Posts by G.Y.

Re: Exit plan

firing an M16 into the machinery, while it is working, should suffice

Re: Site Acceptance Test

"bribed through customs" is a great phrase

compilers Re: Nobody told me I wasn't allowed to do it.

I once let some compilers compile a 1-liner: "ali baba +40 thieves". Smoke came out of quite a few

Told an old guy about it; he said "I give my compilers .OBJ files to eat!"

VT99 Re: In the pilot's defense...

I have seen an allegedly-VT100-compatible CRT terminal where turning the brightness all the way (away from "off") made it dimmer.

Eltaterm, a long time ago

1ppm Re: Forgetful

The Doppler shift at airline speeds is about 1ppm, I.e 4Khz

nail Re: Boom .....

"for want of a nail" Ii.e. bulb) ...

Oppenheimer Re: I recognise the story

When Robert Oppenheimer spoke about ("born classified") nuclear issues, he would pull a page from his briefcase, speak from it -- and hand it to an FBI guy, because he had no security clearance for his own text.

0d Re: Sentencing will be interesting

Time served is 0 days

-10%

Decimate means reduce by 10% (as in Roman armies)

Re: The plan is obvious

That's what the SX chips are for

Re: Divert

I was at a company where this was set up by the company, so we could call during main office. business hours -- which were our evenings.

7!

7-track is better (has a parity-check bit)

old hacker

I've been into computers for 2 (human) generations; I STILL use the mouse, so my Linux memory for shortcuts mix up my Mac and Windows short cuts

C != 0

An old program of mine (integer linear programming) had an error message "fuckup -- C is not zero".

Boss: "if they see this, they will come running at you!"

Me: "that's exactly what I want them to do!"

Documented? Re: Snap!

I dount it was documented ...

Elliptic Re: How's factoring coming along?

Elliptic curves have way shorter key length at same security level, so they are more exposed to quantum. I notice that NSA/NIST have abandoned their elliptic push, are doing lots of post-quantum crypto.

Hammurabi

Hammurabi's code says that, when scaffolding is removed from a new building, the chief builder should be sitting under the keystone

Re: My take:

Believeing "possible" != believing "it's there" !

In other contexts, this is called socialist realism

Re: Wait, Brazil has a launch pad ?

and the documentation is written right to left ...

5 years Re: Forgery

In the US, you can get 5 years for forging the CDC seal. For vaccination, I think it is deserved.

screwdriver Re: "The power lead approached the PC..."

That kind of switch should be designed to need a screwdriver (or a dime) to change.

scurvy

"A great many of the biology studies coming out of the ISS, like the Twins Study, are all about that bone and muscle loss. The whole point of 6-month and 1-year tours on the ISS is to find out what spaceflight does to humans because the 1960s left a lot of blanks."

This is the equivalent of doing experiments on scurvy in ships, instead of giving the crew lemons

Re: Use of floating point numbers ?

In binary FP, 0.1+0.9 (&suchlike) is not guaranteed to be 1.0

In NYC, the law of the Medes&Persians restricts the number of sockets, seemingly on the assumption that each socket powers a 'fridge+-.

When you have a few laptops, iPhones, ..., the only way out is lots of power strips

The apartment building's super does this in spades

Re: Going out for a curry...

what is a cow ork ?

Re: no such thing as a stupid question?

USMC: "The only stupid question is the question you don't ask!"

not employer Re: The bigger question

The school was not her employer

also Re: Good on them

also, when I use Curb (the NYC taxi app) and something goes wrong, Curb is not responsible for no nothing -- they tell me to go to the TLC, gripe there; very slow process.

When a Lyft ride goes wrong, I gripe, driver gets a rocket (been there ....t-shirt)

Hoare Re: Possibly the smartest words ever spoken.

Tony Hoare has a para on this in his Turing award lecture

undeveloped Re: Trusting trust

If the OTP is sent on undeveloped film, it can still be intercepted -- but the recipient will know it has been

666 (feet) Re: Serial printer fun

= the number of the beast

Re: Well...

and the 1st one (until Eve was created)

IBM PC

When IBM tested the PC user manual on newbies, it said "take the diskette out of the envelope. Some of then took the round thing out of the square thing.

IBM rewrote the text to make it unambiguous.

Re: Not a translator

When I would make a mistake in Dutch grammar, the Amsterdam cashier would just answer in good English

Re: Automotive qualified parts take a long to time

Parts for cars have higher qualifications than MILITARY -- forget commercial

scan Re: documented Communicating with only obscenities?

managed to scan my copy:

At a symposium I attended in

Canada, Peter Vigor, then head of the Sandhurst Soviet Research and Study

Centre, was asked how a Soviet NCO might tell one of his men to do some

simple thing. His sample order contained, I think, seven words, five of them

variants on the soldierly expletive which the Russians, in a true spirit of

democracy, use freely through the ranks. This is a record I have only once

heard equalled. Working on a muddy side-slope, one of my Centurion crews

had just got a thrown track back on and tightened, when the track-adjusting

mechanism came away. Falling back into the mud with the 3-foot spanner

and its contents on top of him, the driver uttered the immortal phrase "The ****ing ****er's ****ed, **** it!" Perhaps Peter Vigor too was

indulging in a touch of poetic licence.

Re: M-16 If China tried to take over Taiwan

even better -- do it while the fab is running at full blast

s/.../... Re: Just a natural evolution

delete "this day", replace by "that"