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Comment Technology takes a long time to catch up. (Score 1) 257

I'm sure many devs have had jobs where they're working on some sort of killer automation. Something that makes them look out into a sea of office workers thinking "by end of year, we'll only need half of you..."

They're jobs that technology has long since claimed, yet they still exist. Nothing's perfect. It'll be a slow road.

Comment To be expected (Score 2) 677

This makes sense for a couple reasons.

First, abusing goto really serves noone. It doesn't make code quicker to write. It certainly doesn't make it easier to understand. There is no benefit to it.

Second, I'd argue that very few people want to write new code in C these days. Those who do have specific reasons for it and are probably a bit more experienced or passionate and thus aren't the kinds of people who'd readily abuse things. The ones who would are going to be mostly attracted to easier high-level languages that don't allow the abuse in the first place.

Networking

$10K Ethernet Cable Claims Audio Fidelity, If You're Stupid Enough To Buy It 418

MojoKid writes: There are few markets that are quite as loaded-up with "snake oil" products as the audio/video arena. You may have immediately thought of "Monster" cables as one of the most infamous offenders. But believe it or not, there are some vendors that push the envelope so far that Monster's $100 HDMI cables sound like a bargain by comparison. Take AudioQuest's high-end Ethernet cable, for example. Called "Diamond," AudioQuest is promising the world with this $10,500 Ethernet cable. If you, for some reason, believe that an Ethernet cable is completely irrelevant for audio, guess again. In addition to promises about the purity and smoothness of the silver conductors, and their custom "Noise-Dissipation System," they say," "Another upgrade with Diamond is a complete plug redesign, opting for an ultra-performance RJ45 connector made from silver with tabs that are virtually unbreakable. The plug comes with added strain relief and firmly lock into place ensuring no critical data is lost." Unfortunately, in this case, there's the issue of digital data being, well... digital. But hey, a 1 or a 0 could arrive at its destination so much cleaner, right?

Comment Re:Hmm... I thought it was *my* vehicle. (Score 1) 157

Do you happen to have any reference numbers or links so I can argue with the dealer mechanics about getting the update?

See these: page 1, page 2.

The easiest way to get the ECU update is the Idle dip TSB, which you're likely also experiencing. This'll update you to version B01, which includes all prior fixes. Print it out and bring it with you.

Comment Re:Hmm... I thought it was *my* vehicle. (Score 3, Insightful) 157

It does have some advantages. I got the Scion FR-S the day it came out. The original firmware had a number of small issues and one very serious one.

At a specific load and intake volume, the car wouldn't push enough fuel. It ended up being dangerously lean and it was found that those who stayed at that point for too long would have a catastrophic failure from their direct injector seals melting, necessitating a full block replacement.

An ECU update came out a while later that fixed it, but nobody was notified. Cars coming in for service don't get it automatically -- the techs aren't even told about it. 99% of those original cars remain unupdated. Anyone who chooses some "spirited" driving on a hot day is at risk.

An OTA update would solve issues like this really smoothly for a lot of people. I'm all for it.

Comment Re:It's a first... (Score 2) 108

Makes me wonder if any other astronomers or other scientists to discover celestial objects will have their ashes sent in homage...

It's a romantic notion, but strikes me as not really in the spirit of science. If I knew someone was going to explore this awesome thing I discovered, I would much rather have them use every bit of available weight to further that discovery.

Comment Re:utf-32/ucs-4 (Score 4, Informative) 165

Extracting a character - trivial. Length of string - trivial.

I don't think it's quite as simple as you think. UTF-8 is a variable-length encoding, but UTF-32 is too when you consider grapheme clusters.

When you extract characters and and determine length, are you only talking about code points (not very useful) or are you taking into consideration combining characters to account for actual visible glyphs that most people would consider to be a character?

The overwhelming majority of apps are only doing trivial operations -- string concatenation and shuffling bits to some API to display text. For these apps, choice of encoding really does not matter. NetHack is very likely in this category.

Anything more and you'll have to deal with variable-length data for both UTF-8 and UTF-32. So it doesn't really matter. Choose whichever uses less storage space.

Comment Re:Use utf if you must, for character names, only. (Score 1) 165

For which implimentation of UTF to use, I'd go with utf8 as it seems to have the widest adoption, or 32 because that will probably allow you the longest time before having to think about this again. I would avoid the middle ground.

UTF-8, while originally only defined to 31 bits and now defined to 21 bits, actually has room to trivially extend up to 43 bits. One could say it's more future-proof than UTF-32. Not that it really matters -- we're only using 17 bits right now so I doubt we'll ever get past 21. Maybe when we encounter intelligent alien life.

Comment Micro-management kills this idea every time (Score 3, Insightful) 294

No matter what your industry is, some PHB is going to get into a position where they feel out of control and unproductive if they can't get instant gratification popping in on their people to micro-manage them. In-person meetings are a must for these people.

Comment Not 100%... but hipsters (Score 3, Interesting) 278

There are a few types I see doing this.

You'll always have those insane people who think Vinyl has better quality than CDs or FLAC... but I imagine they are a pretty small group.

You've got people who're after the experience -- maybe a more personal feel to having a big physical system that needs more interaction. Again I imagine this is larger than the first group, but still relatively small.

And finally you've got hipsters, who'll do anything just because nobody else is doing it. Very suspicious that vinyl's popularity starts to grow with a strong correlation to this group's size.

Comment Counter-culture in full effect! (Score 1) 288

So many people are panning this movie. Have you guys posting negative comments actually seen it, or are you just reacting to the press?

I mean, I get it -- there's bound to be some sort of automatic counter-culture response to defend against the massive amount of press talking about how controversial and important it is.

Yes, it's a little controversial to target an actual country and an actual leader so directly. But you know what, their message while embellished for comedic effect isn't really far off base. I think the world could use some more of this controversy, and there's nothing saying this type of thing needs to be in dry journalistic form.

As far as the movie itself goes --- it's a Seth Rogan bromance dick joke movie. It really doesn't bring anything new to the table. It's not his best movie, but it's by no means bad. It's fun and entertained me the whole way through.

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