My boss back at Sperry Univac was a prankster, too. One day, I came in and logged in, and got immediately logged back out. He'd put a logout command into my startup script.
Quick deck of cards and a batch run to remove it later... And knowing that there was only one person who could possibly have done that... I went to the system console and patched the OS to remove the block on entering console commands from a terminal. Then, in his login file, a script to determine what terminal he was logging in from, and enter a console command to mark the communications line he came in on as "Down".
He disabled three terminals in the lab before he went to the console and saw the hardware status notifications of the lines being downed.
This thing went wild through Lockheed back in 1980something. It got so people, if they saw the tell-tale "C>" prompt, would just hit CTL-ALT-DEL.
SO... this being in DOS pre-AT pre-Windows days when you could actually intercept CTL-ALT-DEL, I wrote one that went through some "seemed amusing at the time" death throes when you did that. "No, don't hit CTL-ALT-DEL!! Aiiiiii, too late!! My mind is going " and eventually (oh, about 20 seconds or so) actually rebooted.
I saw it on some download sites at one point, called "SLOD.EXE" (for "Slow Death") but the last time I looked, anything under that name was something else. Besides, it's perfectly non-functional on this century's hardware.
Years ago, I read a fascinating article by a small businessman who made dock floats. Basically, big chunks of styrofoam covered with fiberglass.
He sold them retail for $50 each.
For a government contract, he looked at the paperwork involved and bid $500 each.
He was underbid by another company, and the contract ended up nearly bankrupting them. In retrospect, he was glad he lost the bid, because at 10x the retail cost, he figured he would have lost money.
If someone is going to believe they can vote by sending a text message to some random phone number because they saw a post on Facebook saying so...... Do we really want that person voting?
Heck, even the normal landings in Soyuz spacecraft are pretty rough - over a third of all NASA astronauts who had flown in Soyuz capsules as of late 2016 were injured during landing.
Heh... On this week's "Space Boffins" podcast, they interviewed a European astronaut who had flown the Soyuz several times. He described a Soyuz landing as "a series of catastrophic events." On his first one, the Russians commented on the soft landing, he replied "You call *that* a soft landing?!?!" and they said "You're alive. That's a soft landing."
No, I'm getting the point. You disagree with what you presume his politics to be, therefore it's complete open season, any means -- ANY means, AT ALL -- to keep him off the bench is A-OK. Justice and truth and facts be damned. Scorched earth politics.
If it's allowed to succeed, don't be surprised if it's used on people you like.
This way leads to totalitarianism of one kind or another.
So, because he was "a jock" and is "rich", it's OK to make up lies and slander about him. Open season, anything is OK to attack and destroy "class enemies".
Got it. You're a totalitarian thought-policeman.
Oh, and as for "I'm a nerd. I was bullied. A lot." Yeah. #metoo. I have a built-in negative perception of jock types. But I don't approve of lynch mobs, and that is exactly what this is.
Hey, I am one of the first to scoff (Scoff! Scoff scoff scoff!!) when someone asserts that someone is "paid off by Big Oil."
No, I'm pointing out the anti-energy ideology that infects much of the self-anointed "Environmental" movement. "It would be nothing short of disastrous if we were ever to discover source of cheap, clean, abundant energy." "(Cold Fusion, back when it looked possibly real) is like giving a machine gun to a retarded child."
That cult. Real quotes by the high priests of that cult.
I've said many times -- the moment -- the very instant -- that any energy source of any kind looks like it might be able to keep industrial civilization powered, it will become Anathema. For that reason. Though other excuses will be manufactured, because "humans deserve no access to energy" doesn't play well outside the cult.
And when it was signed into law under Obama, I think I remember the Republican-leaning part of the population being equally outraged at it.
As someone generally Republican leaning, not a fan of Obama, who has despised Trump since the 1980s...
I thought it was a useful capability when the Obama administration proposed it. I still think it's a good idea now. No matter who's president.
I do not recall anyone objecting to it when it was an Obama administration thing. Not one person. Ever.
Any citation for "the Republican-leaning part of the population being equally outraged at it"? I'm sure you'll be able to find one idiot. Maybe two. One of them will likely be Alex Jones, but I never listed to that jackass. Anybody mainstream? Even on the outer edges of the mainstream?
... the percentage of our energy needs that a technology needs to hit before The Usual Suspects will find some reason, any reason, to start wailing and gnashing their teeth and rending their clothes and shrieking "It's EEEVIL!! Tear it DOWN, NOW!!"
My considered opinion on that other issue where people are going on and on about "The Russians! The Russians!!" is that Putin didn't much care who won the election. He just wanted, whichever highly divisive person it was, that their supporters would not accept the results as legitimate. Trump was setting up doing it on his end, with the "The election is rigged!" comment. If Hillary had won, it would be Trump and the Trumpunists going on and on about "The Russians! The Russians!!" instead of the opposite.
