Think SSDs are so much wickedly faster than top of the line mechanical drives like the Western Digital Velociraptor? Maybe not. Bill O'Brien has an article on his site debunking three common myths about solid state drives (SSDs):

Myth 1: A Solid State Disk will boot faster than mechanical hard drive.
This is true but it's partially smoke and mirrors as well. When SSDs first appeared, they were rather pathetic 8GB and 16GB devices. Not much fits in that size. Even at 32GB you'll still be somewhat cramped if you have hardware drivers and applications. But when you get to 64GB or 80GB or 128GB -and you have some room to feel confident about carrying the additional software you need around with you--you start to add time to the boot process.

Some of you may remember Bill O'Brien from his stint at Computer Shopper, where he co-wrote The Hard Edge with Alice Hill.

I've seen a bunch of complaints lately about the new beta index. Now, I know that it's been in a state of rapid flux in the past few weeks as they try different things -- sometimes the thing doesn't even render right. Of course, this is 'beta', so you take your lumps as they work out the bugs.

Other than the occasional rendering problem and associated weirdness, though, I have to say that I rather like the new interface.

Wha? Why are you all looking at me like that?

Seriously. Listen. Okay, I don't like the green "idle" look very much, either. I personally think it's a bit difficult to read. But, other than that, I think the changes improve the usefulness of the site. Firehose has become more integrated with the main page, for instance. The whole thing is more dynamic, more AJAXy and overall the feel is much faster and much easier to sort through to find what you're looking for.

If you don't like it, you can always use the RSS feeds.

I welcome your opinions and comments, especially opposing viewpoints.

Okay, so I'm a little slow at jumping on bandwagons. Having written code to parse everything from XML configuration files to Windows-style .INI files, I've always thought that writing code to create and parse configuration files sucked. And that things like ConfigParser and xml.dom.minidom in Python made it suck a little less.

So, having worked with XML, I had heard of JSON as an alternative to XML and always thought "Wow. I'm going to have to write ANOTHER parser? Ugh." Obviously I just didn't get it.

So I wrote a little proggie the other day and needed an object-oriented-type configuration file for it and thought, for some strange reason, they I should do something a little lighter weight than XML. Flat .INIs weren't going to work because, well, they're flat. ;) So I decided to give this JSON thing a try.

I looked at the JSON documentation for Python 2.6 (and simplejson for Python 2.5, which the Python 2.6 json module is based on) and went huh? That's it? That can't be it. I'll need to write more methods than that surely.

As I looked more and more at it, I realized uhhhh...a JSON file looks rather like a Python dictionary (like a hash table in Perl or C) with str and numeric values. And lists! (Values can be lists!) Perfect. And when you parse it, you get exactly that -- a big Python dictionary. Wow! *slaps forehead* How much easier can you make it than that?

So you can have

{
        "window": {
                "width": 150,
                "height": 200
        },
        "bookmarks": [
              {
                  "name": "Slashdot - News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters",
                  "url": "http://slashdot.org" },
              { "name": "Google Docs",
                  "url": "http://docs.google.com" },
        ]
}

(forgive me if Slashdot mangles the indentation as it usually does)

and then you can access the whole shebang via

>>> import json
>>> configFile=open('foo.rc','r')
>>> config=json.load(f)
>>> config['window']['height']
200
>>> for bookmark in config['bookmars']: print bookmark['url'] ...
http://slashdot.org
http://docs.google.com

And the JSON file can be entirely self-documenting: You can put literally anything you want for each of the key:value pairs.

And since writing out the JSON file is just easy (just in reverse), you can easily write a configuration GUI, with the same brand of direct access to the JSON structure.

Now that's easy.

This is an open letter to my friend, the personal troll.

Okay, this is getting old. Someone, who obviously has a couple of sock puppet accounts (and nothing better to do), went and modded a bunch of my posts as trolls today. They must really hate me, because they waited until two of their accounts got mod points, and then blew 8 of their 10 mod points on lil' ol' me.

