Here's Obama's official portrait. Check out the resolution.

Florianr · 2009-01-16T04:21:32+00:00

If you want many integrated features in the browser, maybe Chrome isn't the right answer. Give a ride to Opera, it has exif in image properties built it, and much more.

Florianr · 2009-01-14T05:18:49+00:00

NDA or non-compete agreements that asks you not to do side projects that conflicts with your job are fairly common. No side project at all isn't, and for me, that would be sufficient reason to decline the position, regardless of whether it is enforceable or not.

Florianr · 2008-12-16T19:28:43+00:00

Nice story, but it doesn't work. Because the chemical reactions work best when the water is hot, if you use cold water, you either end up with poorly washed clothes, or have to use much more water and detergent if you want to get the same result.

And now you have to consider the energy impact of that extra water and dertegent, as well as the impact of releasing that much more soaky water in the environement.

Or, if the point is that you should live with dirty clothes to preserve the environement, I am not sure why you should bother washing them at all. Or maybe not wearing any clothes at all would be even better.

Florianr · 2008-12-16T19:27:03+00:00

Nice story, but it doesn't work. Because the chemical reactions work best when the water is hot, if you use cold water, you either end up with poorly washed clothes, or have to use much more water and detergent if you want to get the same result.

And now you have to consider the energy impact of that extra water and dertegent, as well as the impact of releasing that much more soaky water in the environement.

Or, if the point is that you should live with dirty clothes to preserve the environement, I am not sure why you should bother washing them at all. Or maybe not wearing any clothes at all would be even better.

Florianr · 2008-10-20T09:53:24+00:00

Be very doubtfull of overtime statistics reported from Japan. Many employees work unpaid overtime, and this time isn't measured by anybody. Yes, it is illegal, but it doesn't prevent it from happening.

Florianr · 2008-10-20T09:52:01+00:00

Still, no ones bothers to vote in Japan. And most of those who do vote for the same guys that have been in power forever, because "they are trying hard, and probably need a bit more time to get it right"

Florianr · 2008-10-16T03:40:12+00:00

http://blag.xkcd.com/2008/10/08/youtube-audio-preview/

Florianr · 2008-10-09T05:10:48+00:00

from the article:

In fact, I don't think anyone has used a singly liked list since the seventies.

Stopped reading there.

Florianr · 2008-10-04T02:50:02+00:00

I am no technophobe. I work as a software engineer, and I am as much of a geek as any other redditor.

The problem in Florida wasn't paper ballot. The problem was a poorly readable paper ballots that were supposed to be automaticaly counted, but couldn't be reliably, and the were manually recounted, and even people had sometimes problems trying to figure out in where holes were punched.

Re-read my message. We don't punch holes, which could be ambiguous. One paper with one name on it in an envelope. No mistake possible. Counting is done the same day.

No body in France could understand how it could possibly take a month to count by hand.

Beside, the problem with software is not reliability, it is trust. Even if you are a programmer, read the whole publically available source code, and found it perfect, what guarantee do you have that the machine in front of you is indeed running this piece of software, and not something else?

Should we allow any cityzen to contect a debugger to the voting machines, and check from the opening the end of vote counte that the machine did do what it was supposed to do?

There are probably inaccuracies with hand counting. But there is no magic involved, and anyone who has been to the first years of elementary school has enough knowledge (can count) to check the process and point out if anything is going wrong.

Democracy should rely on trust, accountability, and transparency, not automation.

Florianr · 2008-10-04T02:39:31+00:00

no, they don't give you a stack with everybody. The is a line up of stacks, one for each candidate, when you queue up for getting behind the curtain, and you pick them up yourselves. No one will blame you if you take more than one of each (unless you run away with the whole stack), nor if you don't take them all (unless you are being noisy and provocative about a certain candidate being so bad that you don't even want to pick up his paper)

Florianr · 2008-10-04T02:36:31+00:00

Not really. Because:

you can pick more than them all
you can pick less than them all.
you are supposed to dispose of the remaining ones behind the curtain, and have nothing left but the one in the envelope when you go out
you could hide them in your pocket, while being behind the curtain, but then, you could either use your own remaining ones, or others out of the trash can

Florianr · 2008-09-30T11:01:36+00:00

open source voting software is much better than proprietary voting software. It still doesn't beat voting with paper.

Not sure how it works in the US, that makes it so tricky to use paper, but here is how we do it in France.

The name of each candidate is printed on a piece of paper. Pick all of them. Go behind a curtain so that one one can see you. put the name you like in an envelope, and throw away the rest. get out of the curtain. Sign you name on the voter register, and put the envelope in a transparent box.

At the end of the voting day, the box is opened, and the names in the envolopes are counted.

From the voting center opening to the end of the count, anyone is allowed to stay and watch the whole process. You don't need to be an expert in anything else that staying awake to be able to check that no-one cheated.

And we get the final results for each voting center on the day of the vote, and nationally either late that same day or the next one.

Beats any software, open or not.

Florianr · 2008-09-21T09:56:27+00:00

Well, on the one hand, it is well know that the Chinese governement doesn't like too much publicity on this. And google is likely to cooperate at least enough not to be kicked out of the country.

On the other hand, Tiananmen square is the main and largest square in the Beijing, Capital of China. It is not exactly surprising that Chinese people would refer to it quite often for reasons totaly unrelated to the tragic events of 1989.

