* Posts by Driver's Door

16 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Apr 2016

Canny Canadian PM schools snarky hack on quantum computing

Driver's Door

Re: Free Dumb

Given the choice between the candidate who is least likely to blow up the entire world, because it is bad for business, versus the the guy who the bookies are already taking bets on how long it will be before he starts lobbing nukes at the people that have upset him (anyone that does not kiss his ass) I think I would always choose the one that won't blow up the world. We survived 8 years of Chaney,, I think we can survive 4/8 years of Hillery. But apparently my position is in the minority,The clueless here (USA) picked the one who will screw over his own electoral base as soon as he is in office. If Canada does plan the start accepting the hoards that say that they are going to emigrate, I would suggest adding a 6-grade proficiency test to the paperwork that must be filled out to get a visa.

Driver's Door

Re: Canadian Republicans

And the USA does not have a Democratic party. It has the moderate Republican party and the bat-shit crazy extremist Republican party.

Driver's Door

"Do any "red states" fly a red flag near their seat of government?"

Of course that do, it is called the Confederate Flag. It is the banner of the losing side of the civil war. Now there is an oxymoron if I ever heard one. Civil and war in the same sentence. How do you have a civil war? Do you politely announce your intent? Hello, beautiful day we are having. Did you get a chance to enjoy the Carolinas last summer? You didn't? Shame. I hear they are quite lovely when the place is not an inferno. Forgive me sir, but I really need to blow your brains out now. BLAM! Have a nice day.

Windows XP spotted on Royal Navy's spanking new aircraft carrier

Driver's Door
FAIL

Upgrade XP?

Oh god no! The upgrade will break every app that you are running, i.e. everything but Notepad™. And if trying to get a stable op/sys upgrade running reliably¹, isn't bad enough, do you know what you will have to do to get really old custom software updated so it will run on your new operating system? Why would they run XP on a brand new shop? XP has been out long enough that M$ might has removed almost all of the serious bugs. If you insist on upgrading XP, it may be easier to scrap the ships and start over with a deliver date sometimes in the 2050's. 2 years to build the ship and the rest of the time trying to get the software.working mostly correctly. If you are lucky, you won't have to do anything more extensive than rebooting the entire ship to get it to recover from a system-level bug. It seems to work just fine with the F-35s..

¹what does reliably actually mean? How few crashes per hour of operation (CPH) do you really need? Remember cost is proportional to k*e^(1/CPH)

Chinese 'nauts blast off for month-long space station scouting mission

Driver's Door

Well, the Soviets were never part of the 'race' to land a man on the moon as a flag waving exercise.

Forgive me, but it was all/only about flag waving on both sides. While NASA might have been interested in doing a bit of science, it was all flag waving by both governments that coughed up the funds. Cold war and all.

When Pornhub meets the Internet of Fridges

Driver's Door
WTF?

"Market" Size

What is your best guess as to the total market-size of hard-core long-term¹ users? Remind me, what problem is this product suppose to solve²?

¹AKA people that use it for more than a week.

²Mine-is-bigger-than-yours arguments. The new owner can claim "mine is so large that it has its own internet connection."

Emacs gets new maintainer as Richard Stallman signs off

Driver's Door

EMACS development?

Egads, what possible development would it need? I would have thought that development was finished more than 2 decades ago. I used it briefly in the 80's only because it ran on the four different systems that I was using at the time. There was a pair of systems in which the key strokes for cursor movement for one system's editor did delete functions on the editor of the other system. I was constantly deleting things at the wrong time & if I remember correctly the editor that deleted stuff instead of moving the cursor did not have an undo function. What was Stallman doing, modifying EMACS until it became an entire operating system?

Did Donald Trump really just ask Russia to hack the US govt? Yes, he did

Driver's Door
Joke

Re: I wonder if this would qualify as treason?

As I counter offer, I suggest a reality-TV show where his delusion comes to life by having him play the POTUS.

FCC urged to pause its fight against America's $20bn cable-box rip-off

Driver's Door
FAIL

Re: Cable boxes are not "...only for rent."

Sorry, my mistake. I was talking about the cable modem.

I am Craig Wright, inventor of Craig Wright

Driver's Door

Poe's Law

Poe's Law describes this article.

F-35s failed 'scramble test' because of buggy software

Driver's Door

Re: They control the hardware

1. Do they demand all code meet adequate coding standards?

2. Do they require all software modules to meet specific documentation standards?

3. Are the testing requirements sufficient? When they run the test suite, what percentage of the software actually get executed? It is amazing how often the software test suite does not execute some of the error handling code.

4. Are the specs any good? If there are requirements that are ill-defined or not defined at all, I can guarantee that different people will interpret them differently. Example - the NASA Mars lander that was lost because one group interpreted the unit for distance be feet while the other group assumed that the unit was meters. Oops.

5. With a software project as enormous as this, program management becomes absolutely critical. The programmer is totally dependent on the spec being clear, correct & unambiguous because they may not know or have access to the person writing the modules that connect to their module.

Driver's Door

Re: Dumbasses.

True and from experience I can tell you that you can't write good code unless the spec is clear, complete, correct & unambiguous.

Driver's Door

Re: two words

Your nasty & unnecessary comment missed by at least a generation. The baby boomers entered management sometime from mid 70's to the early 80's which covers the time from early introduction of the F-14 to the middle of its life.

NZ hotel bans cyclists' Lycra-clad loins

Driver's Door

Attire from yore...

Perhaps the reintroduction of the codpiece is needed.

Chilling evidence emerges of Kilocat weapon

Driver's Door

The big question is...

Does anyone know if the Black Ops division of Walmart ever has 2-for-1 sales?