You can not be an enemy if you are dead. This idea that you would get revenge is silly.

This conflict will end because one side will die. The sooner this happens, the lower the body count. (the number of dead can greatly exceed the total population if the conflict drags on for generations)

Actually, it already happened, with gnu moving first.

RMS *already* demanded that Linux be called "lignux", and changed the code of EMACS at one point to make that, rather than "linux", the target.

hawk

>I don't mind static image ads (although I hate it
>when I purchase something on Amazon and then
>get served Amazon ads for the thing I purchased).
>But if it is not static then I despise it.

It's not just ads; it's *anything* that blinks & runs around while I"m trying to read. In fact, I've never blocked *anything* just for being an ad, and I block much of what sites fancy to be "content."

Stay still, damnit, I'm trying to read!

hawk

the two drive bays were typically side by side in the era of MFM drives. And if they were stacked, and you managed to find a double height drive, you would have had no space for your 5.25" floppy.

And the drives I see listed are something like 41mm, or about a inch and a half--half-height or less..

Full height in this parlance is the old 3.5 or 4" tall, nearly the full height of the PC/XT case.

hawk

My smartphone (Samsung Galaxy II) started running slowly. Even after I removed all the unused apps that I had downloaded, movies and photos, it was still running slow. Then I started looking through every single folder. It seems that the trash-cah wasn't actually emptying, and that there was a directory called ".faces" which seemed to archive every single picture that the AI software thought was a face. After those files were removed, my phone regained it's original speed.

>. Likewise MS Office- they change the file formats
>with each release to prevent compatibility with older >versions and especially compatibility with freeware
>office suites.

Now *that* one did not originate with Microsoft. Wordstart and Word Perfect were doing that before MS Word was even released; each coul generally read/export the prior, but not current, version of the other.

Word & Excel (except mac) were distant thirds. Then MS leveraged the dos monopoly to install them on every machine for a minimal royalty at about the time of the 40M hard drive becoming standard, and instead of "$500 for Word Perfect or Word?" it became "Spend another $500 on Word Perfect?"

hawk

And that world has come full circle.

That's not a "double height"; today's bays are half- and third- height.

The last single/full height drive I remember seeing was a 1G scsi in about 96, although I'm certain they continued for at least a feww years after that.

hawk

This is hardly new . . .

I had the original G1, before they were tossing the word "android" around.

It interestingly sprouted a navigation system one day. I thought that was nice, until I tried to use it in general. The "upgrade" needed more cpu power and ram than that thing had.

Add features to use more powerful hardware, and they consume resources on the older phones, too.

The only exception seems to be OSX, which tends to have at least a moderate speed increase for older hardware with each major release.

hawk

>I saw those as a wrap-up, not necessarily a cash-in.

Perhaps more a monument to his ego, with the bizarre attempt to tie in everything he ever wrote.

>They are still good to read.

I forced myself through a couple, and just couldn't do it any more.

hawk

It sounds like this transformer had its center tap grounded and was the path to ground on one side of a ground loop as the geomagnetic field moved under pressure from a CME, inducing a common-mode current in the long-distance power line. A gas pipeline in an area of poor ground conductivity in Russia was also destroyed, it is said, resulting in 500 deaths.

One can protect against this phenomenon by use of common-mode breakers and perhaps even overheat breakers. The system will not stay up but nor will it be destroyed. This is a high-current rather than high-voltage phenomenon and thus the various methods used to dissipate lightning currents might not be effective.

I guess you missed the "cash-in, conglomerate it all!" volumes of his lat career. Foundation XXIV, and so forth . . .

hawk

Cheaper than zero?

Bribes would effectively create a negative cost, at least for the peoplereceiving them.

In March 1989 much of Quebec lost power for the same thing.

They lost power because the common-mode breakers tripped, not because their system was actually damaged.

"They can fix astigmatism now?"

Yes. Here's the Wikipedia entry (though it feels written by a proponent): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

Basically, they measure the retinal reflection from lights coming from a number of different angles to map the lens aberration (just a linear approximation, but with a grid of lights that's plenty close enough). Then they use that to map shorter, more focused laser pulses to reshape the cornea appropriately.

If I understand it right, you normally get rid of all primary and secondary astigmatism (such as coma), but you can still have a small bit of residual astigmatism afterwards. In practice it's night and day; once my eyes stabilized (it took two months) I don't have double vision or any of the other annoying effects of astigmatism any longer.