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Comment Re:didn't it come from the states? (Score 1) 69

I have been firewalling China (the whole world, actually, except North American/ARIN registrants) for years on my company's servers. That alone cuts our spam load by 75-80 percent. RBLs and other measures take care of most of the rest, and server logs indicate less than 3 percent of spam gets through. That seems to be the equilibrium point between blocking spam and false positives.

Comment Re:Really? (Score 1) 897

Well, I think the fact that PHP and other non-MS developments are not locked into a single OS platform carries a lot of weight. Develope a website in .NET, and you are stuck with an MS OS forever. With PHP et al, you can choose a Linux, MS, or any other compatible server setup.

Comment Re:Really? (Score 1) 897

Programming and web development are not really my main gig. I just started this more as a favor to a very good client in my "day job" consult work.

My assembly language skills were on Data General and DEC mini computers, so do not translate very well to modern processors/languages.

Very old nerd nerd here. "I knew Alan Turing. Alan Turing was a friend of mine...."

Comment Re:Really? (Score -1, Troll) 897

I recently had to revisit my former life in programming and "update" my language repertoire (from assembly language and FORTRAN) in order to maintain and update a client's website--written in .NET. I am slowly converting everything to PHP and Javascript because, basically, .NET sucks more ways than a French whorehouse.

Science

Submission + - Large Hadron Collider (LHC) generates a 'mini-Big (bbc.co.uk)

buildslave writes: The Large Hadron Collider has successfully created a "mini-Big Bang" by smashing together lead ions instead of protons.
The scientists working at the enormous machine on Franco-Swiss border achieved the unique conditions on 7 November.
The experiment created temperatures a million times hotter than the centre of the Sun.

Comment The real answer (Score 1) 814

Somewhere in the miasma of bandwidth-wasting childish prattle, someone might have answered this, but I'll go anyway.

Back in the day when print press type was set by hand, it was difficult to keep track of certain things--partly because the type was set backward. It was, for instance, difficult to distinguish between "p" an "q" when viewed backward, hence the phrase, Mind your p's and q's.

Likewise, it was difficult to discern the beginning and end of sentences, further compounded by limited font availability. Editors, too, who spent/spend all day reading/correcting manuscripts found them difficult to read after a while, so easy-to-read manuscripts received preferential treatment. Thus, doubles-spaced sentences and paragraphs became the standard.

Today, with desktop publishing and automatic text justification, extra spaces are unnecessary and actually counter productive. So, if banging out something on a typewriter, two spaces. In a word processor, one space.

(Full disclosure: I am the editor of a print magazine as well as a book author.)

Comment Re:Well... (Score 1) 234

Why the parent is modded "Offtopic" is beyond me. TI's draconian attempt to control what consumers do with, to, or on property that they purchased and own is reprehensible.

So, fuck you TI, indeed.

Comment Re:Apples and Oranges (Score 1) 17

Wrong. Voltage in overhead power transmission lines (at least in the U.S.) is 7200 volts minimum per line. A single overhead line is 7200 volts, and a pair is 14,400 (180-degree phase). Even if the urine steam is broken into a series of droplets, 7200 is sufficient voltage to arc between droplets, and obviously enough current to melt you Indiana Jones-Nazi style.
     

Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft bots performing denial of service 1

at_slashdot writes: The Perl CPAN Testers have been suffering issues accessing their sites, databases and mirrors. According to a posting on the CPAN Testers' blog, the CPAN Testers' server has been being aggressively scanned by "20-30 bots every few seconds" in what they call "a dedicated denial of service attack"; these bots "completely ignore the rules specified in robots.txt".

http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Microsoft-bots-perform-denial-of-service-on-Perl-Testers-906094.html
http://blogs.perl.org/users/cpan_testers/2010/01/msnbot-must-die.html

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