I am taking this Programming Competitions Preparations class. The problems are all horribly unrealistic and not represenative of Software Engineering at all, but then again, they are not really meant to be.

Problems are solved in a two hour period in a team, typically of 3-5 students.

Well, my team realized that today's problem could be easily solved if we plotted points on a grid.

Hmm, lets see now. The largest a coordinate can be is 40,000. Ok simple, declare a 40,000 X 40,000 array of booleans.

Oh, too large for the stack, ok, declare it on the heap.

Umm, hey why is this taking so long.

Wait, what is 40k * 40k again? Oh crap.

Just for laughs, open up Task Manager and hit "Run", watch the VM usage go up to 1.90GB. Hey, look, I can see principles from my Operating Systems class in action! Awesome!

Hey, wait, did Windows just swap everything out to disk? Wow, everything is taking awhile to get back in order.

So, who here can quickly implement a sparse matrix?

To be fair, such stupidities only occure because there is a hard time limit. Normally I would never hard code in an array of anything near that size. Indeed, I do not know of any students here who would ever hard code in an array and say "That should be enough".

Every time the debugger jumps in on a break point, focus has changed! Doh!

With the story of the recent massacre due to gun violence, it is obvious that the country where this occurred needs more gun control legislation.

I look forward to reading the international media's wild criticism tomorrow of how terrible a country Brazil* is: Brazil's inexplicable love affair with guns; its backwards cowboy/pioneer culture; how its economic and political inequality makes immigrants and minorities depressed and lonely, driving them to violence; how its citizens' violence is a reflection of the government's warmongering policies around the world.</sarcasm>

* Click the first link: 19 killed in Rio shantytown shootout

God bless the families of the victims.

I've been toying with it for a while, and I think I'm going to actually start doing it now.

Xaoswolf is becoming a business man. I'm going to start my own gaming company. Mostly pen and paper, with pdf downloads and POD books to start. If that picks up perhaps I can move onto nice printed books, maybe some shirts and other swag.

Also been kicking around an idea for a video game. I got pretty much the whole thing down in my head including a couple of the levels, but no idea where to go from there. Who do you talk to in order to actually sell/develope a game? Not that I'll make tons of cash or that it will beat Diakatana in revenue if it even gets published, but I'd like to give it a try. It should be noted that, while I aced my programming classes, they were all easy, included no 3d modeling, and I can't do more than really simple cheezy text based games in C++. So I ain't doing it myself...

Also got an Xbox 360. Gamertag is Xaoswolf, feel free to add. I have Crackdown on the way, and I just beat marvel Ultimate Alliance (Ghost Rider, Spider-Man, Wolverine, and Captian America. Deadpool, Thor, and Dr. Strange in the reserve). Probably going to pick up Call of Duty 2 since it's pretty cheap now that 3 has been released.

Also, anybody use any of the game rental services like Gamefly? They any good? Or Blockbuster, if you signup for the mail service, you can get free game rentals in the store, but it doesn't say how many or for how long...

Give this guy a medal! Watch our "Maccabee" hero, Hillel Neuer, hammer the Useless Nations HR (Hypocrites Roster) Council. He nails those rats to the wall, calling them out to be the heartless, Jew-bashing scumbags they are. This is like a dream come true.

But it's hard for me to glory in this smack-down for very long. There is a reason that Council president Luis Alfonso de Alba did not dispute Neuer's criticism. Because the criticism is absolutely true.

Just four days after Neuer's testimony, the UN stopped examining human right violations in Iran and Uzbekistan.

The United Nations Human Rights Council has decided to drop its examination of human rights violations in Iran and Uzbekistan. The step followed a recommendation by most of the five states overseeing the special procedure against Iran and Uzbekistan, which are suspected of violating the human rights of their respective populations.

Council president Luis Alfonso de Alba said the 47-member council has decided "not to continue the examination of the situation" in the two countries, but gave no further details.

This literally makes me sick. Many of the atrocities of the past are the atrocities of the present! We are aghast at the complacency of this world body, and the echoes of "Never again" fall on deaf ears.

