rootbear

70 ms·

601.
by rootbear 11y ago
I've heard about this before, that prior to ubiquitous artificial lighting, people slept in two blocks of time. What fascinates me is that we seem to have collectively forgotten about it. Only now are researchers going back, as the art
602.
by rootbear 11y ago
A friend and I had been saying for years that we wanted to visit the NRAO and see the radio telescope. A friend of ours had done graduate work on the predecessor of the current telescope. We finally picked a weekend in the Fall of 2006 and
603.
by rootbear 11y ago
Xroach was way more fun.
604.
by rootbear 11y ago
I seem to recall that the "Pi" in Raspberry Pi was originally "Py" and that the idea was that the system would boot straight into Python, similarly to how early personal computers booted into BASIC. This idea was later
605.
by rootbear 11y ago
This essay was full of some great turns of phrase. I'll keep reading his blog.
606.
by rootbear 11y ago
My evil twin wants to do this some day: (pickfunc? func1: func2)(pickarg? arg1: arg2); Works great!
607.
by rootbear 11y ago
Aaaand, it killed them all. Let's keep the omnipotent computers out of my id, please...
608.
by rootbear 12y ago
At NASA Goddard, they run climate models on our supercomputer and they are mostly in Fortran. I asked one of the developers once and he said the bulk of it was in Fortran 90/95. But there is still a lot of Fortran 77 code around, par
609.
by rootbear 12y ago
Almost. Myhrvold provided funds for the British Museum to complete their copy, and build him a complete machine. From Wikipedia: "After the Science Museum in London successfully built the computing section of Charles Babbage's Dif
610.
by rootbear 12y ago
For more on this, I recommend "Eniac: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the World's First Computer" by Scott McCartney. I read it a few years ago and found it fascinating. I don't remember how much it gets into Zuse, but it
611.
by rootbear 12y ago
I took German in College but I'm far from fluent. Is this exhibit accessible to an English speaker who knows ein bisschen Deutsch?
612.
by rootbear 12y ago
I've thought in the past of how I might turn my grandmother's Underwood No. 5 into a terminal. Now I can just get this! As for all of the hipster references, I'm don't know much about that subculture but I can say that
613.
by rootbear 12y ago
I have one of those that I use as a portable serial terminal. I've connected it, for example, to RAID units that refuse to talk over the network for some reason. Sadly, the tip of my stylus broke and it won't stay latched in its
614.
by rootbear 12y ago
Clearly what is needed is a Type-C to magsafe-style thingy and back. You stick a short pigtale Type-C -> magthing into the Macbook, then another magthing -> Type C onto that, so that you effectively have a magnetic safety catch in th
615.
by rootbear 12y ago
That was always my understanding. In older mainframe operating systems, the command interpreter was more integral to the OS. In Unix, it's just a process. Its function is to run programs for the user, so it is in some sense a shell a
616.
by rootbear 12y ago
I was wondering recently what the interface is on my old Nokia N800 tablet, for just this reason, but I'm reluctant to take it apart to find out. And I still have a soft spot for my trusty old N800. I also have an XO-1 OPLC laptop, b
617.
by rootbear 12y ago
The pi-s have a display interface connector for DSI panels, and they are planning to bring one out, but it seems to be taking a long time. The intent is that it will be very inexpensive, in line with their education focus. The resolution
618.
by rootbear 12y ago
As an Original Series Star Trek fan, I regret the absence of an M5 series.
619.
by rootbear 12y ago
The closed caption that I saw printed "treason" and that's what I heard. But then, they also mangled Ed Catmull's name into something like "at maul", so I don't consider it definitive.
620.
by rootbear 12y ago
It is the most recent Long Term Support release and will be supported into 2019. I expect that is why they are shipping that version.
621.
by rootbear 12y ago
He was supposed to give a talk here at Goddard Space Flight Center recently, but it was snowed out. I've heard him speak before, on his Interplanetary Internet work, and he's a good speaker.
622.
by rootbear 12y ago
Thanks, I'm getting a great understanding of all of this from the comments here. I suspect that USB is going to end up being the universal low-voltage power source, but I still think that's a shame, as something more like 24 to 48
623.
by rootbear 12y ago
Yeah, I wondered about that, but my electronics-fu is not up to analyzing it. Running low voltage DC from one end of a large house to the other might simply not be practical. I'd still like to see a low-voltage plug standard other than
624.
by rootbear 12y ago
Yeah, we have two standards now, auto cigarette sockets and USB, neither of which is optimal. And I agree, the window of opportunity here is narrow and I'd hate to see us miss it. Oh, and to address the comment on wattage, I should ha
625.
by rootbear 12y ago
I like the idea of having solar cells that charge up a bank of batteries that could power my house at night. I was recently talking to a Solar City rep and they are thinking along those lines. I wonder if this would be a good time to defin
626.
by rootbear 12y ago
When my friend married a Hungarian woman, she brought her teenage sons to the US with her. I told them that I wanted to apologize in advance for two things: English spelling, and the Imperial measuring system. They were amused. While they
627.
by rootbear 12y ago
This brought to mind a passage from Stanislaw Lem's "The Cyberiad", where one of the main characters cooks up a one-use lawyer, much like a throw away shell script: And Trurl went home, threw six heaping teaspoons of transist
628.
by rootbear 12y ago
Sorry, I'm just the sysadmin here. A lot of the JWST work was done before I got here, but we still help support them. I'm sure there is detailed information on the web about the detectors in use on JWST.
629.
by rootbear 12y ago
My group at Goddard has done work on the JWST detectors. JWST is a big deal here. It also scares the crap out of me, due to the gymnastics that are needed to get it unfolded properly, in a location where repair is impossible. A lot of pe
630.
by rootbear 12y ago
My goodness! This comment upped my karma points by about 50%! I guess I hit a nerve... Thanks for all the up votes.

More ›