Probably the same person who's been trolling me for the past couple of weeks.

Whoever you are, if you had some testicular fortitude, you wouldn't hide behind socket puppets and AC trolls. I'm asking you now, as a man (or woman as the case may be), to do the honorable thing and post, not AC, with your real account, right here. Then we can discuss your issue with me, one-on-one via e-mail if you prefer.

I seriously doubt you'll do the honorable thing because you've already shown that you're a coward with no honor.

In the coming days I will be documenting known Microsoft astroturfers, together with evidence that paints them as such. Do what you will with this information. I will try to list only actual astroturfers, not fanboys, but I can't be 100% certain who-is-who. So, I will gladly accept any exceptions/modifications in the comments below. If you are the person in question, don't feel bad if I label you an astroturfer and you are not -- but you will be required to prove that you are not an astroturfer in order to be removed from the list.

Note: this list is hardly complete and will be issued in its entirety about once per week.

Update: thanks to those who have submitted updates and comments!

freddy_dreddy
Defcon79
ThinkFr33ly
Julie188 (her blog, linked in her sig currently), plus looking at her posting record, only posts in stories that are of interest to Microsoft.
Thaad.Isolas (to this date, this is his ONLY post, and the account is older than that)
PoiBoy evidence evidence

See this journal entry for evidence links for the other posters.

(Also titled, 'Python 3.0: the good, the bad, and the ugly)

Here's my review of the changes in Python 3.0. I've been writing stuff in Python since 2.1 or so, and I tend to like Python's 'new' object system. I hate Lisp and I hate functional programming(*), so that makes me a bit of an oddball in the Python community I guess.

Good: The print statement has been replaced with a print() function, with keyword arguments to replace most of the special syntax of the old print statement (PEP 3105).

Maybe I just spent too many years writing C and Borland Pascal/Delphi code, but when I first started coding in Python, I often made the mistake of writing

print('Hello world')

rather than

print 'Hello world'

Now it's the way it should have been all along. Things are more consistent this way.

Additionally, the sep= keyword argument makes life easier. No longer do you have put the separator repeatedly in your quoted string especially if the separator is not a space!

Bad: The dict methods dict.keys(), dict.items() and dict.values() return "views" instead of lists. For example, this no longer works: k = d.keys(); k.sort(). Use k = sorted(d) instead (this works in Python 2.5 too and is just as efficient).

Why did they change this? I make use of dict.keys() rather a lot. *sniff*

Ugly: range() now behaves like xrange() used to behave, except it works with values of arbitrary size. The latter no longer exists.

It seems like they changed this just to be pedantic. Tell me what the improvement is in making range work like xrange and then removing xrange? Why not just keep both?

Bad: The ordering comparison operators (=, >) raise a TypeError exception when the operands don't have a meaningful natural ordering. Thus, expressions like 1 None or len are no longer valid, and e.g. None raises TypeError instead of returning False. A corollary is that sorting a heterogeneous list no longer makes sense - all the elements must be comparable to each other. Note that this does not apply to the == and != operators: objects of different incomparable types always compare unequal to each other.

Some of my favorite stupid Python tricks rely on the fact 'None' in fact does not raise a TypeError and instead causes an expression to return False. Oh well. Guess I'll be using a ton more exceptions. :-/

Ugly: PEP 0237: Essentially, long renamed to int. That is, there is only one built-in integral type, named int; but it behaves mostly like the old long type.

So if you're going to only have one type, instead of no longer accepting 'long', make 'long' an alias for 'int'. Now that wasn't too hard was it?

Good: PEP 0238: An expression like 1/2 returns a float

About fscking time. Damn, you have no idea how many times I looked at expressions like 1/2 and went "Huh? Whadya mean 0?"

