What part of "every basic operation EXCEPT a function call" did you fail to understand?

C is close to machine language because every basic operation except a function call results in simple, brief, and concise machine language code. "c=a+b;" results in only a few instructions. And except when you're calling functions whose internals you haven't investigated, everything else is like that.

C is a high level language in that it masks the repetitive assembly language constructs to do those basic functions, but it still only provides basic constructs which are directly tied to what the hardware itself does.

By comparison, perl has a basic construct: "$myhash{"stuff"}=5;" This complex operation under the hood is masked by the simple language construct. It is far away from assembly language.

By comparison, C++ has a basic construct: "cout << "stuff";" While not as egregious as perl, this simple language construct masks function calls and loops under the hood.

In C, simple constructs in the language always result in comparably simple machine level code with comparably short running times. That's what is meant when folks say that C is close to machine language.

CCIE is worth it if you have a passion for routers and networking. The rest (including the other Cisco certs) are trash.

Your career is stalled because you're not interested in programming and don't have an easy knack for management. You've reached the pinnacle of general systems administration and no certifications will change that. There will be more raises as you refine your expertise but you're no longer on a fast growth curve.

If I'm wrong, go get your MBA or MSCS and your career will un-stall.

Felon = committed a felony, distinctly worse than "several prior misdemeanor convictions". Did you? If not, you probably shouldn't describe yourself as a felon.

What were the crimes? If it's something to do with dishonesty (e.g. theft) then yeah, you can pretty much kiss a career in IT goodbye. It would be incredibly irresponsible to grant someone with a record of criminal dishonestly unsupervised access to valuable, private data. And what jobs in IT don't require unsupervised access to valuable, private data?

If it's something else (temper, drugs) then you just have to persist. Try the retail end of IT (work at a computer or electronics store) and maintain a spotless record. Give it a couple years and then use the good reference to work your way back up.

"student in his twenties" is by far the most common time for schizophrenia and a number of other mental illnesses to first manifest. If you notice a rapid and unexpected change in your cognitive abilities in that time frame, visiting with a doctor is just good sense.

And by the way, you seem a little paranoid about doctors. ;)

If your attention span is suffering that dramatically, there might be something medical going on.

Here you go, this is the ticket. At 4 it's all about the fantasy play. Buy her some computer games that indulge the fantasy -- dress the character, animate the character, etc. Things that match the fantasy but also conceptually prepare the player for more technical endeavors.

She'll either be interested or she won't. If she's not interested, you can't force it. If she is, maybe the play segues into something more technical and maybe it doesn't.

You can set the stage but get used to the idea that your child will write her own script. You did when you were the child.

Hawking should stick to what he actually knows.

There's no reason to fear a smart machine. What you should fear is an autonomous but stupid machine. Something with the power to do harm but without the free will to choose not to follow its instructions.

Besides, humans are the great adapters. AI won't replace us; we'll become it.

Wear leveling is only part of the picture. Whenever the SSD erases a block (for wear leveling OR because one sector in the block has been rewritten) it empties any sectors in that block which have been trimmed. The next write to an empty sector requires no erase and copy, thus it's far faster.

Without trim, a visible sector, once used, is never again empty. This means that every write requires a block copy and erase.

I haven't heard of any SSD remapping sectors as opposed to remapping full blocks. Not saying it's impossible, just that I don't think it's generally done. In principle you could journal sectors to a non-user visible area and then do your copy/erase activity when the drive is reasonably idle. But the description of the Sandforce controllers I read suggests it doesn't have the necessary hardware for that.

Seriously? I'd love to hear how you imagine that works.

Without TRIM, the SSD eventually considers all user-visible sectors to be in use. As a result, a sector is never just empty ready to be written. Even with reserved space, it still has to copy the entire much larger erase block in order to insert one sector.

Now I understand why Sony is on the verge of bankruptcy. Late to the party with underwhelming products.

Seems to me he considered the "tradition" option and labeled it "option 1: grow crappy crops that don't work out." Your disagreement is noted but you shouldn't accuse him of failing to consider your point of view.

What makes you think such a system is problematic? Does it hold any confidential information? What harm would come to either you or them if your password was breached? They did tell you not to use a password you use anywhere else, right?

Security has to be right-sized to the circumstance. In the system you describe, the point is to keep out casual intrusion, not close the vault doors. It's frankly dubious that they require any login at all.

Puerto Rico will become a state any time a majority of its citizens want to. Just like Hawaii and Alaska did.

So instead of 3,950,000 slaves gradually reducing to 0 over the course of 60ish years, actual history saw 620,000 dead, entire cities in ruins, and a century of violent hatred that has left most slaves' great great grandchildren still living in poverty as a semi-permanent underclass. All of it overseen by an out of control federal government bloated and twisted beyond recognition.

That was SO much better because, you know, freedom.

The lost opportunities were staggering. We were planning to buy Cuba from Spain for $130m around the time the war broke out. Couldn't afford it after. They eventually had an independence war instead. How different might the 20th century have been were Cuba the 51st state.