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Comment Does it have Draft Mode? (Score 2) 148

I've been waiting since, well, forever, for staropenlibre office's word processor to have a Draft or Galley mode (called "Normal" in Microsoft Word, or at least it was). Why in the world people think they should see the header, footer, and margins while writing and editing a document is beyond me.

That's one reason I would love to switch to LaTex all the way: the IDEs out there have one panel where you do your writing and editing, and a separate panel for viewing the fully rendered result when or if you want to.

Comment Re:Naive to say the least. (Score 1) 258

100,000 hours = 273 years. Does anyone believe that?

Oddly enough, it doesn't matter whether you believe it or not. What matters is whether that's the same predictive model used for estimating lifetimes of RAID arrays, or a single drive for that matter. Since you want to compare the proposed new config directly with current paradigms, you have to use the same set of underlying assumptions.

Comment Re:Armchair engineering at its finest (Score 1) 248

Yeah, I have to agree (sadly) with that conclusion. I wanted to come up with a semi-magical coupling system that would "hand off" one counterweight&pulley system to another every 100 floors or so, and do so without requiring the car itself to stop, but I rather suspect the cost and safety requirements would make this well-nigh impossible.

Heck, we might just as well go for a vertical version of the Hyperloop .

Comment Re:Opposite of a pinhole camera (Score 2) 126

Looks like the opposite of a pinhole camera

Dunno if you were joking or not, but that's exactly what it is. There are all sorts of principles of complementary apertures in optics; this one is perhaps the best known.

Now, in general use you do have to play some games to eliminate background light (as opposed to a pinhole camera, where light from elsewhere is blocked out), but in (dare I say it) Spaaaaaaace!! it'll be easier to set up the phase blocking stuff at the camera itself.

Comment Re: StartsWithABang (Score 1) 76

Sadly, Dogma is just as much present in Scientists as it is with Priests.

That's really sad. Not the implication of your statement, but that you might believe it in the slightest.
In an attempt to head off further comments in this subthread: you might as well be Hitler.

Comment Re:It was the press coverage that was the disaster (Score 1) 76

Not to mention good old politics in the bid-award process. A certain other corporation based in a certain town in upstate NY had build plenty of telescopes, same size, for orbit-based use, but because Security dammit!! and some cronyism on the side Hughes Optical got the contract. And screwed it up in an attempt to save cost.

Comment Re:Hypocrisy (Score 1) 136

You've combined possible sensible behavior with completely ignorant behavior.

Yes, your MD is an asshole (and a lazy shit) for prescribing antibiotics without doing a culture. -- unless you just happened to leave out the part where he had a positive finding.

No, he was exactly right for requiring that the entire scrip be taken. It's morons who "feel better after 3 days" and stop the scrip who thus allow partially resistant bacteria to survive and go on to breed (so to speak) more fully resistant bacteria. "All or nothing" is absolutely the rule here.

Comment obligatory (Score 1) 648

Well, *I* think that 64k different languages should be enough for anyone. //rim shot

So, anyway, anyone who claims that any particular language is the right one to start with (and will lead to fame, fortune, and everything that goes with it) is a fool. I can see some justification for avoiding heavily obfuscated languages like APL or perl in favor of any language that actually uses, you know, words, to identify the functions and operations you want to do. If a high-school kid can't understand that "for," "do," "while," etc. are performing mostly the same operation, then he's screwed regardless of the actual language in question.

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