Good, Bad and Ugly: Python 3.0 uses the concepts of text and (binary) data instead of Unicode strings and 8-bit strings. All text is Unicode; however encoded Unicode is represented as binary data. The type used to hold text is str, the type used to hold data is bytes. The biggest difference with the 2.x situation is that any attempt to mix text and data in Python 3.0 raises TypeError, whereas if you were to mix Unicode and 8-bit strings in Python 2.x, it would work if the 8-bit string happened to contain only 7-bit (ASCII) bytes, but you would get UnicodeDecodeError if it contained non-ASCII values. This value-specific behavior has caused numerous sad faces over the years.

I agree, but changing it is going to be a real pain for a WHOLE lot of programs. Specifically 2to3 and -3 isn't able to fix a lot of these differences.

Meh: PEP 3107: Function argument and return value annotations. This provides a standardized way of annotating a function's parameters and return value. There are no semantics attached to such annotations except that they can be introspected at runtime using the __annotations__ attribute. The intent is to encourage experimentation through metaclasses, decorators or frameworks.

Okay, but we're already doing this throw DOC strings. Why change it now?

Good: PEP 3102: Keyword-only arguments. Named parameters occurring after *args in the parameter list must be specified using keyword syntax in the call. You can also use a bare * in the parameter list to indicate that you don't accept a variable-length argument list, but you do have keyword-only arguments.

Okay, this is more consistent with how arguments work...

Meh: PEP 3104: nonlocal statement. Using nonlocal x you can now assign directly to a variable in an outer (but non-global) scope. nonlocal is a new reserved word.

If you're going to explicitly change the scope of a variable, you might as well make it global, huh? Some people are just too pedantical.

Good: PEP 3132: Extended Iterable Unpacking. You can now write things like a, b, *rest = some_sequence. And even *rest, a = stuff. The rest object is always a (possibly empty) list; the right-hand side may be any iterable. Example:

(a, *rest, b) = range(5)

This sets a to 0, b to 4, and *rest to [1, 2, 3].

Oh, goody! No more writing a, b, dummy1, dummy2 = function()

Good: Dictionary comprehensions: {k: v for k, v in stuff} means the same thing as dict(stuff) but is more flexible. (This is PEP 0274 vindicated. :-)

and ...

Set literals, e.g. {1, 2}. Note that {} is an empty dictionary; use set() for an empty set. Set comprehensions are also supported; e.g., {x for x in stuff} means the same thing as set(stuff) but is more flexible.

I always thought there should be a way to do this...

Ugly: New octal literals, e.g. 0o720 (already in 2.6). The old octal literals (0720) are gone.

But the old way was consistent with Unix...

Good: Change from except exc, var to except exc as var. See PEP 3110.

I hated the old way. To me, there isn't a lot of difference between except (exc, exc): and except exc, var: so I was always getting confused.

Ugly: PEP 3113: Tuple parameter unpacking removed. You can no longer write def foo(a, (b, c)): .... Use def foo(a, b_c): b, c = b_c instead.

Why? I mean, I read the PEP and understand the introspection issues, but um, if you don't like it, just don't use it.

This and the rest of the removed syntax: These seem like silly, pedantic political issues.

Bad: Library changes: why change the names of libraries without leaving aliases to the old names? You're just being pedantical again. Stop it.

Ugly: String template changes and the '%' string operator

I never saw anything wrong with the '%' operator.

The Rest

'file' is already an alias for 'open'. Again, why rename something in a destructive way? What's wrong with just leaving the damn alias there?

(*) More accurately, I hate programming purism. I tend to mix and match various techniques and metaphors and 'use what works' rather than get all uppity about things like how a function should never modify a global variable. Sometimes that's just the best way to do it.

I just heard on Pacifica's "Democracy Now!" that PC Magazine is calling it quits after nearly 30 years. Kind of a sad day, really. I remember PC Magazine was one of the first publications to have an online presence -- they had their own BBS in the 1980s and by the 1990s they added PCMagNet, their own forum on CompuServe (or CI$ as it was known back then ;).

