Allons-y!

Pythagoras, is that you?!

A lot of those early mathematicians were a bit on the crazy side, having come to that realization and not having any of the framework for coping with the idea.

Could you put multiple network cards on your scheduler machine, put the workers on different subnets and randomly dole out the jobs between those subnets? Seems like you'd be less likely to drop UDP packets that way, I'm pretty sure I ran across a utility (lsipc or something) that would list IPC resources, including shared memory. I seem to recall that the segments also show up in /proc somewhere. It's been a while since I've looked at it.

Not being able to ack important message packets seems like a design flaw.

Even though we have a LOT more hardware now than we did back in the day, you still can't BFI your way through a lot of the big data applications that companies are starting to try to get into. In the past, the company would just throw more hardware at a poorly designed application and that would "solve" the problem. I once saw a team throw 48 gigabytes of RAM at a leaky Java program, and schedule weekly restarts for the goddamn thing. But it's a lot easier to hit hard walls with big data, to the point where you absolutely can't throw more hardware at the problem.

Pretty much every manager I've ever had thought they are. All the big companies just see you as a "resource". They don't know a thing about your actual skills. They're just buzzwords to those people.

I took nothing past Calculus either and up until two or three years ago never even used trigonometry in my professional programming. The last few years I've been writing satellite simulations, which has forced me to knock the rust off some of my old math skills. Most programmers can get away with very little math a lot of the time. A lot of very interesting programming involves a fair bit of math. That programming is generally being done by some guy with a Ph.D. in another field, and he's usually doing it in Fortran.

Time to put a big pot of carbon on the barbie!

Oh, yes, that was it. "Now is a great time to unionize your labor!"

There was much rejoicing among the Google+ users! All 6 of them!

"The little yellow rabbits with the red eyes told me to cancel. There are so many of them here now."
"I need to tie up some loose ends before heading over to the Comcast office with my AK-47."
Switch to German. If the CSR speaks German, switch to French. Then Portuguese. Russian. Greek. Etc.
"Oh, that's really interesting, please tell me more [wait for reply] REALLY? That's so interesting. Please tell me more. [wait for reply] I didn't quite understand that, could you repeat it? ..."
"Zorg said it must be done."
"The CIA keeps sneaking into my house through the Internets to read my mind while I sleep."
"What did you say your name was? [type, type, type] OK, then, I've updated your Facebook page for you. Hope you like the new photos -- boy that sex toy sure is big!"
"Oh, can you wait a sec? There's someone at the door." [leave phone on table by loud, badly tuned radio, and walk away for a good 40 minutes]
Go to the bathroom and make appropriate noises as if defecating with some difficulty and repeatedly flushing, but continue to hold the conversation.
Hand the phone to your 5 year old.
Aim an air horn at the microphone.
"Each time I try to move the cable box, the electrons keep spilling out."
"When I use the Internet at my friend's house, it's OK, but at my house, all the photos are upside down."
"I need to spend more special time with my hamster."
"I'm dead."
"I've just had enough of the sparks."
"It interferes with my hair dryer."
"This chick said she'd sleep with me if I cancel my cable."
"The Internet is too big."

Climate Change is a left-wing conspiracy hoax designed to redistribute MY hard-earned wealth to fucking POLAR BEARS!

Scuttlebutt's there's a transparent roll-up display coming soon since, what? Around 2004? Maybe even a bit earlier. OLEDs were supposed to deliver them back in the day. And yet here we are 10 years later, still no transparent roll-up display. Doesn't seem like this should be as hard as a flying car, and yet they both share the same status. I'm sure this one will be different though...

Call it Transformium!

I'm guessing. I stopped watching them last season. It really felt like they were just phoning it in, and have been since The Book of Mormon took off. At the same time, I think they (and I) probably had issues with Comedy Central's standards and practices. I'm guessing once it goes over to Hulu, the various characters will now be able to say "fuck." Knowing Matt and Trey, they're going to abuse the hell out of that in the first episode.

If they want to go after a SEO company for not optimizing their search results, I don't see anything wrong with that. But has Seattle City Light considered just NOT SUCKING as a strategy to improve their reputation? Seems to me that analyzing the root cause of the problem ("Man, we REALLY suck!") and fixing it ("Hey, has anyone thought about maybe trying NOT sucking?") would be a good bit less expensive. Seems like only an idiot would say "Hey here's an idea! Let's pay 20 grand to some company and then we can keep sucking!" Of course, as a power company you kind of have a captive audience, so it seems like you could really suck all you want to as long as you don't capture the attention of various regulatory bodies in the process.

*shrug* I don't live in Seattle, so I don't know anything about it, but the internets say they suck pretty hard. I'm guessing their SEO company kind of sucks, too. Birds of a feather, eh?

Trojan Man?