betterunix

10 ms·

61.
by betterunix 13y ago
"Do people lose their jobs for supporting LGBT rights. Yes." Which is as much of a problem as what happened to Brendan Eich. "If you think some people have less rights than other people just because of the way they were born,
62.
by betterunix 13y ago
That does not mean it is acceptable for people to band together and bully anyone who disagrees with them. All it means is that the legal system is not going to help us, and that we have to take it upon ourselves to remind people not to beh
63.
by betterunix 13y ago
"If Eich no longer believes what he believed," So the issue is not speech but rather thought . George Orwell had a term for punishing people for their thoughts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughtcrime
64.
by betterunix 13y ago
Keep in mind that a ban on gay marriage does not kill, physically injure, blacklist, or run anyone out of town either. If we can ascribe such importance to gay marriage despite all that, why should we be so willing to downplay the impact o
65.
by betterunix 13y ago
"people are entitled to have opinions about public figures and to voice those opinions" Sure, people are entitled to their opinions, and that is what this is all about. The problem here is that someone lost his job because of his
66.
by betterunix 13y ago
Why is the donation relevant? Only because it revealed Eich's opinion on the issue. People have been focusing their attention on the fact that Eich believes that gay marriage should be illegal; if you do not think that should be call
67.
by betterunix 13y ago
This is just sad. Gay marriage has literally nothing to do with Mozilla's work or mission, and there has not been any evidence that Eich was using his position at Mozilla to advance some kind of anti-gay agenda. This is basically t
68.
by betterunix 13y ago
"do you think that a single dev would just arbitrarily assign endianness throughout the code, then have the script code be big endian?" I have seen crazier things. A single developer who works on the code a bit, takes a break, th
69.
by betterunix 13y ago
Disabling Javascript is a security precaution, it makes plenty of sense and will continue to make sense long into the future. You might as well say that the concern of users who run a firewall is at the bottom of your priority list.
70.
by betterunix 13y ago
This comes to mind: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry-Howard_Correspondence
71.
by betterunix 13y ago
Does that include witness tampering? One of the witnesses in the case was unable to appear in court because she was also mysteriously added to the no fly list.
72.
by betterunix 13y ago
I have a simpler solution: the bootloader is kept on a separate storage device, which can only be written to if the computer is booted up in a special mode. No signing needed, prevents common bootloader viruses, respects user freedom.
73.
by betterunix 13y ago
Oh, so we are at war with a government that has been completely disbanded and a loose network of terrorists whose leaders are either dead or imprisoned. Next you'll be telling me that we are at war with Germany, Japan, and Italy.
74.
by betterunix 13y ago
I would expect either a pair of integers, either a rational number or a quotient and remainder. 523/6 is not 87. As for "solved problems," it is not at all unusual to be asked to re-implement an algorithm that is already imp
75.
by betterunix 13y ago
What is scary about this?
76.
by betterunix 13y ago
1. Perhaps you should start now, since your Python interpreter gave you the wrong answer. It should be obvious that 523/6 is not an integer. 2. That is kind of like saying, "I can't remember any time when I have been called
77.
by betterunix 13y ago
Repeated addition is just one multiplication algorithm. I think a much better way to think of multiplication is as an operation on numbers that is related to addition by the distributive law. That law gives the "multiplication is rep
78.
by betterunix 13y ago
"in an age where we better understand the power of social network analysis and the sensitivity of the social graph, the exposure of metadata by a "Web of Trust" is no longer acceptable from a security standpoint." That d
79.
by betterunix 13y ago
It absolutely is important to learn the long division algorithm for programming. How else do you deal with integer division? (Yes, integer division, which people refer to as "big number" division for some bizarre reason.)
80.
by betterunix 13y ago
Ironically, the previous generation was also supposed to be taught how to think rather than just how to do math: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Math
81.
by betterunix 13y ago
ASICs are not the solution to the Bitcoin energy problem. If you can devote 1kW to CPU mining, you have every reason to devote 1kW to ASIC mining. Future technology is irrelevant -- every reduction in the power required per hash will re
82.
by betterunix 13y ago
I hope this is not the case. Bitcoin demands a massive energy investment (every watt used by the attacker must at least be matched by a watt used by the honest parties), and in the future we are going to need to be more careful about power
83.
by betterunix 13y ago
Note that the US can still given juvenile offenders life sentences, it just cannot be a mandatory punishment for a crime.
84.
by betterunix 13y ago
If they are not children, why do we give them no say in the laws they are incarcerated for violating?
85.
by betterunix 13y ago
You can write the Python runtime in something other than C: http://pypy.org/ And there are Java compilers and runtimes written in Java, and Lisp compilers written in Lisp, etc.
86.
by betterunix 13y ago
"Actually C is an excellent choice for security relevant systems software because the issues for developing in C are well understood and can easily be mitigated by following 30 years worth of best practice patterns and using the correc
87.
by betterunix 13y ago
"A packager downloads a random tarball off the internet, often over HTTP and/or unsigned and unverified." Unless the packager is on the mailing list for the project, which many are as it helps them keep up to date on changes.
88.
by betterunix 13y ago
"Being able to send money across the world for next to nothing (compare to credit card fees, not to mention the higher prices of Western Union or hawala) has immense value." This is likely to end as Bitcoin exchanges discover the
89.
by betterunix 13y ago
Who trades goods for gold?
90.
by betterunix 13y ago
Note that "best functioning" can be worlds different from "well functioning."

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