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General Protection Fault--The Comic Strip 1-8-2010 Nick: Linux has thoroughly invaded the mobile market. Palm has WebOS, Google has Android, there's OpenMoko, Bug Labs, Limo... / Nick: WebOS and Android are somewhat restricted, but you can get the source code if you know where to look. Others like OpenMoko are wide open, letting you hack both software and hardware. / Nick: I know you'd never go in for Windows Mobile or Blackberry, and I know not to mention a certain I-device... / Fooker: Don't make me laugh. / Nick: But think of what you could do with a Linux box in your pocket... / Fooker: By Randal Schwartz's karaoke lyrics, if I can only make run Vi, Emacs, or Nano... / Nick: Ahem... There's an app for that.
http://www.gpf-comics.com/d/20100108.html
General Protection Fault--The Comic Strip 1-11-2010 Ki: Well? What did you finally get? / Fooker: It's an Android box. Can't remember what the phone's called, but that doesn't matter. / Fooker: I looked at all the other options you mentioned, Nick. OpenMoko really piqued my interest, but I can't get one by Sharon's deadline. The Pre felt like a toy. This, though, looks solid. Lots of horses under that hood. / Ki: Well, Sharon should be happy. Now she can reach you in an emergency. Her core requirement has been met. / Nick: Trouble is, I'd be worried about feature creep in this project... / Fooker: While we've been walking, I installed an SSH client, logged into my Linux box, downloaded the SDK, and started compiling my first app! Up next is the Android source!
http://www.gpf-comics.com/d/20100111.html
General Protection Fault--The Comic Strip 1-13-2010 Nick: Fooker, I thought you should know... / Fooker: Nickster! Lookit this! / Fooker: I've been messing with Android's source. I can understand why Google did things a certain way, but I tweaked the kernel and increased efficiency 65%. Wish they did that from the start, though... / Fooker: 'Course, replacing Android with a full Linux stack is an option, but I want to see what I can hack within their sandbox first. If only I had GCC rather than Java, I could do some serious wizardry here. / Nick: You do realize you've missed three meetings already this morning? / Fooker: I think I'll try installing Apache next.
http://www.gpf-comics.com/d/20100113.html
General Protection Fault--The Comic Strip 1-15-2010 Fooker: I tell ya, Dex. I'm lovin' this little gadget. Have I mentioned that? / Dexter: Only six times in the last hour. / Fooker: I don't know why I resisted this for so long. If I knew all the things I could do with one of these, I would have gotten one years ago. I think I'll completely rewrite the TCP/IP stack this evening... / BRRRING / YIPE! / Fooker: What in the name of Linus was that? / Dexter: It was your phone. It rang. They tend to do that.
http://www.gpf-comics.com/d/20100115.html
General Protection Fault--The Comic Strip 1-18-2010 Sharon: There you are. I've been calling you all day. After I got your number from Ki. Why haven't you answered? / Fooker: I turned the ringer off. / Sharon: And just why did you do that? / Fooker: Aw, c'mon, hot stuff. You know I hate talking on the phone. Just text, IM, or e-mail me. Now I'm guaranteed to get it. / Sharon: Uh huh. Some of us prefer a more personal form of communication. There's only so much you can express in 160 characters. / Fooker: You know me. Terse and efficient. / Sharon: Right. You did get a text and data plan to go with your new insatiable mobile data appetite, didn't you? / Fooker: They really pushed one, but I figure I'll just pay for what I use. No harm there, right?
http://www.gpf-comics.com/d/20100118.html
 
General Protection Fault--The Comic Strip 1-20-2010 Ki: Your attitude's changed since I last saw you. Is Fooker answering his phone now? / Sharon: Nope. He's checking his balance. / Sharon: He told me to text or e-mail him rather than call but then told me refused the required data plan for a "pay as you go" deal. / Ki: Ye cats. With all the stuff he's been doing... Does he know that will cost him much more? / CRASH / Sharon: He does now.
