Posts by Graham Bartlett1458 posts • joined Monday 12th March 2007 11:03 GMT
Surely the point of the swordfights in the Baroque Cycle is that mostly they wouldn't have been highly-skilled fencing matches. As one character says (paraphrasing), if you're up against a really good swordsman, you don't fight him with a sword, you beat him to death with a treetrunk.
http://www.rospa.com/roadsafety/adviceandinformation/vehiclesafety/pedestrianprotection/pop-up-bonnet.aspx
A quick Google says that Ford were talking about this in 2002, and that Citroen and Jag both had them in their cars in 2006. Whether you do this with an airbag or by some other means is irrelevant really - the impact is taken by the thin metal of the bonnet ("hood" for our US friends) and not by the airbag.
Just remember to watch your hands when the chest develops a mouth and teeth...
But unit testing doesn't check that - system testing checks that. Unit testing checks that under these particular cases on the last month of August in the third phase of the moon, we add one instead of subtracting one.
So what I said. If you're unit testing, that will typically eat somewhere around 30% of your time, maybe more. Wouldn't you be better doing more thorough system testing with that time? Or working with the system to figure out better ways of using it?
If they're interesting, yes. I'm always interested in "how did they do that?" or good stuff about how it was put together.
This though seems pretty much the definition of a WOMBAT (waste of money, brains and time). Nothing much interesting, and nothing new to say. Buy it on DVD for a fiver instead.
Really there are only three bits of software which need to be exhaustively tested on Earth. One is the comms link, so you can always send it commands. One is the reflash code, so you can always reprogram it. And the final one is the hardware protection logic, so that even if the software goes tits-up, it can't drive sensors off the end of their travel or burn out motors/actuators.
With all that in place, they could stop wasting time on pointless unit testing, and get on with actually doing stuff. Unit testing is fine if your requirements never change, and the way you're going to do it never changes, and no-one thinks of a better way of doing something. Chances of this, on a mission with all this new stuff? Near zero as makes no difference.
My opinion? Exhaustively test the critical bits which would break the system, and for the rest just do enough system testing that you have fair confidence it'll work. And then get on with the actual mission.
In fairness, she could well have been getting her own gear together and not particularly watching them set up. So it might only have been afterwards that she realised she'd not seen them hang-check.
The two main people responsible though are the instructor and the "nose-man". Hang-gliders are tricky (although not impossible) to set up for launch on your own, and stray gusts can catch you unawares when you're getting ready, so usually you have someone holding the nose-wires of the glider to keep it under control. That person is responsible for checking that you've done your checks, including holding the glider while you hang-check, and visually scanning the glider for obvious rigging faults. If this guy didn't have someone helping him launch, that's an important safety element missing - especially if he's doing this for a living.
I'm amazed it took until the second page before someone said that!
If 47 is "old people" round your way, I suspect you're not long out of school. To a major degree, it's like hacking. You might not be as pretty to look at, but you're a whole lot more effective in action.
Cue the "she was only a coder's girlfriend, but she knew what to do with a dangling pointer" jokes...
(Oh all right then, let's have another - "she was only a TCP/IP expert, but she was stacked".)
Plenty of pilots have indeed used PC-grade flight sims to practise. And *all* commercial and military pilots have used pro-grade flight sims to practise.
Wow, an update of the Em@iler idea of moving something into a dedicated bit of hardware. And again, it's shonky, late and lacking in features compared to what people expect now.
Assuming someone will build a megaproject water pipeline spanning thousands of miles to get that extra water from the wetter areas to the dryer areas, through some of the poorest countries in the world and in some of the harshest conditions. Since us Brits (who aren't short a bob or two) can't manage to build a pipeline from the north to the south through a few hundred miles of well-tamed farmland, I'd say that plan was SOL, wouldn't you?
Except that one of the reasons they take lots of shots is so they've got good-quality pictures of everything. Not gonna work if you're only getting webcam-quality, regardless of whether you can shift the focus.
You beat me to it!
Never played Starglider 1, mind, but that was only because Starglider 2 had just come out when I got my Amiga.
Lawyers don't (always) enjoy it, but they're required by law to do it. Everyone being prosecuted gets a lawyer - that's one of the basic requirements of a fair trial. So the court system says "We need a lawyer for him. Mr Smith, you're not busy, so you're doing it." You aren't allowed to say no. And if you don't do your job of defending him properly, then (a) he could get released on appeal, (b) you could be struck off as a lawyer for not doing your job, or even (c) you could actually be prosecuted for contempt of court.
So no-one's going to hijack a plane BECAUSE THEY MIGHT KILL A PUPPY....
I don't think they call it "tossing off" for ladies. Although it's a better kind of customer service than I've ever had from immigration. How do you know which direction she was facing, though?
Maybe it's just me, but doesn't $3K seem a lot to spend on a lawnmower? You can easily get a bloke to do it for twenty quid (say thirty dollars). That gets you 100 lawn-mows for the same price, which I suspect is more than you'd get out of the robot lawnmower before something important went wrong with it.
And then there's Penistone, in South Yorkshire.
