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User: saccade.com

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  1. Re:Kudos to Zappos for the way they handled this. on Zappos Hacked: Internal Systems Breached · · Score: 1

    My wife tried to order shoes tonight, and first the site insisted she change her password. Then it took -forever- for the address/payment info to appear before it would let the order go through. Trying to phone them got a "We're sorry - we cannot take your call at this time" recording - *very* unusual for Zappos. Makes me think this has them pretty bent out of shape. Wish I'd seen this before she placed the order. We may be buying some slimeball a lot of shoes...

  2. Re:Good - the Shuttle was a deathtrap. on Inside a Last-Ditch Effort To Save the Space Shuttle · · Score: 1

    Indeed. Remember the sick joke about NASA standing for "Need Another Seven Astronauts"? The shuttle has a terrible safety record, and a lot of the problems are fundamental to the design. Best to let it go.

  3. Boot time vs. actually doing something useful on Ubuntu 11.10 Down To 12-Second Boot · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm always skeptical of these "Boots in N seconds!" claims. Because often it takes another few -minutes- to log in, launch an application, and start doing something useful. We need a new metric. Say, the time it takes from power on to fully loading an uncached copy of example.com in a browser.

  4. Any improvment in diagnostics? on GRUB 1.99 Released With Support For ZFS and BtrFS · · Score: 1
    My chief complaint against GRUB is the horrible diagnostics. Would it kill them to put in real error messages instead of unhelpful grunts like:

    ERROR 18

    Has this been addressed in the new version?

  5. Re:The missing link on Is Apple Turning Into the Next "Evil Empire"? · · Score: 3, Informative

    Or perhaps this one.

  6. The missing link on Is Apple Turning Into the Next "Evil Empire"? · · Score: 1

    I think you're missing the link to the original essay.

  7. San Francisco has had Electric Buses for Decades on South Korea Launches First Electric Bus Fleet · · Score: 1

    Two long, springy polls on the top of each bus connect to a network of bare power lines stretched across the streets.

  8. Try BrowserLab on Best Browser For Using Complex Web Applications? · · Score: 1

    If you want to do quick cross-browser testing, try Browser Lab.

  9. It's a rip-off on HP Explains Why Printer Ink Is So Expensive · · Score: 1

    My sister was a chemist who spent a while formulating inks for a competing printer company years ago. According to her, the price of the ink is a complete rip-off, pure and simple. The price of the ink has nothing to do with the manufacturing and materials cost.

  10. Ray Tracing Jell-O on The 10 Most Absurd Scientific Papers · · Score: 2, Informative

    They missed Paul Heckbert's classic SIGGRAPH 88 paper, "Ray Tracing Jell-O brand Gelatin".

  11. Re:100 million lines of code?? on NHTSA Has No Software Engineers To Analyze Toyota · · Score: 1

    100 million lines of code is an insane amount of software. For a sense of scale, Windows XP is 40M lines of code (source). Given the limited domain of a car (even considering entertainment, dashboard and navigation/GPS systems) it's highly unlikely that they're using that much code.

  12. Re:100 million lines of code?? on NHTSA Has No Software Engineers To Analyze Toyota · · Score: 3, Informative

    I strongly suspect the "100 million lines of code" is BS. Most of the "ECUs" are small microcontrollers that would be lucky to hold 5,000 lines of code, let alone millions. Either the professor is inflating the code size estimate to make himself seem important, or the systems are designed by complete idiots.

  13. XServe? on Why Apple Doesn't Market Squarely To Businesses · · Score: 1

    Apple does have at least some enterprise business, or they wouldn't bother continuing to sell and support products like the XServe.

  14. Not interesting. on XCore's EduBook, a Netbook That Runs on AA Batteries · · Score: 1

    Wireless (WiFi) should be built in. Otherwise you're guaranteed a configuration headache to use a feature that should work right out of the box. Built-in camera is pretty much expected on these machines too. And, quite frankly, I'll stick with the "proprietary" battery packs that give another 2-4 hours of run-time, thanks.

  15. Just saw the spine off! on The DIY Book Scanner · · Score: 2, Informative

    A while back I got a Fujitsu ScanSnap S510. Now when I want to scan a book, I just saw the spine off (table saw, band saw or even a steel ruler and X-acto knife will do the trick). Take the loose sheets, about 40 at a time, and put them into the ScanSnap. The ScanSnap comes with Acrobat Pro and does a fine job of making a searchable PDF file of the book. The paper? Into the recycle bin. I've cleared off several feet of shelf space.

  16. It works, but it takes work on Installing Linux On Old Hardware? · · Score: 1

    After getting Debian running on an old Desktop system, I can say it does work, but you're guaranteed to hit speed bumps along the way.

  17. Perforce on Making Sense of Revision-Control Systems · · Score: 1

    We've had great luck with Perforce for several huge projects. I use it at home for smaller personal work too. It's excellent (no connection with the company, just satisfied customer).

  18. Re:The Computer History Museum (USA) on Science, Technology, Natural History Museums? · · Score: 1

    Ditto votes for the CHM. I would rate it a must-see. If you go north on 101 a ways, there's also the Hiller Aviation Museum, with a nice collection of airplanes and helicopters. The Intel museum may also be worth a visit. Consider timing your visit to the Bay Area to match up with events like the Maker Faire or the various tech conferences / trade shows that come through San Jose or Santa Clara.

  19. 64 bit charge amounts? on Software Glitch Leads To $23,148,855,308,184,500 Visa Charges · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What's really strange is they're using 64 bits to express a charge amount. How many people are charging manned missions to Mars or the military invasion of a superpower to their Visa? A 64 bit credit limit must be quite the status symbol.

  20. The Hardware Lab on Why Do We Name Servers the Way We Do? · · Score: 1

    I used to admin a bunch of machines for a student hardware engineering lab. I called them "short", "smoke", "glitch", "race" and "hang".

  21. Re:grep and emacs integration on (Stupid) Useful Emacs Tricks? · · Score: 1

    You do know about C-xC-b (buffer menu), right?

  22. Another data point. on Designing a Patent-Incentive Program? · · Score: 1

    Our company [large applications software vendor] does something like $2K on filing and another $3K on issuing. We generally don't file preliminaries. The pot gets sliced up if there's more than two inventors. They used to do restricted stock on issue, but I wasn't too fond of that... you've already waited years (up to four in some cases) for it to issue, why tie up the "reward" even longer?

  23. Re:Press Releases... on The Fedora-Red Hat Crisis · · Score: 1

    If you want to understand just how scary a break-in like this is, read Ken Thompson's classic Turing Award Lecture, Reflections on Trusting Trust.

  24. Also check out Marshall Brain's "Robotic Nation" on Robocars As the Best Way Geeks Can Save the Planet · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Marshall Brain has taken a much wider view of how robots will affect the future. By the time Templeton's Robo-cars come about, transportation will only be facet of a very major impact on the human race.

  25. C++ Debuggers on Bjarne Stroustrup Reveals All On C++ · · Score: 3, Funny
    At a corporate event a few years ago, I found myself seated across from Mr. Stroustrup. I asked him what debugger he used for his own development.

    His answer was along the lines of: "Oh, I never use a debugger. If something's not working right I just think about it...maybe I'll add a printf once in a while if I need to check something."

    Now you know why utterly un-debuggable features like templates went into the language...