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Comment Re:Oh no! (Score 1) 150

My best mate is a fan of his work. I like it too, but I have a problem in that since a particularly ... finger lickin' good scene in Consider Phlebas, my squick factor precludes me from reading any more of his work. Without any details, that particular scene pressed a particular dark, furry, oily and squirming button in my psyche, and I cannot get rid of the image in my mind, even years later.

*shudder*

Still, I heartily concur, on behalf of my friends, and myself before that button was squished. It is very sad news.

Comment Re:Examples? (Score 1) 52

You've been given a list of words to study and memorize. Being a diligent student of language and the arts, you've decided to not study them at all and instead make up pointless games based on them. One game you've come up with is to see how you can concatenate the words to generate the lexicographically lowest possible string.

Input
As input for playing this game you will receive a text file containing an integer N, the number of word sets you need to play your game against. This will be followed by N word sets, each starting with an integer M, the number of words in the set, followed by M words. All tokens in the input will be separated by some whitespace and, aside from N and M, will consist entirely of lowercase letters.

Output
Your submission should contain the lexicographically shortest strings for each corresponding word set, one per line and in order.

Constraints
1 = N = 100
1 = M = 9
1 = all word lengths = 10

Example Input
5
6 facebook hacker cup for studious students
5 k duz q rc lvraw
5 mybea zdr yubx xe dyroiy
5 jibw ji jp bw jibw
5 uiuy hopji li j dcyi

Example Output
cupfacebookfor hackerstudentsstudious
duzklvrawqrc
dyroiymy beaxeyubxzdr
bwjibwjibwjijp
dcyihopjijliuiuy

(Please remove spaces from example outputs. slashdot filters ftl)

Businesses

Journal Journal: French high-speed train sets world record 357.2 mph

Today a French high-speed train known as TGV set a world speed record for conventional trains of 357.2 miles per hour. That is quite impressive. In my view, trains at this kind of speed would be competitive with commuter aircraft for the types of routes that both transportation systems serve. It seems that high speed train systems would work economically in par
Security

A Second Google Desktop Vulnerability 80

zakkie writes "According to InfoWorld, Google's Desktop indexing engine is vulnerable to an exploit (the second such flaw to be found) that could allow crackers to read files or execute code. By exploiting a cross-site scripting vulnerability on google.com, an attacker can grab all the data off a Google Desktop. Google is said to be investigating. A security researcher is quoted: 'The users really have very little ability to protect themselves against these attacks. It's very bad. Even the experts are afraid to click on each other's links anymore.'"
Television

Submission + - TV delays drive viewers to piracy

Astat1ne writes: The Register has a story about the delays Australian TV viewers are experiencing with overseas-produced series and how it is driving many of them to download the shows via BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer networks. From the story: "According to a survey based on a sample of 119 current or recent free-to-air TV series', Australian viewers are waiting an average of almost 17 months for the first run series' first seen overseas. Over the past two years, average Australian broadcast delays for free-to-air television viewers have more than doubled from 7.9 to 16.7 months." According to the article, the situation is compounded by the fact that Australian viewers are unable to download legal copies of the episodes from the US iTunes website and are turning to unauthorised means to get copies of their favorite shows.

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