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User: asc99c

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  1. Re:Bull turds! on Bad Software Runs the World · · Score: 1

    It doesn't matter to the client whether your software segfaulted or replied 'sorry Dave I'm afraid I can't do that'. Either way, it hasn't completed a use-case that it is meant to do. And that fact may well mean that a load of downstream activities happen differently, and you quite possibly have gained nothing by rejecting it.

  2. Re:Abstraction on Why Are Fantasy World Accents British? · · Score: 2

    Rohirric had roughly the same old-but-understandable relationship to Westron (common speech) as Old English has to Modern English.

    Huh? Old English is not even vaguely understandable - I don't even recognise most of the letters. I thought to myself that reading Beowulf in it's original format would be interesting. It would be, but I'd need to put serious time into learning a new language.

  3. Re:Fun names worked great, for a while. on Server Names For a New Generation · · Score: 1

    The admins should be able to trivially look up a name in a spreadsheet. We've got a lot of redundant server pairs, and an application that shows the current server name in the corner. With fun names, you can ask a user which server they are on, and often they know the answer without checking. Good luck with them knowing LON-EXC-01 without spending a couple of minutes looking it up.

  4. Re:Not smart Enough? on Scientists Say People Aren't Smart Enough For Democracy To Flourish · · Score: 5, Funny

    Wrote learning is overrated, spelling especially!

  5. Re:Misleading to call it "non-copied" on Non-Copied Photo Is Ruled Copyright Infringement · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If you read TFA (which admittedly, also very nearly misses the point) you'll see the point is this photo isn't just a recording of something. There are certain aspects of it chosen by the artist - the white sky, the monochrome background, the red bus - which therefore can be copyrighted. And furthermore, the defendant had photographed the second image especially to avoid having to pay a licence for the original image.

    While the second image isn't copied either digitally or by photocopier, it is still a copied image. If the defendant had the idea for the image independantly, it would be arguable, but in this case it is well documented that he did not.

  6. Re:In some respect, I agree. on Why We Should Teach Our Kids To Code · · Score: 1

    Errrmmm... yes!

    But it was unrelated - a big US company bought the business, then immediately closed it down and laid off everyone, leaving them with no UK competitors.

  7. Re:In some respect, I agree. on Why We Should Teach Our Kids To Code · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This is one of the best points on here. For 90% of the people who could benefit from programming knowledge, the question of whether to learn Java, or C, or Ruby is ridiculous. Many office workers have to deal with spreadsheets quite a bit, and VBA is the thing they often need.

    My wife used to be a team leader and she had to submit various reports on a weekly basis, through a process that took about 2 hours of copying and pasting between various spreadsheets. One day she was doing it from home and I saw she had got rid of about half the work using more complex formulas instead of copy/paste. I showed her how to add a button to run a VBA macro that did the rest, and reduced it to a 10 minute job, collating the data from a few sources, and then hitting a button.

    Within a few months of that she had rewritten most of the standard procedures for how most of the management reports were created (by herself) and automated most parts of it.

  8. Re:He did not experience 40g's on What a Black Box Data Dump Looks Like · · Score: 1

    You're misunderstanding his point. At high g's you're accelerating very quickly, that's a given. It won't take long until you're being accelerated into something. For a fighter pilot that would be the seat or harness. But if the acceleration is sub millisecond, you've barely even begun to be pushed against the seatbelt, so you don't really feel the 40g acceleration.

  9. Re:100mph and no seatbelt? on What a Black Box Data Dump Looks Like · · Score: 1

    It all depends on what you hit. If it's a head on collision with a tree, it doesn't budge, and you stop dead. If it's a glancing blow that sends you flying / skidding to a stop over a distance, it isn't really that bad. Richard Hammond survived a crash caused by a tyre blowout at 288 mph ...

