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User: Tablizer

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  1. Re:"public standards"? on IBM Locking Up Lots of Cloud Computing Patents · · Score: 1

    Use LAMP as your "cloud" platform and tell IBM to shove their patent where their the lamps don't shine.

  2. Re:Some of these items look suspicious: on Buzz Aldrin Publishes Moon Expenses Form · · Score: 1

    Fork English, it's ilojical and suks!

  3. Some of these items look suspicious: on Buzz Aldrin Publishes Moon Expenses Form · · Score: 4, Funny

    * Chewing gum
    * Accordion
    * Shoe-horn
    * Pizza cutter
    * 75 watt light bulb
    * Dried armadillo
    * Bicycle peddle
    * Original painting of a bulldozer
    * Rodent repellant
    * 7 bottle caps
    * Pillow feathers
    * Rubber mallet
    * Dog bone
    * Green paint, exterior
    * Detour sign
    * Broken canoe paddle
    * Decorative beads
    * Baby pacifier
    * Petunia seeds
    * Empty ice tray
    * Batman mask
    * 3 human teeth
    * Toothpick sculpture of a 3-legged donkey
    * Drained snow-globe

    As a hard-working tax-payer, I demand answers.
       

  4. Re:I'm not fooled on Buzz Aldrin Publishes Moon Expenses Form · · Score: 1

    What that vid portion doesn't show is that the guy followed Buzz around and constantly harassed him for a while, sticking a Bible in Buzz's face.

  5. Re:I'm not fooled on Buzz Aldrin Publishes Moon Expenses Form · · Score: 1

    You need a private count-down: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

  6. Re:The $33.31 was for the hookers on Buzz Aldrin Publishes Moon Expenses Form · · Score: 2

    You gotta give them some incentive. It was a really risky trip.

    "Houston, the lunar take-off rockets failed to fire, and the fuel is leaking fast. Uh, we'd like about an hour of privacy, please...".

  7. Re:Passing Parameters with Side Effects on Lessons From Your Toughest Software Bugs · · Score: 1

    red and blue values were swapping places across thousands of pixels

    Just convince the customers that "the Avatar look" is in style. Who needs technicians when you have a good sales team.

  8. Mishandling handles on Lessons From Your Toughest Software Bugs · · Score: 1

    I once contracted with a shop that had a process that generated garbled output data rows. It appeared to be extra stuff that didn't affect (over-write) the intended rows. The shop had added an extra processing step to filter out the garbage rows and eventually just worked around the glitch.

    They had asked me to try to track it down, among other projects, because they were newbie programmers. I couldn't figure it out either because it never appeared in my intermediate trace statements. I put a trace (print) statement before every "write" in the program. None of the prints showed the garbage, yet garbage ended up in the output file. Head-scratcher galore. I was supposed to be "the expert", and thus feeling a bit deflated.

    On I think the last day of my contract, I was running a test copy of the code with some changes to perform speed tests. I went to try a certain speed tweak, and I suddenly spotted the error: the file handle variable was re-used for another non-handle purpose, something like this:

    fhandle = openFileForWrite(fileName);
    ...
    writeToFile(fhandle, someData);
    ...
    fhandle = countX + countY - 7;
    ...
    closeFile(fhandle);

    The actual handle name was something like "qhand". But a regular variable, "quantity on hand" ended up "qhand" also, the same name as the file handle.

    When it dawned on me what happened, I started screaming like a wildman and the others popped out of their cubicles to see what was going down. They took my coffee away :-)

    As far as the link on goofy video game bugs, I remember somebody discovered that if you don't put a game cartridge in all the way, certain characters dance and spin randomly and rapidly in the sky.

    It created an Internet meme, and spoofs started appearing all over, typically using stop-motion with live actors. I forgot the nickname of the meme, but I found it hilarious. It took my mind off the handle bug.

  9. Hindsight and lessons. on Inside the Failure of Google+ · · Score: 1

    I don't blame Google for trying. There are too many variables to say what will work and won't. Social networking is too big of an industry to not bother making a play for. Honda started out a successful motorbike company, and successfully pushed into automobiles even though that industry was full of established players.

    However, I do blame Google for forcing their services to be or act like a social networking site, where private info magically showed up elsewhere in unexpected ways. That's just desperation and/or forceful denial in play, ticking off your user base. They forgot "Don't Be Evil". Obsession made them stupid.

    I hope Google goes back to what it does well: lots of specialized little services that can OPTIONALLY share info between each other as the user sees fit.

  10. Re:Bridge to Nowhere! on Epic Mega Bridge To Connect America With Russia Gets Closer To Reality · · Score: 1

    You are using "guilty until proven innocent". And I don't see ABC as particularly left-leaning in general (although these kinds of bias claims are difficult to objectify and often contentious.)

    I'll apply Hanlon's Razor as the more likely here.

  11. Tales of Customs on Leading the Computer Revolution In a Totalitarian State · · Score: 1

    cut the cables between the two boards [of a TRS-80] and send them separately to avoid getting caught in customs.