I used to look forward to PC Magazine for their new utilities every month, their "how to" and "tips and tricks" columns, Alfred Poor's computer fixes column, and, of course, my favorite, 'Abort, Retry, Fail?', which was a humor column that highlighted the funniest typos, goofy ads and PC-related photos from around the country. Even John C. Dvorak had a clue at one time -- when he first encountered Linux in the early 90s, he was flabbergasted that you could get the source code to an entire OS on a CD. And he even predicted that Linux would go places one day. Really. :)

Farewell, PC Mag!

What do you guys remember?

In the coming days I will be documenting known Microsoft astroturfers, together with evidence that paints them as such. Do what you will with this information. I will try to list only actual astroturfers, not fanboys, but I can't be 100% certain who-is-who. So, I will gladly accept any exceptions/modifications in the comments below. If you are the person in question, don't feel bad if I label you an astroturfer and you are not -- but you will be required to prove that you are not an astroturfer in order to be removed from the list.

Note: this list is hardly complete and will be issued in its entirety about once per week.

Update: thanks to those who have submitted updates and comments!

freddy_dreddy evidence
Defcon79 evidence
ThinkFr33ly evidence
Julie188 evidence (her blog, linked in her sig currently), plus looking at her posting record, only posts in stories that are of interest to Microsoft.
Thaad.Isolas evidence (to this date, this is his ONLY post, and the account is older than that)

In light of the NIST complaint that there are so many applicants for their cryptographic hash challenge that a good evaluation cannot be given, I am curious as to whether they have adequately defined the challenge in the first place. If the criteria are too loose, then of course they will get entries that are unsuitable. However, the number of hashes entered do not seem to be significantly more than the number of encryption modes entered in the encryption mode challenge. If this is impossible for them to evaluate well, then maybe that was also, in which case maybe we should take their recommendations over encryption modes with a pinch of salt. If, however, they are confident in the security and performance of their encryption mode selections, what is their real objection in the hashing challenge case?

But another question one must ask is why there are so many applicants for this, when NESSIE (the European version of this challenge) managed just one? Has the mathematics become suddenly easier? Was this challenge better-promoted? (In which case, why did Slashdot only mention it on the day it closed?) Were the Europeans' criteria that much tougher to meet? If so, why did NIST loosen the requirements so much that they were overwhelmed?

These questions, and others, look doomed to not be seriously answered. However, we can take a stab at the criteria and evaluation problem. A strong cryptographic hash must have certain mathematical properties. For example, the distance between any two distinct inputs must be unconnected to the distance between the corresponding outputs. Otherwise, knowing the output for a known input and the output for an unknown input will tell you something about the unknown input, which you don't want. If you have a large enough number of inputs and plot the distance of inputs in relation to the distance in outputs, you should get a completely random scatter-plot. Also, if you take a large enough number of inputs at fixed intervals, the distance between the corresponding outputs should be a uniform distribution. Since you can't reasonably test 2^512 inputs, you can only apply statistical tests on a reasonable subset and see if the probability that you have the expected patterns is within your desired limits. These two tests can be done automatically. Any hash that exhibits a skew that could expose information can then be rejected equally automatically.

This is a trivial example. There will be other tests that can also be applied automatically that can weed out the more obviously flawed hashing algorithms. But this raises an important question. If you can filter out the more problematic entries automatically, why does NIST have a problem with the number of entries per-se? They might legitimately have a problem with the number of GOOD entries, but even then all they need to do is have multiple levels of acceptance and an additional round or two. eg: At the end of human analysis round 2, NIST might qualify all hashes that are successful at that level as "sensitive-grade" with respect to FIPS compliance, so that people can actually start using them, then have a round 3 which produces a pool of 3-4 hashes that are "classified-grade" and a final round to produce the "definitive SHA-3". By adding more rounds, it takes longer, but by producing lower-grade certifications, the extra time needed to perform a thorough cryptanalysis isn't going to impede those who actually use such functions.

