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Comment Re:Gun Makers (Score 2) 1111

Uhm, no.

What happened in this article would be the equivalent of a person walking up to a gun shop and saying 'Hi, I need to buy a gun that shoots people really fast, and a ton of bullets because I'm going to kill some people' and the guy selling it to him.

TFA is quite specific that he discovered what they were using the traps for, and went ahead and installed one into a co-hort of the first drug dealer who broke his because he stuffed it with $800K in cash. after he fixed it, he charged them to fix it, and then agreed to install one in the other guys truck.

Comment Re:Avionics (Score 1) 369

As someone who sits behind you a lot maybe we should have a certification test where you have to go through crash sequences and shit can our device. I'd do that so I could read while we mindlessly taxi around DFW to the far away runway or sit behind 30 airplanes in LGA.

I agree with the assessment though, people are stupid and they'd be tangled in their headphones and dying before they just got up and followed directions out the plane in an emergency.

however pretending that everyone will die if a phone is left on is dumb, and it lets people like me argue with the rule makers (not the poor attendants) about it because saying it interferes with the radio and can cause a crash is bad. Interesting how unshielded the intercom is and how the GSM affects it. Has it gotten less as the EDGE network has disappeared and 3G/LTE takes over? i honestly haven't heard that dit dit-da-dit noise in a while. Used to hear it all the time on conference calls.

Comment Re:"35mm DSLR" (Score 1) 316

Canon Rules Nikon Drools (just got me a 6D to replace my 5D)

Much prefer the larger format digitals. Plus, I like looking through lenses. I tried the Oly micro four thirds but I'm better at framing a picture in the eyepiece than holding it arms length staring at a bigger lcd.

Comment Dear Computer Programmers: Why do this? (Score 5, Interesting) 224

I am not a programmer, I'm just a systems guy. I mainly use Mac and Linux, and 64-bit is something I've Just Done for some time now since the introduction of EM64T, however the few times I need to mess with windows the way it works with 64-bit just baffles me as to how 'hard' it seems to be and how 'little' 64-bit friendly / 64-bit stuff there is.

Why is that?

Comment Nerds Ruining Entertainment (Score 4, Insightful) 409

Can you imagine what those shows would have been like had they tried to apply science as we know it?

If you'd like a try, there is a series of books about "Black Jack" Geary that has FTL combat. It's actually quite a good read from a naval combat in space perspective with light speed weaponry + kinetic weaponry + trying to shoot at things that are moving up to 0.1c and what not. But, if you're not into that kind of thing it's got to be a horrid thing to read.

But they do address the few minutes away FTL issue, but it's because you can only enter/exit a system at certain points so unless you're going to turn around and leave you can't micro jump at them.

Sci-Fi

Aircraft Carriers In Space 409

An anonymous reader writes "Real-world military conventions have had obvious effects on many sci-fi books, movies, and TV shows. But how does their fictional representation stack up against the evolving rules of high-tech warfare? In an interview with Foreign Policy magazine, a naval analyst discusses some of the technological assumptions involved in transposing sea combat to space combat, and his amusement with the trope of 'aircraft carriers in space.' He says, 'Star Wars is probably the worst. There is no explanation for why X-Wings [fighters] do what they do, other than the source material is really Zeroes [Japanese fighter planes] from World War II. Lucas quite consciously copied World War II fighter combat. He basically has said they analyzed World War II movies and gun camera footage and recreated those shots. Battlestar Galactica has other issues. One thing I have never understood is why the humans didn't lose halfway through the first episode. If information moves at the speed of light, and one side has a tactically useful FTL [faster-than-light] drive to make very small jumps, then there is no reason why the Cylons couldn't jump close enough and go, "Oh, there the Colonials are three light minutes away, I can see where they are, but they won't see me for three minutes?"'"

Comment Some how 'value' and 'computer' got screwed up. (Score 1) 342

Things aren't expensive because (shocker) MORE PEOPLE USE THEM.

It has nothing to do with people making stuff expensive for expensive sake, it has everything to do with the fact that when a new iPhone came out two million people ordered one in 24 hours.

hell five years ago if a device that did computery stuff did anything close to that people would have freaked out. Now? iPhone 5 is SUCH a disappointment.

Comment Re:Add Support for Visual Studio (Score 1) 1154

Amen. Amen. Amen. Good lord UI on many apps is horrible. Not just Linux, but it's the biggest offender.

I used linux as a desktop OS when RH was still 6.2, and 7.0 and didn't have 'enterprise' in it.

Then I gave up, got a Max because it's core was unix-based and never looked back. I'm sure many people like the roll your own of linux and I learned a ton using it and apply it at work every day, but when I get home and want to goof off shit just need to work and other than clicking a few times to install something I don't want to watch something compile.

I'm sure it's gotten better, but still, to this day, if a GUi starts on Linux I'm lost as to what to do in it, and open a command prompt and do everything from there.

Comment Not only that, Huffington Post cuts/pastes (Score 5, Interesting) 165

Huffington Post is one of those sites I avoid because they mainly cut/paste the entire article and don't reference the original site. A few times I've followed the link I've had to play google detective for a few minutes to find the original article. Just seems shady and with the news of how little to not they pay the people who write for them I stay away from them.

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