drfuchs

40 ms·

481.
by drfuchs 9y ago
Many 1906 SF fires were intentionally set by the owners themselves, after the earthquake had damaged their buildings, because most insurance policies covered losses due to fire, but not those due to earthquake. So, if you burned your buildi
482.
by drfuchs 9y ago
Non-paywalled: http://www.antlr.org/papers/allstar-techreport.pdf
483.
by drfuchs 9y ago
Back in the day, I had a case of the opposite problem: my check to the phone company got cashed for $89.89 rather than the $89.98 that was due, even though I had written both the digits and the spelled-out version of the number indisputably
484.
by drfuchs 9y ago
Hmmm. Looking further, the dup(2) man page also mentions "lowest," but pipe(2) doesn't. A documentation oversight, I claim; after all, what would be the point of the kernel not using a single function for "get me an ava
485.
by drfuchs 9y ago
That StackOverflow comment is wrong. Linux guarantees that for open(2) / creat(2) / socket(2) / etc. "[t]he file descriptor returned by a successful call will be the lowest-numbered file descriptor not currently open for
486.
by drfuchs 9y ago
Two issues: Your technique potentially changes the owner, group, and protection bits of the file, which may come as an unwelcome surprise to anyone trying to use it as a drop-in replacement for directly over-writing the old file. (Worse, t
487.
by drfuchs 9y ago
A tool that can reliably tell whether a given program will hit a null deference or not can also trivially be repurposed to solve the Halting Problem. Thus, no such perfect deref tool can exist. The best you can claim is that there’s a too
488.
by drfuchs 9y ago
The claim seems to be that the tool will always tell you absolutely whether a null-dereference will happen, and never say “maybe.” The Halting Problem is trivially reducible to this (just put an intentional null-deref in front of each halt
489.
by drfuchs 9y ago
It sounds like you’re claiming that Coverity has a solution to the Halting Problem? That would indeed be magical.
490.
by drfuchs 9y ago
Sounds a bit snarky, but I appreciate the shout-out.
491.
by drfuchs 9y ago
Not sure where you’re getting the idea that it’s a hassle to offer early exercise. The 4-person company I joined back when offered early-exercise without my even asking, and it was a huge win: I just had to risk a few thousand dollars (sinc
492.
by drfuchs 9y ago
There are lots of low-wage Afrikaans speakers, and Wikipedia says there "is a large degree of mutual intelligibility between" Dutch and Afrikaans. So there must be some other explanation for why you get native Dutch speakers for
493.
by drfuchs 9y ago
"X" is the transliteration of the Cyrillic character in question as per the 1995 version of ISO/R 9; but the 1968 version that was in effect when The TeXbook was first published has it as "kh". See https:/&#x2
494.
by drfuchs 9y ago
Indeed. Quoting "The Name of the Game", the very first chapter of Knuth's "The TeXbook": "Insiders pronounce the $\chi$ of TeX as a Greek chi, not as an `x', so that TeX rhymes with the word blecchhh. It&#
495.
by drfuchs 9y ago
At what donation level does one receive an actual physical copy of the book? (The page implies that there will be a printed version, but never actually says you get one. Or did I miss it in two readings?)
496.
by drfuchs 9y ago
Whenever they apologize for the system being slow, or difficult for them to use, I say "Yeah, you know we program them that way on purpose, as retribution for how we were treated in high school."
497.
by drfuchs 9y ago
Well, it wasn't the opinion of the editors, but of business leaders; as for the general public, Google still ranks very high: https://www.thebalance.com/retail-brands-with-the-best-reput... and https://www.f
498.
by drfuchs 9y ago
You're living in a bubble if you think Google has a bad reputation; in fact, they're the sixth-most admired company in the world: http://fortune.com/worlds-most-admired-companies/list
499.
Russian government hackers used antivirus software to steal US cyber capabilitys(washingtonpost.com)
2 points by drfuchs 9y ago|0 comments
500.
by drfuchs 9y ago
Half were in Chemistry; anybody know what the Chemists are doing wrong? Or right???
501.
by drfuchs 9y ago
I'm sure we're boring everybody, but yes, I am accounting for the case where the only copy is in the file. The OS knows that there are live references to the non-resident, file-backed page, marked as such in one or more process pa
502.
by drfuchs 9y ago
No need for a fancy filesystem; when one process asks for MAP_PRIVATE (aka Copy-On-Write = COW) on a file-backed page, all other references to that page can be marked COW as well, and if anybody does a write to the page, a new copy of the p
503.
by drfuchs 9y ago
Wow, you're right, and the Posix page indicates the same thing. I believe it used to work properly in Unix / SunOS / HP-UX / AUX (IBM) / Solaris.
504.
by drfuchs 9y ago
mmap(...MAP_PRIVATE...) will protect you from changes made to the file on disk.
505.
by drfuchs 9y ago
A more direct (though fictional) illustration that Unix also has reserved file names that you'd better avoid: "I was writing a novel about digging to the center of the Earth, entitled "core". One day I was running some p
506.
by drfuchs 9y ago
Ok, "unix-derivative" if you prefer. FWIW, it actually happened on SunOS or maybe HP-UX, and it was before Linux existed.
507.
by drfuchs 9y ago
So, you smug Linux guys think it can't happen to you? Well, before you get off my lawn, let me tell you a story... Early versions of FrameMaker kept all resource files (internationalized strings, dialog box layouts, etc.) in the two su
508.
Uncertainty Over Health Care Law's Future Hobbles Entrepreneurs(npr.org)
1 points by drfuchs 9y ago|0 comments
509.
by drfuchs 9y ago
Yes, but they aren't called "black cabs". An American wouldn't know what you meant; they'd understand "yellow cab" for that, depending on where they're from. And a "black car" service is so
510.
by drfuchs 9y ago
In Florida (and every other state that I'm aware of), a dead traffic light is, by law, to be treated as an all-way stop sign, so you're supposed to take turns. Traffic lights are so incredibly reliable that many people seem unawar

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