http://www.gpf-comics.com/d/20100120.html
General Protection Fault--The Comic Strip 1-22-2010 Nick: So Sharon tells me you didn't get a data plan with that spiffy new phone, and you've racked up quite a bill paying as you go. / Fooker: Yup. / Fooker: I talked to customer support and they let me renegotiate my contract to get the data plan. But I've still got to pay the previous balance. That stinks, but it's fair, I suppose. / Nick: How much of a balance did you accrue? You only had the phone for a few days. It couldn't be all that much... / Fooker: Well... / Nick: You wrote a Bittorrent application for Android, didn't you! / Fooker: Hey, that 32GB MicroSD card was just begging to be filled.
http://www.gpf-comics.com/d/20100122.html
General Protection Fault--The Comic Strip 1-25-2010 Fooker: So it's sister powwow night again? / Sharon: You don't have to be here. I know you're uncomfortable around her. / Fooker: I'd feel more comfortable knowing you're not... you know... / Sharon: Alone with her? I know you still don't trust her. She's not the Trudy you once knew, you know. / Fooker: Everyone keeps saying that. / Sharon: Well, go rebuild a motherboard or something. You're not my guardian angel, Mr. 007. / Sharon: Evening Trudy. Time to compare notes from last week.
http://www.gpf-comics.com/d/20100125.html
General Protection Fault--The Comic Strip 1-27-2010 Trudy: So... The Diederich pharmaceuticals link is officially dead. / Sharon: As a doornail. / Sharon: The FBI dismissed the link in January 2000. I went there in May. By the time I thought to look back into it in 2008, the company had folded and sold its assets to Merck. No one's seen "Elsbeth Diederich" since. / Trudy: Mom would have put the poison pill in place from the beginning. The buyer might have changed, but she knew she would sell to someone. And they would get the "right" books, not the real ones. They'll know nothing useful. / Sharon: Our mom certainly is thorough, isn't she? / Trudy: Where do you think "your" Trudy got it from?
http://www.gpf-comics.com/d/20100127.html
General Protection Fault--The Comic Strip 1-29-2010 Trudy: What's wrong? You look like your floppy drive did something... un-floppy. / Sharon: I... was just thinking... if things had gone differently... / Sharon: What if she never put me up for adoption? If I had grown up there, with all that money and corruption, with her negative influences... you can't help but think about the whole nature vs. nurture debate... / Trudy: If you call what she did "nurturing." Never there, barely caring about you, leaving you in the care of a lecherous butler with pedophile tendencies... / Sharon: I mean, could I have turned out like... well, like your alternate? / Trudy: Ouch.
http://www.gpf-comics.com/d/20100129.html
 
General Protection Fault--The Comic Strip 2-1-2010 Sharon: Maybe we need to take a different approach. What if we stop looking for Mom and start looking for someone around her? / Trudy: What do you mean? / Sharon: There was this dark haired woman who claimed to be Elsbeth Diederich. She was a little younger than us, so she obviously wasn't Mom. That threw me off. But what if Mom took her with her wherever she went? / Trudy: Mom doesn't trust men. She often populates her "inner circle" with trusted, highly loyal young women. There's a lot of churn there, but if someone were to show a high level of initiative... / Sharon: I'll do a search of companies with unusually high concentrations of female upper management. Maybe that will turn up something we've missed. / Trudy: You know, having a geek on my side for a change has definite advantages...
http://www.gpf-comics.com/d/20100201.html
General Protection Fault--The Comic Strip 2-3-2010 Trudy: That girl Sharon mentioned doesn't sound familiar. She must be relatively new to Mom's "harem". Sharon could be on to something. / Trudy: I could probe some of my old underworld contacts, but that might raise suspicions with the UGA, who thinks I'm the "other" Trudy, and the last thing I want is the remnants of C.R.U.D.E. tracking me down. / Trudy: I feel like I'm not contributing anything except for knowledge of Mom, and I can't be too specific, lest I give myself away. I have to make it look like everything I know I've observed "from afar". This gets harder every time I... / Fooker: So... how goes the search? Any luck tracking down your mom?