Counter to intuition, the existence of a league of nations has hindered the good rather than the evil. Why? Regardless of the reason, it is a mighty blow against the philosophy of humanism and the messianist faith in the efficacy of diplomacy and dialogue to bring about world peace. But I'll give you my opinion: Because the world is evil. Man is inherently evil, not good. The righteous are always the minority. To use a Biblical word, a remnant.

One nation can be good. Two. Three, yes. Twenty? Could be a somewhat decent coalition. 100? You've got a Devil's Council.

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions." Never has there been a better example of this adage than the U.N. It is an abomination that should be abolished immediately.

Someone wrote a program that would get a list of all your journals and go through and save each one to your computer, and wait between each so you didn't get IP banned. I had it but I can't find it. If anyone still has it, please email it to the email linked to this account or reply with a link if you have it hosted somewhere.

Thanks.

Global climate change -- it doesn't bother me. What does bother me, being a "Global Warming denier," is the sudden MADNESS that has stricken deeply into the nation and the world over the last few months. I am truly amazed by the phenomenon. Amazed that the mainstream has become mesmerized by it, entangled in the unscientific propaganda. And amazed at the speed at which it has spread.

If I didn't know better, I'd think it was an Islamic conspiracy to distract us. While the civilized world is wringing its hands wondering if it's putting too much carbon dioxide in the air and causing the global temperature (sic) to increase by a minuscule amount that is indistinguishable from statistical noise, the Iranians and other Islamists are sharpening their sabres (i.e., readying WMDs, etc.) to decapitate the West.

I don't believe the thermophobia phenomenon is an Islamic conspiracy, because 1) Muslims are much too divided among themselves, and 2) they aren't competent enough to pull it off. Furthermore, the infidel leftists are more than willing and capable of pushing this agenda themselves.

Of course, I've never had any doubt that the left started this. But you can't help but notice how wonderfully this plays into Iran's hands. While Ahmadinejad is planning an apocalyptic, mega-Holocaust, nuclear Armageddon Jihad (in expectation of the Coming of the Mahdi/12th Imam) that'll make WWII look like a tea party, Americans and Europeans are heaping guilt on themselves because of some pictures of polar bears playing on pieces of floating ice in the ocean and Al Gore's debunked, fear-mongering flick that has got people whipped up in a hysterical phobia about supposed climate change. We're contemplating laws that would cripple our countries at a time when we need to be gearing up to defend our very existence and way of life. Global warming is just a boogeyman. Islam is the very real and present danger.

The silver lining is that I get to laugh at the news about global warming conferences getting snowed out, again and again and again. Who says G-d doesn't have a sense of humor? I wish someone would plan a global warming conference in Ecuador to see if it would get snowed out. When my Dad was in Jerusalem last week, the city received a rare snow. I'm thinking of asking him if there was a global warming conference going on nearby. I wouldn't be surprised. Thermophobia is heating up all around the world.

A simple implementation of tags!

I'd link to it, but it is on a non-routable box, I should have it up on a routable machine tomorrow[1].

Using Ruby this time. I now have a distain for Ruby, mostly because finding resources about it online is almost impossible. :(

I didn't use, just straight eruby (most often implemented as mod_ruby) with the CGI module used to get form data.

Oh, how Ruby handles file upload in forms is the most immensely stupid thing I have seen in awhile, and a damn good argument AGAINST dynamic typing. The type returned DEPENDS on the size of the data that was uploaded. ...

Data set is populated from CuteOverload. :-D

[1] I was about to paste in the local host address when the duh factor hit me.

I thought liberals loved multiculturalism. Oh, that doesn't include Christian culture. Christianity is subversive and hateful, and must be stamped out.

Homeschooling creates "parallel societies" that must be stamped out, according to the German government's defense of its 3rd Reich homeschooling prohibition being used now to justify the imprisonment of a 15-year-old student, Melissa Busekros, whose case is being taken to appeal.

Ein Volk! One Reich under Führer. But I'm just waiting for the German authorities to crack down on the Islamist parallel society. No, that won't happen. Christians are nice people and can be easily bullied. The Muslims will wage worldwide, bloody jihad over a comic.

The [Human Rights Court for the European Union] said schools represent society and "it was in the children's interest to become part of that society."

