Posts by Mike Flugennock

Re: "My heart would be a fireball...!"

Same here, man. That theme was stuck in my head for days afterwards.

Re: It's empty!

"...If the computer fails you're kinda up the creek anyway; it's not like you're going to take manual control and pilot it down yourself..."

Uhhmmm... y'mean, the way Neil Armstrong seized control and steered the LM clear of a boulder field that the computer was steering them into on the way down to Tranquillity?

Re: It's empty!

That's as maybe, but the Space Shuttle cockpit -- which you show in its last iteration before the fleet was decommissioned -- looks waaaayyy cooler. Reminds me a lot of this.

Just for comparison, here's STS-1 crewmen Young and Crippen in the Columbia cockpit, circa 1981. There's two small computer displays, and the rest is all "traditional" gauges, readouts, and classic "8-ball" displays, bearing a closer resemblance to the old Apollo CM panels than the later "glass cockpit" the Shuttles were flying in the last years before they were retired.

Re: Hooray!

Seriously, awesome reveal.

Maybe after this, Musk should consider adopting a large white Persian cat.

Re: It's empty!

"If that were the set for a sci-fi film you'd be laughed at -- not nearly enough in the way of switches, lights and buttons."

Not only that, but not nearly enough pointless and meaningless switches, lights and buttons -- at least, for a 1950s "B" sci-fi filck.

Actually, the instrumentation in Dragon V2 looks more like the instrument panels in the spacecraft in Kubrick's 2001 -- lots of video panels displaying multiple types of engineering and flight data, and which look as if they have an actual function and purpose.

Re: That's what my boss used to shout

Well, Apple may want me to think I "need" a new phone every year, but the wife and I luckily have the good sense to know better.

Re: What a load of left wing crap

Hey, man, watch it.

I happen to be a "left-wing tree hugger", and I nonetheless think this is the rock-stupidest excuse for a "research study" I've seen come down the pike in years.

Re: I do both

My wife has a Netflix subscription, but she uses it far more often than I do; I've seen their selection, and there's not a whole lot there I'm interested in -- the new season of Arrested Development Netflix commissioned, some older (pre-1970) movies, and all of maybe half a dozen episodes of MST3K -- out of the ten-year run of that show.

Pretty much all of what I like I have stashed on local physical media -- some of it on commercially-produced DVDs, a lot of it on DVD-R's I've ripped of old movies and shows I taped off of cable when they were originally broadcast, or as mpeg4 downloads from archive.org in the case of many of my favorite obscure old '50s "B" movies.

The only time I've watched Netflix recently is on those nights when my wife and I settle in for an episode or three of Arrested Development as I've been trying to work my way through the new season before I go back and look at the old stuff, or maybe a couple of episodes of The IT Crowd -- and even then, I've still got my eye out for a good deal on DVD sets of both.

Re: For added irony, on the story's page

"I try to be a "kind reader" and leave the ads un-blocked, but any day now the new habit of auto-play video ads at full volume is going to push me over the edge..."

I'm amazed that they're pulling that shit again, after all the hell-raising about fifteen years or so ago. About twenty years ago, when I first moved over the Web design from print work, one of the first things I learned is that auto-playing embedded media was a big, fat no-no.

Luckily, I see pretty much none of that crap as I'm running SeaMonkey with ABP, FlashBlock, and NoScript.

Careful what you wish for...

- Self-driving cars

I'm sorry, but there isn't a single phrase in the English language these days that scares the living piss out of me quite like "self-driving cars".

- Real 3D TV with a proper 360 degree "walk-all-the-way-around-it" viewing angle (possibly even walk inside it)

Oh, hot damn. Just what I've dreamed of -- the ability to walk through a scene from Two And A Half Men.

Re: Print dialogs

I can't say for sure for other applications, but Photoshop has a simple "print one" menu choice. It doesn't throw up the standard print/setup dialog, it Just Fucking Prints One.

Re: We Were Promised Jetpacks

Jetpacks, for me, rank right up there with flying cars as far as things that look really cool in the movies but which would be positively hellish in real life.

Remember all our discussions of how horrible air traffic would be if all those idiot drivers on the highways suddenly had flying cars?

Now, imagine all those knucklenobs with their own personal jetpacks... if you dare.

Re: No way near Homeopathic standards..

Major brands of commercially mass-produced American beer are like making love to a beautiful woman in a canoe...

There, fixed it for you. (;^> ...but, yeah, you're pretty much right -- and I'm an American.

May I suggest Dogfish Head 60-Minute IPA...?

Re: Feline quantum particles

Whew, I'm sure glad I'm not the only one whose cat seems to know where all the space-time wrinkles are in the house... and our Minnie, being strictly an indoor cat, has had the better part of a decade to find all the "wrinkles" in our house. I honestly didn't know we had that many.

Still, she does that stupid bit where she crawls under the sofas to sleep and acts as if we can't see her even though she leaves her tail sticking out. Little stinker.

Re: Speakers...

I recall once hearing about a style of mixing in the early/mid '60s known as the "car radio mix" -- that is, tracks purposely mixed so they'd sound good on a car radio, which is where most teenagers were listening to their rock'n'roll at the time. Of course, this was before sophisticated car stereo systems really started taking off.

So, if you're listening to a digital reissue of an old Paul Revere And The Raiders album and wondering why the low end sounds so flat and "punchy", it's because it was originally mixed to be heard on the seven-inch dashboard speaker of a car radio, not your big fancy modern system at home.

turntable issue

I can remember in the late '80s, early '90s, people talking up the sound quality of CDs by pointing out how crappy LPs sounded. When they failed to mention that by the early '90s, almost every possible component in turntables -- even supposedly high-end tables -- was being made of plastic. So, if your LPs sounded like crap back then, it's likely because they were being played on those crappy late '80s consumer-grade turntables full of crap plastic parts.

That's the problem with those USB turntables they're advertising to people who want to burn digital copies of their LPs -- it's a good idea, except that they're using those same kind of crap turntables full of plastic parts.

If you're trying to preserve any old LPs you have that are still in good shape, you'd be better off with a proper DJ turntable with the proper set of adapting connectors.

Re: Comment of the day.

The fold-out cover of my old vinyl copy of Yes' Close To The Edge was so heavily used for this purpose that I suspect that even today I could extract tiny flecks of marijuana from the centerfold crease.