rootbear

37 ms·

541.
by rootbear 11y ago
Well, it's a stretch, but when I saw Die Hard I just barely caught the BSD reference when they log into the CEO's terminal. I found a screen shot on flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/armenws/951617612
542.
by rootbear 11y ago
I actually like this, and had decided that single quotes were a good digit separator even before C++ adopted it. I had a calculator, an HP, I think, that used single quotes as digit separators in the LCD display. There is actually a locale
543.
by rootbear 11y ago
I won't argue too hard about that, but just as a counter example, I'm American and I work a fairly ordinary nine hour day, which includes a hour for lunch and breaks. I try to get a good night's sleep, but I'm old enough
544.
by rootbear 11y ago
A 20 minute early afternoon nap does wonders for my productivity and alertness for the rest of the day. Sadly, I don't work in a place where that is easy to do explicitly. But there is that little-used lab over in the other building...
545.
by rootbear 11y ago
The downtown was a mix of boring and cut and fill. We moved to DC in 1971, while much of downtown DC was torn up, with lots of detours and one-way streets. I remember whole blocks that were just steel plates over pits. My father was not muc
546.
by rootbear 11y ago
I took a tour of the tunnels with my High School science club while the system was under construction. It was fascinating and I learned a lot about why they made the decisions they did. Tunneling for Metro was staggeringly expensive and hav
547.
by rootbear 11y ago
I'm also a DC area resident and I agree with your analysis. Fortunately, I have an easy commute out here in the suburbs and use Metro mostly on weekends and evenings for non-work trips. But even then, there are times I drive in because
548.
by rootbear 11y ago
Interesting idea. It makes me think of the indirect blocks used in Unix style file systems. But I'm unclear on some points. Should the 253 in the second case (s[0] == 254) be 255? It's not clear why it ends at 253. Second, how is
549.
by rootbear 11y ago
As I've studied the history of the early first generation computers, this problem became increasingly clear. Computers were held back by the need for a main memory that was reasonably fast, reliable and affordable at the size needed. M
550.
by rootbear 11y ago
I use Das Keyboard professionals, the ones with labels on the keys. I have one on my Linux system and one for my Mac. I have nerve damage from cervical spine surgery that makes many of my fingers numb to varying degrees. My typing accuracy
551.
by rootbear 11y ago
In the "I, Robot" movie there is a ruined suspension bridge that ignores physics. That was not the most serious problem with that film.
552.
by rootbear 11y ago
This is hilarious. I dislike how the word cyber has been used for things far from its original meaning. But I'm not sure I like "computer attack" any better than "cyber attack". Information ware fare? Offensive data
553.
by rootbear 11y ago
I believe the First Law would require that it save that maximum number of persons.
554.
by rootbear 11y ago
Agreed about both books. The Elegant Universe explains clearly how Relativity and Quantum Mechanics conflict, and how String Theory solves that problem. I should reread the Hawking book, I haven't read it since college.
555.
by rootbear 11y ago
I had to zoom in to my screen just to see the difference between those. I know that I am perhaps not well informed on this issue, but I also think that having multiple code points for what most people would perceive as the "same"
556.
by rootbear 11y ago
I think it would help if news reports always used the same units. "This project would cost 0.1 Gigabux out of a total agency budget of 18 Gigabux." Switching between millions and billions and trillions can obscure how small, or la
557.
by rootbear 11y ago
I read Crystal's book, "Pronouncing Shakespeare", a few years ago and found it fascinating. I hope to hear one of these "OP" (Original Pronunciation) performances some day.
558.
by rootbear 11y ago
I, on the other hand, strongly prefer focus follows mouse. At least on Unix systems, one (usually) gets to choose. On Windows and the Mac, no such flexibility exists. It's the same with windows stacking order control. I routinely push
559.
by rootbear 11y ago
One of the Showscan demonstration theaters was in a Chucky-Cheese Pizza restaurant in Northern Virginia, in the 80s. I went to see the demo film and was amazed. I've been a fan of high frame rate ever since. Sadly, Hollywood seems unin
560.
by rootbear 11y ago
Thanks, I'll check it out.
561.
by rootbear 11y ago
I made one of these my cover image on Facebook and called it The Ice Mountains of Pluto, which is a Golden Age Science Fiction story title if I ever heard one. But this isn't SF! It's a real photo! That was taken by an atomic powe
562.
by rootbear 11y ago
Exactly. The current theory, I believe, is that humans didn't "exterminate" Neanderthals, we just out bred them. This might be due to differences in "character". I can't reproduce the argument here, and I don&#
563.
by rootbear 11y ago
Townhouses. I live in one and my washer is on the second level, off the kitchen. It sits in a pan with a hole in the bottom that goes to a drain pipe. That might save me from a slow leak, but could never deal with a catastrophic failure. I
564.
by rootbear 11y ago
They had some of these at the University of Maryland at College Park when I was an Undergad.
565.
by rootbear 11y ago
Sorry, I didn't mean that literally, I meant getting equivalent functionality. I'd be fine with semicolons, Renderman Shading Language uses that syntax.
566.
by rootbear 11y ago
Yes, that is the primary reason they were flipped. Typing x=-42; when you meant x= -42; was just too easy. I know. I did it. Similarly, as I recall, variable initialization of the form int i 17; created some sort of par
567.
by rootbear 11y ago
I don't now about the later versions of the standard but in C89, using the old style meant you did NOT get the type checking of the prototype style declarations. If there is no semantic difference these days, then yes, that would be a
568.
by rootbear 11y ago
ANSI C could be cleaner than it is. I regularly lament that I must type int func(long_type_name a, long_type_name b, long_type_name c) { ... when I really, really should be able to type int func(long_type_name a, b, c) { ... I
569.
by rootbear 11y ago
Interesting! I always assumed that the keypads were introduced at the same time as touch tones. The era of keypad pulse phones must have been very brief as I'm sure I never saw one. Some early keypad phones lacked the * and # keys. Per
570.
by rootbear 11y ago
The article is badly edited, speaking of both "negative density energy" and "negative energy density", when the latter is what was meant. Even though, as I understand it, General Relativity doesn't forbid FTL explic

More ›