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User: Nefarious+Wheel

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Comments · 3,691

  1. Re:No backup?! on Has Anyone Seen the Moon Pictures? · · Score: 1

    I wasn't saying they couldn't afford it, I'm saying it never entered their minds. Dey wuz drinkin from da fire hose...

  2. Re:How old is too old is up to you on How Old is Too Old? · · Score: 1
    Yep. I'm 56. My first computer was a four-fridge SDS 930 with discrete transistors. That's **old**. Hah! You young whippersnappers with yer mice and potatoes and whatnot don't know what a real computer is. 8K is enough for anyone if you just code it right!! Fortran II R0xor3Z!! Still in the industry too and I have two toons on Xegony at L70 besides. Don't give up the ship. Never give in! Never surrender!! Never quit until He with His Noodly Appendage puts you to bed with a back hoe!!!

    Uhh, sorry, what was I talking about? It was the little aspirins, wasn't it...

  3. Re:No backup?! on Has Anyone Seen the Moon Pictures? · · Score: 5, Informative
    Ok, I have this original video with the first man on the moon, should I make some backups? Nah...

    Old technology sucks. I know, because I'm an old technologist.

    The year was 1969, peeps, 37 years ago.

    Magnetic tape degrades. For the 7 track stuff used back then you were lucky to get 7 years out of a tape -- that's why the IRS required only 7 years backup of data, they couldn't reliably ask for more. 9 track wasn't substantially better. Look up "print-through" (you may have to resort to paper sources for that).

    Disk space was expensive and hard to get too -- 55mb IBM 2370 disk pack cost about $1K each or worse in old money iirc. People weren't even aware of the need to make backups yet, and that was for data only -- the idea of storing video in digital form didn't happen until the late 70's when JPL trialled storage of images as well as image catalogues (don't ask about JPLOS -- please. Or Mark IV.).

    Film degrades too. We've lost a lot of original movies and animation because of the chemically active film substrata.

    I wouldn't be surprised if they "lost" it because the media simply degraded to the point of unusability. When was the last time you wrote your congresscritter to have NASA data archives funded properly? They're mostly living from grant to grant there and conserving this fantastically important data won't happen without a push. So push!

    Mmmm. Lost a planet Obi-Wan did. Embarrassing!

  4. Intervals on Researchers Make Mount Etna Sing · · Score: 1
    Ahh it crescendoed from B# to Fb

    Obviously not a well-tempered mountain. Fb is normally rendered as "E" and has been since Bach's time.

  5. Re:Video link on Liquid Armor the New Bulletproof Vest · · Score: 1
    The energy imparted to the vest/person is directly related to the force. Again, you're treating momentum as a magnitude and not a vector... et. al.

    Guys, I hate to spoil a good argument, but can't this simply be measured? Build or acquire an appropriate crash test dummy that models a live target, test and measure the results?

  6. Re:1.21 gigawatts on Using Electricity to Heal · · Score: 1

    If you're going to use Jigga-watts, you should remain consistent with the dialect and use "orientated" as well. (Erk.)

  7. Not sure if this is a dupe on New Alzheimer's Drug Shows Promise · · Score: 2, Funny

    I think this may be a dupe, but I can't remember. Perhaps I really suffer from attention defi Let's go ride BICYCLES!

  8. Re:All intelligence is genuine, not artificial. on NPR Looks to Technological Singularity · · Score: 1

    Was it Minsky who said "Asking whether a computer can think is as useless as asking whether a submarine can swim"?

  9. Re:Evolution yes, singularity no on NPR Looks to Technological Singularity · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Can you imagine the "text book that anyone can edit" being used in any school...

    You don't think much of anyone, do you?

  10. Re:Evolution yes, singularity no on NPR Looks to Technological Singularity · · Score: 1
    Perhaps if you augmented your intelligence a bit more, you'd understand that it's not the same as knowledge or information

    Military intelligence is to intelligence as military music is to music.

  11. Re:First picture! on 30th Anniversary of Viking Landing on Mars · · Score: 1

    I have the second photo framed on my bookcase at home. Remember the Midas Rock? Can you spot it? Remember why it was named?

  12. Re:Humans? on 30th Anniversary of Viking Landing on Mars · · Score: 2, Informative

    Delay was 40 minutes one-way light time during landing.

  13. NSIWT on 30th Anniversary of Viking Landing on Mars · · Score: 3, Funny
    I remember working in SFOF in Pasadena during the landing. Pretty magic. Walter Cronkite was there, lots of SF luminaries.

    One of my favorite memories was a Xerox'ed cartoon of a lovely sylvan setting, Viking 1 parked by a meandering stream, three-eared rabbits running by, trees.... and a two-headed eagle flying away with the high-gain antenna.

  14. Re:Unlikely wing design. on Ancient Reptile Had Wings Like a Fighter Jet · · Score: 1

    Adapted more for leaping through thick brush without breaking your wings perhaps, in search of fast-moving food?

