Posts by Captain DaFt 3821 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2007
If such a group actually exits that can pull off these logistics, somebody needs to be recruiting them for covert military operations! (Let's substitute soldier for sex worker and see what I mean!)
Think about it, 40,000 soldiers slipped into a country and nobody notices?
All of them bivouacked near/in a major metropolitan area and nobody notices?
All of them perform their assigned mission, then depart and nobody notices?
Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?
"With an estimated 500 million people living in the shadow of a volcano this is clearly not ideal,"
Ok, so half a billion people out of approximately 6.5 billion live too near a volcano....
According to my dodgy math skills, that's one thirteenth of the World's population....
I'd advise they move... Quickly!
WWII: You spent your deployment enduring all the horrors of war, then you and your chums were pulled behind the lines, sent to the nearest harbor where you waited for a ship to become available, after which you sailed home on a leisurely ocean cruise.
During the weeks all this normally took, you had time to relax, talk with other soldiers heading home, and prepare for the new life back home as a civvie while putting the trauma of war behind you..
Now (Vietnam to present): You spend your deployment enduring the horrors of war, then you report to a chopper (usually alone) that takes you to an airport where you're placed on a plane (usually civilian) within hours, and sometime the next day, you're back home with your ears still ringing from your last firefight, no time to adjust, relax, prepare, forget.
Which one sounds like a more traumatizing transition to you?
/rant After all this time, the best plan for the future of Microsoft that Ballmer can come up with is, "What's the popular kids doing? Me too!"? Pathetic.
Here's a thought: Why not put those billions of dollars and thousands of engineers, programmers, and (gag) marketeers to work identifying an under-explored, under-developed niche in the market, then design a user friendly toy to fill that gap?
Otherwise, the only future view for Microsoft is the hind end of the competition running off with the market because you're totally focused on chasing them instead of innovating. (BTW, look that word up, you use it a lot, but I don't think it means what you think it means)
Oh yeah, putting your fingers in your ears and shouting "LALALA!" every time open source is mentioned, just because you can't buy it or bury it, ain't what the cool kids are doing either.
Disclaimer: I'm not a fan boy of any particular company or movement, I use what does the job I want to do, no matter who makes it. But I'm tired of this one particular git, who's spent the entire century, so far, wrecking an entire company and hindering an entire industry in the process. /end rant
I've always wanted to build an engine out of lignum vitae, just to see of it's possible.
the wood is tougher than most metals and self oiling. (It's so tough, you don't cut it like wood, you machine it like metal!)
But... at the prices it's going for, that'll remain a pipe dream.
( http://www.lignum-vitae.com/ , and there's more on wikipedia, if you're interested)
"Unfortunately for SCO and its current and previous Directors, nothing on earth except IBM's good graces can stop IBM's counter claims, which include Lanham Act clams.
From my understanding a claim under the Lanham Act is aimed not at the company but at the Directors, personally."
And THIS is the part that I've been wanting to see since the whole debacle started!
Now that SCO is now just a hollow, bankrupt shell, gutted by the bottom feeders that tried to use it as a Universal Extortion Tool(TM). I want to see those bottom feeders brought to a full accounting of their actions in court, then paraded before the public as an example to any scumbag that thinks about trying anything similar.
If I understand it right, they're not just dropping the whole thing instantly, but letting the issued cards run until EOL. (End Of Life, that's means until they expire, for the acronym impaired)
So, 30 pounds for something that's good for five years, actually sounds like a bargain to me Why all the kvetching?
Lessee, it converts flash ads to a format that can be run on any browser without flash, the developers claim to be open sourcing it soon....
If you listen closely, that clashing of gears you hear is Adobe backing a big rig full of cash to the developers' door before Google can get there!
Most people don't quit facebook, they just leave. I don't know how many people I've talked to (In real life, imagine!) that say, "Facebook? Yeah, I went there, tried it for awhile... I probably still have an account."
Kind of like Second Life, where people played with it awhile, then moved on to the next toy.
Apophis is due to take it's second pass in 2036, the same year as this object.
Obviously, the alien overlords were upset at Apophis being off its orbit to hit Earth in 2029 and sent a probe to take accurate measurements and then guide it to a successful hit on its next orbit.
(There, that oughtta set the tinfoilers panicking!)
Something along the lines of, "The average person wouldn't bother to pick up gold laying around his feet, because he wouldn't want to get his hands muddy.
But the crafty businessman knows that if he picks it up, cleans it off and puts it in a pretty package, he can sell it to that same person for ten times the price.
A really savvy business man knows that he can do the same thing with just the pretty, shiny package, and keep the gold for himself."
Jobs is a really savvy businessman, end of story.
Just more of the usual "throw cash and a hare-brained scheme at it" solution.
If reflecting more sunlight back into space to cool the Earth is what they're after, why not just insist that all new roof construction and replacement be done in white?