Not to mention an American mountain range called "the Tits", whose biggest mountain is "Big Tit" (that's the Teton range and Grand Teton).
On the cross-language thing though, our school ski party were hysterical that in Zell-am-See, the electrical appliance store across from our hotel was called Electrodick.
"Coca Mountain": That wasn't white chocolate powder you bought, you know...
(Courtesy of the strangest songwriters on the planet...)
Chapter one my lunch begun I chewed my food and wrote
Chapter two my salad thru I ate my morning coat
Chapter three I drank some tea and then I ate the cup
Chapter four inhaled the door and threw the hinges up
Chapter five I downed a chive and half a beef burgoo
Chapter six I had to fix a bowl o' cola stew
Chapter seven cracked eleven eggs and ate the yokes
Chapter eight I licked the plate and sucked a case o' cokes
Chapter nine I had some wine and as my body shook
Chapter ten I ate my pen and polished off the book
In all our hides a book resides they say, and I allow
There wasn't one when I'd begun but there's one in me now
"Dehumanising"
Since it is not human (in the opinion of medical experts specialising in foetal development and in the opinion of UK and US law, oh and my opinion too) this is not actually possible. The fact that it will become a human, assuming nothing bad happens during pregnancy, does not mean that it is a human at this point. It's impossible to emphasise enough how utterly wrong, evil and stupid the idea of "life begins at conception" is.
You might also be interested to know that the vast majority of abortions in the UK are carried out before 12 weeks, well before a foetus could ever survive outside the womb.
Those Japanese, eh? When you're looking at anime and you invite that tentacle into your home, you never quite know where it's going to end up...
Nope, just a regular sort of joke like the BOFH.
An ordinary GPU *is* enough. It took a lot less than a modern GPU to make the FX for everything from Tron to T2. Something with the same spec as WETA Digital's setup for the first LotR film is within reach for a keen and well-heeled amateur. The crucial ingredient is time. Halo doesn't look like Avatar simply bcos playing Halo needs a new frame at least every 100ms, and at that it's pretty ropey. But if you're rendering CGI, it doesn't matter if each frame takes a week to generate - you can generate frames a week at a time and print them as they arrive. The only questions are how long you want it to take for the render, and how realistic your CGI models are (both of physical items, and of laws of physics).
Quicker to write, sure, but the idea of caching is that you're reducing the amount of writing. On the read side, they'll both be the same speed.
And not cheaper. Quick Google suggests £3 per GB for DDR3, and under £1 per GB for pen drives.
But if it came from somewhere else, how did *that* get started...? Either it's possible to evolve life from building blocks, or it isn't. If it is, then all the building blocks existed on Earth so there's no particular obstacle. If it isn't, then someone outside the Universe set it up.
TBH, chirality is just one of the "why on earth is it like that?" evolutionary oddities, like the blind spot in the human retina. I've no argument with people looking for better reasons, but it's a mistake to think that "it just happened that way" is not an equally valid answer.
But if we're not looking at TLDs for Tokyo, New York, the SF/LA Bay area, etc., then why a moderately large mostly-suburban city in a fairly small not-particularly-important country?
London isn't even in the top 20 of world's largest cities (according to Wikipedia) - it's around the same size as Tehran, Istanbul, Rio de Janeiro and Lagos, and it's well behind Beijing at number 20. What makes London more deserving than Tokyo, Shanghai or New York?
I'm glad the government isn't directly pissing money away on this. I'm less happy that this is coming from a not-for-profit which doesn't mention where their funding comes from (making me suspicious that it's government-funded) and which cost taxpayers £6m last year in a reneging-on-pensions scandal.
"Ban speedos"...
Too right sport. Don't want yer mate ta ask yer ta rub suncream inta his back when he's wearing budgie smugglas.
</aussie>
Triffic! </stoke-accent>
Firstly the occasional rocket is unlikely to be a serious competitor to the local international airport for emissions. And secondly, I know I'm no expert but that area really looks like a few hundred miles of feck all in every direction. So long as you're not building on the coastal areas, losing a few square miles of undifferentiated scrubland is not a big deal.
In fact it might even be better for the environment. The large area of swamp closed to the public around Cape Canaveral has become a de-facto nature reserve, simply bcos there's no people stomping around there and shooting stuff.
Beat me to it. You're sending alcohol into space with a bunch of sex-deprived Russians, and you expect it to survive two years untouched? Riiiight...
Sure it is. But you have the question of what's "private" once it's left your PC. Most people would argue that a published website is "public". Public Facebook posts? Probably, too. Facebook posts to your friends only? Unsure. Facebook messages? Tricky - it's between two people, but the data is always held on a third party's machine. Emails? Even more tricky. Text messages? Or files shared across wireless networks? At what point do you need a search warrant, or permission for a wire-tap, or what else...?
Simple reason - Apple and Microsoft are still around. The others aren't. With the exception of Tramiel, all the others were one-hit wonders. And Tramiel was a two-hit wonder.
None of them saw the need to sell their existing product *AND* build on that success sustainably. So Acorn died by not working sustainably, and Sinclair, Commodore, Amstrad and Atari died by producing a load of shite that no-one wanted.
