Posts by Gene Cash
778 posts • joined Thursday 22nd March 2007 15:34 GMT
Re: if you dont want to root, and
Or perhaps buy a Nexus 4, which is about as stock as it gets, plus Google's been good about updating mine - so far...
Re: 'My fucking screen is blank!'
That's Google AdWords, actually. I never knew eBay had so many items of mass destruction for sale! Are we invading them next?
Thumbs up for accurate reporting
I have to send a virtual beer to Lester, since it's well done and balls-on accurate. I can't even nitpick it. That's really rare for anything space-related.
Re: Missing
Things tried? V* didn't even get a finished vehicle. They used the tank problems as an excuse to cancel it.
Re: Don't you just love ...
Yes, he is, and for more than just this. Think what would have happened if Tim Berners-Lee had patented HTML? That's pretty much what Nelson did with his "Project Xanadu" - basically nowhere.
Look at xanadu.com and tell me he's not a total crackpot.
So...
The thing lands on the asteroid, perturbing the orbit just enough that it actually hits Earth. Oops! I guess that's as close as I get to a tinfoil hat icon.
Re: Understandable
"you will have to think"
That's seemingly impossible for anyone *I've* seen on the road recently. Between their texting, turning around to yell at Little Johnny, or dicking with their sat-nav, they've been doing anything but thinking about their driving.
Re: bad manners
Thanks. Much appreciated!
Re: Lobbyists Are ANTI-DEMOCRATIC
Sorry, here in the US I pay the NRA (even though I don't have any guns) and the AMA (Amer. M'cycle Assn) to lobby against things like stupid gun laws, stupid motorcycle laws, and ethanol in my gas. I have to fight big organizations like the corn farmer lobby, so my money is best spent on professional lobbyists. I do my own letter-writing (NOT emailing) as well. I also voted against that religious freak in the last election.
Lobbyists are elected by me, accountable to me through the NRA/AMA magazines, and definitely wanted. For example, the AMA defeated several Home Owners Associations trying to ban motorcycle ownership.
I can't think of anything else I can do to be more involved in the democratic process, as I don't have the time to do political volunteering/campaigning.
"third secretary of the political department"
That sounds like it belongs in the '60s era Russian embassy, not the current US one.
So are their CIA operatives giggling their asses off right now, going "oh my GOD, he ACTUALLY DID IT!"??
Takeoffs are easy, it's landings that are a bitch
*Especially* carrier landings. If you read the Wired story, (http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/05/drone-carrier/) which is a bit more skeptical, you'll see they admit to having problems with this. When they do that autonomously, then I'll be seriously impressed.
Speaking of autonomous, I'm surprised you didn't notice (rise of the machines and all that) that this is an autonomous drone, which is more told where to go and what to do, than continuously hand-flown like the USAF vehicles. So it's a lot more robot than model airplane.
Re: Reliability??
Sorry, I've had spinning rust drives die just as dramatically. I've had a Western Digital die when I put my glasses on the external case. I've had several Western Digital and a Seagate just refuse to do anything except spin up.
For the obvious reasons I do cold backups of my system on the 1st & 15th of the month, and I've no problem taking my chances with SSD. They can't be any worse.
Re: Why...
They use rockets attached to the parachute bridle, activated by a simple altimeter just before touchdown. You can see the puff of smoke if the helicopters are close enough in time. If the rockets don't fire, it can be spinal injuries and chipped teeth, but they're pretty reliable.
Vladimir Komorov had major issues with his spacecraft, and ended up in a spin so his chutes immediately wound up when they deployed. He had a complete train of failures and misdesigned crap, so he was pretty pissed off.
I do remember there was one Soyuz that ended up surrounded by wolves, so they now carry knives & pistols.
Still, I'd ride a Soyuz, Shuttle, Dragon, or just about anything, even a Boeing product, to get into orbit. Boeing can't even keep their capsule from cracking during the pressure test though.
Hm.
I think Saturn V could have put up the American segment in 3 launches. Of course it would look very different, not being constrained to fit bits into a Shuttle cargo bay.
The best thing to note
This took only 48 hours from "oops, that looks bad" to blokes going out the airlock.
I think NASA deserves kudos for being able to get something done (and done well) on that sort of timescale with an operation this complex.
It seems a lot of people are switching away from Adobe
Just a data point. I read a lot of web comics (during off-work hours of course!) and a lot (5 out of about a dozen) of the artists are switching away from Adobe because of this.
There's a lot of contention on what they're switching to (Manga Studio being a front runner, but definitely not GIMP) but they are all switching away specifically to avoid the subscription bit. One guy remarked that he's used Photoshop ever since he learned to draw a long time ago, and never used anything else, so Adobe is scaring off some core customers here.
Re: "shot dead at his house while playing dominoes"
Ah ok. A couple daring restaurants tried the swipe-it-yourself wireless terminal and found Americans were too dumb/lazy to figure it out. It was quickly canned.
"shot dead at his house while playing dominoes"
Damn, these dudes play like my grandfather!
