Posts by Stevie 7282 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Jun 2008
Not checkers, "verifiers".
Ours made a second copy of the tape.
Funny story. I once wrote a softcover program (you can do that sort of thing in a language that emphasizes readability over terseness) and it got verified 9 times.
And I was menaced by the punch-room supervisor when she found out and she made me run it in front of her to prove it was a real program -it was - and it was the only job I submitted to come back with no typos.
The term in the first world war was "Artillery Observer", and that was indeed what aircraft were first used for, replacing tethered blimps/barrage balloons for the purpose.
The apocryphal story is that while on a mission one officer took exception to the bally hun nearby, drew his sidearm and fired off a few shots, starting the process of retasking aircraft for a combat role. Original armament apparently included rocks, dropping on the enemy from above for the use of, and Mills Bombs, which were basically tin cans packed with explosives and set off with a fuse lit, I would like to think, with a cigar.
The term survives into modern warfare times as "Forward Observer", the poor sod who has to correct the fire of artillery batteries from a closer position to the enemy than is good for the health in an age of high-powered rifles and sniper scopes. They also do the "painting" with laser designators in weapon systems like Copperhead (though they might get a spiffy new job title when doing that).
The artillery observation role is also how those lucky sods in the UK have such beautiful Ordinance Survey maps. The government, having assembled a crack team of map-makers for wartime use needed a reason not to disband the group and lose the talent, so set them the task of mapping the UK at one inch to the mile, then 1:50,000 when the UK went metric.
Who knew such beauty could come from shooting the bejayzus out of each other?
What was the question?
I worked in one place that was having regular thefts of really stupid stuff - old greenscreen terminals for example - despite having 24 hour security guards and an ID checking turnstile.
Every day we would be required to open up any briefcases for a "security check" as we passed in or out. What a joke.
a) All the females of the opposite sex had complained about handbag searches, so handbags were exempt. Cue the carrying of enormous duffels as unsearchable "handbags".
2) I asked what they were looking for once and was told "computer tapes". When I asked what a computer tape looke like, they described an old nine track reel of tape. Sitting in plain view in my opened-for-security-check Delsey Slimline Briefcase (dead 70s, me) was a modern (as of then) nine track cartridge tape as used in our site.
*) I finally lost it when one of the guards made a snotty remark about the thefts.
"That's insulting!" I snapped.
"It's my job!" he riposted.
"No, it's insulting that you think that if I wanted to steal a terminal I would be so stupid as to try and carry it out past the security check in front of the CCTV camera" I counter-riposted.
"Well, how would you do it?" he snarked.
"We are on the sixth floor. I could simply tie a rope around the terminal and lower it to a confederate through a window while you are busy guarding the gate. But that would be doing it the hard way. I'd actually probably just do what the real theives are doing".
"What's that then?" said Mr Security.
"I'd wait until everyone but security and the PC night shift was gone, take whatever I wanted to steal and put it in one of those huge canvas dumpsters-on-wheels, the ones we use for waste paper. I'd cover up the stolen item with more paper, and wheel the dumpster out through the freight elevator. Where I would be waved through the security check."
Then I just stood and watched the penny drop. A magic moment.
The consensus in the UK PC press (PC World etc) In The Day was that the Apple II had gorgeous color that no other machine could equal, but most other machines were better at sums.
Since I only ever got my hands on an Apple II in the early 1990s I couldn't comment.
The one I got was originally used to run the national convention business of a large US comic book business, so it can't have been too shabby.
"all tables, grey backgrounds, blue underlined links and no CSS"
So, downloaded in sparrow's fart time and was invulnerable to XSS attacks?
As for paying for content to rid myself of adverts, I tried that. The adverts started coming again six months later. In this case it was "Fool me once, never get a cent more of subscription money from me again and I'll adblock your free content".
This the same Stephen King as the one who re-issued The Stand with all the pages editors had removed put back in, thereby showing the world the absolute necessity of editors?
I think I agree that in many cases King's endings let down the book (Tommyknockers is an example) but sometimes he hits one out of the park (Firestarter worked very well for me, as did Christine).
But the real king of "Ruin a Good Idea with The Explanation" is Dean Koontz. I had to stop reading his books. I loved he set-ups but hated his trite reasons why things were happening like they were.
Never read any Twilight books, largely because in a post "Vampire LeStat" world I feel Vampires Are Stupid. There isn't anything anyone can say about them that is new and interesting no matter what you say they eat or when they can or cannot go abroad amongst people. I *did* read a short in which vampires kept herion-addicted humans for the high, but the rest of the story simply wasn't worth the idea.