http://www.gpf-comics.com/d/20100203.html
General Protection Fault--The Comic Strip 2-5-2010 Trudy: We're having some success, if you must know. / Fooker: Ah, good. I'd hate to hear you were lying about. / Trudy: I beg your pardon? / Fooker: Sorry. Did I inadvertently insinuate duplicity on your part? How fraudulent of me... / Fooker: I'm afraid I keep confusing you for someone who obviously isn't here anymore. Years of lies and deceit are difficult to overcome. I am ashamed of my charade of pretense. / Fooker: I am a masquerade of ostentation. / Trudy: Tell me, Fooker. How do you really feel?
http://www.gpf-comics.com/d/20100205.html
GPF Archive: Monday, February 8, 2010 Trudy: Stop beating around the bush, Fooker. If you have something to say, just say it. / Fooker: OK, how about this... / Fooker: I've had my eye on you ever since we came back from that "alternate universe." I tried to give you the benefit of a doubt. I really did. But nobody's more suspicious than a retired secret agent, and you set off all my old intuitions. / Fooker: Maybe it's all my old experiences, but nobody knows "our" Trudy like I do. I've seen things the others have missed. I know things they'll never know. And what I see when I watch you... seems too darn familiar. / Fooker: So consider yourself warned. I can't prove anything... yet. But I'm on to you. You aren't all you claim to be, "Trudy". Any when you finally slip up, I'll be watching.
http://www.gpf-comics.com/d/20100208.html
General Protection Fault--The Comic Strip 2-10-2010 Sharon: Is everything OK? I heard you two talking in the kitchen, but couldn't make out what was going on... / Fooker: Oh' t'weren't nothin', hot stuff. Just catching up on old times, reliving old memories. That sort of thing... / Fooker: Only those were someone else's memories, weren't they? This whole "alternate universe" junk sure is confusing. You're you, only you're not you, and I'm not the me you knew me to be... / Fooker: There's got to be a song in there somewhere. "I'm not the me you knew me to be..." / Trudy: I'd hate you in any universe...
http://www.gpf-comics.com/d/20100210.html
 
General Protection Fault--The Comic Strip 2-12-2010 Sharon: I've compiled a list of companies that meet our various criteria. If we split them between us, we can go through them rather quickly. / Sharon: Some of these are long shots. I'm sure, but without much more to go on, I'm afraid it's all we've got. / Sharon: Still, anything we can cross off the list narrows our options. If we whittle it down to just a few... / Sharon: What is up with you two? / Fooker: Oh, nothing. I like being the tormentor for a change.
http://www.gpf-comics.com/d/20100212.html
General Protection Fault--The Comic Strip 2-15-2010 Ki: Mrgh... Swha...? / Nick: Oh, sorry, sweetie. I had an idea for a program and couldn't sleep, so I thought I'd write it down before I forgot it. / Ki: Mrf mrm kill later... / Nick: That's ok, honey. Don't wait up on my account.
http://www.gpf-comics.com/d/20100215.html
General Protection Fault--The Comic Strip - 2-17-2010 Ki: I had the weirdest dream last night. You were in the office... / Nick: Working on the computer. It wasn't a dream. Sorry. / Ki: You never came back to bed. You said you had an idea for a new program... / Nick: Yeah, I jotted down some details so I had something to work from later. / Ki: This looks like a full formal specification document. / Nick: Well, technically it's a mixed requirements and spec. I modified a template from work. / Ki: You wrote a full spec document at 2:30 in the morning? / Nick: I finished the alpha around 5:45.
http://www.gpf-comics.com/d/20100217.html
General Protection Fault--The Comic Strip 2-19-2010 Ki: What kind of idea had you up at oh-dark-thirty writing documentation and slinging code? / Nick: It's this idea I've had brewing for a while. / Nick: You know how the inventor's gene works. Inspiration strikes at any time. Well, that applies to code as well. The idea struck me as I lay there thinking and I couldn't go back to sleep. So I had to get up and write. / Ki: OK, but what does it do? / Nick: My notes turned into requirements, which became a spec, which became the alpha, it just kind of snowballed. / Ki: What does it do? / Nick: Haven't the foggiest.