Seriously though, a question for the Brits: When you go to a restaurant, sit down, have your meal, In the US the waitress brings the bill, you stick the card in there, she goes back and swipes it for the amount (and possibly writes the number & for fraud later), brings it back, you take the card, note down the tip and leave. The amount goes on your card and is later updated with the tip amount.
How does that work in the UK? How would chip/pin affect it? I'd think chip/pin would kill the "go back and swipe" step. Or do I misunderstand?
Re: What on Earth is the point?
Accounting is a really tedious, boring, and sucky job, and if they wanted me to do it, they'd have to pay me those sorts of numbers.
Re: SSDs, I believe, have now overtaken memory as the single most cost-effective upgrade
Yes, a SSD completely rejuvenated an old laptop of mine. My boss stuck an SSD into his Apple thingie and complains that it was a total waste of money, so that just may be OSX vs. Linux. Perhaps OSX doesn't take that much advantage of an SSD. My boss is actually rather technical, so I don't think that's the problem.
"attack on ... Bookmarks"
WTF? EXPN? That would be "instant shitcan" in my book, if I'm interpreting this correctly.
Speaking of M1A1...
I think I see one disguised in the new floral camouflage in the middle background...
"All the data is transferred and controlled via a private cloud network"
Seriously? So if Amazon goes down (again) so do our drones?
Re: Weasel words maybe?
Pffft. I got "you're a victim of counterfeiting" about 10 minutes after I installed my store-bought copy of Windows 7. So I installed a crack. There endeth my little experiment in actually buying Microsoft software.
Re: Maybe.....
And a competent ISP to manage it. I have to have a VPN account to get any sort of throughput, and it's not just YouTube, it's also NASA TV and a whole slew of other things.
The network hauls butt when I turn VPN on, so they do have decent hardware, they've just buggered it beyond belief.
CNC milling machines are expensive as hell compared to 3D printers, and not that easy to use, even if you already have a tape describing gun parts.
Re: Getting the popcorn ready for the arrival of the shrill shills
I only recognize terrorists when they're carrying a pressure cooker....
GRANDMA!!! NO! IT'S NOT WORTH IT! NOT THE BAKED BEANS!!!!
Re: X-51
I don't think so... for a government project, it's "pick one of fast, accurate, or cheap"
Seriously though, this is a hell of an accomplishment.
Doing science while black
As a Florida resident, it's pretty obvious a white child wouldn't have had a problem. People are incredibly racist around here. Icon for what deserves to be done to the place.
"Hi-tech balloon control system"
So apparently they were two sheets to the wind?
Re: Silly Ruling
But the point he's trying to make is it's not an "obscure gotcha clause" or misleading adverting. It's a simple fact you need to repay your loan for the phone. And it's not bait and switch, T-Mobile is a lot more clear on their terms than AT&T or Verizon, in my personal experience, which is why they're now my provider.
We need to go after twats like Verizon, that refused 5 attempts to pay my ETF, to the point I had to file an FCC complaint.
Re: RE: ... is not a viable business case.
Ah yes, the same Brighthouse where the billing system has special code to defeat any attempt to paste in your checking account number and routing number, or your name (which must match their records exactly, including misspelling, punctuation and mis-capitalization)
The same Brighthouse where I filed an FCC complaint about them highjacking my DNS, causing SAMBA to break, then they said "hey, you can use Google's DNS, case closed!" and I had to reopen it.
The same Brighthouse where I couldn't view youtube videos w/o insane amounts of buffering (and other network issues) so I opened a VPN account and started naming'n'shaming on Twitter where Brighthouse started following me and anything I tweeted about suddenly stopped being an issue, despite all the tech support tickets I filed being totally ignored.
Then we can discuss Verizon, where my attempts to pay my ETF 1) in-store when I closed my account, 2) through the website, 3) over the phone, and 4) back at the store again were all rejected until I filed yet another FCC complaint.
I am watching Virgin get smacked about with no small amount of glee.
Brits complaining about space?
Isn't that a bit rich considering you can barely put a lego figure on a balloon?
But yes, the Orbital system is apparently a method for diverting COTS money to some DoD pork barrel buddies, since Boeing has totally failed in their attempt to grab some.
You missed the fact that the Antares first stage is basically Ukrainian designed and made, even ignoring the engines.
Re: God I hate politicians...
But I don't **want** to support local businesses! They never have anything in stock that I want, nor do they want to obtain it. The amount of hassle for a special order is insane.
So I go in and manage to convince a clerk to order something for me. This is usually a 20 minute hassle in and of itself. Then I have to make sure they order the right goddamn thing.
Then I wait 2 weeks and call, only to find out it either arrived a week ago and nobody called like promised, or no one knows what the hell I am talking about.
Finally, someone admits to knowing what I'm talking about and that my item might be in. I drive back down to find out no, it isn't, they made a mistake and they have no clue when it's supposed to be in. It could also be that step #1 failed and they ordered the wrong thing. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.
On the off chance it's actually there, they need a store manager to release the item to me, as they haven't been trained in the procedure and they don't want to take the responsibility. After another hour, I'm able to drive back home through the traffic.
