When it stopped meaning "Suspend output to terminal" along with it's partner CTRL-Q.

In-Band serial flow control ftw!

G.

It probably wears out in a year or two and/or requires $100/month in exotic maintenance supplies, and if you ever put wax on the car it will destroy its self-cleaning properties, etc.

G.

Work hard, save as much as you can, invest wisely. Should be easy to accumulate $1M.

Unfortunately that's not really all that much money these days...

G.

Horgan has been going on about stuff like this for years. He wrote a book in 1997 called "The End of Science" which I read and thought was completely ridiculous. My recollection (possibly faulty as it's been quite a few years) is that he came across as very anti-science and wandered off into religion later in that book. It feels to me as though he WANTS science to fail at some point.

I don't know why he seems hell-bent on convincing everyone that we're going to run out of things to discover, but I just don't buy it.

Even if we manage to get to the "bottom" of Physics some day that's cool and all but it's hardly the end of much. The biology of even simple cells is fantastically complex and there's lifetimes worth of discovery left there. Also even if some day we we know most or all of the "rules", the possible applications of these simple rules are virtually infinite, so no scientists or technologists or explorers are likely to be unemployed any time soon.

Every time humanity thinks it knows everything, someone thinks up a clever new idea for measuring things and boom, a whole new world of complexity opens up. There might be an end to the turtles at some point, but I'm not worried :)

G.

Yes, that could be. But it seems clear that the plane was not being controlled by anyone who wanted the plane or its passengers to be rescued, so "oh, I've just flown the plane as far away from civilization as possible and I've just run out of fuel, yet I think I'll try at the last moment to make a successful water landing so as many people as possible can be saved" just does not seem likely. Either the plane was not under control, or those in control were not trying to save anyone.

And more specifically I strongly suspect the life-rafts were equipped with EPIRB satellite transmitters, none of which were activated. So that sort of suggests there aren't a bunch of people floating in a raft somewhere (which likely would have shown up during the satellite debris search I suspect).

Even having a rough idea of where it went down might still mean that the wreckage is not found for a long time. There's a lotta damn ocean out there, and I don't think the range of the "pingers" on the data recorders is that huge.

One thing I've been curious about is the cockpit voice recorder on the 777, specifically what the recording duration is (is it just a 30m circular buffer) and can the pilots disable it and/or the flight data recorder by pulling circuit breakers?

G.

I first remember hearing you as a recurring guest during the Mike Hodel era of Hour 25 on KPFK in LA.

Any great memories of those days that you'd care to share?

G.

Yeah, but just think of the ad revenue from putting the resulting video up on YouTube for us all to laugh at.

POW! Ha ha, that never gets old.

G.