@blakeyrat said:

When the guy who picked git gets back from vacation, I swear to Christ I'm going to send him on a permanent vacation.

Plus, his work “shows the patriarchal nature of the software industry.” (http://megan.geek.nz/index.php/how-git-shows-the-patriarchal-nature-of-the-software-industry/)

Could you guys stop posting this bullshit in my thread? This isn't English 102.

Tee hee.

@A fifteen-year-old “Yahoo!” joke said:

Straight from the horse’s mouth: houyhnhnm.com. Because you’re not just some yahoo.

@snoofle said:

Anyone want my clue-bat?

If you’re near the F train I could pick it up from you on my way to work one day.

@joe.edwards said:

Here's some interesting reading for you: Wet Goddess. It's a heart-warming autobiographical tale of love, life, and "consensual" dolphin-human sex.

Why, thank you so very much. In return, may I suggest this link: ‹http://amazon.com/s?field-keywords=brain+bleach›.

@bridget99 said:

What about Heaven? Can you confirm that Jews don't really believe in it?

This is not exactly like Christian ideas of Heaven and Hell, but Jews do believe in Divine reward and punishment after death; see http://judaism.stackexchange.com/q/4467/70.

@Zecc said:

Can someone tell me why it isn't kosher to, on sabbath, just have someone else around to do all the work?

It most certainly is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabbos_goy

Also, 'kosher' only refers to the suitability of food being consumed by an observant Jew, not to any other law or anything non-food related.

The Wikipedia page does point out that, “Generally speaking, a Jew should respect a non-Jew's right to rest on the Sabbath, and therefore may not explicitly ask a non-Jew to perform a service prohibited by the Jewish law on the Sabbath.” In other words, using a non-Jew is another loophole, and there are guidelines on when this is or is not approriate.

(Also, the Hebrew word kosher literally means “appropriate”, so Zecc’s use of the word was, in fact, kosher.)

@Zmaster said:

http://www.kosherswitch.com/live/tech/how

As an practicing orthodox Jew myself, let me weigh in on this.

xaade summarized the technicalities pretty well; the issue most of you seem to be havng is the matter of hiding behind technicalities. And that’s not wrong. The vast majority of their target market (i.e. observant Jews) will see things the same way and not use this product, no matter how persuasive the manufacturer’s blurbs are. However—

There are times when “hiding behind technicalities” is appropriate: situations of hardship where most of you would be saying, “God couldn’t have meant for you to leave the lights off now, could He?” Probably not, but the Rules don’t tend to have complex exception clauses; they just say, “Don’t.”

It’s a different way of approaching rules and exceptions. You can have exceptions that need to be updated as technology develops, or you can set up eternal rules, but with loopholes—and depend on human judgement to decide when the use of the loophole is appropriate. Some religions take the first route; orthodox Judaism believes God treats us as responsible adults. (Some people’s behavior makes me wonder, though.)

@blakeyrat said:

When the guy who picked git gets back from vacation, I swear to Christ I'm going to send him on a permanent vacation.

Plus, his work “shows the patriarchal nature of the software industry.” (http://megan.geek.nz/index.php/how-git-shows-the-patriarchal-nature-of-the-software-industry/)

Could you guys stop posting this bullshit in my thread? This isn't English 102.

Tee hee.

@snoofle said:

We did everything short of poking them with pointy sticks.

Well, now you know what you need to do next time. ☺

Don’t give her her next paycheck; instead give her a duplicate of the last one.

@DaveK said:

An EE is someone who, when you tell him the "true / false / file_not_found" joke, laughs at you, not the joke, for thinking a boolean could have only as few as three states!

As an EE, I feel obligated to prove Dave correct. There is this issue in the field ℤ₂ (although those are not quite Boolean numbers; in ℤ₂, 1+1 = 0) where the equation x² + x + 1 = 0 has no solution. (0×0 + 0 + 1 = 1 = 1×1 + 1 + 1) So we define α as a sort of imaginary value for which α² + α + 1 = 0. Then we need to define another imaginary so that polynomials with 0, 1, & α have solutions, and so ad infinitum.

Seriously, EEs can make practical use of insanity like this.

BTW, Dave, say “hi” to my Dad next time you see him.

@Bulb said:

Actually I was doing it wrong, because according to strict aliasing rules the cast invokes Undefined Behaviour. The correct way to do it would be:

char tmp[sizeof(void )] = { 0 }; / this syntax zeroes the whole array */

void *ptr = *(void *)tmp; / tmp decays to char * */

because strict aliasing explicitly allows casting between char * and any other type of pointer.

And, from this thread in comp.lang.c, this can even be done (in C99) without the temporary:

#define ALL_ZEROS(T) ( ( (union {unsigned char uc[sizeof(T)]; T it;}){.uc={0}} ).it )
#define ZERO_PTR ALL_ZEROS(void *)