Three examples come to mind: Star Trek, lady mystery author, Game of Thrones.
The guy who was the Science Consultant for Star Trek had a two part job. One was to get the "real"science right (or close enough). The other was to make sure the fictional particles and weapons and such were consistent with previous appearances.
Says my wife: a certain prolific/productive/hack writer of series detective fiction hired a family member to record and organize various facts about people and events and such in her detective stories.
There's a guy who has pretty much written an encyclopedia of the Game of Thrones, with genealogies, dragon husbandry tips, geography, etc. (I know nothing about Game of Thrones.) George R. R. Martin uses it -- and maybe has hired the guy to maintain it -- because GRRM had trouble keeping track of it all.
As I think most of us know, there's a huge amount of legacy COBOL code out there, still grinding away in banks and insurance companies and such. As a percentage of total production code it may be declining dramatically, but as an absolute number the decline is much smaller. It's a lot easier to say you're going to rewrite an undocumented COBOL monstrosity in Java than to actually do it.
If COBOL on Visual Studio has the tedious bits defaulted and hidden, or shrunk to something just as informative but not as verbose, that would be something. (For all I know, this has already been done, ages ago.) Click the little plus sign in the left margin, and it will show you the actual COBOL code, in all its verbosity, if you need to see it for some reason.
For horribly-structured ancient code -- a certain program with a multi-screen nested-IF statement comes to mind -- this could be the start of a refactoring that turns it into something maintainable.
If the new blocksize so unpopular it can't get 75% by January, the status quo remains. Seems pretty reasonable.
If the new blocksize is somewhat popular -- it gets 75% by January but just barely -- up to 25% of the bitcoin network is suddenly locked out of the main blockchain, and disaster results. Until the laggards switch over, anyway. Not so reasonable.
Is the imminent problem so severe that the delay from requiring a larger percentage -- say, 90% -- and a later date -- say, July 2016 -- is worse than having up to 25% of the bitcoin network off the main blockchain?
Too late to answer that question, I suppose. Switching the XT software to this new requirement (XT2?) would mean there would be three contenders. Yikes!
Anti-virus companies could (or have an incentive to) create virus-infected software and release it into the world, and then come up with detection for them faster then their competitors.
Don't recall if it was a joke, speculation, or a vague accusation, much less who made it. (It was years ago.)
Guess I'd better RTFA. It may explain how he will be able to grow new natural shell by the prosthetic shell, after being released into the wild. If indeed he can.
But we're working to "Get the Fox out of here!". (Say it fast.)
One more month, maybe sooner, and our team's application loses its last DBF file. (All actual VFP code was eliminated months ago.) Goodbye, VfpOleDB.dll!
Stuff just keeps getting cheaper, for the most part.
Well, oil prices have gone up. Until the cost of petroleum rose so high it was almost cheaper to make it from turkey guts. (Much faster than waiting for geology to make petroleum, and the imitation crude oil made was almost good enough to use, as-is.) And new technology arose, then OPEC wised up.
That's the general trend line for natural resource costs. Down. Exceptions tend to be few, and temporary. Just ask Paul Ehrlich. http://duckduckgo.com/?q=paul....
Yep. Had the journalist been more skeptical and generally prudent, he would have insisted they do their wireless exploit from the back seat. (Oh, and not on the Interstate.)
Or at least, have one of them ride along, while the other did his thing remotely. And hope they were good friends.
Otherwise, you've got yourself a bizarre double-homicide that the forensics team on "CSI: Dogtown" (or "CSI: Creve Coeur" or...) might not even recognize as a homicide. It would just be a vehicular murder-suicide to them.
Now that there's no danger of East German troops invading West Germany, or of supporting suppression of Soviet Union colonies like Hungary and Czechoslovakia, maybe it's time to reconsider the necessity of NATO.
Now that South Korea is immensely prosperous relative to North Korea, maybe its time to shift the burden of defending South Korea to the South Koreans. (Or make South Korea the 51st state. Take your pick.) (I'm being facetious. They wouldn't go for it. It would be a terrible deal for South Korea.)
Look at the bright side. This technology could also be used to produce an even racial balance among the participants at a website.
If a disproportionately large number of people of a racial group have logged in, it will not allow any more of that group until the population is more appropriately diverse.
