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Comment Re:Modula-3 FTW! (Score 2) 492

Also 22/3.0 with a bad compiler would be essentially be stored as (int)22 / (float)3.0 and then the int get converted to a float during runtime. I'm not kidding when I say I've seen that during memory inspections. My teacher in college recommended never mixing types and depending on the compiler for conversion and always using 22., 22.0, or (float)22 to ensure types were stored properly.

Comment Re:Waffle much? (Score 2) 160

It shows the transition - OpenGL has been a second class citizen for ATI/AMD for years and now is first class. With the PS4 using their chip and OpenGL they finally have a good reason to have extremely good OpenGL performance and dedicate development time to it, but I still remember when they wouldn't even support extensions.

nVidia has always had OpenGL as a first class citizen (for different reasons - CAD, then PS3, now mobile and Linux GRID arrays such as the one I use with VMWare VMs for GPU support).

Comment Re:Hypocrites, liars and communists. (Score 3, Informative) 441

The Koch brothers don't need to buy scientists - they bought climate denying politicians. The Republicans then put climate deniers in every environment and science role (and if you don't believe me, look it up yourself - just recently they added anti-science/climate denier Ted Cruz to head NASA and have had a climate denier running the EPA since late last year). I'm not saying jump two feet into cutting all emissions like some nuts on the left, but just give science an effing chance and see if it affects anything. These guys just outright deny it is and can happen.

Comment Re: Any experienced teacher already deals with thi (Score 1) 388

I also grew up in that era and basically with no instruction a few of us learned to write BASIC, then decided that was too slow and moved to assembly language. Not long after that we were cracking software. To say our knowledge was far beyond that of the teachers is an understatement, but you are correct in that those of us that did have that knowledge were few. Still, I went to advanced computer camp one summer and the instructor was laughably years behind my brother and I in skills.

Comment Re:Renewable energy ist cheaper! (Score 0) 166

Some fission products such as strontium 90 are pretty radioactive (and short lived). Transuranics from partially burned (non-fast) reactions also can be very radioactive and short lived, but most are alpha emitters, so your dead skin will block that (don't eat or breathe them, though). The actual fuel (uranium, at least) you could carry around in your bare hands, but most people don't because non-oxidized uranium reacts with water (so if you marred the uranium oxide coating and touched the uranium, water from your hand may cause the uranium to catch fire). On the positive side, many of the fission byproducts have uses (like medical devices) and are separated from the waste, so yeah, most of the stuff in the casks is pretty benign.

Comment Re:There is a difference. (Score 1) 589

Yeah, I imagine they were going to hack AMC and rig the film projector to overheat and explode, setting off the thermonuclear warhead it was attached to by the secret CIA program to hide nukes under film projectors.

Well, they did specifically say they were going to blow up every theater, not hack them. Almost certainly an idle threat unless North Korea has planted thousands of sleeper agents and activates them to do such a strike.

As for having unencrypted docs all over, I've seen that, even at corp levels - once you're behind the firewall, everything is unencrypted unless sending between sites or sending a secure mail such as to HR (our HR system requires it).

Comment Re:Failed state policies (Score 1) 435

Not to mention the stuff Obama is lifting is already so easy to circumvent it is relatively pointless. I've met numerous divers that have gone to Cuba via Mexico or Canada and Cozumel is filled with shops selling Cuban cigars, probably exclusively targeting Americans. Even during the Cold War I had a friend that visited Russia to study Russian architecture and brought back Cuban cigars (and they didn't bother to check where the cigars came from because he visited Russia... also they were much better back then - the subsidies helped immensely).

Comment Re:I wonder if... (Score 1) 435

True - my uncle lives in Florida and says most of them vote republican on the abortion issue alone (i.e. Catholic church influence) even if their dirt poor and on food stamps and the republicans tend to take those programs away. He's glad they do, as well, because it lets him keep more money. For reference, this is a very rich uncle and he can probably afford significantly higher taxes (which are all on investments these days - he retired a multimillionaire when he was 54 or 55, so he could spend more time doing things he loves, like traveling the world).

Comment Re:I quite doubt that the GPLv2 goes to court here (Score 1) 173

GPLv2 has a lot of gray areas, though. It can be used internally by a company without releasing source, it seems to apply to plugins but I've been explicitly told by GPLv3 authors that it does not when GPLv3 was in review, etc. Honestly, I disagree with the GPLv3 authors - a plugin is still a dynamically linked library and I honestly believe that you could use it maliciously to try and infect GPLv3 in commercial software (but I also think it would be thrown out in court). Since GPLv2 is equally ambiguous on plugins, it may also apply to that one, as well.

Comment Re:But does it report artificially low ink levels? (Score 1) 270

That doesn't equate to great tasting coffees, though they are better than most (if not all) of the canned stuff.

And I'm far less of a snob with coffee than with beer - I will actually drink Keurig or canned coffee but I need to add cream. For black I prefer beans roasted 5 days or less before use and burr ground, with grind type as per the style of coffee (Turkish, espresso, french press, drip). Yes, home roasted. Unlike beer, home roasting has saved me a fortune after the initial expense, too ($~130 for 20# bags and $300 for the roaster offset the cost of buying beans at $14-18 a pop in 2 years).

Comment SMB jet airliner (Score 1) 244

The Steve Miller band stumped me for years with "big old jet airliner," though I had no idea what he was saying. My best guess was Jeb O'Brian, whoever that was.

In my 20s I spent a LOT of time listening to and writing down lyrics for my cover band and finally figured that one out (and no, I didn't have the album, in fact, I rarely had the albums, thank you very much - not really my favorite music, but I played it).

Comment Re:Sony needs to invest in their IT (Score 2) 170

They didn't specify the attack, but a DDoS attack (part of this group's MO) is notoriously difficult to counter because it relies on the lack of security of the user community rather than the company itself. They use, say, a half million computer bot network to flood the target servers with requests. While you can theoretically block request flooding, sheer numbers can still overwhelm systems.

Comment Re:The Magnavox Odyssey (Score 1) 47

Can't recall gameplay, but most major sports had games (football, baseball, basketball, hockey). I also remember the color overlays for the TV. My age was in the single digits when I played this console, so I don't remember much (and certainly don't remember when it came out - played it maybe mid-to-late 1970s).

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