Posts by John Gamble

Re: Haven't you seen Fringe ?

Given a hypothetical bomb that size, who says the objective has to be depressurization?

Even if it "only" managed to kill one person, do you really think the rational action afterwards would be to fly on to the scheduled destination? Especially since the crew wouldn't know if that was the only device on the plane.

Re: Not quite

Yep, My grandfather's too, training for the RAF in Canada. He always said that given the average lifespan of WWI pilots, he was very lucky the war ended before he got shipped over.

Re: Ominous.

Libertarians are something completely different

No, Libertarians claim to be something completely different. It's the same old money-shuffling scam, with a whiff of feudalism added.

The Only Failure Here...

... is your inability to hear the whooshing over your head.

Re: "You could make a random number generator"

Atmospheric noise (and other sources) have been done, although I suppose you'd want a plugin device instead of a web site. To quote myself from over a year ago:

Other sites that have done this: Lavarnd (<http://www.lavarnd.org/>, yes, randomness from a lava lamp), Hotbits (<http://www.fourmilab.ch/hotbits/>, "Genuine random numbers, generated by radioactive decay"), and Random.org (<http://www.random.org/>, which uses atmospheric noise).

Well... actually, we commentards had to nag them into doing it. But to their credit, they are now doing it.

Thank you, reviewers.

Re: Interesting

All the "don't do it" comments just show that the terrorists have won.

Considering the no-sense-of-humor types have been in place since planes were hijacked to Cuba, the terrorists (current batch) are just a variation on an old theme. Only the things to watch for have changed.

Hyperbole

Okay... I dislike our current copyright system, and bravo to Australia for shining a light on TPPA negotiations, but "running the US software industry into the ground"? Cite, please?

Speaking of citations, crediting the National Commission on Excellence in Education's famous quote to Jerry Pournelle says something about your own education.

Re: Huddle?

But he didn't say he was in the U.S.

(Plus, a quick search confirmed this. I sometimes feel A.C. postings should be automatically penalized with a -1 penalty at the start.)

Re: I'm on it

What, you prefer that over Slippery Rock's high-tech cooling system?

(Actually, I could see combining the two... hmm.)

Re: The best one?

Yes, the problem with judging the best is that one has to also consider the quality of the scripts. I think Peter Davidson could easily have ranked higher in viewers' estimations if the script quality hadn't started dropping around that time.

(Is it my imagination or did Davidson get saddled with a large number of scripts with downer endings, including Tegan's departure?)

I came in with Tom Baker, and still rank him highly, but I really like Smith, who seems to have incorporated much of what I like about Baker and Troughton in his performance.

None if you live in a well-lit city, but in more remote areas the ability to have the home lights on before you get home is a plus.

The internet-lightbulb is something of a straw dog anyway. The question is rather "what devices would it make sense to remotely control", and while the fanboi-types will certainly go overboard, in my case the ability to remotely monitor the temperature (and choose to turn on the air-conditioning) would be a plus for example. Or to turn on the outdoor lights.

Re: Inferior glass - Don’t be silly.

Honestly, the notion that I could pound like a gorilla is actually flattering.

Somewhat relevant: 1971 American Tourister commercial.

Re: Am I the only American who wants U of M to lose?

Well... the refusal to lend out tools isn't a great attitude, but on the other hand they at least aren't saying anything like this:

They are probably staying in the best hotels too.

So you're from Ohio?

Re: I'd love to know

It's in the "no data" category , but that just raises the question of why there is no data. I certainly didn't notice any thought police hanging around on my last few trips up North.

Re: ... their half dozen terminal sessions.

I ... rarely had more than three sessions going at a time. I feel so inadequate now.

Re: …all written in C, … no easy way to hitch it to a Python app

Yeah, the Perl, Python, and Ruby communities would like to have a word with you...

(Presumably other languages too.)

Re: I looked at the code.

Here is a real-world example of what happens to security when you have blinders on:

A gaping security hole has existed in a popular open source tool for literally years because the maintainers just can't accept that they have a weakness.

Ouch. I was completely unaware of this, and I've used FileZilla. Thank you for the heads-up.

Re: Psychostats

The unforced style did catch my eye too (also my favorite, SWIFT, which had the best unforced style, didn't make it to the voting list).

Plus the mild rudeness (as opposed to gross rudeness) was a plus.

Re: Lava lamp

Yup. Brief history courtesy of The Straight Dope: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/568/how-do-lava-lamps-work

Re: They are held in memory

Thank you, that was clear and informative and deserves an extra fifty up votes.

Re: Too Little, Too Late

Sure, and the reason one would want a 68000 chip is to run a MacOS. Oh, wait...

The x86 chips are not going away yet, true, and they may hold the lead for a very long time, but it's not guaranteed that they'll still hold the majority. What's going to drive chip choice now is the software that runs on it, and there are plenty of platforms that would be equally happy running on a PowerPC as on an x86 chip.

Re: lol smartwatches

Shrug. I've been wearing my Pebble for months now. It does exactly what (as an extension to my phone) I want without going overboard (I don't need an Android operating system on my watch).

Wearable tech is fine as long as has the features you actually need.

Re: curly bracket hell....

Huh. Was there a time when punch cards and curly braces ever intersected?

(The only time I ever used punch cards was for the CDC 6000 series of machines, and braces were not in its character set.)