Posts by Gene Cash 6945 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Mar 2007
> reruns of them that many times on bog standard broadcast TV.
Yup, can confirm... if ST had been as apparently popular when it was still running as when it was syndicated, we would have had 20 seasons instead of 3.
As it was, when you see the same 79 episodes 30 times each (mainly since they're the only interesting thing on the damn TV) then you learn to recognize them.
As a kid, I was always confused why the "The Gamesters of Triskelion" was being held on The Isle of Man.
(and now I'm the guy with a 4ft Playmobil Enterprise, and I even wrote an Android app to do the Bluetooth commands to operate it)
> Mars -- obviously the thin atmosphere
But we didn't know that. Mariner IV, which returned the first pictures of another planet (the day I was born) discovered:
1) It was a dry, cratered place with no water, which was a big surprise
2) the atmosphere was only 4% of the thickness expected, which is quite a result
3) temperatures were FAR lower than expected, -100C instead of roughly +10C to -10C
And those were hard scientific expectations, not from sci-fi authors.
Yes, but I think removing every single hatch on 27km of pipe is asking a bit much, and this is a good idea to narrow down the work.
As per This approach allows engineers to address specific points along the 27 km collider, UKAEA says, without having to disassemble sections of pipe and use a manual endoscope to inspect for defects.
Actually BK, McDs, and Wendys are all circling the drain because of their outmoded business model.
They're still stuck in the '80s-'90s trying to sell fast really cheap crap. Unfortunately, because of inflation, their stuff isn't so cheap any more, but it's still crap.
Meanwhile, Culvers, 5 Guys, Shake Shack, In-N-Out, Whataburger, etc are killing them because they sell decent food, even though it's not cheap. Granted, a meal at 5 Guys is $15-$20 per person, but you eat a burger with real meat and lots of it, on real bread, with the specific real toppings you asked for, plus a metric assload of fries. You come out saying "that was a GOOD lunch" not "well at least I'm not hungry any more"
Culvers also sells stuff like pretzel bites, good onion rings, cheese curds, good fish (sometimes even walleye when it's in season), butterfly shrimp, reubens, and pot roast sandwiches, which are all things BK & McDs can't compete with.
I remember the last time I was at a Wendy's. They had one of those newfangled customer ordering kiosks that McDs started, that was all the rage.
You know what it was? It was one of the registers turned around. Seriously. They were expecting me to ring up my own god damn order.
That was 5 years ago, and I haven't been back since.
BK, McDs, and Wendys are only surviving because there will always be the "I only have $4 and I'm hungry" crowd.
Me too... when I go to McDs at 4 or 5 in the god damn morning, it's because I WANT A BURGER!
If I wanted a goddamned breakfast, I'd go to the Denny's or Waffle House across the street!
And McDs does the nastiest, most plastic breakfast on the planet. I feel like I'm eating the foam photography model for the ad, and not actual food.
I've already spent 3 days fighting systemd trying to set up a system to upload camera images when it's plugged in as a USB device. It would not let me manage an asynchronous information window of any kind.
That's the sort of crap that caused me to stop using Windows.
I switched to Devuan and I was able to write udevd scripts to do what I needed to do in a couple hours.
So it's a real issue and not a "holy war"
When I was in middle school, we had a field trip to the local women's prison. Not sure why.
Note that my school was a private one, operated by a Lutheran church. It's why I'm atheist today.
Anyway, our supervising teacher was very handsome, and I learned a LOT of things that day, including the fact that a human can actually turn "beet red", and that redheads can be redheaded all over, so to speak.
No idea how they thought this was a was a good idea, except it showed just how sheltered and out of touch with reality the school staff were.
On a more educational level, we once went to a jury trial in a murder case, after being instructed that anyone that let out so much as a peep during the proceedings would suffer dearly for it.
The case was declared a mistrial after the knife was passed around the jury for inspection with a label saying "murder weapon" and not "alleged murder weapon" and this left a very deep impression on me. It gave me quite a lot to think about for a very long time.
Holy cow.
Do you not remember the HUNDREDS of variations of Star Trek written in BASIC?
