Sounds like someone doesn't like their Telescreen....

Are you stupid? The person gave a perfectly reasonable explanation to why they are doing this by barge than by land.

You just have to realize the person answering is an engineer.

Is that like "Clinton Derangement Syndrome" because I know and have read of many people who still rant about how horrible that guy was despite having a growing economy, almost bringing some modicum of peace to the Palestinian/Israeli issue, being able form and enunciate coherent sentences and aside from getting a blowjob by a near heifer, didn't invade other countries just for the lulz.

So you're planning on putting lots of these expensive, hardened systems anywhere there 'might' be a disaster? Makes absolutely no sense.

If a disaster is that likely in a given locale, it would make much more sense to build your bunker - and fill it with thousands of pounds of supplies instead of letting your tiny toy copter bring you a couple of cans of beer and some joints. Or do what the Air Force does, put the stuff in pallets, attach a parachute and airlift it to where it's needed.

This is like trying to download Wikipedia on a 300 baud modem line.

You're looking for someone who is incredibly good (able to offer a wide variety of programming languages, good enough to not create any bugs, anticipate them and/or find them very quickly), that is essentially someone who could pick and choose his job, but pay him like some intern.

Would you do it?

Return a list from a function. Sure, you can legally do it, there's nothing in the language inherently stopping you, but experienced C programmers will avoid returning a list at all costs, because suddenly you have to care about whether the caller frees the list properly, and what if the things in the list are used elsewhere and we need to do reference counting etc.. etc... I've worked on a C codebase that was a couple hundred thousand lines of code, and I can't think of anywhere that we ever returned a list from a function. I can't think of any Haskell program more sophisticated than "hello world" that I didn't use "map" and other list functions all the time.

Ultimately, the cost of manual memory allocation isn't just the extra work you have to do to make sure you aren't leaking or corrupting memory, it's the algorithms you won't allow yourself to even consider because the memory management would just be too hard.

I'm not saying C doesn't have it's place, I'm just saying that there are software engineering costs associated with using C as opposed to a higher-level language.

http://www.masterlock.com/products/product_details/99DSPT = the kind of gun lock I have. Fits both pistols and rifles, almost any caliber.

Many companies make these locks, and they are available from almost all gun stores except possibly the Weapon Shops of Isher,

Before I shoot either my pistol or my rifle I say, "Hi. It's me."

Once in a while I take a friend or young relative to the range with me. When I do that, I make appropriate introductions:

"Chuck, this is a a Merlin 795 rifle."
"Rifle, this is Chuck. He's an approved person."

I also have simple, cheap mechanical locks for my guns.

All I need, methinks.

I have no children in my house unless grandchildren are visiting from out of state. When they're here, my guns are locked.

The idea of adding some sort of uP device to my $150 .22 pistol is a laugh.

Are you going to pay for it?

If not, my $10 through-the-magazine-well lock will have to do.

Or professionals launching the attacks from script kiddies' compromised machines.

Problem with air gaps is, most people have an air gap between their ears.

Your conclusion is probably right, but one workaround would be for Congress to grant the utilities big bucks to fix it, whereupon entrepreneurs with solutions (and con artists with "solutions") would pop up all over. That would take care of (1), (2), and (4).

Not sure I like that suggestion, but admittedly it is in our national interest to do something about it.

I vaguely remember reading that our national grids are a mere hop and a skip of the Grim Reaper, even without cyberattacks.

"They are taking a virgin tech and trying to make it MANDATORY."

Indeed.

I find it amusing that a site which rails against pant-on-head-retarded proposed restrictions on COMPUTERS has so many firearm-tech-illiterate folks on it.

Dear Willful Fucktards:
If you are too lazy to make the minimal effort to understand the VERY simple (compared to compared to computers) technology behind firearms, SHUT THE FUCK UP until you actually know whereof you speak. How dare you have an opinion on tech you don't understand?

Thousands of dead children and adults are the price you pay for stupid people, but they are a very reasonable price to pay to embed the capability for both self-defense and revolution in the American public.

Crime rates are very low, we are a huge nation, and if you consider that homicide rates among good citizens are very, very low, it's even less a problem. (Not all the casualties matter because hood rats offing each other is pure good.)

How about some outrage over the many things that kill hundreds of thousands of your fellows in less newsworthy ways? No? Thought not.