http://www.gpf-comics.com/d/20100219.html
General Protection Fault--The Comic Strip Ki: You wrote a whole application in the dead of night and you don't have a clue what it does? / Nick: Well, the source code's right here. / Ki: It's 6:30 on a Saturday! I haven't had my coffee yet, and you expect me to sit down and parse code this early just to figure out what-- / "O_O / It's... the most beautiful thing I've ever seen... / Nick: Brings a tear to your eye, doesn't it?
http://www.gpf-comics.com/d/20100222.html
 
General Protection Fault--The Comic Strip 2-24-2010 Ki: I can't believe it. It's perfect. The logic is flawless. The code is efficient and elegant. Even your comments are concise yet thorough. This code belongs in a museum. / Nick: Aw, c'mon. It's not that special... / Ki: No, it's better. I've read your code. I know what it does. / Ki: Nick, what you've done here is the impossible. You've created the one program everyone needs. The one itch thought never to be scratched. It's the one thing no computer user should be without, but was thought impossible to build. / Ki: You've built the ultimate "killer app". / Nick: The killer app killer?
http://www.gpf-comics.com/d/20100224.html
General Protection Fault--The Comic Strip - 2-26-2010 Ki: Nick, you've built the ultimate "killer app". You can't keep a lid on this. What are you going to do with it? / Nick: I'm not sure... / Ki: GPF could package it and sell it. It could make the company millions. Heck, we could sell it ourselves. It will pay for itself a thousand fold. / Nick: ... no... / Nick: This program is too important. It can't just be bottled and mass produced. It must be shared. It must flow organically. To shackle this code with patents and trademarks would be a crime against humanity. / Nick: I shall release it as open source! / Ki: Please, don't make us do the "ominous thunder" joke again. We've really run that one into the ground.
http://www.gpf-comics.com/d/20100226.html
General Protection Fault--The Comic Strip 3-1-2010 Ki: Are you still considering releasing that program as open source? / Nick: I just finished setting up my Sourceforge site. / Ki: I don't want to talk you out of this, and I'll bet Fooker will be turning cartwheels once he finds out, but are you sure this is the right course? Opening up that code can have pros and cons. / Nick: I'm sure. This thing has a great start, but think how it will grow with an entire community behind it! The spirit of open source is sharing and communication. / Ki: If you want it to have a great start, I think you should name it something other than "zkrmfgq". / Nick: It's... sort of a tradition, that, and it's the only ".com" domain still available.
http://www.gpf-comics.com/d/20100301.html
General Protection Fault--The Comic Strip 3-3-2010 Nick (thinking): There. The site for my new open source project "zkrmfgq" is up and running. Now I wait for the community to coalesce around it. / So Nick dutifully waits.............. / and waits........................ / Nick (thinking): Yup. Any second now...
http://www.gpf-comics.com/d/20100303.html
General Protection Fault--The Comic Strip 3-5-2010 Ki: I keep meaning to ask. It's been a few days. How is "Project ZKRMFGQ" coming? / Nick: I was just checking before we headed out to work. / Ki: Hey! It looks like someone posted on your forum! / Nick: I wonder if it's a patch or support question... / Nick and Ki are incredulous as to what they read in the forum... / Ki: I don't think she's into the type of sharing you had in mind... / Nick: With software like that, she definitely needs support.
http://www.gpf-comics.com/d/20100305.html
 
General Protection Fault--The Comic Strip 3-8-2010 Days pass... / Nick (thinking): Finally! People are commenting on the "ZKRMFGQ" forum! / Wartortle (from on screen): Awesome app, Gort! But I think I found a bug in parser.c, line 342. You failed to initialize a variable before use. See the attached patch. Hope this helps. - Wartortle / Nick (typing response): Thanks for contributing. Unfortunately, I think you misunderstood the meaning of the code. The allocated memory is not initialized on purpose, adding a small bit of randomness to the entropy pool. I'm rejecting your patch, but please contribute again. - Gort / Wartortle (from on screen): What kind of tyrant *are* you? Too afraid to let anyone touch your precious code? This is open source pal! If you can't take the heat, stay out of the source repository...
