astangl

11 ms·

61.
by astangl 14y ago
So his conclusion is we have to have more of a Big Brother state, to track our whereabouts at every moment, with the assurance that this will help assert & protect our identity? Give me a break...
62.
by astangl 14y ago
Not sure what the "not including silicon" means in that first story. Nevertheless, these are evolutionary improvements, not the revolutionary ones implied by the hyped headlines. Don't get me wrong -- I'd love to see PV power production bec
63.
by astangl 14y ago
I wish I got a nickel for every one of these solar "game changer" headlines. I'd love to believe the hype, but these wondrous lab results don't seem to make it to the marketplace. By now we ought to have almost-free PV paint that we could p
64.
by astangl 14y ago
I still have that issue around here somewhere. Makes me feel like an old fart when I read stuff like this, or see my old typewriter in a museum.
65.
by astangl 14y ago
Why not just tie an overhand knot on a bight of the cord, and then slip the resulting loop over a button on any shirt you happen to be wearing?
66.
by astangl 14y ago
I dispute their contention that an "ideal" solution would not block political or charity robocalls. Ideally we close these loopholes in the No-Call List, so these all are illegal. It seems to me a lot of the problem results from allowing th
67.
by astangl 14y ago
John asked me to review his entry prior to submission, and we had some ongoing discussion as he worked through his revisions. He initially pointed me to a "minimally obfuscated" version to analyze. I'd say it took me a good hour or so to fe
68.
by astangl 14y ago
I'm surprised more people don't take Wiley (and all the other textbook publishers) to task for their price-gouging ways. Instead of going after the kid who found a good arbitrage opportunity, maybe they ought to reexamine their pricing mode
69.
by astangl 14y ago
If you think Turbo Pascal was bad, you should have seen what we used before TP came out -- the UCSD Pascal p-system. Ugh... compared to that, Turbo Pascal was a pure delight to use.
70.
by astangl 14y ago
I looked at costs of filing a patent awhile back. Seems relatively cheap to file, if you do as much work yourself as possible, however the maintenance fees they require you to pay at 3.5 yrs, 7.5 yrs, and 11.5 yrs, to keep the patent in eff
71.
by astangl 14y ago
For an organization like IEEE that pushes for professional codes of ethics & quality, certification, etc., it is remarkable how derelict they are in providing even basic security for their users' passwords.
72.
by astangl 14y ago
Among other problems, have to put up with delays imposed by greylisting, if your email server does that.
73.
by astangl 14y ago
"16 characters ought to be enough for anybody."
74.
by astangl 14y ago
I can easily imagine them scanning for certain filetypes, then displaying large pages of thumbnails for somebody to review. Porn would be readily discernable, and some would surely enjoy having this job. At least in the early days Microsoft
75.
by astangl 14y ago
I have pointed this out to people before too. It doesn't seem to deter their slavish adherence to what they declare to be "best practices", which seems to correspond to something they read in some magazine or blog.
76.
by astangl 15y ago
Impressive. In Missouri, St. Joe Lead Co. donated land containing its mountains of tailings for a state park. St. Joe's State Park, popular for off-roading, with people riding their ATVs, minibikes, etc. through the tailings from the lead m
77.
by astangl 15y ago
This is one of a couple tantalizing stories I've seen on that site over the years, something that sounds really promising but then leads nowhere, calling the whole story into question. The other one is the lawnmower engine retrofitted with
78.
by astangl 15y ago
Please solve our design problems for free, and in turn we'll think about hiring you.
79.
by astangl 15y ago
Agreed. He seems wowed by the Greek letters and radical signs that he quotes from the PageRank and Apple patents, thinking it is some precious knowledge that we public would be lucky to (eventually) be able to use. In truth, by the time peo
80.
by astangl 17y ago
Reminds me of back in the old days writing integer assembly language (and later) C apps for microcomputers. As FPUs started to become available, users complained they spent all this money on an FPU and got no speed improvement. I half-serio