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snicklepuff

57 karma · joined May 14, 2013

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snicklepuff··on The descent to C
> C presents a simple "big array of bytes" memory model that totally abstracts all that complexity.

I don't understand what you mean by this. Machine code itself abstracts away the underlying hierarchical memory structure. Sure, some machine language might have instructions to manipulate the cache, but those are easily invoked from C, using either inline assembly or __builtin functions.

snicklepuff··on Nest introduces their Smoke Detector
Jesus, $150!? For a smoke detector!? How hard is it to hit the little "mute" button on the cheap one you already have?
snicklepuff··on Thwarted Linux backdoor hints at smarter hacks (2003)
This is why they use git - subversively inserting code into git is not possible like it is with CVS
snicklepuff··on The Student Loan Bubble is Starting To Burst
> but objectively you can't identify which students won't do the work - ergo, you can't discriminate who to enroll

I'm calling complete bullshit on this one: isn't that the very definition of admissions? Even if you claim it's not, I think that if you look at any student's previous grades / work experience / references, you can quite reliably determine who will do the work and who will not.

These schools simply don't want to: they want to admit everybody so they can take their money in exchange for basically nothing. I would fully support legislation to bar for-profit institutions from receiving any federal tuition aid (whether loans or grants).

> public money[1] should not be involved. The school management can't say "no" to it

This is false: schools are not required to accept federal loans.[1]

[1] http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865576111/No-more-student... to accept federal loans

snicklepuff··on Why You’ve Never Read “I Have A Dream”
I was jumping around chronologically, the video was shown by a teacher I had in high school. That wasn't clear, sorry.
snicklepuff··on Why You’ve Never Read “I Have A Dream”
I've seen and read the entire speech dozens of times: In school, I distinctly remember being given the entire speech transcription and talking about it as a class on more than one occasion. In elementary school, we would have an actor come on our "morning announcements" and re-enact the speech each year. One teacher showed it to us on YouTube in it's entirety.

Is my experience really that unusual?

snicklepuff··on Statement from Edward Snowden in Moscow
To imply that the US is somehow out of order to pursue his extradition makes no sense. What does he expect them to do?

IMHO, he should not have run. I don't think he would have any trouble convincing 12 people that what he did was the right thing. Running was bad form.

I don't like this guy, and I don't trust him.

snicklepuff··on MySQL man pages silently relicensed away from GPL
> they couldn't release it under an updated license (like the > ASL2 or GPL3) or dual-license it for compatibility with > other projects without getting clearance from each and > every contributor.

IMHO, this is a huge advantage: it guarantees that the maintainer of the project can't run off and so something crazy. The linux kernel allows every author to retain copyright, and there's some security in that: since it is basically impossible to get clearance from even the most significant subset of copyright holders in the kernel, it will forever be GPLv2.

Look at it this way: if Torvalds were evil, he could require everybody to assign him copyright, and then take everybody's work and let corporations pay him to allow them to use it closed-source enviorments. Or even un-GPL the whole thing and sell it to somebody. (IANAL, obviously - not sure about that last one)

Point is, there is security in nobody having controlling ownership of a project,

snicklepuff··on Linux local privilege escalation 0day, 2.6.37 - 3.8.10
Why the hell is CONFIG_PERF enabled in distribution kernels?? A normal server/desktop user would NEVER USE THAT. If you're smart enough to use Perf, you ought to be smart enough to compile your own kernel.

This is a brilliant example of how stupid many distros are with their kernel configurations. They need to start understanding that enabling features that nobody uses only increases the probability of problematic bugs.

Also, they need to stop enabling CONFIG_CC_STACKPROTECTOR. It slows stuff down, and as can be seen here, often doesn't do any good.

snicklepuff··on Linux local privilege escalation 0day, 2.6.37 - 3.8.10
Wrong -- works on x86_64 Debian.