http://www.gpf-comics.com/d/20100308.html
General Protection Fault--The Comic Strip 3-10-2010 Nick's 'ZKRMFGQ" project is not going well... / Nick (typing): No, you can't iterate over the entire data tree. That negates all performance gains from the look-up hash and quadruples the size of the look-ahead buffer. - Gort / JDF (typing): But if you don't scan the whole tree, you can't compute the average of all node values. - JDF / Nick (typing): We don't need the average! That functionality was never in the original spec. / cwright (typing): I have a feature request. I need to generate a report based on this data. Can you add a sorting feature on arbitrary columns? - cwright / Nick (typing): That's beyond the scope of the tool and would bloat the code. Dump it to a CSV and import it into Excel. / jbacon (typing): This patch will make it sort, collate, fluff, and fold! :D - jbacon / Nick (typing): THAT'S NOT WHAT THE PROGRAM DOES!! - Gort / merlyn (typing): I need it to read email. thx - merlyn
http://www.gpf-comics.com/d/20100310.html
General Protection Fault--The Comic Strip 3-12-2010 Ki: What's wrong, sweetie? Problems with your "ZKRMFGQ" project? / Nick: I've been voted out. / Ki: You've been voted out of your own project? / Nick: I refused to expand it beyond its original scope. I was "holding it back. Stifling innovation. Not a team player. A closed source bigot". / Nick: Since then, it's been forked three times and none of the new projects contain any of the functionality of the original. My simple little tool has bloated to a 350GB behemoth. The ultimate "killer app" has been killed. / Nick: At least I backed up the pre-release source to our external drive before it was pillaged. / Ki: About that...
http://www.gpf-comics.com/d/20100312.html
General Protection Fault - The Comic Strip - 3-15-2010 TV Announcer: And now the latest "Dancing With The Stars" rumors! / Nick (thinking): What the... / Nick: "Dancing With The Stars"? Don't tell me you two actually plan to watch that garbage... / Ki: Are you kidding? We love it! / Sharon: It's about the only reality show worth watching! It's fast paced, entertaining, and unconventional. / Ki: It also doesn't have the false drama and backstabbing you see on most reality shows these days. / Sharon: The new season starts next week, but we can't get enough the rumors so far. / Ki: Don't worry. We'll switch apartments each week so we'll only annoy you and Fooker every other week.
http://www.gpf-comics.com/d/20100315.html
General Protection Fault--The Comic Strip 3-17-2010 Nick: I never would have pegged you two for "Dancing With The Stars" fans. / Sharon: It's probably our favorite show now. / Sharon: The competition is fierce and genuinely entertaining. Some of the stars are actually really good, and even those who aren't usually give it a really good try. There's drama from injuries, nervous anticipation for the results... / Ki: It's also educational, after a fashion. I've learned more about ballroom dancing from this show that I ever knew before. It's a very athletic competition, but with a poise and grace you'll never find in another sport. / Sharon: And let's not forget the sexy pros in their skin-tight outfits, like Derek Hough... mmm... / Ki: Don't point that out with Edyta Sliwinska on the screen... / <> / Nick: Hello...
http://www.gpf-comics.com/d/20100317.html
General Protection Fault--The Comic Strip 3-17-2010 Nick: I never would have pegged you two for "Dancing With The Stars" fans. / Sharon: It's probably our favorite show now. / Sharon: The competition is fierce and genuinely entertaining. Some of the stars are actually really good, and even those who aren't usually give it a really good try. There's drama from injuries, nervous anticipation for the results... / Ki: It's also educational, after a fashion. I've learned more about ballroom dancing from this show that I ever knew before. It's a very athletic competition, but with a poise and grace you'll never find in another sport. / Sharon: And let's not forget the sexy pros in their skin-tight outfits, like Derek Hough... mmm... / Ki: Don't point that out with Edyta Sliwinska on the screen... / <> / Nick: Hello...
http://www.gpf-comics.com/d/20100317.html
 

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