Rey is overpowered, definitely, but I didn't really have a huge problem with that. Kylo Ren is way overpowered, too, and way too deserving of the title "Darth Emo", though he was better in The Last Jedi.
That ridiculous Leia doing the Kryptonian sleep-flying back to the ship after getting explosively decompressed, modulo some blast damage from the weapons that tore the bridge apart... What were they thinking?
The utter stupidity of *dropping* bombs *in space*... *were* they thinking? Seems unlikely.
On the whole, I like the actors. But their performances were ill-served by the writing and directing. The whole thing was completely disjointed. It just felt sloppy, beyond the above stupidities. (None of which were the actors' fault.)
"But.... Russians!!" is the last refuge of the compleat idiot.
Actually, an "all varieties" flu vaccine may be just around the corner. Rather than antibodies against the capsule proteins, which are constantly mutating, they go after the stalk proteins, which don't change very much or very often.
And to lift your flying car. You would need a ton or two of antimatter. Collide with another flying car and the explosion would be how big? Enough to create a second moon?
Last time I looked this up, it was something like 47 grams of matter converted completely to energy == one megaton of kaboomage.
With matter/antimatter annihilation, a good portion of the energy vanishes into thin space in the form of neutrinos. The ratio was about 60/40, and I don't recall which way, so as a reasonable estimate, I'd pick half. Or, calculate based on the mass of the antimatter, not the antimatter + matter it annihilates with.
So, one tonne == 1 million grams == over 21 thousand megatons.
Repubs hate green energy because they view it in regressive. (Mindmills were around in the 15th century).
People who can do arithmetic hate the headlong-rush to replace base load generating capacity with sunny-days-when-the-wind-is-blowing energy.
Nuclear energy can be the compromise. It will look like we are moving forward, while not producing evil carbon dioxide. We will need to lesson the regulatory burdern but not eliminate it. As it is we have a stalemate.
Yeah, I've been advocating phasing out coal in favor of nuclear for... oh, about 40 years now. The so-called "Greens", of course, hate nuclear with an undying white-hot hatred. They will hate any energy source that threatens to be able to supply industrial/technological civilization. ANY energy source. Mark my words. If flow batteries threaten to actually make "sunny days when the wind is blowing" energy sufficient to keep industrial/technological civilization running, they *will* find some reason that it's The Most Horrible Evil Ever. Guaranteed.
Way back in the paleolithic era of the World Wide Web, some wiseacre registered peta.org. People Eating Tasty Animals. The site was a compendium of links to meat companies, leather goods, animal testing laboratories... basicially, if it ticked PeTA off, he'd have a link to it.
Grumbling from those quarters for years. But they didn't have any web presence, other than news articles about their antics.
Then, at some point "that" PeTA filed a complaint and stole the domain that had existed for several years. It's still owned by the crazies. For a while, the guy who did the original page had it up as a link off of his main page...Hey, it's still there, mtd.com/tasty. I thought I'd looked a while back and it was gone, but it's still there as of now.
And there it is, Double down: Trump is a Nazi same as all R presidential candidates back to Dewey.
It's just old, tired and stupid at this point. Not convincing anyone.
'This time it's real' is part of the derp.
They told me Nixon was a Nazi, and I ignored them, because for all his faults, Nixon was no Nazi.
They told me Reagan was a Nazi, and I ignored them, because for all his faults, Reagan was no Nazi.
They told me George H.W. Bush was a Nazi, and I ignored them, because for all his faults, George H.W. Bush was no Nazi.
They told me George W. Bush was a Nazi, and I ignored them, because for all his faults, George W. Bush was no Nazi.
Now they're telling me Trump is a Nazi, and I'm ignoring them, because for all his many glaring, egregious faults, Trump is no Nazi.
I hope a real Nazi doesn't ever get close to power, because the people crying NAZI! NAZI! NAZI! at every Republican since Eisenhower have long since lost every shred of credibility.
(No, I didn't vote for the SOB, but that doesn't mean I'm stupid enough to think he's a Nazi.)
D'oh! Brain fart. Keith Ellison. Keith. Ralph never served in Congress, and is somewhat metabolically challenged. While this doesn't preclude voting in Chicago, it's a bit to much of a handicap to serve in Congress.
Slashdot Mirror
My boss back at Sperry Univac was a prankster, too. One day, I came in and logged in, and got immediately logged back out. He'd put a logout command into my startup script.
Quick deck of cards and a batch run to remove it later... And knowing that there was only one person who could possibly have done that... I went to the system console and patched the OS to remove the block on entering console commands from a terminal. Then, in his login file, a script to determine what terminal he was logging in from, and enter a console command to mark the communications line he came in on as "Down".