(Yes, it means vendors will need to support more functions. Cry me a river. At the current scale of ICs, you can put one hell of a lot of hash functions onto one chip, and have one hell of a lot of instances of each. Software implementations are just as flexible, with many libraries supporting a huge range. Yes, validating will be more expensive, but it won't take any longer if the implementations are orthogonal, as they won't interact. If you can prove that, then one function or a hundred will take about the same time to validate to accepted standards. If the implementations are correctly designed and documented, then proving the design against the theory and then the implementation against the design should be relatively cheap. It's crappy programming styles that make validation expensive, and if you make crappy programming too expensive for commercial vendors, I can't see there being any problems for anyone other than cheap-minded PHBs - and they deserve to have problems.)

In case you're just immediately drooling to find the answer to this conundrum, I found it on ASPN: a module to allow asynchronous subprocess I/O through a pipe that works on both POSIX and Windows.

Anyway the full story: I started looking up the necessary pywin32 calls (along with their corresponding C Win32 API calls, since the pywin32 documentation sucks) to do it -- I knew I might need to create a pipe with CreatePipe and set it as FILE_FLAG_OVERLAPPED and then pass it CreateProcess via the startupinfo parameter. I then figured out that I could do most of this by subclassing subprocess.Popen. I also found PeekNamedPipe, which also might do what I needed ... and then, voila, after searching for some Python/Pywin32 examples that used a few of these API calls, I came across the above-linked recipe on ASPN.

(I already knew I could achieve what I wanted on Unix by subclassing Popen and using select and fcntl and knew how to do it. It was just convenient that the above happened to already be using the technique for POSIX OSes)

It would be really cool if that noah guy could add support for this technique in Pexpect, and in fact, it's the next logical step. I may, for my project, end up subclassing Pexpect to write my own implementation using asynchronous pipe I/O rather than a pty. This has several disadvantages, I know, but for most of what I use Expect or Pexpect for, it won't make one bit of difference.

One thing, though, is that I don't know if there is any problem with using code posted on ASPN in a GPL v2 or v3 application. Anyone know the details? And, there seem to be some disdvantages listed on the linked article, such as Cygwin's bash and sh not displaying prompts and problems with Python code on Windows. Anyone know how to fix those?

One day an Ass put on a Lion's skin and proceeded to amuse himself by taking a stroll through the woods, trying to scare all animals he encountered. He brayed at a Wolf in what he thought to be a good enough imitation of a lion's roar, and the Wolf ran away into the bush. He did the same to a Monkey, and the monkey too ran up into a tree. The Ass was proud of himself. At long last he saw a Fox, and proceeded to do his best imitation of a lion's roar at him too.

The Fox however was a lot less than impressed, and answered, "Ho ho ho, if it isn't an ass trying to look important. Congratulations, though, I almost took you seriously until you opened your mouth."

Not minding the Ass's dejected looks much, the Fox continued, "But seriously, don't you have something else to do or someone else to bother? I've worked 60 hours this week so far, and it's only Friday _morning_, and, frankly, I have neither the time nor the mood to entertain you guys." And the Fox trotted along, ignoring the Ass.

The Ass was now depressed and he went to the side to munch on some leaves, and he started drawing doodles in the dirt with a hoof to pass the time and take his mind off the brutal rejection he had just received. He ate and he doodled, but somehow he just couldn't take his mind off it.

Suddenly he heard a voice nearby, "Ah, finally someone with some fashion sense. I was starting to think it's a lost cause..." As the startled Ass rose his eyes, he saw an impressively tall Lion in front of him, eyeing him and his doodles in the dirt.

"I'm toast," thought the Ass, "there's no way a Lion would mistake me for the real thing."

So, in desperation, the Ass started to bray at him. "Syyynergy!" He brayed. "Leverage! TCO! Customer-centric! Industry best-practices!"