  15. Zany Solution on 'Laser Tweezers' Used to Sort Atoms · · Score: 1

    Reminds me of the French car in Tom McCall's "Zany Afternoons" -- the car that was "so exclusive that none will be built!" The only way to secure information is to not send it. That works, generally. Encase the computer in concrete after removing the wireless connection, wrapping the box in lead foil and unplugging the cables. Data is safe. The frog is deaf...

  16. Place your bets on Challenging the Ideas Behind the Semantic Web · · Score: 1

    Who would win? (/troll)

  17. Re:Or... on Worst Tech CEOs Earn the Most Money · · Score: 2, Insightful
    but in the tech industry it makes sense that a CEO would not be of much help if they don't have a solid technological base. It's not like other industries where good CEO-sense can take you a long way...

    True. Remember Carly?

  18. Re:Anyone remember Ashton-Tate and Wordstar? on Worst Tech CEOs Earn the Most Money · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Ashton-Tate when down the toilet because Dbase 4 was a pile...

    Sort of true, but not the complete picture. dBase IV was indeed the quality showpiece you describe (funny how yesterday's gods become today's devils) but more to the point the code was acquired by -- you guessed it -- Microsoft, who turned it into everyone's favorite mockery of a database, MS Access. When you can't compete, sue to cover your failures -- SCO didn't invent the technique.

    Look up the story of Tom Rettig some time, one of the main developers, for a tid-bit of insight into the origin of the term "eating your own dog food". He used to co-star with a dog in the iconic TV series Lassie.

  19. Re:Paranormal research also at respected instituti on Virtual Reality Gaming System Tests for Telepathy · · Score: 1
    By your definition, the difference between kook and scientist is the amount of funding they get.

    Well, you have to quantify it somehow, don't you? Pick a better metric.

  20. Re:Virtual Testing on Virtual Reality Gaming System Tests for Telepathy · · Score: 1
    What was that thing where someone was being tested for telepathy and got every single answer wrong?

    Assignment in Eternity, Vol II, R.A.Heinlein I think.

  21. Re:Tax payer money at work on Virtual Reality Gaming System Tests for Telepathy · · Score: 1
    We haven't been able to find focussed point-to-point radio transmitters in our brains,...

    Hmm, wouldn't have to be much, and it might not have to be focussed. Depends on the configuration. You can switch a large current with a small voltage. RF? I know that amateur radio folk used to regularly (ionosphere willing) communicate between California and Japan using 1-watt transmitters. Was all in the antenna.

    Speaking of antennas, I've heard humans described as a two-metre bag of water with a few impurities --real antenna stuff -- and we definitely affect radio signals. Theramin effect (test it by putting your hand next to an AM radio and listen to the music get louder).

    I invoke Clarke's Law here somewhere, or one of the corrolaries at least. Metaphysics becomes physics with some regularity. Read Bacon's Novum Organum to see a metaphysical treatise (very occult stuff, and he was in danger of being burned for a witch at the time) be nothing more than an exposition of the scientific method, complete with theory, empirical evidence, experiment, and independent corroboration.

    Focus? I thought most of our subconscious mentation was sequences of neurons firing mostly in parallel as associations between impulse groups were balanced, all producing coherent sums in the way of ideas and impressions, inspirations. Perhaps at some level we could be gathering non-coherent impressions from a variety of sources and drawing subconscious conclusions as a result.

    Or, equally likely, I could be full of compost.

  22. Never metaphysic I didn't like on Virtual Reality Gaming System Tests for Telepathy · · Score: 1

    "I have the sixth sense," said comedian Red Skelton some years ago, "..I just don't have the other five".

  23. Re:A license to print money... on Northrop to Sell Laser Shield Bubble for Airports · · Score: 1
    The only way the terrorists can win is if we give up.

    Almost true. Another way the terrorists can win is for us to become them, to become what they want us to be; Tyrannical, paternalistic, prescriptive and philosophically unimaginative.

  24. Re:A license to print money... on Northrop to Sell Laser Shield Bubble for Airports · · Score: 1
    What would show the terrorists is refraining from terror and facing our future with our chins up as strong, free men, rather than as sniveling neurotics praying to Jesus to protect us while hiding in a self-imposed jail cell that the terrorists can still shoot us through the bars of.

    Dang, that's pretty straight. I was born in the USA, don't live there now, but I remember something chisled into the facade of Redondo Beach High School -- "Where there is no vision, the people perish". Can't remember the attribution, sorry, but I've lived that way.

    So, good people, what's the vision now? Can you say it in one line without resorting to Dilbert?

  25. Re:Fad on Ruby For Rails · · Score: 1
    ...because its API doesn't work with what's smokin' hot in 2011...

    Hi. I just got back from 2011, and we don't use RoR any more. I came back because my head chip was based on it and my GF is upset because my web pages don't fit in her small-format stack. Anyone got the source RNA here?