Licensing and fair usage
What license does Eternally Confuzzled use? Can you copypasta my stuff? Yes! The content on this site is public domain, and
I couldn't care less what you use or how you use it. Anything else would defeat the purpose of the site, which is to facilitate
knowledge transfer and make life easier for programmers. I don't even care if you copy entire articles verbatim and place them
elseweb. They wouldn't be updated to match the latest site, but that's your problem, not mine. :)
All that said, I can't make it clear enough that I accept no responsibility at all for damages caused by direct use of content
or modified content. I don't anticipate any such damages, but public domain means you're on your own. Do what you will, and
don't come crying to me if something breaks. If any of my published content is wrong or broken somehow, I'd love to hear about
it so I can fix it here, of course. Feedback is always welcome; that hasn't changed. Further, I'll be happy to respond with
my thoughts and suggested fixes for your problems, and those are public domain as well.
Long story short, help yourself. Though in legal terms I'm completely off the hook for what you choose to do. Keep that in mind.
Random numbers are hard
For the most part feedback on this site has been positive (yay!) Well, except for one article in particular. I've read some
scathing criticism of the Using rand() article. That's all well and good; I can handle
criticism, and in fact welcome it. :) What disturbs me is that the criticism was well warranted.
From a minor mistake in terminology, to major mistakes that contradict everything, to being flat out wrong in places, I
reviewed the criticism thoroughly and found the article wanting. I have no excuse and apologise for the quality of information.
This was one of my earliest articles, and either I was too rushed to get something published or had a not uncommon bout of
insanity when writing it. Something needed to be done, as I wasn't willing to let things stand as they were.
So what to do? I seriously considered dropping the article entirely, but it's referenced enough that doing so would be
unwise. In the end I decided to rewrite it. This somewhat flies in the face of my goals for this site as there are other
articles in the webosphere that cover the same information with more detail. In fact, one of the criticisms was "this is
the same as my article with less information", and that's fair. However, another one of my goals is to make the information
accessible, and the other articles in question were a little too deep of a dive to meet that goal. So I think mine still
has value.
The new article is basically a "don't use rand" article with introductory explanations of why and suggested alternatives.
Hopefully the rewrite addresses most criticisms while still adhering to the spirit of Eternally Confuzzled. Time will tell. :)