  10. Re:Engineering on What a Black Box Data Dump Looks Like · · Score: 1

    For most cars? I've got a little Citroen C2, a 1.4 diesel that I commute in, and that only goes safely to about 80, but that is definitely a very low-end car. I have had the opportunity to take a hire car down an empty toll road, and hit 130mph. I chickened out at that point because I could finally see a car in the distance going quite a lot slower, but as I was slowing down, a BMW came flying past, that was almost certainly going above 150mph.

    My big family car is a Ford Mondeo ST220, which I have taken on a track, and it will happily, and safely, go round a decent corner at 80, but no idea how fast it could go on a long straight.

  11. Re:It'd better happen quick then on Is the Time Finally Right For Hybrid Hard Drives? · · Score: 1

    Given that it's £20, it's the UK and the GP is correct. Retailers try to get out of it / say that it is a manufacturer issue, but of course they would. It is still down to the retailer to sort out the problem with the manufacturer on your behalf.

  12. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa on Good Disk Library Solutions? · · Score: 1

    Agreed. Last night I tried to watch a Blu-Ray I had ripped to a plain image (I do usually use MakeMKV, but this was the 'Life' documentary series with various features that don't quite get captured right in MKV). First, PowerDVD insisted I needed to update it, which took a while. Then it told me a variety of error messages before crashing. In the end Blu-Ray is just such a pain to use on a PC that I can imagine why no one wants a disc loader type system.

    Rip everything to MKV - it is way easier.

  13. Re:Supernovas on OPERA Group Repeats Faster-Than-Light Neutrino Results · · Score: 1

    Remember though, the team who have discovered this effect have pointed out as much, and are also still skeptics of their own results. I don't mean to sound unskeptical of the result, but I think it is possible that neutrinos can under differing circumstances travel at different speeds.

  14. Re:So on IEA Warns of Irreversible Climate Change In 5 Years · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You're assuming that in all cases there are no alternatives to using lots of energy, and that is completely invalid.

    Tying in the London congestion charge just gives a great example for a rebuttal. London does have a decent public transport system - the tube is the quickest way of getting around. Commuting journeys across London do not need to be made in a car. The congestion charge has been effective: people go to work on the tube, or a bike.

    A generic carbon tax will promote efficiency and lower consumption of carbon, but just increase costs.

  15. Re:39K ? Luxury! on Things That Turbo Pascal Is Smaller Than · · Score: 2

    > Kids these days don't know the meaning of a kilobyte.

    Shouldn't that be a kibibyte?

  16. Re:Legalized euthanasia on What Happens When the Average Lifespan is 150 Years? · · Score: 2

    I just don't believe that jobs are 'opened up' by older workers retiring. When people have more money, and can buy more stuff, jobs are created. If old people stop retiring, they have more money, and therefore create extra demand.

    In the short term, what you say is true, and it may take a couple of years before companies see the demand trending higher, and choose to employ more people, but longer term, there isn't an economic problem in people living longer.

  17. Re:Bill Gates on Is Bill Gates the Cure For What Ails Microsoft? · · Score: 2

    I can't completely agree with this. I'm pretty sure Intel would love to get rid of a lot of the cruft in the X86 ISA, and release a properly new product. Partly because they've tried it once already. The reason they can't is that so much software is compiled to work well on X86.

    And in the end, when people are buying a PC, they expect to get a PC that does everything they want of it. ARM are doing very well, as smartphones become better and so bought by more people, and tablets take off. But in the end, there aren't full fledged ARM based PCs. That line is going to be incredibly difficult to cross. Maybe tablets will blur the lines - a tablet with a docking station providing keyboard, mouse and full-res monitor, might for instance create demand for desktop-style software recompiled for ARM ISA, but it is very far from a sure thing.

  18. Re:You have a point on Twitter Prepared To Name Users · · Score: 1

    The real farce has been that they were allowed to tell people everyone was naming him on Twitter, and the woman's name is Imogen Thomas. If the injunction had blocked her name, it would have got rid of the obvious search on Twitter. If the injunction also prevented referring people to somewhere that the information was available, it would have left people googling searches for injunctions.

    If you're going to bother with an injunction, don't let people with internet access have the search term and website surely!

