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Comment: Re:Gingers? (Score 4, Insightful) 265

by Bonker (#39257845) Attached to: Redheads Feel Pain Differently Than the Rest of Us

I've always thought the 'Gingers have no souls' bit was invented totally by Matt Stone, a Jewish/Irish/American ginger, for 'South Park' as a 'take that' for Jewish critics of the show who describe him as a 'Self-hating Jew'.

I've always thought that Ginger skin-tone and hair coloration was very attractive on women. I've not heard a lot of disrespect for Gingers before the South Park episode, and then it's been entirely tongue-in-cheek.

Comment: Re:Sane choice (Score 1) 355

by Bonker (#39210547) Attached to: Khan Academy Chooses JavaScript As Intro Language

- Appreciating data-types, their limitations and the perils of using casting them incorrectly helped me a lot in understanding about things I need to be careful about

This is a fairly serious issue, but one that can be brought up after the basics of computer programming have been instilled. Most languages are either loosely typed, duck-typed, or have robust conversion features these days. Kids who learn to mangle a string in Javascript will pick up quickly on 'You have to use a 'to_str' method in some other languages'.

The place where this will really catch them is math... but again there are robust solutions in almost all languages.

- Are they going skip the concept of Pointers ? It's not wise to use them unless necessary but to be aware of the concept was very rewarding for me

Pointers in anything other than the very lowest-level-touching-the-metal code are an abomination. They cause far more confusion and grief than they ever help. Yes, there are situations in which the best way to address a problem is to pass a pointer around. However, in this day and age of multi-gigabyte ram sticks, I'd rather bloat up a program's ram usage with maybe unnecessary copies of large objects than dick around with pointers.

- How will they teach multi-threaded programming? We're not quite there yet in JS.

Threading and thread safety are not really beginner concepts, nor are they really required for the majority of code work in the real world.

However, JS approaches the issue obliquely by being bolted onto the threading model of the underlying interpreter. In a browser, which is probably what most of these kids will be learning on, you have to worry about concurrency of the browser instance. If I run a script in this named window, is it going to affect anything in that named window? No, that's not really threading, but it's the same mental concept.

Likewise, beginners are not going to be writing their own output handlers, which is the obvious usage for threading. The advanced ones are going to be playing with painting on HTML5 canvas elements while maybe playing sounds at the same time. They'll be using the browser's already threaded output for those functions.

Comment: $1,515,129 (Score 2) 232

by Bonker (#39075959) Attached to: SCO vs. IBM Trial Back On Again

The MOR for TSG shows total assets as $0 (yes, that's "zero"), down from $1,326,293 on petition date, and total liabilities of $1,119,238, up from $418,965 on petition date. The MOR for TSG Operations shows total assets as $1,515,129, down from $15,493,080 on petition date, and total liabilities of $9,739,295, up from $4,311,640 on petition date. Go SCO! It was not bankrupt when it entered bankruptcy protection, but it surely is now.

Total assets: $1,515,129. Total Debt: $10,858,533

Hmm... SCO's in a world of hurt. I'm trying to figure out how they can even get lawyers to work with them at this point, unless they're using a 'We don't get paid unless you get paid!' ambulance chaser-type personal liability attorney.

Hey, IBM. That's a total of $12,373,662. According to your 2010 income report, it looks like you're making a net of about 14 billion dollars a year... literally more than a thousand times that. And I'm thinking that at least some of that $10.9m is owed to you. If you guys negotiate a bit with the other creditors, I'm betting you could simply up and purchase all SCO's assets for about $2-4m.

That's lunch money for a company like IBM. It's less than a certain Kickstart project we've all been reading about.

Think about the good will you could create by taking a dump truck to what's left of SCO and then public-domaining the entire shebang.

Comment: Irony (Score 3, Insightful) 265

by Bonker (#38898543) Attached to: The Hi-Tech Security at the Super Bowl

And while all this fear mongering, submission to armed authority, 'convenience arrests', and security theater is happening, thousands of Americans will be singing

"mumble mumble mumble something something Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave!"

*shakes head sadly*

Yeah. Enjoy the game. Really. There's not a lot else left now, is there?

Comment: 2012 Hysteria Waning or Waxing? (Score 2) 412

by Bonker (#37821630) Attached to: Ask The Bad Astronomer

Phil,

I was recently reading through some of the '2012 hysteria' on your site and your affiliates... mostly responses to uneducated or superstitious people who've bought into the 'The End is Nigh' madness.

Since I grew up in a similar environment, I've also been watching the apocalyptic religious fervor surrounding people like Harold Camping with some horror.

My understanding is that this kind of thing tends to peak near century markers... 'End of the Century == End of the World', so theoretically, the silliness should be tapering off. Right?

What is your experience on this? Are we seeing a slowdown to the 'End of World' craziness, or is it going to get worse?

Comment: Re:My boycott of sony products persists (Score 1) 378

by Bonker (#37412596) Attached to: New Sony PSN ToS: Class Action Waiver Included

Yeah, Sony earned my ongoing boycott well before the 'Other OS' fiasco. I've refused to buy Sony anything since the rootkit'd CDs incident. I haven't regretted my decision once.

I even try to avoid purchasing anything that pays a license to Sony. That's more difficult, but doable if you do the research.