Or I could sit down at the computer, go clicketyclick, enter a number off a plastic card, and wait a week for it to be dropped at my doorstep.
I do not want money from this procedure to go towards supporting the first set of retarded poo-flinging drooling morons.
Re: They should be shot
Twice. Then beaten with a pipe.
Posted in Yahoo! Axes! Yet! More! Products!
Re: The difference between Google and Yahoo!
I actually had to Google "yahoo kids" and "yahoo sms" to find out what they were...
Google does the same thing
Google Voice on Android has a "save samples for better recognition" checkbox but there is zero information on where it's saved (server, I assume) or how long.
Posted in Antares aborted after launchpad mishap
It's an ethernet cable that fell out
Which is why it takes 24 hours for another launch, it takes that long for the network guy to get out there.
Re: to be that guy
No, it's not. I just want a plain 'ol Android phone with whatever the latest OS is, so I can run the apps I want.
I might root it to get rid of Castle Defender, TwitBook or whatever other shovelware, but that's it. I have done the custom rom thing, and I just don't have the time to dick with all that.
So I got a non-contract, straight-off-Play, Nexus 4 hooked up to a SIM-only T-Mobile account. Now Google can't whine about carriers, it's got to put up or shut up. And if they disappoint me, I'll be sorely pissed.
Crap battery management
Old devices had really small batteries, so they paid attention to where every microwatt went.
Nowadays, they don't seem to care. For example, if I'm working at home all day using wi-fi, and I manually switch off mobile data on my Nexus 4, the battery will last at least 2, maybe 3 days.
If I don't switch it off, I see instances where I turn it on after a while and it's using BOTH wi-fi and mobile data, and the battery life is evaporating like chocolate in a laser beam.
And this is Google's supposedly most advanced top-of-the-line Android. Idiots.
Posted in Antares aborted after launchpad mishap
"they don't build 'em like they used to"
One reason they're doing 8 ISS missions that they only have enough engines for 2 test flights and 8 production flights:
http://spaceflightnow.com/antares/demo/130416aj26/
"If you want to get an engine like this, you can't find it in the United States," Eberly said. "I think it speaks to the state of the liquid propulsion industry in the United States."
Zing.
"Russia is working on a light version of the Soyuz rocket which will use one NK-33 engine on the first stage."
First I heard of that!
"met in a secret session"
That pretty much gives me all the reason I need to oppose it.
They haven't caught up to real books
I was rather surprised to see the Android reader doesn't even support footnotes when I was re-reading one of my Terry Pratchett favorites.
I can't underline/circle interesting things, which I do with a lot of my technical books, nor can I mark important things that I want to refer to later.
Another big surprise is there are usually no illustrations and they're poor if they're there. They're tiny little things and I have had trouble zooming to see important detail.
Then there was the instance of DRM where I couldn't browse at lunch because I had no wi-fi or cell connection so it could call home.
Maybe in another 5-10 years...
"lightweight carbon nanotubes"
"Ah, carbon nanotubes. They are to modern half-assed science fiction what "radiation" was to half-assed science fiction fifty years ago." -- Jeph Jacques
My ancient Samsung had two
I live in humid Florida and my first cellphone was some matchbox size Samsung flip phone back in the mid '90s. It stopped working a month after I got it, and T-Mobile looked at the "water detector" and said "nope, it's been wet"
Of course I'd treated it like gold because it was my first phone and very expensive for a starving student at the time. The sales droid pulled out a brand new phone and handed it to me. I pulled out the battery and bingo, the water detector sticker was just as red as my phone. I just looked at her. I didn't say a word.
So I got a replacement free of charge.
Re: Anyone can recommend a better browser?
Yeah, but it's a hell of a lot better than anything else I've tried on Android, including Maxthon, Dolphin, Chrome, Opera mini, or the stock browser.
My main desktop problem on Firefox is related to a hang caused by a crappy Java app my company insists on using (mainly because we wrote the POS) and I'm running Debian Testing.
"Is IARPA the new name for DARPA or an expansion of them?"
No, according to their "history" page, they're just an unrelated direct rip off and they've only been around since '06
"IARPA’s structure was modeled on that of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency" and the name was intended to confusing funding congressmen.
Re: Google keeping Austin weird?
Competition helps. My Brighthouse connection in Orlando was total shit[1] until Comcast and AT&T showed up, now it is merely piss-poor, but I do get 1mb/sec on occasion now. Obviously AT&T's announcement shows they're worried even though they apparently have no idea what to do except "do the same thing"
I used to have an AT&T landline until they started calling 2-3 times a day about U-Verse and wouldn't stop. I do hope Google bends 'em over really hard and drives a robot car right up there.
[1] total shit as in I couldn't play multiplayer on XBOX Live w/o dropping games and being accused of cheating by Bungie. On "broadband" cable.
Re: Just goes to show, if you have enough money..
Exactly... I can see a bunch of the top Silicon Valley guys being Trekkies, especially Brin, Page, or Wozniak.