He disabled three terminals in the lab before he went to the console and saw the hardware status notifications of the lines being downed.
This thing went wild through Lockheed back in 1980something. It got so people, if they saw the tell-tale "C>" prompt, would just hit CTL-ALT-DEL.
SO... this being in DOS pre-AT pre-Windows days when you could actually intercept CTL-ALT-DEL, I wrote one that went through some "seemed amusing at the time" death throes when you did that. "No, don't hit CTL-ALT-DEL!! Aiiiiii, too late!! My mind is going " and eventually (oh, about 20 seconds or so) actually rebooted.
I saw it on some download sites at one point, called "SLOD.EXE" (for "Slow Death") but the last time I looked, anything under that name was something else. Besides, it's perfectly non-functional on this century's hardware.
Here is the smoking gun, their manifesto on TMT:
https://deepgreenresistancegre...
(checks out link...)
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!! The stupid!!!!!!!!!!!!! It burns, it burns!!!!!
On the brakes issue with hybrids or full electrics -- my 2008 Prius is still on its original brake pads, at a bit over 130,000 miles.
This ...
Years ago, I read a fascinating article by a small businessman who made dock floats. Basically, big chunks of styrofoam covered with fiberglass.
He sold them retail for $50 each.
For a government contract, he looked at the paperwork involved and bid $500 each.
He was underbid by another company, and the contract ended up nearly bankrupting them. In retrospect, he was glad he lost the bid, because at 10x the retail cost, he figured he would have lost money.
If someone is going to believe they can vote by sending a text message to some random phone number because they saw a post on Facebook saying so... ... Do we really want that person voting?
Don't exhale!!
And any landing where you can use the aircraft again is a great one. Probably almost as old, but I only heard that addendum recently.
Heck, even the normal landings in Soyuz spacecraft are pretty rough - over a third of all NASA astronauts who had flown in Soyuz capsules as of late 2016 were injured during landing.
Heh... On this week's "Space Boffins" podcast, they interviewed a European astronaut who had flown the Soyuz several times. He described a Soyuz landing as "a series of catastrophic events." On his first one, the Russians commented on the soft landing, he replied "You call *that* a soft landing?!?!" and they said "You're alive. That's a soft landing."
No, I'm getting the point. You disagree with what you presume his politics to be, therefore it's complete open season, any means -- ANY means, AT ALL -- to keep him off the bench is A-OK. Justice and truth and facts be damned. Scorched earth politics.
If it's allowed to succeed, don't be surprised if it's used on people you like.
This way leads to totalitarianism of one kind or another.
So, because he was "a jock" and is "rich", it's OK to make up lies and slander about him. Open season, anything is OK to attack and destroy "class enemies".
Got it. You're a totalitarian thought-policeman.
Oh, and as for "I'm a nerd. I was bullied. A lot." Yeah. #metoo. I have a built-in negative perception of jock types. But I don't approve of lynch mobs, and that is exactly what this is.
I have sources too. Several of them.
Alas, they disagree with each other.
Hey, I am one of the first to scoff (Scoff! Scoff scoff scoff!!) when someone asserts that someone is "paid off by Big Oil."
No, I'm pointing out the anti-energy ideology that infects much of the self-anointed "Environmental" movement. "It would be nothing short of disastrous if we were ever to discover source of cheap, clean, abundant energy." "(Cold Fusion, back when it looked possibly real) is like giving a machine gun to a retarded child."
That cult. Real quotes by the high priests of that cult.
I've said many times -- the moment -- the very instant -- that any energy source of any kind looks like it might be able to keep industrial civilization powered, it will become Anathema. For that reason. Though other excuses will be manufactured, because "humans deserve no access to energy" doesn't play well outside the cult.
He reliably pisses off lefties. That should count for something.
There is that.
"There's so much good in the worst of us,
And so much bad in the best of us,
That it ill behooves any of us
To find fault with the rest of us."
Not sure who said that. Opinions on the source vary.
And when it was signed into law under Obama, I think I remember the Republican-leaning part of the population being equally outraged at it.
As someone generally Republican leaning, not a fan of Obama, who has despised Trump since the 1980s...
I thought it was a useful capability when the Obama administration proposed it. I still think it's a good idea now. No matter who's president.
I do not recall anyone objecting to it when it was an Obama administration thing. Not one person. Ever.
Any citation for "the Republican-leaning part of the population being equally outraged at it"? I'm sure you'll be able to find one idiot. Maybe two. One of them will likely be Alex Jones, but I never listed to that jackass. Anybody mainstream? Even on the outer edges of the mainstream?
Yeah. I thought not.
... the percentage of our energy needs that a technology needs to hit before The Usual Suspects will find some reason, any reason, to start wailing and gnashing their teeth and rending their clothes and shrieking "It's EEEVIL!! Tear it DOWN, NOW!!"
