Comment Re:Fuel Tax Works Fine (Score 1) 932
Yeah! This'll fix em! Every time one of those electric vehicles pulls into a gas station, their mileage tax gets added onto... their... gas... bill.
Oh. Never mind...
Comment Hazards of P=NP (Score 1) 222
I'm pretty sure that if you prove P=NP, that there may be consequences. It you are very, very lucky, Bob from the Laundry will pop by and arrange for a new career for you, or at least keep your brain from being eaten.
If you're not so lucky, well, pointing a loaded theorem at the ... things ... that cast shadows on the walls of Plato's cave may make them pay attention. This is, however, a dangerous process, because many of the shadow-casters are unclear on the distinction between pay attention and free lunch buffet here. [1]
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Stross#The_.22Bob_Howard_.E2.80.94_Laundry.22_series
If you're not so lucky, well, pointing a loaded theorem at the
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Stross#The_.22Bob_Howard_.E2.80.94_Laundry.22_series
Comment Re:OMG big brother... (Score 1) 353
...Big Deal
So you are of the opinion that it is ok to have a database; whose existence appears to be a mystery to about 90% of the public; that keeps detailed location data for an indefinite period of time (ref: years); that is unencrypted; that can be accessed not only by thieves, but Law Enforcement as well; that can be used to provide a detailed time-line map of where you have been; is not a big deal?
Ah, you should probably be aware that the phone company does this already for all cell phones. The database can be queries by any 'authenticated agent', a person with an account and password, such as a law enforcement officer. Social engineering works well, too. The US Justice Department classifies this information as 'routine business documents', not requiring a warrant.
If you don't want your location history known to others. do not carry a cell phone.
Comment ++curmudgeon; (Score 5, Funny) 375
Ah, it's articles like this that make me so glad I'm retired!
C++ programmers have it too easy. Why, in C we had to code our own bugs. C++ programmers just inherit them!
Comment Yes! Faster bubble sorts! (Score 1) 166
Ah, I remember looking at the sorting algorithm in a low level graphics library. Tightly hand coded, packed to keep every pipeline stage filled and make optimal use of all the parallel units in a VLIW graphics processor, it was probably the most efficient bubble sort I'd ever seen.
I coded up a quicksort to about the same degree of tightness in a couple days, and, golly gee, a whole bunch of code suddenly got faster. Some MUCH faster... That was Lesson 1 for me. Optimize algorithms before optimizing implementations.
Survey Shows That Fox News Makes You Less Informed 1352
A survey of American voters by World Public Opinion shows that Fox News viewers are significantly more misinformed than consumers of news from other sources. One of the most interesting questions was about President Obama's birthplace. 63 percent of Fox viewers believe Obama was not born in the US (or that it is unclear). In 2003 a similar study about the Iraq war showed that Fox viewers were once again less knowledgeable on the subject than average. Let the flame war begin!
Red Hat Settles Patent Case 76
darthcamaro writes "Red Hat has settled another patent case with patent holding firm Acacia. This time the patent is US Patent #6,163,776, 'System and method for exchanging data and commands between an object oriented system and relational system.' While it's great that Red Hat has ended this particular patent threat, it's not yet clear how they've settled this case. The last time Red Hat tangled with Acacia they won in an Texas jury trial. 'Red Hat routinely addresses attempts to impede the innovative forces of open source via allegations of patent infringement,' Red Hat said in a statement. 'We can confirm that Red Hat, Inc and Software Tree LLC have settled patent litigation that was pending in federal court in the Eastern District of Texas.'"
White House Correspondent Tweets His Heart Attack 77
Tommy Christopher, who writes for mediate.com, has reporting in his blood, so much so that he livetweeted every part of his recent heart attack. "I gotta be me. Livetweeting my heart attack. Beat that!" and "This is not like the movies. Most deadpan heart attack evar. Still hurts even after the morphine," were among his updates as he was rushed to the hospital. Christopher is now in stable condition after recovering from emergency surgery.
Comment Re:Let me get this straight (Score 0) 123
Not
Comment Handy for use with screen readers (Score 3, Interesting) 210
For persons using screen readers to read web content (Apple VoiceOver, for example) the option to simplify the content of an article and automatically pull it together as a single page is wonderful.
Try closing your eyes and reading, via a text to speech system, a typical Forbes article broken across five pages packed with links, for example. This option or the Firefox Readability extension speeds things up something wonderful.
Comment not every iPad owner (Score 1) 284
Gawker doesn't suggest that "every iPad owner in the US" may have been exposed. It says every iPad 3G owner may have been exposed. I don't think that's splitting hairs, either, given the short time the 3G model has been available. Things are bad enough without making them seem worse.
Rumor of Betelgeuse's Death Greatly Exaggerated 356
The Bad Astronomer writes "A rumor is spreading on the Net like wildfire that the red supergiant star Betelgeuse is about to explode in a supernova. This rumor is almost certainly not true. First, it's posted on a doomsday forum. Second, it's three times removed from the source, and is anonymous at each step. Third, the evidence is shaky at best. Plus, even if true, the supernova is too far away to hurt us. But other than that ..."
Open Source Developer Knighted 101
unixfan writes "Georg Greve, developer of Open Document Format and active FOSS developer, has received a knighthood in Germany for his work. From the article: 'Some weeks ago I received news that the embassy in Berne had unsuccessfully been trying to contact me under FSFE's old office address in Zurich. This was a bit odd and unexpected. So you can probably understand my surprise to be told by the embassy upon contacting them that on 18 December 2009 I had been awarded the Cross of Merit on ribbon (Verdienstkreuz am Bande) by the Federal Republic of Germany. As you might expect, my first reaction was one of disbelief. I was, in fact, rather shaken. You could also say shocked. Quick Wikipedia research revealed this to be part of the orders of knighthood, making this a Knight's Cross.'"
Ubuntu Will Switch To Base-10 File Size Units In Future Release 984
CyberDragon777 writes "Ubuntu's future 10.10 operating system is going to make a small, but contentious change to how file sizes are represented. Like most other operating systems using binary prefixes, Ubuntu currently represents 1 kB (kilobyte) as 1024 bytes (base-2). But starting with 10.10, a switch to SI prefixes (base-10) will denote 1 kB as 1000 bytes, 1 MB as 1000 kB, 1 GB as 1000 MB, and so on."
Comment Re:Inflamatory headling superceeds mundane content (Score 5, Informative) 268
We have announced that our upcoming Mono release (2.8) will default to 4.0:
http://www.mono-project.com/Roadmap
For the first time in Mono's history our C# compiler and its supporting engine and core libraries were done before Microsoft released the product, we were usually one to two years behind. This time we are some five months ahead of time:
http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2009/Dec-09.html
There are still a handful of loose ends here and there, but luckily, nothing major.