"Ah, " brayed the new 'Lion' right back, in the best donkey language, "so you speak management too. This day is looking brighter already. Between you and me, the other candidates are a joke. Have you seen what they wear to an interview? By the way, you _are_ here about the job opening, right?"

"Huh? What job?," replied the bewildered Ass.

"Well, to keep the story short," brayed the 'Lion', "I used to be the manager of this forest clearing, but they promoted me, so now I have to find a replacement. And Tim here," said the 'Lion' pointing to yet another Ass dressed in a lion skin, "is our HR representative. He'll help me pick a good candidate. I guess you haven't sent in a CV either, since you're not here for the interview, but I guess we could bend the rules a bit if you want to take part anyway."

"Uh, ok..." answered the Ass, still not entirely sure what he's walked into.

"I see you brought a sample of your work too," continued the 'Lion', pointing a hoof at the doodles in the dirt. "Nice flowchart. What is it of?"

"Oh, that," grinned the Ass, "nothing in particular. I was just thinking of food, mostly."

"And you drew a good hundred square metres of flowchart just about that? I'm impressed. Reminds me of some of my best work: the corporate regulation and flowchart of how to piss. Admittedly, it was mostly to annoy the Wolf, but I digress. Well, I can't make a definitive commitment yet, so this is strictly off record and non-binding, but I think your chances are good. We'll call you later if we decide to hire you."

Anyone know why SetNamedPipeHandleState should not be used for asynchronous I/O (i.e, 'overlapped' or 'non-blocking' I/O) on a named pipe? MSDN just says don't use it it's only here for Lan Manager 2.0 backward compatibility.

Just curious. Seems like you could use it to do non-blocking reads without setting up an OVERLAPPED structructure, etc.

First off, let me say that Expect is an awesome tool. It's great, especially, for writing GUI front-ends to CLI applications. Of course, if you want a nice-looking fully-modern GUI, you're not going going to be using Expectk. The Tk toolkit is ugly and ancient.

Now enters Python, PyGTKand Pexpect. Pexpect, for those who don't know, is a pure Python Expect-like module.

Pexpect is great -- right up until you need to run on Windows. After that, well, you seem to be pretty much out of luck with Pexpect, as it can't run on Windows, since it relies on Python's pty module, which is not available on Windows.

So, in looking around for other Expect implementations -- it seems none of those work on Windows, either -- with one exception: the Don Libes original Expect, which now runs on Windows.

Great! Only one problem: now I have to write my CLI handling code in Tcl.

Let me just say that Tcl sucks. It's horrible. Maybe you like functional programming, like Ruby or Lisp or Scheme. I hate it. I'm an OOP guy. I prefer OOP. Yes, I know about XOTcl, etc., but at the end of the day these extensions are like putting lipstick on a pig. (Ha! Thanks to the 2008 Presidential Election, I now LOVE this expression! ;)

For example, in GUI-front-end writing, you often need to build your command line from a list of arguments. With Pexpect, you just do something like this:

from pexpect import *

command="mycommand"
switches="%s -a %s" % (switches, argument_for_a) ....
cmdline='%s %s' % (command,switches)
child=spawn(cmdline)

With Tcl Expect, you'd think you could do something similar:

set command "mycommand"
append switches [format "-a %s" $argument_for_a] ...
set cmdline $command
append cmdline [format " %s" % $switches]
exp_spawn $cmdline $switches

But, nooooo. Expect passes $switches as one big-long fsckin' argument

Ok, fine. Pass it a list! Change everything to lappend, etc., and that should work right?

Nooooo. Then Expect mangles it even worse and passes the list like this:

"{arg 1} {arg 2} {arg 3}" -- literally. Braces and all.

Grrr.. Okay, looking closer, exp_spawn expects to see each argument to the program passed as a separate argument. Okay, there must be some way to break a list into separate args.

There is. In Tcl 8.5. It's called 'expand'. Never mind that ActiveTCL 8.5 doesn't come with Expect, and the only way, it seems, to get it is to pay for it. Fsck you, ActiveState.