  19. Re:Where is this going to end on Tweeter To Be Prosecuted, Twitter Now Censoring? · · Score: 1

    The judge who granted the injunction did appear to suggest Imogen Thomas had attempted blackmail with the details of the story - which is part of the reason an injunction was granted.

  20. Re:Hmmm ... on CMU Eliminates Object Oriented Programming For Freshman · · Score: 1

    > If by the time you get to university you don't have more than a basic (no pun intended) proficiency in programming then you're likely headed for a non-techie role.

    I don't agree with this. Not everyone is from an environment where they will have been exposed to much of this stuff - certainly, before I went to university, I couldn't do any programming. I didn't know many people from any professional background really, just knew I quite enjoyed messing about with computers and figured I'd do computer science. My parents both work in the public sector, the school careers service was very heavy on public sector jobs (IIRC airline pilot was the only non public sector job which appeared on my list, and I'm colourblind which rules that one out...) In the end I've been a techie for 10 years now and am still mostly avoiding moving into management.

    University is the first time people are really making their own choices on a large scale. Any assumptions made on a person before that are unlikely to be valid.

  21. Re:Clean Power on Activists Seek Repeal of Ban On Incandescent Bulbs · · Score: 1

    Tesco sell CFLs for 10p a piece (16 cents). That's the UK, but it's rare things are cheaper over here ...

    My previous house (built 1885) had a couple of light fittings that got through a ridiculous amount of bulbs. Based on the wiring colours, it must have been about 50 years since the wiring was put in. CFLs lasted about 2 months, but incandescents only lasted 1-2 weeks. My current house had most of the rewiring done in the 90s, and I've only had to replace 1 CFL in over 3 years.

  22. Re:This is way over the top on Why Nokia Is Toast · · Score: 1

    I'm guessing you're also American. Because I think in the UK and the rest of Europe (and seemingly the world) people do still like Nokia.

    Naming a current product might be an issue, because they do have lots but without big launches. But if I needed a phone I'd find plenty of current models in the shop. What are they particularly good at? They're very compact (iPhone is just too big for my liking, and most smartphones are equal size to bigger), excellent battery life (mine lasts about a week between charges), work beautifully as a phone, I've never had a dropped call (for that matter I'm not sure I even heard about dropped calls until smartphones came around...), very good value for money, well built, designed with thought about how it will be used as a phone ...

    The best smartphone I've seen yet is the HTC Desire, but second is an N900 which I like enormously. The iPhone 4 gets third place for me. The Nokia OS isn't the prettiest, but it is definitely one of the most usable.

  23. Re:Looking at the bigger picture on Oracle Asks Apache To Rethink Java Committee Exit · · Score: 1

    It isn't black and white - but the shade of grey has been getting darker since the Oracle takeover. I'd say they've taken a pragmatic view that Java had a lot going for it, despite not being 100% open. It seemed to me the shine had been coming off Java for a while before the Oracle takeover anyway - there are plenty of gems in there, but getting useful stuff done still seems a bit cumbersome.

  24. Re:Quality, not quantity on Aging Reversed In Mice · · Score: 1

    I've just got to 30 and would still very much like to live forever. My wife doesn't want to live forever, and doesn't even seem particularly keen on living any longer than a 'natural' lifespan. The reason being that the people you know would all die - even if you can cure aging, you would likely see friends and relatives die as a result of accidents.

    You don't get to make new relatives. Even if you go on making new friends, it would be odd to live in a world where your parents, children, brothers and sisters had died.

  25. Re:THIS on LSE Breaks World Record In Trade Speed With Linux · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Yet oddly, in the UK at least, there is a tax on actually buying shares, so my long-term investment account has various charges for stamp duty as my money goes in there. The tax is only applied to buying actual shares. It isn't applied when messing around with futures and complex derivatives etc that have caused the problems.

    I think this needs to be exactly the opposite way around. I don't think there should be a tax for dealing in shares, but instead a tax on dealing with various futures products. Not too severe a tax but enough to dissuade this sort of high speed speculation.