also, the BIOS's API has been totally open (and basically unchanged) ever since the original IBM PC.

  17. Re:I wonder on Will Harvey On Virtual Worlds, Technology Curves · · Score: 1
    True. I was just saying that not *all* older games are prone to those problems. Also, many games from that vintage won't even run in WinXP DOS boxes anyway, and so you need something like dosbox to run them, and since that has customizable emulated CPU speed it doesn't really matter which speed it runs at. :)

  18. Re:I wonder on Will Harvey On Virtual Worlds, Technology Curves · · Score: 1
    However, a lot of those older games were coded such that they'd run at the same speed (if not the same framerate) on all systems. Hey, just like today's.

    And a lot of them just used vsync for polling anyway.

  19. Re:Why not libtcl? on Rexx for Everyone · · Score: 1

    Not really. Other languages can call Tcl just fine by just passing it a string (similar to AppleScript on MacOS). And Tcl has a lot less overhead than Bonobo.

  20. No it doesn't on An Ignition Interlock In Every Car? · · Score: 1
    New Mexico has periodic (annual, IIRC) vehicle safety inspections. If your interlock were disabled, you wouldn't get your inspection sticker and couldn't legally drive your car.
    Bernalillo county has annual emissions inspections, but no safety inspections. The rest of the state has nothing of the sort.

    I've lived in NM basically all my life. The drinking problem would probably be solved if the cops would actually pull over people who were driving erratically, rather than spending all their time dealing with people who are driving 2MPH over the speed limit.

  21. Why not libtcl? on Rexx for Everyone · · Score: 1

    Tcl was specifically designed for the sorts of uses which AREXX was used for. It's also much more lightweight than Bonobo could ever dream of being.

  22. I didn't say it wasn't on Backlash as EMI Hunts Down the Grey Album · · Score: 1
    I agree that DJing is an artistic performance when it's a live mix. But Grey Album doesn't sound like it's a live mix. It sounds like loop painting in Acid, which I'd be hard-pressed to call a "performance" in any situation.

    Personal taste isn't a factor in my assessment. I'm going from a purely technical standpoint.

  23. Gee, you sure showed me. on Backlash as EMI Hunts Down the Grey Album · · Score: 1
    I mean, wow, because we use different sets of terminology on things which aren't universal, and because you think your terminology applies to everyone who does these things, wow, you're so right.

    Whatever.

  24. Re:If it seems easy... on Backlash as EMI Hunts Down the Grey Album · · Score: 1
    Yeah, but in this case it doesn't sound easy, so much as really amateurish.

    Also, where's the performance? Certainly not on DJ Dangermouse's end (it's not like he was the one rapping or playing the various instruments), and I doubt it's a live mix; to me it sounds like he just took little clips from White Album, painted them in Acid, and then laid Jay-Z over it.

    Not That Hard.

  25. Re:Kinda mediocre on Backlash as EMI Hunts Down the Grey Album · · Score: 1

    Uh. A "beat" is just a beat, regardless of whether it's a loop, a sequenced drummachine, a sample, or what. I've never seen anyone take "beat" to mean "a rhythm as generated by a drummachine," which is what you seem to think it means.