Yeah, just you.
Colonists part wasn't strictly necessary, but it was good scene-setting. We got to see a base which *wasn't* just bullet-scarred dark tunnels, which made how it looked when the marines got there more significant.
More time with Ripley after she's revived, adjusting to a world where her daughter has grown old and died without her, and where everything she knows (she's a pilot and a techie, remember?) is obsolete.
The automatic guns scene worked for me. Always wondered why the aliens didn't just come in the front door. Now I know.
Significantly extended final battle with the alien queen. The part where the two break apart and circle round each other looking for weaknesses is superb. It shows the alien *is* smart, not just a shark with legs. And that makes it a duel, not just a brawl.
More chat with the marines and Ripley, hence more character. The marines had a lot of shooting and dying to do, but precious little character. Even the most vocal ones (Hicks, Hudson, Vasquez) were fairly 2D.
Newt isn't just an annoying little kid, she's clearly traumatised *and* she's a survivor with important intel for the marines. She gets more to do than just run away and scream. And she's important for Ripley, who's only recently "lost" her actual daughter.
And Bishop gets more time too. The original didn't make much out of Bishop's android-ness. The extended version does.
So yeah, fraid it's probably you. ;)
Dunno about the full set, but I got the Aliens DVD (not Blu-Ray) a couple of years back, and it had some great "making-of" stuff on there. Essential viewing in these days of green-screen and CGI, when the powerlifter-vs-queen fight is *really* being staged between 10-foot-tall constructions, with Sigourney Weaver inside, and all controlled by a couple of dozen experts with hydraulics, control lines and sheer brute force. Also for the sets, particularly the loading bay, which again these days would be inserted in CGI but back then were actually built. The actors' training segment was also pretty fun, talking about the guy playing Apone (an ex-sergeant) basically putting them through boot camp so they'd look and behave like actual soldiers.
If they've deleted that from the Blu-Ray, I recommend not buying it.
Anyone want to do a YouTube version for those that don't have/want a MOV viewer?
More than a few people who'd happily eat Jennifer Lopez. And I'm sure they'd beat the snake to it. *cough*
Not really - steam engines were an entirely-British invention. Sure, if the Brits hadn't done it then someone else would have later, but it was Brits every step of the way. Savery came up with a first draft but never got it working, Newcomen got it working for pumping mines, Watt made major improvements for serious industrial use, Trevithick upped the pressure to make the engines smaller and more efficient (and hence suitable for locomotives), and the Stephensons got railways working properly.
But if you work on one muscle group without also working on the counteracting muscle group, you'll get a strange out-of-kilter look, and possibly other problems too. Push-ups work your pecs, but unless you also work your back muscles then you're going to end up all round-shouldered as your newly-toned pecs pull your arms forward into a shambling neanderthal posture. Solution is to do some pull-ups as well, which are the perfect counterpart to push-ups.
If you've got a robot wife, why would you screw the jetpack?
Is it just me, or does Adam Sandler in drag look suspiciously like Miranda Hart? Is there a reason we never see the two of them together?
Actually there probably is - the concentration of so much super-dense talentlessium in one place might cause a tear in the fabric of space and time. Although if the two of them got sucked through a black hole and every trace of everything they've ever perpetrated was obliterated from existence, the average quality of all material recorded by humanity would be slightly improved. Which would be nice.
Oh god no. I'd forgotten that. We watched it in the cinema too, and that really was awful.
The fact that the (rich and connected) owner of a shopping mall can have his employees do this in public with no police come-back should tell you everything you need to know. The original meaning of "privilege" is "private law", and it still applies for much of the world.
Then you've not done your job properly. Sure it gives you a nice warm feeling when you get shitcanned and no-one else can do what you've done. But suppose the company were treating you well, and your trajectory intersected a bus one morning. For no fault of their own, the company would be in a whole world of hurt.
Everything gets logged. Everything you wrote goes in version control. Now making sense of it all, *that* takes experience. But if you're worth hiring, you don't leave all your knowledge in your head. If you do, by definition you're not worth hiring, and if they shitcan you then you're getting what you deserve.
At 15mph, you're not going to get more than a broken bone if you pile it into a wall, or if you pile it into a pedestrian. Sure it'll hurt, but everyone will walk (or at least limp) away.
At 28mph though, you can do yourself and pedestrians some very real damage. So it certainly does make sense for riders to get the training for looking 28mph-worth ahead, wearing a "proper" helmet, making sure that the bike doesn't have anything which'll impale a pedestrian on impact, annual MOT check to make sure the bike's brakes still work, insurance for if you do wipe someone out, and so on.
Yes I'm aware that you can do more than 28mph downhill on a regular bike. It's not exactly a regular occurrence though.
If you RTFA, you'll notice that this is the second time it happened. The first time it happened, she told her mum (as you should), and her family did nothing about it.
It's not unknown for kids to fall apart if their family won't back them up on something like htis. So good on the girl for having the smarts and mental resilience to get the photo and then say "OK mum, laugh this one off you bitch".