Something I'll be thinking about the next time some blowhard politician or pundit or academic says something like "It is time to have a national dialog on race".
Yeah. And I'll join that when I've saved up enough that I can retire right now, even after forking a lot of loot after losing a lawsuit.
Sorry, I'm just especially irritable right now, for some cake-related reason.
My work provides monthly passes for free (-ish, I do have to work there), but I don't leave my car at home. I drive to the light rail parking lot.
Taking the bus from home would include a walk to the bus stop and a wait for the bus -- no matter what the weather -- and a long ride to the light rail station.
Air conditioning on the train can only do so much in a St. Louis summer, with 4 doors opening on each car every few minutes.
I've just now almost talked myself into dropping the monthly pass and getting free (-ish) parking in the parking garage instead.
Something along those lines -- in a very different era -- were the CDC 6000 series computers designed by Seymour Cray, and their successors.
One or more central processors did the number crunching and general program logic, and some of the OS, with a bunch of smaller, not-so-bright "peripheral processors" doing I/O and certain low-level OS functions. (How not-bright? They couldn't do division or multiplication except by powers of two, for instance.)
Supposedly, Gene Amdahl, designer of the IBM 360 series machines, later said he wished he'd put more smarts into the channel controllers, in the manner of the CDC machines. Don't have a source. That story might be apocryphal, or at least misremembered in its details.
Slashdot Mirror
Three examples come to mind: Star Trek, lady mystery author, Game of Thrones.
The guy who was the Science Consultant for Star Trek had a two part job. One was to get the "real"science right (or close enough). The other was to make sure the fictional particles and weapons and such were consistent with previous appearances.
Says my wife: a certain prolific/productive/hack writer of series detective fiction hired a family member to record and organize various facts about people and events and such in her detective stories.
There's a guy who has pretty much written an encyclopedia of the Game of Thrones, with genealogies, dragon husbandry tips, geography, etc. (I know nothing about Game of Thrones.) George R. R. Martin uses it -- and maybe has hired the guy to maintain it -- because GRRM had trouble keeping track of it all.
As I think most of us know, there's a huge amount of legacy COBOL code out there, still grinding away in banks and insurance companies and such. As a percentage of total production code it may be declining dramatically, but as an absolute number the decline is much smaller. It's a lot easier to say you're going to rewrite an undocumented COBOL monstrosity in Java than to actually do it.
If COBOL on Visual Studio has the tedious bits defaulted and hidden, or shrunk to something just as informative but not as verbose, that would be something. (For all I know, this has already been done, ages ago.) Click the little plus sign in the left margin, and it will show you the actual COBOL code, in all its verbosity, if you need to see it for some reason.
For horribly-structured ancient code -- a certain program with a multi-screen nested-IF statement comes to mind -- this could be the start of a refactoring that turns it into something maintainable.
There's a German-language edition of The Onion?
Let me see if I've got this right.
If the new blocksize so unpopular it can't get 75% by January, the status quo remains. Seems pretty reasonable.
If the new blocksize is somewhat popular -- it gets 75% by January but just barely -- up to 25% of the bitcoin network is suddenly locked out of the main blockchain, and disaster results. Until the laggards switch over, anyway. Not so reasonable.
Is the imminent problem so severe that the delay from requiring a larger percentage -- say, 90% -- and a later date -- say, July 2016 -- is worse than having up to 25% of the bitcoin network off the main blockchain?
Too late to answer that question, I suppose. Switching the XT software to this new requirement (XT2?) would mean there would be three contenders. Yikes!
What's their motto again?
"Don't be live"? "Don't be liver"? "Don't be vile"?
Something like that. I just can't seem to think of it.
Anti-virus companies could (or have an incentive to) create virus-infected software and release it into the world, and then come up with detection for them faster then their competitors.
Don't recall if it was a joke, speculation, or a vague accusation, much less who made it. (It was years ago.)
So this claim seems more than a little familiar.
Uh, Californians?
Now practical fusion power is only 20 to 25 years away.
Again.
Still.
Opaque envelopes do it, too. And curtains on windows.
And it'll probably change dramatically when Fidel Castro dies.
I asked a friend how long it would be from the death of Fidel Castro to Cuba getting a Major League Baseball team.
He said it depends on the timing. If it's before the Superbowl, it will be that year. Otherwise, the following year.