Comment: The Bubblegum Solution (Score 1) 185

by Bonker (#36090054) Attached to: Ugly Truth of Space Junk

1. Pick a substance that can be shipped to space fairly gracefully in large, thin, flexible sheets. You'd need BIG sheets. This can either be something that is already adhesive or can be activated or coated with adhesive in orbit. Either way, it should be cheap and disposable. The edges of this material should be fairly durable so that if it tears, the torn bits will hang on to the edges. High relative-velocity impacts should either go right through the material or stick to it.

2. Attach a small, single-use, steerable rocket to one corner of each sheet. These need not be designed to stand the test of time but should be durable enough not to break apart on use.

3. Ship many of these to a 'messy' orbit as cheaply as possible. Deploy, unfold, and activate the adhesive as necessary, preferably without any kind of human-aided EVA. Ideally this should be done with the cheapest, lightest of rockets, and activation and unfolding is something that should happen entirely electronically.

4. Let these orbit a few times, sweeping up crap. Monitor from the ground via telescope.

5. Activate the single-use rocket remotely to nudge the whole mess into reentry.

6. Repeat as necessary to clean the orbit.

Comment: Re:Anime FANSUBS create a market where there was n (Score 1) 199

by Bonker (#35108510) Attached to: Piracy Boosts Anime Sales, Says Japanese Government Study
Well, EXCUUUSE ME
</SteveMartin>

First, how the hell is 'supernatural' not the same thing as 'possessed'? Y'wanna quibble on fine points or personal definitions?

Second, anyone who wants the long version of the story is more than welcome to click the link. I didn't feel the need to discuss the merits of loli-vampires, loli-snakes, the almost-entirely conversation-driven nature of the story, its light-novel origins, or even Studio Shaft's over-the-top psychedelic animation. This is a discussion on the merits of breaking copyright for the greater good.

If you want to pit Araragi-kun against Mr. Cullen, or want to talk shit on the story, /a/ is on a different website.

Comment: Anime FANSUBS create a market where there was none (Score 5, Insightful) 199

by Bonker (#35108160) Attached to: Piracy Boosts Anime Sales, Says Japanese Government Study

You think U.S. fans would know what to expect from a title like Bakemonogatari is without having seen a fansub first?

Turns out that the aforementioned title is a popular romantic fantasy story about a young ex-vampire and the various supernatural girls he meets. Its title is probably best translated as 'Ghost Story'.

Despite the relative obscurity of both the story and the source material, It has a fairly strong U.S. fanbase that will likely make publishing a run of Region 1 DVDs profitable for both the Japanese and North American companies involved.

Without fansubs, that market simply wouldn't exist and everyone would miss out.

Comment: Re:Video games have always been great distraction (Score 1) 64

by Bonker (#35064438) Attached to: <em>SnowWorld</em> VR Game Reduces Pain For Burn Patients

I've always thought that Child's Play was the most fantastic take on this. Video games distract you from the suck when you're sick or in pain. Gabe, Tycho, and thousands of gamers have grown up in the last couple decades experiencing that and have brought the same relief to lots of kids.

These guys are in Seattle. They need to hook up.

Games

'SnowWorld' VR Game Reduces Pain for Burn Patients->

Submitted by Bonker
Bonker writes "The Beeb has news of a simple VR Game being used during treatments and rehabilitation for burn patients. Players, who engage in a fast-paced snowball fight with penguins and snowmen report feeling less pain. 'SnowWorld' was developed by Professor Hunter Hoffman and Professor David Patterson at the University of Washington Harborview Burn Center in Seattle."
Link to Original Source

Comment: Re:Save the effort (Score 1) 221

by Bonker (#35041388) Attached to: FBI Executes 40 Search Warrants For 'Anonymous'

Can't we just save the effort and convict 'Anonymous' in absentia? It'd be much more efficient.

Err... no. No you can't, at least in the U.S.. I'm not sure if you Limeys still enjoy the right since you've gutted the Magna Carta so well, but in the U.S., it's coded into the Constitution that anyone charged with a crime has the right to face their accuser and defend themselves in a fair trial.

You can bring charges against a 'John Doe', here, but you can't convict or sentence them before they have a chance to go before a jury.

Comment: Re:Of all the author's out there (Score 1) 188

by Bonker (#33653534) Attached to: Terry Pratchett's Self-Made Meteorite Sword

As his time with his books has grown, Sir Terry is somewhat known for spending time with weapons in order to describe his characters using them better.

(I'm trying to find an official source, but haven't seen one more authoritative than TVtropes yet, so take this with a grain of salt.)

In particular, the various City Watchmen of Ankh Morpork are all shown to use crowsbows at one point or another. Mister Pratchett learned to use a crossbow himself.

This sword sounds somewhat like Carrot Ironfoundersson's very sharp, well-used, and above all highly unmagical sword. However, another part of the standard issue for AMCW cops is a short sword, so we may get to see some more details on sword care and swordmanship in the next Discworld Book.

Comment: When half the population is doing it... (Score 1) 324

by Bonker (#33011406) Attached to: PC Gamers Too Good For Consoles Gamers?

According to Wiki, around a quarter to a half of all internet traffic is torrents.

Generously, if 90% of that is illegal, that means that about 20% to 45% of all traffic on the internet is illegal.

Obviously, what he have here is not a problem with the populace, but a problem with the law itself.

Sadly, the 'War on Copyright Infringement' looks like it's going to be every bit as damaging on the 'War on Drugs', with the possible silver lining that we don't pay for the former with our tax dollars. YET.

When you are working hard, get up and retch every so often.

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