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User: jeremyp

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  1. Re:Thank you! on OpenBSD 5.6 Released · · Score: 2

    Perhaps someone else has something to add?

    7/ systemd doesn't run on it.

  2. Re:Well on Space Tourism Isn't Worth Dying For · · Score: 2

    If space planes made it easier to get into orbit, that is the way we'd be doing it now. No space plane has ever put cargo into orbit. Giant fireworks do it routinely (almost).

  3. Re:Is this the first death in commercial space exp on Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo Crashes · · Score: 1

    I know in aviation one of the Wright brothers died during a test flight.

    One died of typhoid in 1912 and the other of a heart attack in 1948.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...

  4. Re:Tip of the iceberg on Pope Francis Declares Evolution and Big Bang Theory Are Right · · Score: 1

    However, keeping all options open is what a scientist ought to do.

    Wrong. Science should only keep options open if they are not contradicted by the real World. For example, no scientist keeps the option of the Earth being flat open because there is a mountain of evidence that says it is not flat. The Biblical account of creation is flatly contradicted by evidence from reality.

  5. Re:Tip of the iceberg on Pope Francis Declares Evolution and Big Bang Theory Are Right · · Score: 1

    Genesis conforming our current Big Bang theory is already a nice start.

    It would be if it was true, but Genesis gets the origin of the Universe so hopelessly wrong that it is obvious its writers knew nothing about cosmology, geology, chemistry, physics or evolutionary biology, which would be completely in line with them having a similar level of knowledge to everybody else around at that time.

    In fact, at the time the Bible writers were talking about the Earth being supported on pillars and being like a tent with windows in the sky to let the rain in, the Greeks were already beginning to come up with reasons why it must be a sphere. It doesn't look to me like the Bible writers had any kind of special knowledge at all.

  6. Re:Saw the debate on Ken Ham's Ark Torpedoed With Charges of Religious Discrimination · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It doesn't matter who won that debate (although most accounts I have read suggest that Nye won), Nye is right and Ham was talking bollocks. Evolution happened, creationism as per the Bible didn't. The Great Flood is fiction.

  7. Re:Fine, if on The Airplane of the Future May Not Have Windows · · Score: 1

    You can't just turn the existing seats round. If you did that, the crash (or possibly even just a sudden stop) would just rip them off their mountings because the back of the seat would act as a lever.

    You'd need much stronger (i.e. heavier) seats which means fewer of them per plane. Which means either more expensive fares or lower margins for the airlines. Given the fact that aeroplanes don't crash to a pretty good approximation, why bother?

  8. Re:And this ... on Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems · · Score: 1

    What sentence? The only crime he is in the frame for is one of rape in Sweden and he hasn't even been charged with that yet, much less tried and sentenced.

  9. Re:Oh yeah, that guy on Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If Assange was in British custody and the USA made an extradition request, he would be extradited unless the crime that the USA wants to charge him with carries the death penalty. Even if there was a possibility of the death penalty, I expect we would extradite him if the Americans gave us an assurance that he won't be executed.

    Note that the British did have Assange in custody for a bit and the USA made no attempt to extradite him. I don't think they have anything on him. Assange is currently holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy because he thinks he might get convicted of rape.

  10. Re:Oh yeah, that guy on Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems · · Score: 0

    I'm still lost on why Sweden, of all places, is more likely to deport Assange to the US than England is.

    It isn't. Assange is hiding in the Ecuadorian Embassy because he's frightened of being convicted of rape.

  11. Re:Easily done: on 3D-Printed Gun Earns Man Two Years In Japanese Prison · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Who commits 90% of the gun crime in the U.S.? Certainly not law abiding citizens.

    Clearly not by definition.

    MILLIONS of crimes are prevented every year by law abiding citizens either brandishing (99% of the time) or using (1% of the time) their legally held guns.

    Citation needed, I think.

    Even assuming this is true, how many averted robberies are worth the loss of a human life? One? a hundred? a thousand? How many averted crimes are worth the 100 children that are accidentally killed by guns each year?

    Secondly: look up what the word 'democide' means. You're an idiot who wants to get us all killed by our government.

    Still, only 200 million people were killed by their own governments in the last century, so it's no big deal.

    Perhaps you should look up the word "democracy". You'll find that the way bad governments are removed in a democracy is by voting them out of office. The USA is allegedly one of those, so that' the way to remove a government, not by making war on it.

  12. Re:And this is why Linux will never win the deskto on Debian's Systemd Adoption Inspires Threat of Fork · · Score: 1

    Wooosh!

  13. Re:Wait, what? on OS X 10.10 Yosemite Review · · Score: 1

    You can program your phone, you just need a Macintosh, Xcode and a developer certificate to do it.