And for me the sooner the current craze for Zombies is over the better. The Dead rise. Yawn. Even the White Walkers are tedious. We know this because GRRM stopped writing about them yonks ago, having baited and switched the reader at about halfway through book one of A Game Of Pagecounts.
I'll watch GoT on TV next year just for the spectacle, but to the idea that the dead are taking over Westeros I say "about time", and I'm done with the books since book 5: A Blithering with Behemoths.
"It would be comforting to the Oracle faithful to believe that this open source onslaught isn’t having an impact on the database behemoth."
No, it will be comforting in the competition drives down the price.
People using Oracle typically are leveraging the Oracle technology, and switching en masse to an open source "alternative" is a non-starter.
Smaller shops that just want to hold data in tabular form and get at it with SQL are a different use case than the large enterprise, where replication technologies and resilience are paramount.
I know if the license calculus were to change favorably that my director-level people would be a lot happier.n But telling them to move to Mongo DB or MySQL would get me fired, free or not.
Yep. A while back we read in these pages of a flight simulator that inverted the virtual aircraft when it flew into the southern hemisphere's sky. The thrust of the article was in the quick fix approach supplanting the figure out what's wrong and fix that approach, and was written after one of those "inches/metric" screwups on a Mars shot (as I remember it).
If the test suite is bebuggered then all hope is lost in the face of willfully blind management.
I *knew* this would turn out to be a videogame-based spat gone large.
Now tell me again how a kid who makes threats over the phone to someone's wife is not a potential lethal threat.
These f*cking people have no connect. They seem incapable of working out the direct consequences of their actions, of if they can, they don't care.
Either way: to the organbanks with them. There must be needing people out there who won't be such a waste of organic matter.
I just watched the movie "Dunkirk" and read " Hurricane Hunter aircraft" as "Hawker Hurricane aircraft".
Several milliseconds of confusion resulted while mash-up footage of The Battle of Britain/Sharknado ran in Mr Brain.
"Bandits at 2 o'clock, looks like a squadron of great whites! Tally ho!"
My first experience with a GoPro was installing the SD card sold to me with the camera only to find after a bunch of mysterious messages that this particular card was too big for the GoPro. The manual was of minimal help, and reading it made matters no better.
As for all you armchair astronauts that are second guessing someone on mission and offering advice: You know what you can do, and the same goes for your horses.
Calling an astronaut stupid says more about your intelligence than the astronauts.
Yes. It's the difference between "a conspiracy" and "A conspiracy theory" that generates the contempt.
An example of the first would be the Yalta Agreement.
An example of the second would be The Birther twatism, anything said about the WTC by someone who is not versed in materials science, anything said online about anything political.
You'll be showing us your snapchat shot of the other side of the Moon to prove this?
And if it's like you say, why did the NASA ground crews speak of the "communications blackout" when the space craft went to the part we never see? Eh? Eh?
Pauses to smooth down hair and regain control
Absent a spaceship with a camera, no-one on the Earth will ever see the backside of the Moon, and when they *can* see the Moon, the other side is always dark because the Sun is shining on the part we *can* see.
So you may be right half the time, but it is the half when no-one cares. No-one at all. No-one suddenly sits up at their desk in the middle of the day and thinks "the far side of the moon may be fully lit right now" because no-one really thinks about the moon unless:
a) They can see it - far side dark.
2) They are watching Space 1999 or 2001 A Space Odyssey on the telly - not the real Moon; doesn't count
+) They are paid to think about the Moon - same crowd who re-named Pluto not a planet; beneath contempt
I've had many gel lead/acid batteries swell and split. No liquid ones though. My guess is that an internal short forms and heats the gel. A liquid battery "just" boils off the acid until it is gone, which is why you want unsealed ones.
A colleague had a car battery explode when he did the wrench-short across the terminals thing while working on his car. Wrench welded itself to the terminals in sparrow's fart time, and the battery electrolyte boiled merrily until the casing burst/slagged (not sure which) and the various steamy vapours touched the white-hot wrench and ignited.
He walked around with a haunted expression for years afterward.
I also worked with someone some years back who had a mini like mine with the battery under the back seat. His son did some work on it in order to earn car-borrowing privs, and unfortunately left the spanner on one of the battery terminal tightening bolts before closing the seat. The spanner slowly worked its way across both terminals and provided much excitement a few days later as my friend drove to work. Luckily it didn't do the welding-itself-to-the-posts thing, how we never figured out, but the sparking, burning and driver-screaming-like-a-litlle-girl were still impressive, I was told.