He was at least 58% serious, I think. No less than 33%, for sure.
We can expect a sudden burst of Perestroika, if not absolute Wall-smashing, once the old man dies.
Guess I'd better RTFA. It may explain how he will be able to grow new natural shell by the prosthetic shell, after being released into the wild. If indeed he can.
But we're working to "Get the Fox out of here!". (Say it fast.)
One more month, maybe sooner, and our team's application loses its last DBF file. (All actual VFP code was eliminated months ago.) Goodbye, VfpOleDB.dll!
Yep, up to bullet point 3.
Stuff just keeps getting cheaper, for the most part.
Well, oil prices have gone up. Until the cost of petroleum rose so high it was almost cheaper to make it from turkey guts. (Much faster than waiting for geology to make petroleum, and the imitation crude oil made was almost good enough to use, as-is.) And new technology arose, then OPEC wised up.
That's the general trend line for natural resource costs. Down. Exceptions tend to be few, and temporary. Just ask Paul Ehrlich. http://duckduckgo.com/?q=paul....
Yep. Had the journalist been more skeptical and generally prudent, he would have insisted they do their wireless exploit from the back seat. (Oh, and not on the Interstate.)
Or at least, have one of them ride along, while the other did his thing remotely. And hope they were good friends.
Otherwise, you've got yourself a bizarre double-homicide that the forensics team on "CSI: Dogtown" (or "CSI: Creve Coeur" or ...) might not even recognize as a homicide. It would just be a vehicular murder-suicide to them.
Now that there's no danger of East German troops invading West Germany, or of supporting suppression of Soviet Union colonies like Hungary and Czechoslovakia, maybe it's time to reconsider the necessity of NATO.
Now that South Korea is immensely prosperous relative to North Korea, maybe its time to shift the burden of defending South Korea to the South Koreans. (Or make South Korea the 51st state. Take your pick.) (I'm being facetious. They wouldn't go for it. It would be a terrible deal for South Korea.)
Not correct.
The required qualifications to be president are given in the Constitution. Nothing there about being a felon.
It's government. Of course there's a high risk of unexpected pitfalls.
And because it's government, fixing or eliminating it is somewhere between "difficult" and "impossible".
The ones responsible for its existence or the details of how it was defined don't want to admit they goofed.
The ones who benefit from it are happy with it remaining as it is.
The ones who are screwed over by it look like scoundrels if they try to get rid of it or fix it.
Look at the bright side. This technology could also be used to produce an even racial balance among the participants at a website.
If a disproportionately large number of people of a racial group have logged in, it will not allow any more of that group until the population is more appropriately diverse.
Alakazam! A more diverse Internet.
Equatorial. Dry.
Got it! A use for the Sahara.
The US doesn't.
If they could, they'd ban opaque envelopes and envelopes with adhesive seals.
Something I'll be thinking about the next time some blowhard politician or pundit or academic says something like "It is time to have a national dialog on race".
Yeah. And I'll join that when I've saved up enough that I can retire right now, even after forking a lot of loot after losing a lawsuit.
Sorry, I'm just especially irritable right now, for some cake-related reason.
Goerge (H.W.) Bush didn't do so well at re-election time, as I recall.
My work provides monthly passes for free (-ish, I do have to work there), but I don't leave my car at home. I drive to the light rail parking lot.
Taking the bus from home would include a walk to the bus stop and a wait for the bus -- no matter what the weather -- and a long ride to the light rail station.
Air conditioning on the train can only do so much in a St. Louis summer, with 4 doors opening on each car every few minutes.
I've just now almost talked myself into dropping the monthly pass and getting free (-ish) parking in the parking garage instead.
Something along those lines -- in a very different era -- were the CDC 6000 series computers designed by Seymour Cray, and their successors.
One or more central processors did the number crunching and general program logic, and some of the OS, with a bunch of smaller, not-so-bright "peripheral processors" doing I/O and certain low-level OS functions. (How not-bright? They couldn't do division or multiplication except by powers of two, for instance.)
Supposedly, Gene Amdahl, designer of the IBM 360 series machines, later said he wished he'd put more smarts into the channel controllers, in the manner of the CDC machines. Don't have a source. That story might be apocryphal, or at least misremembered in its details.