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User: LWATCDR

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Comments · 15,647

  1. Re:More trustworthy than Sourceforge? on LibreOffice Now Available On Apple's Mac App Store · · Score: 1

    Yes. Apple does not like or allow crapware add on in the app store.

  2. Re:Nostalgia sells. on The Rebirth of Arcade Racers -- On Kickstarter · · Score: 1

    Much like war games and Flight Simulators driving games are going too far.
    It is really hard to drive fast around a track. Race car driver spend years develop their skills.
    I want to jump in and burn up a track!

    I am really into flight sims but then I love to fly PA-28s and 172s vs 747s in FSX.

  3. Re:It's just grumbling about US investigations on Russian Official Calls For "International Investigation" of the Apollo Program · · Score: 1

    " Criminals should switch to Euros to avoid being pursued by the US outside its borders."
    So besides Russia and Qatar is anyone upset with the US going after FIFA?

  4. Re:Buzz Aldrin, paging Buzz Aldrin on Russian Official Calls For "International Investigation" of the Apollo Program · · Score: 1

    Buzz Aldrin... You sir are a bad ass.
    Went to the moon.
    Punched an idiot for saying that we did not go to the moon.
    Armstrong was also a class act but you got to love Buzz Aldrin.
    Next you need to punch Adam Curry over and over again for claim that Armstrong lied about the moon landing right after he passed away.

  5. Re:Effect of nukes on NEOs on Should Nuclear Devices Be Kept On Hand To Protect Against Near Earth Objects? · · Score: 1

    Should be no issue for a stone or nickel iron asteroid. Even for an ice or carbonaceous a series of smaller devices should not "shatter" one.
    "I would much rather that we look into splattering it with a bunch of white material"
    You would probably find the total mass needed would be very large compared to nuclear devices for the same total effect.
    a B61 is less than 700 lbs and can produce 600kt yield.
    a W32 is less than 70lbs can can yield 250t.

  6. Re:Effect of nukes on NEOs on Should Nuclear Devices Be Kept On Hand To Protect Against Near Earth Objects? · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Actually no it is not.
    You do not try and blow up the NEO. You try and deflect it. The idea is that you use the "shaped" nuclear charge design developed for the Orion.
    The NEO becomes the pusher plate and you nudge it so that it does not hit the earth.

  7. Re:Nothing on Journalist Burned Alive In India For Facebook Post Exposing Corruption · · Score: 1

    Interesting idea but would it work? Or would people just contract to remote teams and even more money would flow into the Indian economy. At least with H1-B workers they pay rent, US taxes, and by stuff here.

    Of course you could try and cut off all trade with India but cutting trade for human rights abuses in India while opening trade with Cuba is at best a little hypocritical.

  8. Re:probably a muslim on FBI Investigating Series of Fiber Cuts In San Francisco Bay Area · · Score: 1

    Yes I am, sapien.

  9. Now such thing as an ideal solution.
    As you point out c/c++ is often the best for the job.
    People forget about things like IDEs, compilers, debuggers, and libraries.

  10. Re:probably a muslim on FBI Investigating Series of Fiber Cuts In San Francisco Bay Area · · Score: 2, Funny

    It was an ungodly atheist LGBT socialist.
    Statistically since this is the SF area it isn't all that unlikely that it was.

  11. Re:HÃ? on Philae's Lost Seven Months Were Completely Unnecessary · · Score: 1

    Yes there was. Every RTG launch causes a few nut jobs to come out and protest at the Cape. BTW I live and grew up near the Cape so it always makes the local news.
    For Philia you might be correct about it not being an option. Too bad because they could have done a lot more science if they had built one big enough for an RTG.
    However the anti-nuclear protests for RTGs are absolutely universally unjustified and frankly stupid. Most people are very dumb when it comes to risk. They live in terror of a nuclear power plant but will drive a car.

  12. Re:HÃ? on Philae's Lost Seven Months Were Completely Unnecessary · · Score: 1

    "So it's not completely insane to be concerned. They figure your personal odds of dying because of it to be one in a trillion, which most of us would say is too low to think about. But I can understand why a few people might say that even one-in-a-trillion (especially since it's repeated for everybody on the planet) is worth considering."

    But it is insane to get into a car and drive to the protest since you are far more likely to die or cause a death then the launch...
    In other words yes it is insane to worry about it.

  13. Re:Aborted launch on Philae's Lost Seven Months Were Completely Unnecessary · · Score: 1

    A fear without facts.
    The RTGs are very tough and would just hit the ground and not break apart.
    But no level of safety is enough for the anti nuclear drones. They are fools that will accept a risk millions of times greater by getting into a car to go to a protest over a well designed space probe.