The magazines had a listing of one at least once every 3 months, and there was probably over a hundred computer magazines back then. Several for each line of computers, and then several for each variety of language. Stuff like "ANALOG" (Atari News And Lots Of Games), "TRS-80 Computing", "Creative Computing", "Dr. Dobbs", "Byte", "ACE" (Advanced Computer Entertainment), etc and those are just the big names I remember.
I won't ever buy an electric vehicle from ANYONE ever again. Chinese, Korean, American... I don't care.
It's all proprietary, and when it breaks, you get to keep both pieces. You have no recourse other than the original manufacturer, who holds ALL the cards. Getting it repaired is usually more expensive than a new vehicle, and if it's not, it's usually a 9-month-plus living hell.
Fuck that shit.
Been there, done that, got the t-shirt... and so have 3 of my friends, who have also experienced this pain.
I still use stuff I learned about order analysis and data structures. All the nuances of lists, arrays, doubly-linked lists, binary and n-ary trees, sorting, and what can bite you in the ass was invaluable. Being able to say "this inner loop is going to eat you alive" and explain why, has saved me quite a few times.
What caused them to fail?
Was it government red tape? Was it a lack of talent? Was it an inability to get various things a rocket needs that are sometimes difficult to acquire? Was it a lack of customers? Was it a poor business model? Was it just running things on too damn much of a shoestring?
A £20m UK government investment doesn't really even get one rocket finished.
I assume "A £6m followed" means they got £6m more funding, which is a drop in the bucket. That wouldn't even equip a small test stand.
It sounds like "we got a pat on the back and a 'good luck' and were left out to dry"
It's not "hallucination" and "misalignment"
It's "wrong" and "abusive"
"Hallucination" is an anthropomorphism that does not apply to statistical token generators.
"Misalignment" implies it's somehow slightly out of whack and it'll be fixed real soon when actually it's emitting harmful abusive speech.
Oh yeahhhh. I remember queueing up every Friday along with everyone else to deposit my paycheck.
Good times. I also remember people initially refusing direct deposit because they didn't trust it.
Don't forget: the most important product your company produces is your paycheck
I still have a screenshot from Octoshape Launcher Lib back in 2006 proudly saying "Could not find a native to execute"
I remember friends joking about it being the "General (Custer) Error" as he was an US Army general who ended up being executed by the natives.
More on topic, at lunch today I saw a sign proudly displaying "Start PXE over IPv4 on MAC: D8-5E-D3-81-32-13" which is apparently a Gigabyte motherboard address.
That was about the only thing on the sign, so I didn't figure it was interesting enough to submit.
People need to know that stuff is available, sure, but advertisers shouldn't be disruptive assholes with "punch the monkey", ads right in the middle of a sentence, and bouncing flashing crap.
I used to pay for TV and 20% of my TV time became ads. You only get 40 minutes content in an hour of US broadcast TV. At the rate I was paying for cable, I finally said enough.
I've bought things like a very expensive Sirius XM digital radio and subscription on the promise WE WILL NEVER HAVE ADS. That promise lasted about 18 months.
My local shopping center used to have a triangular kiosk that had maps showing where the hell you were, and where all the stores were. You know what it has now?
FUCKING ADS AND NO MAP ANYWHERE. And they wonder why their foot traffic is zero, because that "suck all your bucks out" attitude pervades the whole place and you can feel it.
Now god damned Google Maps shows places that have paid ad money rather than the places I searched for.
Plus all the stories of ads carrying malicious payloads.
So it's adblock on full and phasers to kill.
First off, the connector doesn't need keying. You align the hat board over the main board.
Second, it should be obvious you don't connect powered equipment unless it's specifically denoted as hotplug. The Pi is definitely not, and there are warnings to not do that.
Third, he did something this hamfisted and posted to the known universe about it? I'd look around with a guilty look and pray nobody saw me.
Because they have good food and you go there all the time? (Obviously I'm not talking about McDonald's)
It's easier at one of the local restaurants to sit at a table and order online than stand at the counter and order. You sit down, scan the QR for your table, and their ordering website is really well done and easy to use. I've been waiting for them to screw it up, but they actually implemented two of my suggestions for improvement.
Also keeps me from punching the fucktards that stand 20ft from the counter then insist they're in line when I step up.
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