    Reminds me of the story of Richard Garriott's Sputnik 1. It's an actual spare probe prepared by the Soviets in the 1950's as a backup.

    When Russia was having a hard time transitioning away from Soviet rule in the 90's, Soviet space stuff was being auctioned for ridiculously low prices.

    Richard snapped up the spare Sputnik for a bargain, and disassembled it to get it past customs. His team unscrewed the metal sphere into two halves and presented them as "new-age salad bowls" to customs officials.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10...

  12. Re:Bridge to Nowhere! on Epic Mega Bridge To Connect America With Russia Gets Closer To Reality · · Score: 1

    Okay I stand corrected on that. But, you have no evidence ABC edited with the intent to make her look foolish. They may have done it to simply keep it short. TV news does that a lot.

  13. Simple out on Girls Catfish ISIS On Social Media For Travel Money · · Score: 1

    Just require ISIS show up at court.

  14. Re:Bridge to Nowhere! on Epic Mega Bridge To Connect America With Russia Gets Closer To Reality · · Score: 2

    Yes, but that's not the point. She cited it as her foreign policy experience when asked about experience.

  15. Re:Bridge to Nowhere! on Epic Mega Bridge To Connect America With Russia Gets Closer To Reality · · Score: 1

    To save fuel, Obama should have made Sarah Palin the US's ambassador to Russia. She could walk to work.

  16. Re:Don't Cry... on Hitchhiking Robot's Cross-Country Trip Ends In Philadelphia · · Score: 1

    Perhaps somebody just got news they were being replaced by automation.

    And then on their way home spotted the robotic hitchhiker. The rest is history, including the robot.

  17. Re:Simples on San Francisco's Public Works Agency Tests Paint That Repels Urine · · Score: 1

    Pee at an angle to the wall.

    Steve Jobs: "You're holding your wanker wrong".

  18. Victory for "Soft" Socialism on Are We Reaching the Electric Car Tipping Point? · · Score: 1

    Subsidizing the cost of nascent "green" technology is needed to prod the industry to produce and learn how to make a better green mouse-trap through experience and R&D.

    It's paying off now as electric cars are getting competitive. Gasoline engines have been the dominant car technology for a century, and thus have had a lot of R&D behind them. Thanks to subsidies to induce sales and R&D, electric cars have evolved to be competitive with gasoline.

    Private companies rarely look more than 5 to 10 years ahead. It's why they have to be prodded via subsidies, etc. Finance theory on ROI teaches one to generally focus on the short-term. Whether this is entirely rational or not makes an interesting debate, but it's the ruling view of the current business world.

    By the way, I consider "soft" socialism to be incentive-based. "Hard" socialism would be outright banning products. I'm generally against outright banning for products, such as incandescent bulbs and sugar-loaded Big Gulps. Tax them heavily as a disincentive, but don't ban them.

  19. Re:Here's the list on Why Your Software Project Is Failing · · Score: 1

    Not really. They often have to use it with actual data to relate to what it's doing with it. The data flow matters.

  20. Obligatory #31 on Obama's New Executive Order Says the US Must Build an Exascale Supercomputer · · Score: 1

    Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of pork

  21. So Comcast isn't incompetent after all, just bribed up the wazoo.

  22. Not practical on Ask Slashdot: Everyone Building Software -- Is This the Future We Need? · · Score: 1

    It's not practical any more than everyone learning to be lawyers or plumbers or electricians. Get experience and master your art rather than try to be a jack of all trades. Newbie programmers usually do poor work for a while (or are slow), just like newbie plumbers.

  23. Dedicated Airspace for Drones? on Amazon Proposes Dedicated Airspace For Drones · · Score: 2

    How about over ISIS

  24. Re:funny I should see this right now on Why Your Software Project Is Failing · · Score: 1

    mongodb? Use something that's been tried and true for at least 10 years. Go with MySql or PostGresql and screw the noSql toys until they mature and have decent docs.

    Let pioneers take the arrows, the rest of us stay in proverbial Boston, which has infrastructure and seasoned specialists, and get shit done. And we have nice lawns to kick fanboys off of.

  25. Re:Here's the list on Why Your Software Project Is Failing · · Score: 1

    The problem with most software isn't that it can't be modelling and rely on basic physical principles, it's that many projects fail to take specs and testing seriously

    Most requesters (users) don't really know what they want UNTIL they actually see something concrete, and then realize it didn't fit what they had in mind. We don't need engineering, we need mind-readers. If users had enough time to sit and be thoroughly interviewed about needs and preferences, they wouldn't need automation to begin with.

    And further, how to make software maintainable in the longer run is highly disputed largely because it depends on "wetware" and unknowns, such as developer perception of code, and unknowable future domain changes.

    It's more akin to writing technical documentation than to building a bridge: how do you write documentation that's clear to the audience, but flexible enough that it doesn't have to be largely reworked for every change.

    There is no magic modularity formula: domain issues inherently intertwine (or can intertwine in the future even if not at original launch.) You can't hide intertwining, you have to find a way to manage it well.