Posts by Yag

"The Frenches on the other hand all drive badly"

Yeah, come on! they don't even keep driving on the left side of the road!

Re: Getting the popcorn ready for the arrival of the shrill shills

Yes, we're getting sick of hearing about past atrocities to justify present atrocities.

The ultimate way to secure source code

Corollary : The ultimate way to secure job.

"adblock is no better than stealing from a store."

And the hover-on full screen pop-up surround-sound-enabled flash ads are like a huge man jumping in front of you, blocking your way and yelling at you because you just took a short look at him.

"minister for the digital economy FFS"

Heh... You know, it's not the worse portfolio title in the current french government...

It is a subdivision of the ministry of industry, now renamed "Ministere du redressement productif".

I can't even figure out how to translate the thing. Google gives a somewhat lacking "Ministry of productive recovery".

Re: Legal oddity.

A bit erroneous...

It's not $8m/year, but $8m total losses in 2008 (calculated by "a libertarian think tank", so probably overestimated - but let's not start on it).

Here is the link to their study : http://reason.org/files/0ed1e38947a206981804b66dfd19b9f7.pdf

You will notice that they count both "Net operating and nonoperating expenses".

According to the first definition found in google (I like irony) : "Non-operating expenses may take a variety of forms. The most common type relate to interest charges or other costs of borrowing."

Soooo... Bond repayment included. The one the city will still have to repay.

If the losses minus the cost of the bonds are less than the operating profits, then this is not that a good deal for Provo as :

- They'll still have to repay the bond.

- They lose the asset unless Google bail out.

- Google won't have the burden of debt, will get profits from the start without even doing anything.

- Google won't bail out. Provo won't get the network back.

- Provo won't get some operating profits to offset the bond repayment.

- Citizens of provo will be even more burdened by taxes than if the city kept the network...

If operating losses are greater than the operating profit, then getting rid of the thing was indeed the right move.

Yes, I heard about the sunken cost fallacy, thank you. I also heard about agendas and the art of manipulation...

(DISCLAIMER : Building such a network in the first place was a f***'up. Everyone can agree with it. I wonder where the gravy went...)

Re: NK-33

Indeed, and the fact they still existed could have meant some time in the gulag for Nikolai Kuznetsov and his engineers, because orders were given to scrap everything related to the failure of the lunar launchers...

Watched and interesting documentary on this story : http://youtu.be/rEX0IHIn0_4

BTW, there's rumor of restart of production of this unique engine.

Re: The answer is simple

I've got a solution... Send in a KITTEN!

People will keep watching just to save the kitten :)

Unfortunately, i'm pretty sure animal right activitsts will be outraged by putting the poor kitten in this predicament.

Re: A Year To The Day.

Sure thing, and I will be late for my appointment at 30:05:00 PM.

Let's just says "-04-17" then, ISO 8601 is convenient to avoid issues with those strange people who can't get their dates straight...

"yet batteries are catching on fire on the new Boeings"

No, no... this was only a thermal runaway leading to cell venting, which is a protective feature of the battery... Airplane systems functioned as intended!

(Reference to http://787updates.newairplane.com/Boeing787Updates/media/Boeing787Updates/Certification/Webcast/Boeing-787-solution-presentation-English.pdf - As usual, the PR dept. gets far better funding than the engineering dept.)

Re: Is a degree worth the paper it is written on?

Not the right question... Should be instead

"Is a HR droid worth the money it is paid?"

Re: "Oh, and I am NOT a racist."

If there's no such thing as 'race', racism does not exist.

Not at all.

Shhhh...

*close eyes*

Those who are not racist may accept that 'races' exists, but :

- They also knows that, due to the long history of migrations, settlings, conflicts and rapes (good ol' days) there's no such thing as a 'pure race'

- They also knows what the concept of "racial purity" brought...

- They also acknowledge that the people they're talking to may have european/african/east asian/indian/plutonian* ancestry, but they simply *DON'T CARE* and talk to them as an individual. Being overcautious not to hurt "you people" seems actually quite racist to me...

* Well, i'm not racist, but those plutonian... They're not born on a real planet y'know...

Re: Araine 5 record

The first launch was a spectacular case of fail...

The backstory is quite sad however : No funding for adequate test means, reuse of the old Ariane 4 means, depression and suicide for some of the technical grunts who got all the blame on them...

Re: "...a desire to push out propaganda..."

Not... Really.

Propaganda is also used to demonize/ridiculize the opposing side and to enhance your own side image (by passing as a bunch of funny fellows for example).

ADDENDUM : Due to the overload of propaganda from both side (the famous Syrian Human Rights Committee is rumored to be nothing more than a propaganda office of the opposition), I'ld prefer NOT starting a flame war on this stuff.

The 1980's called - they want you to grab a big box of floppy disks and report for duty.

And the 1970's called - they want their mainframe/dumb terminal infrastructure back.