Disqus - Latest Comments for DGentry

Re: How to Be a Werewolf - It's just a gentle takeover.

DGentry — Wed, 25 Dec 2019 15:47:21 -0000

So the Haynes pack is based in Ann Arbor? Seems legit.

Re: All Night Laundry - In which she falls

DGentry — Sat, 30 Nov 2019 13:49:09 -0000

The End.

Re: All Night Laundry - In which everyone is mostly OK!

DGentry — Fri, 04 Oct 2019 09:36:38 -0000

I think (hope?) we'll find out soon.

This comment won't age well if we're still coming back for our daily dose of Bina a year from now.

Re: All Night Laundry - In which everyone is mostly OK!

DGentry — Thu, 03 Oct 2019 11:33:44 -0000

I feel like we're getting really close to finding out how Bina {becomes/became/will become/almost-became-but-spent-thousands-of-webcomic-pages-undoing-that-timeline} the botfly.

I'm so excited!

Re: All Night Laundry - In which it's not what you think it is

DGentry — Thu, 28 Dec 2017 11:15:16 -0000

It's the Botfly. It's time for the Boss Fight.

Re: Coding Relic: Software Engineering Maxim #8: Money is not the only motivator

DGentry — Thu, 13 Jul 2017 09:40:54 -0000

Doubtful.

Re: All Night Laundry - In which really, Horatio was being polite

DGentry — Mon, 12 Jun 2017 23:40:10 -0000

Uh oh. Horatio! Bad Naught, no cookie!

Re: All Night Laundry - In which jQuery does it's thing

DGentry — Thu, 08 Jun 2017 00:16:26 -0000

Maybe Direct means that whoever is holding the Moment has to be in direct physical contact with everyone to be transported, while Contagious is that a chain from person A to B to C will all be transported.

Re: All Night Laundry - In which there are more of them, of course

DGentry — Mon, 05 Jun 2017 01:59:35 -0000

I started reading a couple months ago and caught up several weeks ago, though I didn't read all of the comments of the last four years. This might have been discussed already.

One possibility keeps nagging at me: I wonder if the Botfly/Green Lady actually *is* Bina, a Bina from the future. Maybe one of the previous Binas on a really crazy time jaunt, or maybe the current B13 but projecting back from the future. Given enough time, stress, and trauma, the motivations and mental state of that Bina may no longer be comprehensible to B13 of the present day.

It would explain how the Binas have been able to absorb and generate Unlight after being exposed to it: they have an affinity for it, it is attuned to their body.

It would explain why Gregor mistook Bina for the Green Lady back at the start of the story: she looks like the Green Lady.

I'm not sure it explains the abilities of the red scarf, or the lucid dreaming with Josephine. That is just freaky.

Re: All Night Laundry - In which Bina shows off her find

DGentry — Fri, 26 May 2017 01:11:52 -0000

It is taller though, and more likely to hurt the arch of the foot I suppose.

Re: Far to the North - 196

DGentry — Wed, 03 May 2017 00:31:24 -0000

The reindeer kindof looks Seussian...

Re: Soft Errors Are Hard Problems

DGentry — Tue, 07 Oct 2014 09:49:09 -0000

Alpha particles are so large that they tend not to penetrate well, so the packages of nearby chips will protect them from alpha particles emitted elsewhere within the room.

Beta particles (electrons) and cosmic rays can penetrate the package of chips, but those are from the solar wind not radioactive decay of anything local.

I'm not sure that a radiation counter will detect alpha particles from the packaging materials. The situation I've seen is with the bonding agent emitting alpha particles, which is a "goo" inside the package which cushions the die and the wires between the silicon die and the pins on the package. The particles which hit the silicon die can cause errors, while the plastic of the package surrounding the goo would tend to absorb the rest.

Re: Coding Relic: ATA Commands in Python

DGentry — Wed, 11 Dec 2013 21:53:27 -0000

I don't know of a good reference for SMART access, though there is existing code which does so (like smartctl) which could be examined.

Re: Coding Relic: Discrimination on the Basis of Bytes

DGentry — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 09:02:21 -0000

I don't doubt that its bad, and that having to deal with nasty people attacking your infrastructure takes time away from more positive work. However it seems like the fundamental problem is that there is a DDoS at all, not so much the padding.
If the attacker were trying to overwhelm the link capacity, they'd send larger frames. Sending minimum sized frames means they're trying to overwhelm the receiving machine's ability to process the incoming packets. If the packets were not padded, there would be even more of them.

Re: Post-mortem debugging: core files

DGentry — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 14:38:41 -0000

Most likely. Since publishing this, I've learned not to foreshadow future writing.

Re: Coding Relic: IPv6 Addresses for Fun and Profit

DGentry — Sat, 09 Jun 2012 21:13:36 -0000

Nice one!

Re: Coding Relic: BangIP Option

DGentry — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 13:41:01 -0000

Incumbent IP providers lobbied heavily against it in the IETF. They don't want to enable new competitors.

Re: Coding Relic: GCC Function Instrumentation

DGentry — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 00:13:05 -0000

How did I find the names of __cyg_profile_func_enter and __cyg_profile_func_exit? I think I Googled for information about creating a profiler, and found descriptions of how to use this mechanism. I am definitely not the first person to write about it.

Re: Code Snippet: SO_BINDTODEVICE

DGentry — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 11:11:03 -0000

I've used IP_PKTINFO for this. There is also an IP6_PKTINFO which I have not personally used, but looks similar.

You set IP_PKTINFO in the flags passed to recvmsg. The control block will contain an ip_pktinfo structure indicating the ingress interface.

This is from memory, but some searching should turn up more specific information.

Re: Coding Relic: Content-Type: joke; genre=bar/packet

DGentry — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 00:43:54 -0000

I'm glad you enjoyed it. If I may suggest:
http://codingrelic.geekhold...

Re: Coding Relic: Multiple Inheritance

DGentry — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 08:35:38 -0000

Sure, go ahead.

(BTW, our kids thought the hotdogtopi were funny but wouldn't eat them. Too creepy.)

Re: Coding Relic: ATA Commands in Python

DGentry — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 00:38:05 -0000

Simply that Python isn't generally the language one reaches for to write SCSI or ATA commands to hardware devices. Python can be made to work, but the existence of the system header files with all needed structures defined strongly encourages use of C/C++ for this purpose.

Re: Coding Relic: Merchant Silicon

DGentry — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 13:13:43 -0000

I doubt the pendulum will swing back toward hardware like the switch fabrics of today. Once the margin starts slipping in a particular product category, it doesn't tend to recover later.

If anything, I expect it to move further toward software. Switch ASICs right now have a lot of knowledge about how packets are supposed to be routed, and I expect some of this to be removed in favor of software configuration. The ASIC might consist of a set of lookup tables, CAMs, and rewrite engines, and allow the software to supply sets of instructions to stitch those resources together.

I suspect the next opportunity to move the momentum back toward hardware design would be when we have a disruptive change. For example if pure optical switching ever becomes a commercial reality, I suspect it will come in at much higher margins.

Re: Coding Relic: Listing Processes with libproc

DGentry — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 16:45:56 -0000

Those routines are definitely in libprocps. Linking to it should be sufficient:

cc -o myprogram myprogram.c -lprocps

To me it sounds like -lprocps is either not being passed to the compiler or is failing to find the library you installed.

Re: Exploring Google App Engine

DGentry — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 17:17:50 -0000

Yes, I agree that is a better way to handle it.