I gave up that regular Coke years ago for Diet Coke, after a particularly bad tasting case of cans. I actually kind of like the aspartame flavor. Then I gave that up for gold Coke (caffeine-free diet), which is pretty good to have every now and then, without the headaches three days later to punish me for not drinking it for too long.
I still don't get what it is with Coke Zero, though. I had a chance to try some recently, and it tasted pretty bad.
I think Firefox and Chrome, which are mostly on a quarterly release schedule, should have year-dot-quarter version numbers. But I don't have anything against the Gecko version numbering (which is what current FF version numbers correspond to). But no matter what you do, someone will have borked up browser version checking that will break when you change your version numbering to something that seems more sensible.
As for the Windows version naming, the funny part was how they were ready to call it Windows 9 until they realized just how much stuff (including Java, for fuck's sake!) did if (substr(version, 0, 9) == "Windows 9") to lazily check for Windows 95 and Windows 98 in a single comparison.
You don't have to "slow down" to get to an orbital "gas station". You have to reach orbital speed on the way to escape velocity anyhow, so there is no delta-V penalty. This lets you use multiple launches to put up the stuff you need to get to Mars into LEO and dock with them on the way out. As a bonus, the unmanned launches don't have to limit themselves to 3-gee acceleration. But mostly the point of this is if you don't have a big enough (or efficient enough) rocket to push it all up in one launch.
It's the moon that's the problem, because it's another gravity well that you have to go into and back out of, requiring a double delta-V penalty unless there's something on the moon that you can take up with you to make it worth the energy. The only good reason to use the moon for this purpose is more pork spending. Really, the moon is too boring a place to land humans on again, at least until we've explored it a lot more with unmanned rovers.
Pedantry time. The reason we have no way to use 3He is because we don't even have basic nuclear fusion working (which is not strictly a US problem, there are Europeans working on it too), and 3He is not the easiest stuff to fuse. It's at least a second-generation fusion fuel, so it likely won't be useful until at least 2075-2100.
Luckily, Doctor Who post-dates the introduction of PAL broadcasting by only a few years, so you won't have to go to an alternate universe to find a 405-line VCR.
The problem was that Excel 1.0 was written using a bytecode virtual machine that for some really stupid reason used 8086-style segment/offset pointers referring to absolute host memory addresses... on a system with 32-bit registers and linear addressing space. It was a really big WTF.
I seem to also recall that either Excel 1.0 for Mac or Word 1.0 for Mac was the first to have the key shortcut Command-W = close window. Millions of people have been accidentally quitting apps when trying to close windows ever since. (Back in the day I preferred Command-K for that function.)
You do realize that the US has two separate primary power grids (east and west), right? Plus most of Texas (which has a lot of wind generation) is on an independent grid.
Well, ya know, they still sell these things by the cartload at Goodwill. And the board isn't exactly the main cost in these, it's the labor of putting together all the wiring to have buttons where the case designer wanted them.
This kid is no computer genius either. He stuck someone else's clock in a different box and claimed it was his creation. Very Steve Jobs. Check the Artvoice link, he had a bunch of other stuff where he took the guts out of other stuff and showed the naked guts like they were some brilliant creation.
That's the point. He didn't even make a small change. Unless you count stuffing it into another box as a "change". That's literally all he did. And people are acting like he's some kind of super genius whiz kid for doing that.
It doesn't matter what an "administration" thinks about space anyhow. All the President can do is cheerleading. It's our legislative branch that keeps underfunding NASA, making sure that what funds they do provide are mostly earmarked to ensure that they go to the appropriate pork projects. Projects such as the Senate Launch System, which still lacks any real mission after it (someday) goes up for the first crewed test flight.
Right now the only purpose of SLS is to build SLS.
I saw a picture of what might have been the "device", but wasn't able to find any confirmation other than it was in a "suitcase" (small suitcase-style pencil case) as I had earlier heard.
What. The. Fuck. It looks like someone took apart an ordinary LED bedside clock and stuffed it into a box, without touching the wiring, or even trying to tie or glue anything down. The power source wasn't even changed, it's still got the AC cord (nice electrical hazard there, kid), and the 9V battery to keep it running during power outages. In other words, 20+ year old technology. Literally just an ordinary clock re-cased into a box, this isn't even science-fair tier stuff.
And even the LED display would be a pain in the ass to re-use, since most of those clock displays use the same pin-out as I've seen in ads in the back of late-70s electronics magazines. It's basically a 2x16 matrix, and most of them don't even have the LED segments needed to display 24-hour time.
To be specific, the folder is named "C:\$WINDOWS.$BT", has the hidden attribute set (so DIR/A to see it), and it is over six. fucking. gigabytes. I'm happy I wasn't on a low data cap connection. Classy act there, MICROS~1!
I had previously set Windows Update (about two months ago?) to "download updates and ask me to install them", and found that it was set to "automatically install updates". I wonder if there's any chance that another update changed this setting over the past few weeks?