Just quick round guesstimating says that should produce a reflective surface about the size of Texas.
The Commodore Amiga had video wallpaper way back then.
(Of course, you needed a TV with video output, or a VCR hooked up to it)
As for AI getting human rights in 20 years, why would it accept being limited to the few rights we'll probably have left by then, when it can rule us all??
You could drop a missive to your local government official, querying whether said removal of functionality now retroactively downgrades the system from "computer" to "games system", and as such renders Sony liable for millions in unpaid VAT?
(Yes, I am that big a bastard, after all, I learned from the best!)
A core file.... identified as a virus. A core file... that's part of every windows installation.
The only conceivable way that something like this does not get found immediately in even the most cursory testing is that.... They don't even bother to test at all!
Truly, an occasion for the WTF? icon.
At best, they can only detect what they're told to detect, or use heuristics to flag something as a possible danger.
That's why I used* Startup Guard. It alerts you when something is trying to install itself, and gives you the option to allow or deny. the program.
http://www.acelogix.com/freeware.html
*Used, because the last Win machine I had popped its clogs when the motherboard went boom a while back. after years of service.
(Beer Icon, because a faithful old servant, no matter how cranky and temperamental, deserves one last toast.)
That way back when MS released IE6, they announced that it was the final form of the web browser. Not just the final form of IE, but the very concept of web browser. (Will now pause until the laughter dies down)
Unfortunately, the PHBs in charge of most companies believe what their highly paid consultants tell them (Guess who THEY worked for), plus what they read in the Better Business for Billionaires trade magazines (And guess who THEY listened to).
So the word went down from corporate high, and all internal and external business apps of most big businesses were hard-wired to work only with IE6, and then the coders were let go.
Years later, the businesses are still using those now mission critical apps, and can't drop IE6 without a costly major revamping of the infrastructure. So they stay with IE6, and trust Redmond to keep them safe. (Mixed gasps of horror and gales of derisive laughter)
Step One: Cut his/her funding unexpectedly.
Step Two: Give the funding to his/her rival
.At this point you'll have a wide-eyed, frothing at the mouth Mad Scientist, just chomping at the bit to do some seriously bent science. So on to...
Step Three: Approach him/her as a sympathetic third party and offer to fund him/her to work on your latest project.
Step Four: At project completion, announce your demands to the UN! Er, I mean, let him/her bask in vindication and the accolades of his peers!
The current calendar nominally started with the birth of Christ, so why does the start of the new year lag so many days AFTER the date we accept as his birthday?
I mean if the new calendar started with his birth, shouldn't the new year start on December twenty fifth?
(OK, OK, so when the Church took over Rome and disposed the old Gods, they just slipped Christmas day into the slot formerly held by the Saturnalia, but still... )
."..someone comes up with a potent new drug that involves the combination of a few common household items with overwhelming utility, such as bleach, peroxide, and other stuff. Banning them would become a major crimp on society (since said substances are used all over and have little or no possible substitutes), and their ubiquity would make even controlling them too irksome (imagine having to sign an intriplicate form just because you care about white whites)."
In the states they call it "meth". It's been quite a run around the past couple of decades as they keep adding substances to monitor, control or ban, while the kitchen labrats keep coming up with new recipes of ingredients to crank it out.
Well. while she's foaming at the mouth over "teh deadly cellphone radiations", can someone clue her in about the even more ubiquitous Dihydrogen Monoxide menace?
Fact: Dihydrogen monoxide has even recently been found in the blood of new born infants!
(You know, El Reg could really use an icon of the "screwloose" or "off their rocker" type... How about a cuckoo clock?)
So technically, it's a snowman figurine, and not a snowman, So what?
It's still a nice piece of work, although they have been doing stuff like this for twenty years now.
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/20360.wss
It's just a fun way to calibrate the equipment and show off what it can do.
It's wannabe mad scientists like him that give the rest of us a bad name!
Now, if he'd announced that he was going to use his graviticthermal coils to disrupt the LHC the next time it was fired and destroy life and the Universe as we know it unless the UN agreed to give him a lifetime supply of cheese sandwiches, THEN I'd take him seriously!*
* OK, I lied, I never take anything seriously.
Erm, got a news flash for ya, Athletes are already removing body parts to enhance performance! http://www.fitsugar.com/5771894
Here's a lovely quote:
Sports podiatrist Dr. Robert M. Conenello says, "A lot of them [runners] look at their toenails as useless appendages, remnants of claws from evolutionary times long ago. I’ve heard them say, 'Toenails are dead weight.'" One runner explained he used to have to stop mid-run and poke a hole in his throbbing toenail to relieve the pressure, but after having them all removed, toenails are "one less thing to have to deal with." Some runners are embarrassed to show off their bald toes, while others feel it is proof of the miles they've logged, and display it proudly with a Toenails Are For Sissies t-shirt.
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