Comment Re:actually... (Score 1) 667
Offshore development follows offshore laws...
Is Microsoft Trying to Become "King of Search" With Cortana Strategy? 107
New submitter Ammalgam writes: Microsoft recently announced that they were porting Cortana over to both Apple and iOS. This move seems to be puzzling to the larger Microsoft community because on it's face, Cortana is not per se a commercial product. But there is an interesting theory emerging. Windows10update.com is speculating that the insertion of Cortana into other platforms is a "Trojan Horse" strategy that will ultimately have Windows, iOS and Android users sending their search requests to Bing. The theory is that enough of those requests will bring Bing to Google's level.
Comment Re:actually... (Score 1) 667
There was a story a few years ago where a company lost an eight digit dollar sum because of a misplaced comma in a contract, which totally changed the meaning.
Going by memory, United States of America Inc.. lost a lot of duty payments due to "all South-American fruit trees are exempt
And what do you do when the vice president leaves you a memo that you need to "literally make the programmers work around the clock"?
Is he telling you to start a crunch, hire people and divide into three shifts, or pay 200% overtime and deal with law mandated recovery time?
Comment Re:When you can't tell the difference... (Score 1) 667
... between "terror" and "terrible"
Sloppy use over time is why terror and horror are near synonyms, but terrific and horrific are near antonyms.
Not to mention how awfully doesn't signify that something is awful, or that awful doesn't mean full of awe anymore.
The meaning of words change, and that is unavoidable. But it does cause ambiguity until the "final" meaning of a word has been established.
Comment Re:Something completely different... (Score 1) 667
Emily Post wrote a book that was (informally but very widely) considered to be the "bible" of American etiquette.
That belongs with "civil war" and "irregular pattern" in a list of oxymorons.
American etiquette is to smile and say "I'm fine", which is a euphemism for "none of your fucking business".
Comment actually... (Score 2) 667
No matter how good the accent is, injecting the word "actually" several times in a sentence marks the speaker as an Indian.
Mind, you can identify a native New Yorker the same way, by the references to coitus and oedipal desires.
The problem with "bad English" is that it tends to be imprecise and ambiguous. Using a word "wrongly" might not be bad when talking to friends, but when placing a large order or designing an airplane, precise use of the language can really make a difference.
Comment Re:I've read them all (Score 1) 299
I sit corrected - I was unaware that he had since been made a knight bachelor. The Wikipedia article lists his name with "OBE" following it, not "Kt, OBE". Which makes a big difference, as the "OBE" pretty much only lets people sit further to the front in churches.
Comment Re:I have two problems with this article. (Score 1) 287
What kind of hole can be opened in a server due to a bad clock? Serious question.
Non-expiry of certificates, tickets and other time-based credentials, for one thing.
Comment Re: This sucks. (Score 1) 299
Off-topic, but why do we have people named Faith, Hope, and sometimes Charity, but I've never heard of anyone with the first name Love?
"There are 1,600 people in the U.S. with the first name Love."
"There are fewer than 119 people in the U.S. with the last name Pratchett."
Source: http://howmanyofme.com/
Comment Re:Downloaded a sample on Kindle (Score 1) 299
Probably Lynn Pratchett, and the publishers, of course.
It would not surprise me if people are working overtime right now to print his books and make ebook ads so they can capitalize on his death before he's even in the grave.
I bet that by tomorrow, Google Books will have Terry Pratchett on the front page, and someone will be smiling about the extra sales.
Fellow fans: Please do not feed the greedmonster - don't buy his books now, but wait until the profiteers have moved on.
Comment Re:Octarine is real (Score 1) 299
As a fan, I would say he started dying years ago. There was little left of the once brilliant satirist. First he became a sad and desperate man, and later not even that.
It was sad to see him slowly die, bit by bit, and today's news was a closure.
My tears had already been shed. Now the book has closed.
Comment Re:I've read them all (Score 1) 299
He didn't receive a knighthood. He became an officer, not a knight. This also means he wasn't Sr Terence, but Mr Terry Pratchett, OBE.
Comment Re:I'm a Member of That 1% (Score 1) 192
The kernel will still run 64-bit code unless you disable that feature. That means that a static-linked 32-bit binary or a package (like steam) that bundles its own 32-bit libs may still work, even on no-multilib Gentoo.
I don't know for sure that this is what is happening in your case, but I wouldn't rule it out without checking.
Ok, copied over
gentoo $ file ls
ls: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter
gentoo $ chmod +x ls
gentoo $
sh:
gentoo $
If it were just a case of missing libraries, it would have reported:
-sh:
Comment Re:Timezone silliness (Score 1) 129
They check in the source code, not the object files.
The object files won't have the time stamp of the commit of a source file, but the timestamp of when they were created by a build.
Comment Re:Thanks to the Humble Bundle (Score 1) 192
No, it's more that the loader first tries the 32-bit loader and then the 64-bit loader, for every binary and library it encounters. This takes extra time.
Plus, task switching also has to deal with both 32-bit and 64-bit code, with different frame sizes. It's less efficient than a 64-bit pure system.
SGI was the first company that offered a choice: 32-bit, 64-bit or mixed mode 32/64 (which is just now being implemented in Linux as x32), where you run 64-bit code in a 32-bit address space.
