jtlien1
Re:Tabs v/s Spaces: An analysis on why tabs are better
on Wednesday June 21, 2017 @12:17AM (#14600620)
I was learning make. I couldn't get the example in the Make book to work. Then someone explained that the line after a make heading HAD to begin with a tab. Nowhere was this explained in the book. Please, let us stamp out the tab which is a holdover from the IBM selectric era.
Re:IBM 5110 PALM (Put All Logic in Microcode) CPU from 1978
on Sunday June 04, 2017 @09:43PM (#14484790)
A few years back I re-implemented a microcode assembler that I had used in a silicon valley startup in the 1980s. I used some of the features of Haskell to do it. See metalasm on Sourceforge. It can now do disassembly of horizontal microcode as well.
Re:SEC Rejects Rule Change for Bitcoin Exchange-Traded Fund [pdf]
on Friday March 10, 2017 @07:13PM (#13843274)
Something useful like bitcoin etf gets rejected. But look at some of the stocks that are allowed to trade...
Magnegas for example has been an ongoing fraud for 17 years.
Fake delivery of machines to Kazahkstan. It would be easy to prove this a fraud but the SEC does not care.
Re:How to Build an Exit Ramp for Trump Supporters
on Thursday October 20, 2016 @08:00PM (#12757204)
The exit ramp I have for Hillary supporters is the death of Vince Foster. Hillary fought an FBI investigation of this but made sure there was on one of Billy Dale who stood in the way of her travel office plans. All I have read on this indicates a cover up that protected Hillary and Bill and the deep state implicated Republicans.
Re:Your wife is Indian, landlord won’t rent to you
on Monday July 18, 2016 @10:45AM (#12115326)
Just wait to you get older and face job discrimination.
The wonders of unenforced feel good laws.
Re:I Teach Seniors How to Use Technology
on Monday July 18, 2016 @10:37AM (#12115258)
Well a lot of "seniors" like me have used computers since they were programmed by punch cards. Bought my first PC in 1983 and have built my ever since. Ubuntu user now. Back when I learned to program, you needed to know the inner workings of the machine you programmed for. I'm not sure many of the younger programmers do.
Re:Saudi Ties to 9/11 Detailed in Documents Suppressed Since 2002
on Monday July 18, 2016 @10:33AM (#12115236)
Have you seen anyone interview Norm Mineta about what really happened in the Situation Room on 9/11? He was fired and exiled practically when people started to point out his damning statements about what happened in the Situation Room when the Pentagon was seeing a plane approach. Or how about the 66 video tapes confiscated by the FBI that could show what really did hit the Pentagon?
Re:Mental Models I Find Repeatedly Useful
on Thursday July 07, 2016 @12:52AM (#12047528)
The mental model from economics that is widely misinterpreted is comparative advantage. Most think it means you/a country etc should specialize in that which you are best at. And then free trade will work to your advantage. But it actually means that even if you are worse at producing products A and B than another country, if your ratio of A/B is better than the other country, it would be good for you to produce A and trade it to the other country for B etc. I
Re:The Amorality of Self-Driving Cars
on Saturday May 21, 2016 @05:49PM (#11746334)
My take on driverless cars is that they should solve a few other problems first. Like our crazy insurance system. I should pay much less for driving on uncrowded rural highways than people who drive in congested cities. And pay by the number of miles driven. And fix the problem with drunken drivers and deer/car collisions. And taxes to pay for roads
not on how many miles you drive on which roads using what kind of vehichle. Small cars are subsidizing semis and dump trucks.
Re:What would a disruptive bank look like?
on Friday March 04, 2016 @07:29PM (#11227790)
100% gold back deposits.
Would only loan money to people who can prove they do not need the money.
Re:A battle over solar power in Nevada
on Monday February 08, 2016 @01:09PM (#11059769)
It reminds me of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court after the Interdict came down and stopped all that progress.
Our Interdict is the PUC, regulation, lobbyists and corrupt political decisions, then subsidies and more counter subsidies. No, rooftop solar is not a no brainer anywhere.
Try to figure in the cost of energy storage which is still astronomical in price. Or jump into 100 years of utility regulation fights when all we need is power generation that should be just based on common law rights etc and competitive capitalism only.
Re:What do economists say about inequality?
on Friday January 15, 2016 @04:45PM (#10912372)
The inequality is more apparent than real. I enjoy watching videos of Dallas from the 1980s. They were the richest oil men in Texas. But look real close... They are using dial telephones. They could have had expensive radio phones in their cars, but who would they talk to? The couldn't even order a pizza. The entrepreneurial culture that led to cell phone being universal wasn't there yet. It is the NETWORKS that make us all rich compared to where we were decades ago.
Re:Unix Delenda Est (2015)
on Sunday January 10, 2016 @10:26AM (#10875584)
Cool stuff. We've come a long way since I ran around the office at night upgrading everyone from a version of Windows that didn't allow a user to type Format C: return when they meant Format A: (floppy disk), and immediately reformatted their hard disk by mistake. Progress is being made but it seems slow at times.
Re:Lego a “better investment than shares and gold”
on Friday December 25, 2015 @10:41AM (#10791449)
Had a friend that collected legos and put them all in his basement. Unfortunately, the basement had moisture problems and all his lego boxes got mildewed. Last I was him, he was cleaning them and putting them into a covered trailer. Make sure you have a clean dry place to store them.
Re:Lessons from Cellphones on Distribution of Wealth
on Wednesday December 02, 2015 @07:26PM (#10666922)
That the poor in Africa can have a cellphone...
I get a kick out of watching reruns of "Dallas". The mega rich oilmen depicted in that series did not have cellphones. But because some people pioneered cellphones and got rich, then because of that the poor in Africa are in someways richer than the oilmen of "Dallas".
Re:There are now more U.S. jobs in solar industry than coal mining
on Sunday July 06, 2014 @04:58PM (#7995704)
In that jobs are inversely proportional to the amount of productivity in an industry, one would conclude that coal mining jobs are very productive and solar not so much. This is not an argument for solar, because if the amount of jobs is what matters, then we should be putting tons of money into the post office. Do we still have 700K people delivering snail main?
Re:Fast Inverse Square Root
on Tuesday April 01, 2014 @04:43PM (#7511520)
A lot of times, the code you are writing does distance comparisons to determine overlap or intersection. But if all you are doing is this, then you can use the square of the distance which is just x^2 + y^2 and you have no need for a square root. Some mathematicians call this "quadrance". Or just do all your work in this metric and reserve the square rooting for when it is absolutely necessary.