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Comment The real and serious question (Score 1) 413

Boeing is in serious do-do. It needs to convince the flying public they have clearly identified the problem AND fixed it. All while limiting their legal liability.

At the end of the day the real and serious question for flyers: "Probability-wise is the Max, flown by a typical pilot, significantly more likely to end up crashing".

I think that I would want an answer to that question, before booking a flight on one.

Comment Re:Summary Ignores the Subject of the Article (Score 1) 113

And how about the needless repetition: All the paragraph does is say three different ways that 18 3/4 long, or 5 1/4 shorter. No other actual information. Sheesh. Almost as bad as reading Reuters (and other) news where the same news article commonly appears 3 or more times in different "sections", with the exact same summary. Nothing like adding a bunch of filler rather than unique content. News these days has ended up in a bad place.

Comment there is a middle ground (Score 1) 456

Jsish (http://jsish.org) walks a fine line with an implementation of javascript wherein type-checking is provided only for function signatures. This can improve module usability, without impacting the bulk of an implementation. And although Jsish is primarily embedded, it also provides in-Browser support that pre-processes just the function signature, rather than the entire code body (ie. like typescript).

Disclaimer: I am a Jsish developer.

Comment Re:plurality breaks build systems (Score 1) 103

It's sad that 30 years on, none of the existing config/build systems seem to offer even basic debugging capabilities.

Which is why on the Jsi project (jsish.org), the configure is handled by, well Jsi itself.

That is, a minimal interpreter is built with just enough language features to perform the configuration.
No external programs are used. If there is a problem, we can use the Jsi debugger to single step through it.

Try doing that with m4 (used by autotools), cmake, et al.
In fact, debugging is not possile when you are using:

bash
make
gcc/g++/ld/ar
autoconf/automake/libtool
m4
awk
sed
basename
chmod/chown
strip
grep
find
cpp
gdb
yacc/bison
lex/flex
tar/gzip/zip
man
cmake
lua
tcl
perl
python

Comment It's not just updates that can hose you... (Score 1) 68

This week at work about half of us have started getting daily blue screens of death. I checked and there were now updates or SW installs in the last month.
I've worked there for 5 years and never seen anything like this. Is it a domain policy change or config change from Microsoft that's triggering it?

We mostly use Windows to run VM's for Linux development, so I'm no MS lover.

Comment Re:Javascript really sucks (Score 1) 300

Writing maintainable javascript (still) requires a defensive approach. Using abstractions just bite. But the big disconnect occurs when calling a function with the wrong number or type of arguments.

In real life, I embed javascript (http://jsish.org) in C into high-end industrial devices, albeit mostly for diagnostics and testing purposes.

The only reason this flies is because Jsi has been extended to support type-checking of function calls. Standard Js itself is just too hard to maintain.

(Disclaimer: I am the author of Jsi)

Comment Re:Stupid people are stupid (Score 1) 956

Sounds like a case of package profiling to me!

I'm sure running a school in the US is a tough job, but perhaps the individuals involved in the situation could have taken in a little more context with their analysis .

"Lets see, where would a timer device be appropriately used in a bomb? Perhaps an unattended package?"

But it sounds like it was in his possession the whole time. If someone is willing to blow themselves up they don't need a timer.

Comment Objectively... (Score 1) 696

I bike a 2 hour round trip every day. And in the last 3 months:

  - Was knocked off my bike while doing 25k, while in a bike lane (truck turned right in front of me while I was beside him). I ended up in emerg.
  - Driving my car to work (a rare occurrence), I missed getting t-boned by a pickup, by 6 inches. He hit 2 other cars beside me when I hit the brakes.
  - Other day I got in my car after I biked home, and then swore at a slow biker who took up the whole lane: he was ignoring the 1-meter wide bike lane beside him.
  - saw a biker nearly get hit when he ran a stop sign at a 4-way, where a car had been waiting then started to go, then slammed on the brakes. Biker waved cheerily.
  - Nearly got hit by a car turning left onto highway, as I crossed the highway on my green light: he was tailgating a van, didn't see me, he skidded sideways to a stop.
  - And virtually every day a car mirror whizzes past at less then 1 foot, doing 60-70k .

So what?

Well indisputably, bikers do stupid things. However I note there seem to be a lot more drivers (most who never bike), than there are bikers. Without question, driving is more frustration inducing than biking. Usually due to traffic. Which leads to a lot of unhappy, near road-rage individuals out there behind the wheel. And that's not likely going to change any-time soon.

In fact, I think all the bikers could disappear tomorrow, and the drivers would still be just as neurotic and unhappy.

What these car drivers should learn is that many of us ride because we used to drive everywhere, but ended up hating what it made us become.

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