  14. Re:Wait, what? on OS X 10.10 Yosemite Review · · Score: 1

    App store feels less optional over time. You can't officially get xcode without it,

    Absolutely not true. You can also get Xcode through the developer centre.

    In Yosemite the software update menu item is gone altogether and presumably you have to at least open up app store to get to it (though if you don't use any Apple applications it would only be for os updates).

    True, but in Mavericks, Software Update did nothing more than open the App Store on the Updates tab.

  15. Re:Wait... on Apple Releases CUPS 2.0 · · Score: 1

    Yes, he's trolling,

  16. Re:That's not the reason you're being ignored. on Flight Attendants Want Stricter Gadget Rules Reinstated · · Score: 1
  17. Re:That's not the reason you're being ignored. on Flight Attendants Want Stricter Gadget Rules Reinstated · · Score: 1

    If you turn the seats around, they have to be much stronger because the force of the impact will be transmitted through the whole seat back instead of just a couple of hard points where the seat belts are bolted on. Undeniably, this would be more survivable, in an accident but the seats will have to be much stronger and more securely bolted to the air frame meaning they will be heavier meaning fewer of them in a plane meaning more expensive flights.

    Given the probability of ever being involved in an air crash, it's a risk I'm happy to take.

  18. Re:If you wanted us to believe your Op-Ed... on Goodbye, World? 5 Languages That Might Not Be Long For This World · · Score: 1

    They missed a trick with Objective-C. In Smalltalk the binary operators are messages just like anything else, but in Objective-C you can't use the binary operators as messages.

    It actually wouldn't have been that hard for the language to define the binary operators as syntactic sugar for messages e.g. you could have * being syntactic sugar for multiplyBy: when it appears in the context of a message selector, so your above example would then be:

    Vec4 *result = [matrix * [[a * [b / @(10.0)]] + @(0.5)]];

    @(...) is the modern Objective-C syntax for boxing a literal as an NSNumber.

    It's still not as readable as your first example, but it's an improvement on the normal syntax.

  19. Re:If you wanted us to believe your Op-Ed... on Goodbye, World? 5 Languages That Might Not Be Long For This World · · Score: 1

    Curly braces are meaningless clutter.

    No they are not, they denote the beginning and end of a compound statement in a nice explicit way that the the human eye can see and the compiler can parse.

    Indention level is what matters to the human eye, and all that the compiler needs. But you have to freaking normalize indention if you're going to take that path, or it ruins the whole deal.

    But normalisation of indentation is not a solved problem whereas pretty printing of blocks delimited by braces is.

    In both of the editors I currently use frequently, typing an opening brace also puts in the closing brace nicely aligned and places the caret between them indented the correct amount ready for some code. How does that work in Python?

    If I copy a piece of C code (or move it) from one place to another, my editor correctly indents it for the new context. How does that work in Python?

    I do like Python, but its indent rule coupled with the rule that stops you from breaking long lines anywhere you like is a bit of a pain. However, it's pain I'm prepared to live with because of the other nice features.

  20. Re:Ahh yes on Apple Fixes Shellshock In OS X · · Score: 1

    If it had been Pascal with objects, we'd have been OK. Pascal does array bounds checking.

  21. Re:the solution: on The $1,200 DIY Gunsmithing Machine · · Score: 1

    Nope. I see nothing about keeping the government in check in that wording. If anything, it's about defending the state from its enemies whoever they may be including rebellious slaves.

    The for protecting the states and people from the federal government is actually the whole constitution.

  22. Re: Here's the solution on Will Windows 10 Finally Address OS Decay? · · Score: 1

    OS X comes with a utility called Migration Assistant that can effectively duplicate an old machine onto new hardware. Technically, despite several iterations of new hardware and operating system upgrades, I am running the same installation as I was with 10.5 in 2007 and I have not experienced any operating system rot. My current four core 16Gb SSD machine is just as fast as my original 32 bit two core 4Gb MacBook pro.... .... oh wait...

    Seriously though, I wonder how much operating system rot is really down to disk fragmentation. I don't think I've ever had a machine that suffers from it, but with Windows boxes I do defrag regularly.

  23. Re: Here's the solution on Will Windows 10 Finally Address OS Decay? · · Score: 1

    Woosh!

  24. Re: No alternative system is available ? on UK Government Tax Disc Renewal Website Buckles Under Pressure · · Score: 1

    The road tax is not hypothecated, it all just goes into the government's pockets and they'll decide what to do with the savings. They may choose to contribute it to a tax cut, or use it to help reduce the deficit or perhaps improve some service somewhere.

  25. Re:Is this news? on UK Government Tax Disc Renewal Website Buckles Under Pressure · · Score: 1

    They have to because it's Scotland's national animal. If the Scots had decided to bugger off last month we could have dumped it.