  14. Re:Nuclear Power Fears on Philae's Lost Seven Months Were Completely Unnecessary · · Score: 2

    Really?
    New Horizons?
    It is not taboo at all except for a few loud nut cases.

  15. Re:Nothing on Journalist Burned Alive In India For Facebook Post Exposing Corruption · · Score: 1

    Pretty much.
    The big question should be what can India do to stop murder and corruption. It is not Facebooks job to do but the government's. If the Government will not do it then international pressure needs to be applied.
    Maybe Amnesty International or the EFF should have some system for whistleblowers.

  16. Re: One more in a crowded field on Swift: Apple's Biggest Achievement For Coders · · Score: 1

    Yes and no. If you only include a basic "standard" library you are pretty much going to make the language useless. If your "standard" library includes things like widgets then it is a lot more likely to be useful.
    Java had Swing which will not perfect worked as a cross platform gui.
    For Swift on linux the best bet would probably be QT bindings so you can have a cross platform SDK.
    Will QT make the effort to port to Swift?
    Who knows.
    Swift is not likely to flourish on systems besides IOS and OS/X who should do what really does not matter. Now if Apple had ported Cocca to the Linux and Windows you would have had something really interesting.

  17. Re:Emulator on Commodore PC Still Controls Heat and A/C At 19 Michigan Public Schools · · Score: 1

    I did a little looking.
    It uses an RF modem so in theory an emulator should work fine. Even better would be to "replace" the RF modem with something like an RPi and use a VPN. Or maybe an old PC booting from a flashdrive. You could even keep the RF modem and use it as a fall over.

  18. Re:One more in a crowded field on Swift: Apple's Biggest Achievement For Coders · · Score: 1

    No libraries and worse no Windows version.
    Talk about a safe way to open source something. It will never be used. The Linux community often balks at c++! No library bindings so it is useless for application development. Now if you want to write bindings or write a replacement for ls you are all set.

  19. Re: One more in a crowded field on Swift: Apple's Biggest Achievement For Coders · · Score: 1

    For now.
    But even that is changing. Now if we can just drop the stupid Freemium model and let me buy apps.

  20. Re:Hire That Programmer Immediately! on Commodore PC Still Controls Heat and A/C At 19 Michigan Public Schools · · Score: 1

    "Actually, I've heard the contrary argued on occasion: "Don't bother wasting code space on cleanup; the OS will do that when you exit."
    On a modern OS with gigabytes of ram sure that can work. It is stupid and sloppy but it could work.
    On an embedded system?
    Not a chance.

  21. Re:Emulator on Commodore PC Still Controls Heat and A/C At 19 Michigan Public Schools · · Score: 1

    They probably have some custom interface boards "I bet using the printer port"

  22. Re:replacement = $2 mill? on Commodore PC Still Controls Heat and A/C At 19 Michigan Public Schools · · Score: 1

    simple
    Things where simpler back then. a system to control all this was not in place a the time they made this. Some teacher had a bright kid and said, "let's see if we can have a computer control all the HVACs.
    They had an Amiga which for the time was a very powerful computer "much more so than an x86 dos box running at best a 286" so they did it.
    I would love to know how they are using radio links for this. DTFM over audio?
    Today if they wanted to roll there own they could use some cheap wifi routers and maybe some aurdino clones and use a VPN to keep it all secure.

  23. Re:Hire That Programmer Immediately! on Commodore PC Still Controls Heat and A/C At 19 Michigan Public Schools · · Score: 1

    "diving through bad pointers would take out the entire system; and not meticulously free()ing every malloc() would lead to unrecoverable memory leaks which would... take out the entire system."

    Ummm good programmers always free every malloc.
    That is not really the issue without an mmu you can actually fragment memory over time.
    Maybe the programer didn't use any dynamically allocated memory and just put everything on the stack? Frankly in most small embedded system you try and avoid alloc for that very reason.
    Other option is the system just does a reset every x days.

  24. Re:Investment into NASA vs welfare on NASA Probe Reveals More Detail In Pluto's Complex Surface · · Score: 1

    Wow talking about buying into a fool's dilemma.

    You can spend money on feeding those that can not feed themselves and explore the universe.
    In fact I would say that a good society spends on both.

  25. Re:Isn't that the point of inspections? on Inspectors Warn Faulty Valves In New-Generation EPR Nuclear Reactor Pose Meltdown Risk · · Score: 2

    Frankly I feel the opposite.
    Any project as large and complex as a nuclear reactor, airliner, or launch vehicle that passes inspection I think one thing. They did not look hard enough.