8%.
So predictable.
That's a good point.
My considered opinion on that other issue where people are going on and on about "The Russians! The Russians!!" is that Putin didn't much care who won the election. He just wanted, whichever highly divisive person it was, that their supporters would not accept the results as legitimate. Trump was setting up doing it on his end, with the "The election is rigged!" comment. If Hillary had won, it would be Trump and the Trumpunists going on and on about "The Russians! The Russians!!" instead of the opposite.
Either way, Putin gets what he wants.
I feel all left out.
Was it something I posted on Slashdot?
Rey is overpowered, definitely, but I didn't really have a huge problem with that. Kylo Ren is way overpowered, too, and way too deserving of the title "Darth Emo", though he was better in The Last Jedi.
That ridiculous Leia doing the Kryptonian sleep-flying back to the ship after getting explosively decompressed, modulo some blast damage from the weapons that tore the bridge apart... What were they thinking?
The utter stupidity of *dropping* bombs *in space*... *were* they thinking? Seems unlikely.
On the whole, I like the actors. But their performances were ill-served by the writing and directing. The whole thing was completely disjointed. It just felt sloppy, beyond the above stupidities. (None of which were the actors' fault.)
"But.... Russians!!" is the last refuge of the compleat idiot.
Actually, an "all varieties" flu vaccine may be just around the corner. Rather than antibodies against the capsule proteins, which are constantly mutating, they go after the stalk proteins, which don't change very much or very often.
And to lift your flying car. You would need a ton or two of antimatter. Collide with another flying car and the explosion would be how big? Enough to create a second moon?
Last time I looked this up, it was something like 47 grams of matter converted completely to energy == one megaton of kaboomage.
With matter/antimatter annihilation, a good portion of the energy vanishes into thin space in the form of neutrinos. The ratio was about 60/40, and I don't recall which way, so as a reasonable estimate, I'd pick half. Or, calculate based on the mass of the antimatter, not the antimatter + matter it annihilates with.
So, one tonne == 1 million grams == over 21 thousand megatons.
Not in my back yard, please.
Repubs hate green energy because they view it in regressive. (Mindmills were around in the 15th century).
People who can do arithmetic hate the headlong-rush to replace base load generating capacity with sunny-days-when-the-wind-is-blowing energy.
Nuclear energy can be the compromise. It will look like we are moving forward, while not producing evil carbon dioxide. We will need to lesson the regulatory burdern but not eliminate it. As it is we have a stalemate.
Yeah, I've been advocating phasing out coal in favor of nuclear for ... oh, about 40 years now. The so-called "Greens", of course, hate nuclear with an undying white-hot hatred. They will hate any energy source that threatens to be able to supply industrial/technological civilization. ANY energy source. Mark my words. If flow batteries threaten to actually make "sunny days when the wind is blowing" energy sufficient to keep industrial/technological civilization running, they *will* find some reason that it's The Most Horrible Evil Ever. Guaranteed.
Way back in the paleolithic era of the World Wide Web, some wiseacre registered peta.org. People Eating Tasty Animals. The site was a compendium of links to meat companies, leather goods, animal testing laboratories ... basicially, if it ticked PeTA off, he'd have a link to it.
Grumbling from those quarters for years. But they didn't have any web presence, other than news articles about their antics.
Then, at some point "that" PeTA filed a complaint and stole the domain that had existed for several years. It's still owned by the crazies. For a while, the guy who did the original page had it up as a link off of his main page...Hey, it's still there, mtd.com/tasty. I thought I'd looked a while back and it was gone, but it's still there as of now.
And there it is, Double down: Trump is a Nazi same as all R presidential candidates back to Dewey.
It's just old, tired and stupid at this point. Not convincing anyone.
'This time it's real' is part of the derp.
They told me Nixon was a Nazi, and I ignored them, because for all his faults, Nixon was no Nazi.
They told me Reagan was a Nazi, and I ignored them, because for all his faults, Reagan was no Nazi.
They told me George H.W. Bush was a Nazi, and I ignored them, because for all his faults, George H.W. Bush was no Nazi.
They told me George W. Bush was a Nazi, and I ignored them, because for all his faults, George W. Bush was no Nazi.
Now they're telling me Trump is a Nazi, and I'm ignoring them, because for all his many glaring, egregious faults, Trump is no Nazi.
I hope a real Nazi doesn't ever get close to power, because the people crying NAZI! NAZI! NAZI! at every Republican since Eisenhower have long since lost every shred of credibility.
(No, I didn't vote for the SOB, but that doesn't mean I'm stupid enough to think he's a Nazi.)
D'oh! Brain fart. Keith Ellison. Keith. Ralph never served in Congress, and is somewhat metabolically challenged. While this doesn't preclude voting in Chicago, it's a bit to much of a handicap to serve in Congress.