Years later this same guy lifted the engine out of the mini and discovered a socket wrench that had been sitting on the front sub-frame for years, also down to the kid.
I have to say I'm a bit puzzled by the scaredy-cat reaction to the UPS situation and lack of prep.
Knowing there were lead acid batteries involved, why was this not opened up OUTSIDE? The biggest danger would have been the venting of chlorine and possibly flammable hydrogen, which although it goes bang is loud and scary rather than dangerous in the amounts a battery can usually put out into a leaky casing like a UPS (not hermetically sealed usually - mask me how I know this), but you don't want either happening inside.
Knowing there were lead acid batteries involved, why no large pack of Baking Soda on hand? Useful for spills and preventing splashes turning into burns. Also good for stopping spilt acid from being acid. And quenching fires too.
Knowing there were corrosive chemicals involved, why no bucket of water for emergency immersive washing? Yes, water can make things worse (like with lion battery mishaps) but with lead acid jobs large amounts of water are a skin's best friend. Also good four pouring on acid spills to take the bite out of 'em. Also to stop the acid splashes from taking the paint off the director's Jag.
And most of all, why no big metal box for dropping the whole thing in until it stopped fizzing, sparking and doing it's worst? Outside this would simply be a possible cause of a phone call from the neighbors to the police/fire brigade if it all went smoky and blazey, but the important thing is it would be outside, not in the office basement.
Reminds me of the time a neighbour called the fire brigade to tell them his entertainment centre (a 1970s compact hifi thingy) was smoking. They arrived in Dennis, their fire engine, and the neighbour said "it's okay, I just unplugged it and it stopped smoking."
Two firemen, bit between their teeth and adrenaline-crazed from the drive over from the fire station elbowed him out of the way, grabbed the entertainment centre, carried it out onto the front lawn and chopped it to matchwood with their shiny axes to the amusement of onlookers.
Don't call the fire brigade if you don't mean it. They take their work seriously and love to chop stuff to bits. I mean, who wouldn't? I would if I were a fireman. It's half the fun and most of the point.
The reasons for the low uptake may indeed hinge on naff quality, but the acronyms are not helping.
"DAB". "DAB+". Might as well call it "LAAAAAAME".
And "RAJAR"? By the rules of naming stuff from initials it should be "RJAR" or "RaJAR" (You only get to make the "make it work" letters big if it is an awesome world-changer like RADAR.)
This whole fiasco conjures up visions of pipe-smoking, balding, middle aged men in brown tweed jackets c/w leather elbow patches sitting round a table wasting hours of time in "brainstorming" sessions.
Signs I've seriously considered leaving for the people I share facilities with:
"The oldest man made machine in the world is very probably the hinge, which likely predates the wheel. From a simple flap of hide to the machined pin and socket affair of today, the hinge is an elegant and simple answer to the problem of how to move things out of the way so they can be moved back again reliably. This toilet seat is fitted with such a device. Use it. "
"Spreading fecal matter around the area to mark territory is normal behavior if you are a Hippopotamus. If you are a human being it is not. Stop shitting on the floor you assclown."
"If you look into this toilet bowl and see something other than water, you haven't finished flushing."
"If your toilet ritual involves shitting on the floor and then treading in the feces so you can walk it all over the floor, why not consider shitting outside with the rest of the animals?"
"If your toilet ritual involves flushing half a roll, try flushing it down in stages. Remember: If you jammed the plumbing three times in a row, chances are good the laws of physics are working against your bizarre behaviour."
"Please flush before using this toilet. Alternately, please find either a different Indian Restaurant in which to eat your weekly curry as judging by the evidence of the last month they are trying to kill you. Either way, stop leaving the contents of your bowels for everyone else to enjoy."
"If you have found the toilet jammed up and filled with the contents of the Indian Food Gourmet's bowels, flushing again will not end well for anyone. Please stop doing it you moron."
"Two hundred million, eight thousand and five, two hundred million, eight thousand and six, two hundred million, eight thousand and seven ..."
"Hey fedoraman, would you like a cup of tea?"
"Ooh yeah! Nothing like a good cup of tea!"
"No, nothing like a good cup of tea."
Sluuuurp!
"Two hundred million, eight thou ... um ... aw! One, two, three"
Thank you Eccles and Bluebottle for the script.
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