So, I was working with ActiveTcl 8.4.19. Which doesn't have 'expand'. Nowhere in the docs is it mentioned what to do. I found a forum post, fortunately, and figured out that the 'eval' command will break a list passed to any command into separate arguments by forcing another round of expansion before calling the exp_spawn. It took me hours to find this little nibble of Tcl wisdom.

WTF? Why is Tcl so ..... friggin' bass-ackwards! If I wanted my programming to be this kludge-ridden and ugly, I'd've written the damned thing in bash! Or csh. Or DOS batch files!

Bleck. Tcl sucks.

Alternative viewpoints are welcome.

In the interest of fanboys and zealots everywhere, and to spare them the minimal thinking effort, I propose the following form. All the options are genuine from genuine posts encountered on the Internet in the last decade. The wording may not be the original, but the spirit hasn't been altered at all.

You are a liar, and the feature/bug (cross out the one that doesn't apply) you talk about doesn't even exist, because:
 
[] I haven't personally seen it happen, therefore it doesn't exist.
[] It only happens once every 1-2 hours on my computer. (But that won't stop me from both it doesn't exist.)
[] ... and even that is my fault. (But that won't stop me from pretending that I'm an expert on what to do on your computer.)
[] Nobody told me about it.
[] It only seems to happen to a couple (of hundreds) of whiners.
[] "Everyone" knows it's not true.
[] "Everyone" knows it can't be true for programs made by _______________ (insert company.)
[] I once worked as Level 1 tech support at an ISP, and had to deal with your kind of idiots every day.
 
You're only claiming that because you're:
 
[] paid by _______________ (insert same, or competitor company) to post that
[] brainwashed by __________________ (insert same, or competitor company)
[] not elite enough to like the right stuff, let me tell you what your tastes should be.
[] a liar.
[] a troll.
[] in denial.
[] against innovation.
[] having mental problems that you confuse for having different tastes than I do.
[] too stupid to use a computer.
 
The problems you encountered -- and which I still claim that it doesn't exist -- are your own damned fault, and can be solved by:
 
[] defragging your computer. (Race conditions and crashes just appear out of nowhere, if you forget to defrag your computer.)
[] activating AA in your drivers. (AA solves rendering artefacts. Broken graphics and glitches are called artefacts too. You do the maths.)
[] buying a new quad-core triple-SLI compressor-cooled overclocked computer. (What do you mean your config matches the recommended specs? If you don't have a computer that cost $5000, you shouldn't be playing games at all.)
[] replacing your motherboard with a compatible one.
[] turning off your firewall and/or antivirus.
[] rebooting your computer. (As any Level 1 tech support guy knows, that's the miracle cure for everything.)
[] learning to play the damned game. (Yes, falling through the ground is just because you're a noob.)
[] stopping being so lame as to do or like other things in a game than I do.
[] saving every 5 minutes in a different slot.
[] using the cheats / external trainer programs. (Hey, it's already playable with that cheat, so stop asking to fix the game.)
[] stopping posting about it! If people find out that the game sucks, there won't be enough players to make mods that fix it!
[] introspection and realizing that only your mental problems and personality deffects prevent you from seeing things exactly my way.
[] packing your computer in the original carton, taking it back to the shop, and telling them that you're too fucking stupid to own a computer.
 
I am an authoritative source on the subject because:
 
[] I have used the program for few minutes.
[] ... on a friend's computer.
[] I have installed it on a computer.
[] Although I haven't yet, I plan to use the program in the future.
[] ... and I have a good feeling about it.
[] I have read about it in another thread.
[] A couple of people have aggreed with me before.
[] I know that _______________ (insert company) would never do that.
[] My user id is lower.
[] I have a gazillion of level 70 characters! On every server!
[] I was in the beta! (But somehow it's just not recorded anywhere.)
[] I could pwn your sorry ass in the game.
[] I could beat you up IRL.
[] My dad probably makes more money than yours.
[] I once worked as Level 1 tech-support for an ISP, and that makes me the expert on all software, hardware and users.
 