Of course, the children will be a part of that society, socially, economically, and politically. But the German government thinks that every citizen needs to be programmed like robots with identical left-wing beliefs: atheist, naturalist, evolutionist, postmodernist, socialist, environmental armageddonist, etc. Hey Germany, there's this thing called Freedom. Maybe you've heard of it? It paid you a visit 63 years ago. But you just can't shake your love affair with fascism. Your old flame is kindled again. (Oh, and we know you're helping the terrorists in the Middle East. You've just outsourced your pogroms.)

Tag this thinkofthechildren:

"The welfare of the child is the central concern in the actions of the Youth Welfare Office."

Yeah, they cared so much for the child that they tore her apart from her family and home, where her welfare was perfectly fine, and put her in prison! ... where they are probably trying to "deprogram" her Christian beliefs with liberal messages piped into her cell 24/7: "God is not real. The Bible is based on myths. The State is the source of all wisdom. Humans evolved by chance over millions of years. Trust in Darwin; all his words are true."

See earlier stories:

Achtung! Germany drags homeschool kids to class. Authorities haul crying children away to avoid 'danger' from parental teachings

Government declares war on homeschooling parents. Family's 'religious convictions' must meet state requirements

A government education official says the government is working to avoid future conflicts over homeschooling with one particular family by looking "for possibilities to bring the religious convictions of the family into line with the unalterable school attendance requirement."

In a related story, the U.S. teetered toward taking a step to become a police state with newly introduced "hate crime" legislation (in committee) that would violate the Constitution in multiple ways. Basically, it means that I would have to keep my beliefs secret, lest someone gets offended at my words and calls out the Thought Police attack dogs. In Soviet America, government reforms YOU.

Ever had to find your way around a huge college campus? How about ever been late for a class or meeting on a regular?

AJAX to the rescue!

WWU Route Finder is a proof of concept of an AJAX map using Canvas and Python. Click two buildings, and the Python back end, accessed using XMLHTTPRequest of course, shows you the shortest path between your start and destination.

The biggest advantage is that the Python back end can access a highly optimized Graphing library and potentially support real time processing of hundreds of thousands of nodes, taking advantage of the server hardware and not relying upon the performance of a browser's Javascript engine.

Paypal just took over a week to send a payment.

Mailing a check takes less time.

W-T-F.

Isn't Paypal supposed to be almost instant? Is that not the very PURPOSE of Paypal?

Oh, in other news, I saw the most awesome digital camera on eBay (Not what I used Paypal for though :( ).

3 megapixel (plastic lens, probably resolves to 1.2 if your lucky :) ), MP3 player, e-book reader, voice recorder, and digital camcorder.

512k of memory built in. :-p fits 2GB SD cards, hmm, for all that stuff, should have dual SD card slots, heh.

I'm interested in using a gampad or joystick instead of a mouse, for my Kubuntu desktop pointer. Later on, I'm planning on reinstalling Gentoo on a seperate partition. At this point, I'm intending to go with js2mouse. What do you recommend? Should I use a different software package? Should I use js2mouse as a kernel module? Also, I'd like to recommend this idea to my brother for his Windows XP desktop. What software package do you recommend for that? The packages that I've seen look kind of like spyware.

Hi all.

The military is awesome. It's probably 1 of the best career decisions that I've made. Everybody seems real nice. There seems to be great camaraderie.

W-T-F

Will not fix?

SPACES IN DIRECTORY NAMES IS A WILL NOT FIX?

WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH SUN.

For all the talk about "greedy corporations," they are no more tight-fisted and selfish than the typical consumer. (If you've worked in retail, you know what I'm talking about.) Especially the Slashdot consumer. (story: Amazon Adjusts Prices After Sales Error; see the comments)

On the Amazon story: Legally, I think a legitimate case can be made either way, for charging or not, but IANAL. But morally, I think Amazon is in the right. The consumers knew they were getting a literal steal of a bargain. "Buy one, get one free" means you have to buy one. Doubling the deal means you have to buy more, not less. "Buy" obviously means that the price is above $0.00, else it would be called "free": "Get one free, get one free." The people who took advantage of the glitch were being greedy consumers.