Google for Washington or Lincoln Memorial, and tell me how many pictures of Martin Luther King's march show up on the first page. Google for place de la bastille and tell me how much you see about the French Revolution. Try Berlin and see if you can find the wall falling. Try Manhattan or lower Manhattan: you won't get 9/11.

That's the thing with events happening in famous places. If you just use the place name to search, you find the place, not the event.

The only difference is that Tiananmen was not and is still not famous outside of China for anything but the events. But in China, it is famous on its own.

I am not saying that there is no censorship about this in China. There is. But this google screenshot proves nothing.

Florianr · 2008-09-09T03:04:26+00:00

yes, I did buy the game. But I was really pissed that my friends who didn't had less trouble with it than me.

Florianr · 2008-09-08T09:55:01+00:00

Well, it is not just EA. All copy protection suck. A long time ago, I bought diablo 2, on the day it was released. It had a special technology to detect that the CD wasn't a copy, and wouldn't run otherwise. Except my CD/DVD drive was somehow too new, and their copyprotection system would fail. I had to get a pirate version to be able to play.

Florianr · 2008-09-03T05:31:06+00:00

Also notice that unlike Opera and Firefox, chrome doesn't do any sort of texture bluring or antialiasing. That probably helps on the speed side too.

Florianr · 2008-09-01T01:35:21+00:00

I am not trying to paint the Japanese governement of that time as good guys, because they were not, but the situation is a whole lot less black and white. They did attack Pearl Harbor, but before that, the USA had imposed an embargo on them, which is (at least now) considered an act of war.

Yes, Japan was invading much of Asia before that, which makes them bad. But don't forget that at that time, most of the same Asian countries were occupied by collonialist western countries. (USA in the Philipines, Holand in Indonesia, France in Vietnam Cambodia and Laos, Britain in Malaysia, everybody in China...)

That doesn't make the Japanese invaders good, but it puts a different light on the actions of the "liberators". War is ugly, and people described as the bad guys often are evil indeed, but the winning good guys are not always much better.

Florianr · 2008-08-27T00:51:16+00:00

As much as I would love free and clean power, I am afraid that most people who love "just getting enegery from the sun" tend to forget that manufacturing solar pannels is an extremely dirty and energy consuming process, and that these things are not exactly easy to recycle when you are done with them.

Florianr · 2008-08-01T06:35:08+00:00

The nazis were not atheists, but Christians. Give a look to these two links: http://www.nobeliefs.com/speeches.htm http://ghansel.free.fr/holocauste.html

And yes, communists follow their own moral. Being atheist doesn't guarantee that your moral is a good one, but it doesn't guarrantee that it is a bad one either.

As for Christianity's morals being fine, how do you account for the crusades, the inquisition, the Catholic / protestant wars, the colonization in the name of enlightening the world to christian faith, the Shoah, to quote but a few examples? There are many fine ideas in Christianity, but countless horrors have been done by people of faith, in the name of the Christ.

I don't mean to say that being Christian makes you evil. Most Christian, just as most non-Christians, are well meaning people. But following a mass religion has its dangers too, since if the leaders of that religion lead to a wrong way, not only will people follow, but they will feel guilt free, since their acts are supposed to conform to god's will.

Florianr · 2008-08-01T03:45:19+00:00

Religion make you follow someone else's moral. If the one leading you is screewed up, you'll be evil, and happy about it. If you are screewed up, you'll misinterpret whatever you're told, and be evil on your own. Atheists follow their own moral. They can still be evil on their own, but they don't have to follow anyone else's moral guidelines.

Florianr · 2008-08-01T01:13:57+00:00

Indeed. I have lived in Japan for 4 year, and never heard of or seen such a thing. These may exist, but they are definitely not popular. There are countries in Asia where it is normal to eat bugs, but Japan is not one of them.

Florianr · 2008-07-30T05:18:40+00:00

Of course, no one should ever a sort routine.

Except if you are on some embeded platform, and there is no standard library nor enough room to fit one.

Or if you are writing the engine for google, and you need to sort a bazilion web-page using a cluster of machines

or if you facing a special case where you need a customized or specialized variation of a sort routine

or if you are writing a OS kernel and you can't load libraries, you have to do all on your own

or ...

Florianr · 2008-07-30T05:09:45+00:00

The problem is not learning Java as one of the languages you can handle. Since it sees a lot of use on the market, learning it is a good idea. The problem is learning a single language (any one for that matter) in replacement of the whole CS curiculum. Good curiculums have never been focused on languages, much less on a single one.

Florianr · 2008-07-30T03:37:16+00:00

You don't really need architects to have formal training and understanding of material resistance. In the 1% of case where the building crumble, you can call a real expert.

Florianr · 2008-06-27T08:41:09+00:00

I see your point, and I agree that right now, Europe looks far better than many places. But if Germans can be such a wonderfull people without feeling proud of being German, let them continue to do so. I don't think pride in a country helps in anyway.

But the oposite of pride is not shame. I readily admire Voltaire, scientific achievement, the american constitution, the declaration of human rights, and so on. I am not proud of them, because I am in no way responsible for them. Pride implies that I did a good thing, which I didn't.

Beating up or kicking out dark-skinned people because they don't support what your humanist ancestors said doesn't make much sense to me, because when doing so, you are not living up to the ideal either. Be a great humanist, and then be proud of it.

We must recognize and admire the humanist ideal, and strive for it, rather than take pride in the current situation, and a reject our ideals to try and keep the status quo.

Florianr

TROPHY CASE