Furthermore, I'd like to state that:
 
[] you're a liar.
[] you're a noob.
[] I'm going to mod you down in other threads for disaggreeing with me.
[] someone should mod you down in this thread too, for disaggreeing with me.
[] you'll only have the right to criticize it, when you can make a better program.
[] if you don't like it, fix it yourself.
[] you're too damn impatient. It will rule after they patch it and/or people make mods that fix it.
[] it's people like you who are the problem with society today.
[] you're living proof of what's wrong with education today.
[] we need a goddamn IQ test before letting idiots like you use a computer.
[] you mis-spelled "math" as "maths", therefore you're stupid and uneducated, and nobody should listen to your opinion.
[] I don't even understand what your problem is. Learn to write more than a paragraph, noob.
[] nobody has time to read a whole page about where the bug happens. If you can't say it in 1 sentence or less, it's not worth reading.
[] people should just respect and listen to us who've earned our expertise in Level 1 tech support.

Those of you with little business knowledge and reading lots of confusingly-written news articles might be confused by what caused the whole investment banking collapse, with financial legends such Lehman Brothers and Merryll Lynch tanking. So here it is in a nutshell, explained in geek language by a geek for geeks.

Newsweek finance columnist Robert Samuelson, in his latest article, (RTFA. Really. You'll enjoy it. ;) puts it this way:

Finally, investment banks rely heavily on borrowed money, called "leverage" in financial lingo. Lehman was typical. In late 2007, it held almost $700 billion in stocks, bonds and other securities. Meanwhile, its shareholders' investment (equity) was about $23 billion. All the rest was supported by borrowings. The "leverage ratio" was 30 to 1.

Leverage can create huge windfalls. Suppose you buy a stock for $100. It goes to $110. You made 10 percent, a decent return. Now suppose you borrowed $90 of the $100. If the price rises to $101, you've made 10 percent on your $10 investment. (Technically, the price has to exceed $101 slightly to cover interest payments.) If it goes to $110, you've doubled your money. Wow.

Note, however, the part that he leaves to the imagination of the reader: what happens if that stock tanks and drops to $90? Heh. Well, they still have to pay back the $90 they borrowed, plus they lost the $10. And if it really tanks bad and drops to $80, they lost $20 for a 200% loss. The risk cuts both ways.

Well, that doesn't seem so bad, though, right? It can't be that all these stocks, bonds and other securities can all go down at the same time, right? Right. Except that the same investment banks made a string of bad purchases. Again, Samuelson puts it this way:

Dubious mortgages were packaged into bonds, sold and traded. Investment houses had huge incentives to increase leverage. While the boom continued, government remained aloof. Congress resisted tougher regulation for Fannie and Freddie and permitted them to run leverage ratios that, by plausible calculations, exceeded 60 to 1.

Now wait a minute. What allowed all of this to happen?

Samuelson hints at it:

Merrill and other retail brokers, which once served individual clients, have ventured into investment banking. So have some commercial banks that were barred from doing so until the repeal in 1999 of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933.

So, wait a minute. You mean all of this was caused by deregulation of the financial markets? You betcha! As David Lightman put it yesterday in that article I just linked:

In 1999, President Clinton signed the Financial Services Modernization Act, which tore down Glass-Steagall's reforms by removing the walls separating banks, securities firms and insurers.(emphasis added)

Isn't this kind of financial deregulation exactly what caused the Great Depression? Yeah. You should really ask Slashdot reader mcgrew about that, because he seems to know all about it.

Do the math. We're headed for a financial collapse of epic proportions. Pay no attention to the musings of McCain and Palin or Obama and Biden. They're just trying to get elected. Keep reading the articles by guys like Samuelson and mcgrew. These guys know what they're talking about.