The sections of ship are designed to be isolable from each other. Close a door, shut some duct work to isolate air, and you're fat dumb and happy back in the engine room!

Uh, except commenters and Wikipedia both say that's not true - that the Los Angeles class has only 1-2 bulkhead doors and they most likely had cables and plumbing passed through, making them impossible to seal.

I guess you're just full of shit, then, and lying about serving on one of these subs. Nobody knows you're a dog on the internet, huh?

I'm sure that the nuclear operators stayed at their watch stations during all this

Why? The reactor's probably completely shutdown in drydock anyway, but....SCRAM the reactor, grab your jacket, and exit stage left like everyone else. It's a PWR reactor - not a liquid metal reactor that would be permanently damaged by shutdown.

Is there really a point to sticking around? I'm genuinely curious.

Reality = the $800 Panasonic camcorder and Azden shotgun mic + Audio-Technica wireless lav & handhelds that are the Slashdot standard video gear are at least as good as a Canon XH A1, which was the high-def successor to the XL1.

XLR mic inputs are only really necessary if you're dealing with music and need big audio bandwidth. And nowadays, you might as well use a Zoom H4 for sound, and it will provide phantom power and give you two channels of directional sound through external mics plus 2 channels of ambient. This assumes you either own a copy of pluraleyes or know how to synch audio manually.

I saw the movie TANK -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_(film) -- in the on-post movie theater at Ft. Hood, TX, which at the time was home to the world's largest concentration of tanks. And one of the most boring spots on this planet. Watching a theater full of young tank crew guys cheer this movie was a bit scary. How many of them would go back to their units and decide to take out a bar in Killeen (nearby town) where they'd been short-changed or something like that? Or maybe invade Mexico for the hell of it, an idea for which I actually drew up a battle plan and submitted it through the Army Suggestion Program, where it got all the way up to the Post Commander, who thought it was a fine idea and that it sounded like fun but didn't think the Pentagon or White House would approve.

Anyway, you can't really think about the cost of the military working with a film production company as a true cost. Aside from recruiting value, the military does lots of training-type stuff when a unit or ship isn't actively engaged in combat, and what the heck - they might as well make a movie while they're practicing carrier take offs and landings or clandestine insertions or whatever.

I'm not going to give you a yes or no, because I don't have to. This is Slashdot, not a grand jury. And, because the answer is more nuanced.

Although Steve is gone, Apple is continuing everything that both Richard and I didn't like about their business. So, Steve's malign influence on people's computing continues unabated.

Like I said, I could have written it better than Richard, because Richard has problems with empathy. Had I written it, it would have been more graceful.

Steve also had no shortage of head problems. What an idiot for not retiring when he was first diagnosed - but I guess the public Steve Jobs was the only Steve Jobs there was, and he couldn't stop. Besides his foolish continuance of work, an eating disorder contributed to his demise. He did end up becoming the richest guy in the graveyard.

I was also offended by the New Yorker cover, and I think Richard was too.

Nobody should be surprised that there was much that is negative about Steve. I do oppose Apple's way of business, which is high on DRM and control of the user. Were I writing the same piece, I think I could have said it better than Richard.

I think the saddest part is that Dennis Ritchie, who really invented the stuff of our modern world, died around the same time and in comparison to Steve, was unlamented.

RMS has spent his life fighting for your rights.

No. Richard Stallman has spent most of his adult life:

• having zero political sense or capital
• despite the first, hampering the free software movement by presenting extremist, uncompromising views that get him (and the FSF/Open Source movement) laughed out of the room
• preaching exclusively his vision of utopia
• maintaining a text editor
• not giving two shits about what anyone else wants/thinks/believes/needs, which is a problem given he fancies himself a leader and representative
• not asking for others opinions, collaborating, or accepting constructive criticism
• not having any perception of how he is received, judged, or viewed

He shares a disturbing number of qualities with your average cult leader.

It was only until many other more reasonable voices and non-FSF software appeared that the open source movement gained traction. And what was his response? Continual bitterness, which has shown up in him demanding Linux be called GNU/Linux.

While revered by some geeks, he's almost completely ignored by government, academia, and industry and not taken seriously by anyone with power in any of them. He is a sociopathic egomaniac, and while I wish to hell he'd retire to a small corner of the world - I don't want it to be because of poor health, and I hope he's better soon.

So, I was offended by those comments, too.