I've removed and hidden all the KB updates named in this thread, deferring restarts until I was finished, and half an hour after telling it to restart it's still "Preparing to configure Windows. Do not turn off your computer." Since this is just a gaming laptop, I'm willing to go without games for a few hours while this crap uninstalls.
Not that I trust hiding the KB updates... one of the optional updates waiting for me was Silver(b)light. I tried to hide it but it just kept coming back. Yeah, now I'm putting it on "check for updates and don't download". I want to stay on Windows 7, capiche?
Oh look, some anti-Apple troll with mod points got butthurt and couldn't take my calling out the parent poster's troll, and had to mod me troll. Cry harder, hater.
Reading is Fundamental, check your fanboyism, it seems to have come off the leash. I never said who was or wasn't behind the creation of the Macintosh. And I sure wouldn't credit Raskin with the dubious distinction of being the one who wanted a black box with security screws (seriously, those Torx screws needed at least 6 inches of shaft, that was a custom-order tool for a while) and as few ports as possible. That was all Steve.
USB was one in a whole line of interfaces that Apple chose because they needed something faster or easier to use than the current PC standard, and they usually chose an existing standard that someone else invented. Most of them did not go mainstream, USB was an exception.
SCSI for hard drives, PC went with naked ST-506 cards, then IDE (which emulated a popular disk controller chip) which evolved into SATA. Apple grudgingly took up IDE, and still doesn't like E-SATA.
NuBus for card slots, PC kept tacking more crap onto ISA, then eventually Intel came out with PCI.
USB for low-bandwidth devices like keyboards and mice, PC still took years for that to become mainstream.
Firewire for high-bandwidth devices like external hard disks (Apple actually invented this one), PC went with USB 2.0, which was technically inferior but easier to make, then USB 3.0 which was fast enough to overcome some limitations of 2.0 by sheer force of bandwidth, but still not so great technically.
Thunderbolt for really high-bandwidth devices (including card slot expanders!) and DisplayPort snuck in there to give it a dual use, the jury is still out on that one, but it's Intel's baby, and I think Intel would like it to stick around, and would rather not hack USB again.
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I gave up that regular Coke years ago for Diet Coke, after a particularly bad tasting case of cans. I actually kind of like the aspartame flavor. Then I gave that up for gold Coke (caffeine-free diet), which is pretty good to have every now and then, without the headaches three days later to punish me for not drinking it for too long.
I still don't get what it is with Coke Zero, though. I had a chance to try some recently, and it tasted pretty bad.
I think Firefox and Chrome, which are mostly on a quarterly release schedule, should have year-dot-quarter version numbers. But I don't have anything against the Gecko version numbering (which is what current FF version numbers correspond to). But no matter what you do, someone will have borked up browser version checking that will break when you change your version numbering to something that seems more sensible.
As for the Windows version naming, the funny part was how they were ready to call it Windows 9 until they realized just how much stuff (including Java, for fuck's sake!) did if (substr(version, 0, 9) == "Windows 9") to lazily check for Windows 95 and Windows 98 in a single comparison.
a lunar fuel mining operation
And what exactly kind of fuel are you going to be mining on the moon? Please don't say Helium-3 and reveal yourself to be a complete and total retard.
It's like saying you have to build a yacht and detour via the Panama Canal to cross the Mississippi.
FTFY.
You don't have to "slow down" to get to an orbital "gas station". You have to reach orbital speed on the way to escape velocity anyhow, so there is no delta-V penalty. This lets you use multiple launches to put up the stuff you need to get to Mars into LEO and dock with them on the way out. As a bonus, the unmanned launches don't have to limit themselves to 3-gee acceleration. But mostly the point of this is if you don't have a big enough (or efficient enough) rocket to push it all up in one launch.
It's the moon that's the problem, because it's another gravity well that you have to go into and back out of, requiring a double delta-V penalty unless there's something on the moon that you can take up with you to make it worth the energy. The only good reason to use the moon for this purpose is more pork spending. Really, the moon is too boring a place to land humans on again, at least until we've explored it a lot more with unmanned rovers.
Pedantry time. The reason we have no way to use 3He is because we don't even have basic nuclear fusion working (which is not strictly a US problem, there are Europeans working on it too), and 3He is not the easiest stuff to fuse. It's at least a second-generation fusion fuel, so it likely won't be useful until at least 2075-2100.
It was called Dusty's Trail.
Luckily, Doctor Who post-dates the introduction of PAL broadcasting by only a few years, so you won't have to go to an alternate universe to find a 405-line VCR.
The problem was that Excel 1.0 was written using a bytecode virtual machine that for some really stupid reason used 8086-style segment/offset pointers referring to absolute host memory addresses... on a system with 32-bit registers and linear addressing space. It was a really big WTF.
I seem to also recall that either Excel 1.0 for Mac or Word 1.0 for Mac was the first to have the key shortcut Command-W = close window. Millions of people have been accidentally quitting apps when trying to close windows ever since. (Back in the day I preferred Command-K for that function.)
at the same time across the USA
You do realize that the US has two separate primary power grids (east and west), right? Plus most of Texas (which has a lot of wind generation) is on an independent grid.
