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Comment Re:Duff's Device (Score 1) 373

Sort of related.  If I add some meaningless drivel here then slashdot won't consider my comment to have too few characters per line.  Somewhat ironic that a story about elegant code forces code to be condensed onto less lines.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
  int i;

  switch (argc - 1)
  {
    case 0:
      printf("No args\n");
      break;

    case 1:
      printf("One arg\n");
      if (strcmp(argv[1], "hello") == 0)
      {
        printf("Hello yourself!\n");
        break;

        for(i = 0; i < 5; ++i)
        {
          case 2:
            printf("Two args\n");
        }
        break;

        case 3:
          printf("Three args\n");
          break;

        default:
          printf("More args than I can count\n");
          break;
      }
  }

  return 0;
}

Comment Re:On the road to replacing DirectX (Score 1) 130

I believe almost all CAD and 3D modelling software are OpenGL based.

Probably true. I work on software with a CAD focus and we use Direct3D only because of misinformation. The product was converted from a custom language with C (and OpenGL) to .NET, and the designers at the time were given the impression by Microsoft that OpenGL would shortly be deprecated under .NET.

Ironically, Microsoft actually deprecated Managed DirectX so we rewrote in managed C++.

Comment Re:HEY (Score 1) 268

They don't purr when they are upset do they?

Actually cats will purr when they are about to die (e.g. fatally wounded or ill, when they have given up). On music by animals in general it's hard to say, since humans use music as art/entertainment. Most animal 'music' is more for communication or attracting a mate, but of course you could say that's really what human art is about too (as the musicians you met during your bar gigging years would no doubt attest).

Comment Re:HEY (Score 1) 268

It's not a DISlike of music, it's just no interest.

This is popping up a bit and is very interesting since usually I've heard the opposite story - people actively dislike music because it tells them how they should feel.

To me music taps into something primal within our understanding of sound. The reaction to sudden, loud notes after a quiet passage is probably the most obvious example that we can link to our survival experience, but all languages have their own musical elements (prosody) and some are even tonal, where the pitch alters the meaning of the word. This is why it seems musical appreciation should be universal.

So a question, do you understand the emotional content of music and simply not care (that sounds almost paradoxical), or is the lack of interest from not being able to 'parse' it? If you understand it, to what extent? If not, how does this apply to lanuages? For example, do you fail to find French beautiful and German harsh, and how do you fare at picking up tone in spoken language?

Comment Re:Similar to most studies (Score 1) 427

By that logic, we should mandate a pay gap. If women are paid 25% less than men it will make motherhood much more attractive.

I do agree with Xest however. Unless we want to return to resource wars (well, obvious ones) the world population has to level out and perhaps reduce. Currently this is predicted to occur around 2050. We're probably going to have to get used to a different standard of living. Of some irony is the fact that feminism, with women entering the workforce, has propped up economic growth over the past 7 decades.

Comment Re:Easy clean, cheap solution (Score 3, Interesting) 769

Firstly, so many people drink shit coffee that how you make it is irrelevant

Yep, I'm cringing reading through this discussion of Americans debating which coffee is best.

What's next, Canadians arguing over whether the most offensive word is "damn" or "bum"?

Karma-burning out of the way, what you describe sounds like it would be very mild coffee, poured quickly over the grounds rather than steeped? Typically coffee snobs go for Italian espresso which is far stronger. The principles are;

1. Beans must be fresh. One week after roasting is the optimal time (the beans de-gas), and they should be ground on demand. Supermarket beans are often sitting there for months.
2. The grinder is more important than the machine. You want a very consistent grind that doesn't raise the heat of the beans. So saying I've A/B-ed an expensive burr grinder with a cheap one and couldn't notice the difference in the end cup.

Another interesting style is Toddy's cold-brewed. You simply place a lot of grounds in a large plunger, fill it with cold water and leave it in the fridge for 12 hours. Plunge and pour into another container, keeping the coffee in the fridge (stays fresh for a week) to use as a base. Pour some into your cup, heat in the microwave and add milk and sugar as desired. Because it was extracted with cold water the taste is incredibly smooth with very little bitterness.

Comment Re:We are looser, that's it. (Score 1) 506

Gendered words have the purpose of reinforcing the sound of the word or phrase, like alliteration, since typically the gender of nouns and articles/adjectives agree. The notion of gender loses meaning when applied to neutral things like cars, but the assignment is typically done based on the spelling of the word, not arbitrarily.

Comment Re:Email is an alternative to facebook (Score 1) 149

I detest the underhanded way Facebook tried to funnel all email into their messaging system, but there are clear benefits to centralised communication in some situations, the most obvious being group conversations and event planning. These (and the personal web page that is your wall) is why Facebook took over email for a lot of communications.

On the flip side, look at attempts to use Facebook-style communication in the workplace with Yammer etc. It only gets used by marketing and sales to pat each other on the back. Communication about actual work is still done using email.

Comment Re:First blacks, (Score 1) 917

is it okay for the state to tell someone who they must do business with?

An excellent question. Like most things, our principles behind this are confused and it mostly boils down to supporting laws that force your particular belief. For example, a gay bookshop is unlikely to hire a Christian who believes homosexuality to be immoral, even if they were the best applicant for the job and could perform the role without bringing in their personal beliefs. This would be considered perfectly reasonable by most pro-gay people, but perhaps not in the opposite situation of a Christian bookshop refusing to hire gay staff (which of course most anti-gay Christians would find perfectly reasonable).

Reversing it all, customers are allowed to boycott businesses because they don't like their stance on an issue (or even the owner's stance, businesses rarely need to have a stance on hot polticial issues). Perhaps this hypocrisy in anti-discrimination laws is a recognition that businesses usually hold the power, or perhaps it's just simple social engineering.

To counter all this, you could say it is about professionalism - business is about cold, hard money, so you cannot refuse to do business with someone for reasons other than business success. The laws do not seem to consistently reflect this principle however.

Comment Re:Looking for a job on company equipment? (Score 1) 207

If you're not the capital behind the company, if you're not the one that is taking the risk of losing it all, then please do your job as requested.

Ironically this is why low-level employees spend their time chatting etc. - they're unmotivated, unless they are desperate for the job. Imagine a utopia where all citizens had equal ownership of capital!

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