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Comment Collegerial influence (Score 1) 775

"We did not get access to kids as they were going through college,"

He makes a good point here - one of the sole reasons why I'm a linux guy today is because the college that I went to (Loyola Marymount University) had a strong FOSS ideology in their computer science department. Had I been exposed to any line of Microsoft products during that time, I'd venture to say that I'd be a MS guy today. College students, despite their outcry to be individuals and unique, are very easy to be moulded into the product of your choice.

Bug

Tracking Down a Single-Bit RAM Error 277

Hanji writes "We have discussed here before the potential effects of and protections against cosmic ray radiation, but for the average computer user, it's an obscure threat that doesn't affect them in any real way. Well, here's a blog post that describes a strange segfault and, after extensive debugging, traces it down to a single bit flip, probably caused by a stray cosmic ray. Lots of helpful descriptions of Linux debugging techniques in this one, and a pretty clear demonstration that this can be a real problem. I know I'm never buying a desktop without ECC RAM ever again!" The author acknowledges that it might not have been a cosmic ray-based error, but the troubleshooting steps are interesting no matter what the cause.
Google

Schools, Filtering Companies Blocking Google SSL 308

An anonymous reader in the UK writes "Over the past several weeks we've discussed the rolling out of Google SSL search. Now an obstacle to the rollout has arisen, much to the frustration of school students and teachers alike. Content filter vendors have decided to block all Google SSL traffic — which also blocks access to Google Apps for Education. Google is working to appease these vendors. The questions at the heart of this situation are: Does a company (school, government) have a right to restrict SSL traffic so it can snoop your data, or does an individual have a right to encrypted Internet facilities? And, is the search data you create your data, or is it your employer's (school's)? IANAL but blocking SSL search seems at odds with the UK Data Protection Act, because some local governments here may be using the very same filtering service for their employees. It would also seem to go against the spirit of FIPS in the US (though I appreciate that federal standards are separate from schools in the States)."

Comment There's no "best" answer here. (Score 1) 347

It sounds like the web-app you're using isn't coded well. Hate to put it that way, but if you're having this many problems with it, it's probably true. As for browsers to use - just switch until you find one that works. Try each of the rendering engines and browsers that use them (trident, webkit, gecko, presto, etc). Find one that works, use that.
Next time around though, write the app better. Export to PDF/PS if you need formatting to be absolutely preserved.

Comment Sketchbook paper (Score 3, Informative) 373

I'm a big fan of fountain pens (good feel while writing, better ink, more fun to doodle with when co-workers are rambling on and I have to look like I'm paying attention, etc), and as such I've found sketch pads to be the best note-taking paper. The main reason is that it absorbs ink much better - no more smudges on that nice shirt when you're drawing out ERD diagrams (or smurfs battling unicorns). It's generally archival quality too, which means 20 years down the road my old notes will still be in a usable state.

Comment Comparison with the EVO (Score 4, Informative) 167

Just got the EVO today, and while it isn't as large as the Dell Streak, it is significantly larger than most smartphones in its class. One of the things I noticed was that although it's a joy to type on, it isn't so nice holding it up to your ear. It feels bulky holding it up against your head - however I can still use a headset and keep the device in my pocket. The significantly larger size of Dell means that a.) I wont be able to keep it up to my head without it feeling awkward, and b.) I wont be able to keep it in my pocket and use a headset. I can't see a reason to want a device of this size. It's at the perfectly wrong size, in fact.

Comment Re:"Faith Science Basis?" (Score 1) 714

As a theistic evolutionist myself, I can hopefully answer this for you. The problem doesn't lie in the compatibility of the two theories at all - each of them can easily co-exist. The problem is the clash of the culture that each carries. Many fundamentalists (and less extreme sects of Christianity [and possibly other religions, but I only have an authority to give an opinion here]) were brought up with a culture that ostracized evolution and the science behind it. They blindly accept that it's a theory that combats their theory of origins, without ever actually looking at the theory itself. I know from my personal experience, it was a good twelve years from the time I was introduced to the concept of evolution to the time I finally asked myself if it was compatible with Christian doctrine. Myself and those around me took it as a mathematician would take a axiom - without introspection because in the given paradigm it would "make sense". Granted, this was false logic in our case because of the propaganda of Christian culture. Note that I don't use the term propaganda here in a negative context - it has its place in the religion and would be worse off without it (but that's a discussion for another time).
TL;DR - the logic in each is compatible, but the cultures aren't.

Comment Re:Why? (Score 1) 246

You're right. If you're just using it to touch up config files, then vim isn't for you.
However, if that's all you think vim is good for, then you don't grok vim. Vim is a fully featured IDE that's coded for terseness. It's made to get things done in the quickest way possible - where "quickest" is mostly defined by the fewest keystrokes. Every key on your keyboard is a hotkey, and every key does something different. Chances are you wont be changing every character to the end of your current line very often, but for that time you need to, there's the command in vim "C". Just a capital c. No highlighting the line, cutting it so you can save it in case you need it back with ctrl+x, etc. Just C.
Make sure it's a capital c though, because just "c" will do something entirely different. With vim it's waste not, want not. You don't waste any key on the keyboard. It makes for, once you get past the rough learning curve, an editor that runs with the best (and then some - I would argue that emacs is the only editor that puts up a fight against vim, but that's an argument for another day). I challenge you to find something that a modern day IDE can do that vim can't.

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