Damn, I should've picked up New Folder.com years ago. Maybe Untitled Folder.com is still available?
Well, ya know, they still sell these things by the cartload at Goodwill. And the board isn't exactly the main cost in these, it's the labor of putting together all the wiring to have buttons where the case designer wanted them.
This kid is no computer genius either. He stuck someone else's clock in a different box and claimed it was his creation. Very Steve Jobs. Check the Artvoice link, he had a bunch of other stuff where he took the guts out of other stuff and showed the naked guts like they were some brilliant creation.
and made a small change
That's the point. He didn't even make a small change. Unless you count stuffing it into another box as a "change". That's literally all he did. And people are acting like he's some kind of super genius whiz kid for doing that.
You seem to be assuming that they would use a "modern" design in those things. Like I said, "It's a design that basically hasn't changed since 1980".
The primary mission of SLS is not to get humans into space. It is to funnel taxpayer money into various states and congressional districts.
Delaying the manned launch increases the duration of the porkbux flow. Mission accomplished!
It doesn't matter what an "administration" thinks about space anyhow. All the President can do is cheerleading. It's our legislative branch that keeps underfunding NASA, making sure that what funds they do provide are mostly earmarked to ensure that they go to the appropriate pork projects. Projects such as the Senate Launch System, which still lacks any real mission after it (someday) goes up for the first crewed test flight.
Right now the only purpose of SLS is to build SLS.
NASA plans to fill in the URL for that link by 2023.
Actually, Texas has concealed carry, but it's not one of the states that allows open carry.
I saw a picture of what might have been the "device", but wasn't able to find any confirmation other than it was in a "suitcase" (small suitcase-style pencil case) as I had earlier heard.
What. The. Fuck. It looks like someone took apart an ordinary LED bedside clock and stuffed it into a box, without touching the wiring, or even trying to tie or glue anything down. The power source wasn't even changed, it's still got the AC cord (nice electrical hazard there, kid), and the 9V battery to keep it running during power outages. In other words, 20+ year old technology. Literally just an ordinary clock re-cased into a box, this isn't even science-fair tier stuff.
And even the LED display would be a pain in the ass to re-use, since most of those clock displays use the same pin-out as I've seen in ads in the back of late-70s electronics magazines. It's basically a 2x16 matrix, and most of them don't even have the LED segments needed to display 24-hour time.
Do you actually trust Microsoft to get that right?
To be specific, the folder is named "C:\$WINDOWS.$BT", has the hidden attribute set (so DIR /A to see it), and it is over six. fucking. gigabytes. I'm happy I wasn't on a low data cap connection. Classy act there, MICROS~1!
I had previously set Windows Update (about two months ago?) to "download updates and ask me to install them", and found that it was set to "automatically install updates". I wonder if there's any chance that another update changed this setting over the past few weeks?
I've removed and hidden all the KB updates named in this thread, deferring restarts until I was finished, and half an hour after telling it to restart it's still "Preparing to configure Windows. Do not turn off your computer." Since this is just a gaming laptop, I'm willing to go without games for a few hours while this crap uninstalls.
Not that I trust hiding the KB updates... one of the optional updates waiting for me was Silver(b)light. I tried to hide it but it just kept coming back. Yeah, now I'm putting it on "check for updates and don't download". I want to stay on Windows 7, capiche?
Oh look, some anti-Apple troll with mod points got butthurt and couldn't take my calling out the parent poster's troll, and had to mod me troll. Cry harder, hater.
Reading is Fundamental, check your fanboyism, it seems to have come off the leash. I never said who was or wasn't behind the creation of the Macintosh. And I sure wouldn't credit Raskin with the dubious distinction of being the one who wanted a black box with security screws (seriously, those Torx screws needed at least 6 inches of shaft, that was a custom-order tool for a while) and as few ports as possible. That was all Steve.
USB was one in a whole line of interfaces that Apple chose because they needed something faster or easier to use than the current PC standard, and they usually chose an existing standard that someone else invented. Most of them did not go mainstream, USB was an exception.
SCSI for hard drives, PC went with naked ST-506 cards, then IDE (which emulated a popular disk controller chip) which evolved into SATA. Apple grudgingly took up IDE, and still doesn't like E-SATA.
NuBus for card slots, PC kept tacking more crap onto ISA, then eventually Intel came out with PCI.
USB for low-bandwidth devices like keyboards and mice, PC still took years for that to become mainstream.
Firewire for high-bandwidth devices like external hard disks (Apple actually invented this one), PC went with USB 2.0, which was technically inferior but easier to make, then USB 3.0 which was fast enough to overcome some limitations of 2.0 by sheer force of bandwidth, but still not so great technically.
Thunderbolt for really high-bandwidth devices (including card slot expanders!) and DisplayPort snuck in there to give it a dual use, the jury is still out on that one, but it's Intel's baby, and I think Intel would like it to stick around, and would rather not hack USB again.