Comment Re:Linux vs. FreeBSD (Score 1) 376
Don't mix up OS X's BSD history with its current state. A friend of mine put it rather well: "OS X was BSD once just like orcs were elves once".
Comment Same Option (Score 2, Interesting) 237
I work for Facebook -- my work *is* social networking, you insensitive clod!
Comment Re:Cool? (Score 2, Insightful) 328
Or you could skip the art minor and, ohmygosh, date someone outside your area of specialization. (Note: I may be guilty of this, in my opinion, fairly closed-minded line of thought as well.)
Comment Re:Single digit drops followed by single-digit ris (Score 1) 328
We have a saying here at Carnegie Mellon regarding the guys (especially "cool" CS majors): 'the odds are good, but the goods may be odd.'
Comment Re:And Futurama (Score 4, Funny) 753
Maybe they put the SciFi shows on Friday nights because they think that the target audience doesn't have a social life and would take a break from their MMORPG or D&D game to watch an hour of TV and give the previous time slot to something that the mainstream audience.
Hey, I asked my DM if we could break for Dollhouse the last couple of weeks, and he correctly pointed out that I didn't have my priorities in order!
Comment "No Such Thing as a Null Pointer" (Score 1) 612
Our programming languages professor, Robert Harper, recently talked about this concept in class. Although he argued that there was "no such thing" as a null pointer, what he actually meant to say was either there shouldn't be such a thing, or that a properly designed language would not have such a notion.
Consider SML (which, incidentally, he helped design). There are of course basic types, ints and bools etc, but it also has the notion of an "option" datatype. A foo option can either be NONE, or SOME of foo. For example, if you are doing some calculation that returns an int but may somehow fail to calculate its result, it will return an int option, with either SOME(result) if there was success, or NONE if it failed. Due to SML's strong type system, the function using that result would have to do case analysis on the result -- you can't use an int option as if it were an int; you need to pattern match and grab the int out of the SOME case and otherwise handle the NONE case.
Java (and C and...) doesn't do this properly. Take an ArrayList, for example. When you say "ArrayList foo", what you actually have is an ArrayList option, he argued, since you really either have SOME(an actual ArrayList) or NONE, representing the null pointer. Except Java has no notion of option types. There's no way to actually get an ArrayList -- you always have an ArrayList option. You have to check for NULL every time.
Thus his argument for why Java et al are badly designed, and how you can properly design a programming language without a need for a NULL pointer -- you use a different type altogether, upon which you can properly case analyze.
Comment Re:Double Duh! (Score 1) 711
A friend of mine summed this up pretty well when he said, "OS X was BSD once in the same way that Orcs were Elves once." Debian and Ubuntu are very very similar, where OS X is nowhere close to what you would probably think of as BSD.
Submission + - Hacker publishes notorious Apple Wi-Fi attack (computerworld.com.au)
inkslinger77 writes: "More than a year after claiming to have found a way to take over a Macintosh computer using a flaw in the system's wireless card, David Maynor has finally published details of his exploit.
Maynor had been under a nondisclosure agreement, which had previously prevented him from publishing details of the hack, but the NDA is over now and by going public with the information, Maynor hopes to help other Apple researchers with new documentation on things like Wi-Fi debugging and the Mac OS X kernel core dumping facility."
Submission + - Final Fantasy VII: Voices of the Lifestream (ocremix.org)
djpretzel writes: "Today OverClocked ReMix released its ninth album, Final Fantasy VII: Voices of the Lifestream. The album, made by fans for fans, honors the recent 10-year anniversary of the Square Enix PlayStation video game Final Fantasy VII with 45 arrangements of composer Nobuo Uematsu's original score. Available for free download at http://ff7.ocremix.org, Voices of the Lifestream is not affiliated with or endorsed by Square Enix. More than 40 artists from the OverClocked ReMix community contributed more than three hours of music to the album, with interpretations covering a variety of genres and styles from jazz to electronica to rock to symphonic."
Submission + - Painless way to buy a Linux computer?
An anonymous reader writes: So it's time for me to buy a new computer, and this time it's going to be a Linux-only desktop. Nobody has anything good locally, and I want something a little spiffier than a standard Dell, so I spent the better part of the weekend clicking away at online shopping sites and hardware database boards until my eyes seemed to permanently glaze over (they're almost better now). I want something decent, I don't have too many "must-haves" to meet, but the whole process doesn't seem clear at all. Is it 1992? No. Is it 1998? No. Is it 2001? No, it's 2007. Linux is how old? How come you still have to be a weekend tinkerer to shop for a good desktop computer and components that are free software friendly?
Submission + - Lost Moon landing tapes discovered
de_smudger writes: For years 'lost' tapes recording data from the Apollo 11 Moon landing have been stored underneath the seats of Australian physics students. A recent search has uncovered them.
Recorded on telemetry tapes, they are said to be the best quality images of the landing (unconverted slow scan TV) yet to be seen by a public still fascinated by the early space race. These tapes were mislaid in the early 1980s on their way to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Recorded on telemetry tapes, they are said to be the best quality images of the landing (unconverted slow scan TV) yet to be seen by a public still fascinated by the early space race. These tapes were mislaid in the early 1980s on their way to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Submission + - Internet's Largest Internet Forum to Shut Down
Neo_Mushroom writes: "From the article:
"2channel, the largest Internet forum in the world and an ISP in Japan, has been shuttered by a Japanese court ruling in a civil slander case. The corporation managing 2channel was declared bankrupt and its assets will be seized. The ISP will close on January 15th, and the future of the famous "mega-BBS" is uncertain."
For those who've never heard of 2channel, the BBS is massively popular, recieving over 2.7 million posts every day."
For those who've never heard of 2channel, the BBS is massively popular, recieving over 2.7 million posts every day."
Submission + - Water contest for a Wii kills
priestx writes: A Californian woman who took part in a water-drinking contest to win a video game system has died of water intoxication, tests have shown. Jennifer Strange had taken part in the "Hold Your Wee for a Wii" game run by KDND 107.9 radio in Sacramento, which promised the winner a Nintendo Wii.
A work colleague said Ms Strange had reported her head was hurting hours after the contest and was going home.
Submission + - Where to donate old hardware?
An anonymous reader writes: Like many Slashdotters, I have a surplus of old computers and parts that I (and family and friends) no longer have use for. Some of this junk is still useful, and although I'm too busy to sell it piecemeal on eBay, it'd be a shame to just throw it away. I'd prefer to just drop this stuff off, driver disks and instruction manuals included where applicable, at a major charity such as Good Will, AmVets, or the Salvation Army, but I suspect that they wouldn't be able to move it and would end up throwing it away. Anyone have any recommendations for the major charities or any suggestions for recycling options?
Submission + - A 2-nanometer-high Solomon's knot
Roland Piquepaille writes: "UCLA chemists have built a molecular Solomon's knot at the nanoscale. The Solomon's knot is composed of two rings that interlace each other four times, with alternating crossing points that go over, under, over and under as one traces around each of the rings. This nano-version is roughly 2 nanometers high by 1.2 nanometers wide. And what would it be useful for? The project's leader offers a refreshing answer: "There is often a connection between the beauty and elegance of a chemical structure and its potential usefulness, and this Solomon knot structure is quite beautiful and elegant." Good luck to her! Read more for additional details and a picture."
