Sunday, August 08, 2004

My greatest fear I do not know what idea is more frighening: that regular people might think we use such overwrought terms as "silicon nanosurgery", or that someone at work might read this and think it would be a good idea if we started. Intel Technicians Use Delicate Silicon Surgery to Fine-Tune Microchips. A technique known as silicon nanosurgery, routinely used at nine Intel chip factories around the world, has transformed the way modern computer chips are developed. By By JOHN MARKOFF. [The New York Times > Technology] 6:39:54 PM     Categories: Pushing rectangles... LiveJournal Radio Userland aggregator eating it's own entrails I just saw someone posting this problem on the radio discussion boards that I was also having. I responded thre, but I'm copying the information here for dispersal. The situation was that the aggregator in Radio Userland was failing to pick up any new items out of any subscribed RSS. No error message was thrown up in any obvious location, other than the "0 new stories" in the log. I found that in aggregatorData.root every subscribed feed had an error message that flChanges was undefined. Digging in, I discovered a strange change in xml.rss.readService. The "local (flChanged=true)" that sets the default value for flChanged had moved to the bottom of the script. flChanged is used in the code to prevent processing a feed if it has not changes since the last download. The checks for Etags and such clear it to false, so the default value must be set before these checks are done. If not, the conditional that surrounds teh compileService call sees an undefined value and trows an error. If you are comfortable with editing the scripts in the Radio database, you can open xml.rss.readService and drag the "local (flChanged=true)" at the bottom up to the top of the code. 10:44:36 AM     Categories: Radio

© Copyright 2004 Matthew Ernest. Last update: 9/12/2004; 10:47:28 AM. hT This theme is based on the SoundWaves (blue) Manila theme.

radaR's LiveJournal   8/30/2004 Geek gamers rejoice. Finally, a hot chick they can score with. Video game vampire to go topless in October Playboy Ernest Miller sez, "Videogame character BloodRayne (a red-headed 'Dhampir' who hunts supernatural baddies for the 'Brimstone Society') will be topless in October's Playboy. According to her creators, 'This is a first in videogame history and trust us when we say that Rayne does not disappoint.'" Link (Thanks, Ernest!) [Boing Boing] By radar@poboxes.com. Keeping America Safe from wireless internet. AKMA gets hassled by the man: So Weirdly Wrong: And I walked back to the studio, dumbfounded that someone just rousted me for picking an open wireless signal in public — indeed (as it turns out) for using a laptop within a wireless signal’s range of the library. Weird. We should all be glad that the local contstabulary are able to invent federal laws at a moments notice to save us from the scourge of freely available internet access. However, those godless commie librarians seem to have gotten off scott free. By radar@poboxes.com. Keeping America Safe from Ted Kennedy. Ted Kennedy's name is similar to an alias of some "evil doer". Proof that this list only catches the innocent is left as an exercise for the reader. If Senators are allowed to roam freely about the country, then the terrorists have already won! Reuters. Kennedy -- one of the most recognizable figures in American politics -- told a Senate committee hearing on Thursday he had been blocked several times from boarding commercial airline flights because his name was on a "no-fly" list intended to exclude potential terrorists. [John Robb's Weblog] By radar@poboxes.com. Any sufficiently nice person is indistinguishable from someone who likes you. Yet again, I find I have underestimated just how deep into pathetic geekdom I am when confronted by others of the species. We're pointed that this damning refelction by Joey de Villa, an actual example of the cool geek that the rest of us pretend that we could possibly be but really can't. I don't know how I ended up looking at a page in Everything2 (imagine a less academic Wikipedia written by LiveJournalers), but someone has come up with a geek lament treatment of the Clarke Axiom: Any sufficiently nice person is indistinguishable from someone who likes you. [The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century :: Joey deVilla's Weblog] By radar@poboxes.com. fun Fun FUN. Whee... isn't working late fun? Someone bring be some dinner, okay? By radar@poboxes.com.