via meh.ro
Magical things from my head and the Web
"Most people spend their New Year's Eve watching the ball drop and celebrating the New Year," writes Jason, "and actually, that's what I planned to do, too. Instead, I found myself debugging our licensing activation system." "Just as I was about to leave the office, I received a torrent of emails with the subject 'License Activation Failed'. One or two every now and then is expected, but dozens and dozens at four o'clock on New Year's Eve... not so good. It took me a moment to realize the significance of 4:00PM, but then it hit me: I'm on Pacific Time, which is UTC -8 hours.
"The error message that was filling up our logs was simply 'INVALID DATE' and for the life of me I couldn't figure out why. Our license code was a 32-bit number that represented the expiration date of the license and the features in the license. 7 of those bits represented the year since 2000, so obviously the date was fine up until 2127. After hours and hours of digging through PL/SQL, Java, JavaScript, Ruby, and some random shell scripts, I found the following.
IF YEAR = 2012 GOTO INVALIDDATEJason continued, "nowhere in the code was any indication why 12 would not work, so I took it out. Figuring it couldn't make things any worse, I published the code and tested the registration system. It worked. In the end, a meaningless IF statement had shut down our renewals business... just because."
Riyadh: A Saudi woman was beheaded Monday after being convicted of practising sorcery, which is banned in the ultra-conservative kingdom, the interior ministry said.
Amina Bint Abdulhalim Nassar was executed in the northern province of Jawf for "practising witchcraft and sorcery," the ministry said in a statement carried by SPA state news agency.
That's a thing that's happening in 2011, then.
My favourite comment on this video: "This is a man after my own heart, and liver, and head, and body."
But there’s one thing that I know my husband would absolutely love: It’s just a little coupon book I made up for sex–any time he wants it. And I promise to jump in and be adventurous, too!
That may sound a little bit over the top. After all, chances are your husband already wants it all the time. Do you really want to fuel the fire?
I find most women’s primary attitude towards sex is, “how can I get away with not doing it very often?”
In other words, the focus is: What’s the minimum I can do and still be considered a loving wife?
So, let me get this straight. You, a woman, are saying that all other women see sex as a chore, and the best way to keep their partner happy is to force themselves to sleep with them even when they'd prefer not to.
Also, "Power tools scare me, tech gadgets intimidate me"? Really?
My, there is a lot going on here, isn't there.
To disable M-PMV’s protease, we need to know exactly what it looks like. Like real scissors, the proteases come in two halves that need to lock together in order to work. If we knew where the halves joined together, we could create drugs that prevent them from uniting. But until now, scientists have only been able to discern the structure of the two halves together. They have spent more than ten years trying to solve structure of a single isolated half, without any success.
The Foldit players had no such problems. They came up with several answers, one of which was almost close to perfect. In a few days, Khatib had refined their solution to deduce the protein’s final structure, and he has already spotted features that could make attractive targets for new drugs.
Over ten years trying to solve part of a problem. Turn it into a game, give it to the Internet, use mathematical magic on the large number of varied solutions to come up with the answer.
That answer - to the whole problem, not just part of it - came after a few days.
(A full discussion and explanation of this will appear on Geekosaur in the next few days)
