Francois

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• Commented on Bad news day
  A small data point from a coworker who fled Russia to avoid military service: morale in the Army is bad, and higher-ups confiscating conscripts' phones to avoid them talking with family won't help it much. America didn't do so well...
• Commented on An update on the revolutionary experiment
  A partial solution would include rightwing hereditary press barons, lampposts, and carefully measured lengths of rope....
• Commented on Publishing: A Slice of Life
  Wait until you run across, I Am Not Making This Up, cryogenically treated tubes (valves across the pond). Wait, don't tubes run warm enough to have at least one element glow red hot, thus rather defeating the purpose of a...
• Commented on Dark State: how to get signed copies!
  These days Stateside it's well-intentioned clever subordinates with good reason to be paranoid desperately trying to yank the choke-chain around their superiors' necks. It's not working....
• Commented on We get mail (contd.)
  Blast from the past: "UN-altered REPRODUCTION and DISSEMINATION of this IMPORTANT Information is ENCOURAGED."...
• Commented on The Day After
  As Hunter Thompson said in 1972: "This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it — that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car...
• Commented on What are you reading this summer?
  "How Music Works", David Byrne: a look at how spaces & technology affect music performance & composition, mostly focused on the 20th Century and popular music. "Thinking, Fast And Slow", Daniel Kanneman: examines two kinds of thinking, one fast &...
• Commented on Why we're not going to see sub-orbital airliners
  Other factors on HST interception: 1) Civilian craft are specified to 2.5 - 3.8 G never-exceed loads, so at 1 km/s (Mach 3) the turning radius must be 30 to 40 km; much tighter and the airframe could fail catastrophically....
• Commented on Who ordered THAT?!?
  SNP getting most Scots seats is not as far-fetched as some make it to be. The Bloc Quebecois was a force in Canadian Federal politics for two decades before the electorate turfed them in favour of the main centre-left party...
• Commented on The Curse of Laundry
  [Reference grammar test to keep idiots off the Net] That reminds of a chat with a friend, at the beginning of Endless September about twenty years ago, where he allowed as to how there should be an IQ test before...
• Commented on Not a Manifesto
  On magic: a few years ago I was talking with a younger guy, maybe in his mid to late 20s, about Elon's private space program, and musing "we live in the future". He agreed vehemently: "If you told me when...
• Commented on Not a Manifesto
  Speaking of abhuman hive minds, Charlie's "Invaders From Mars" talk four years ago on corporate immortality came out before news from the past eighteen months. Google acquires Machine Learning startup: http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/26/google-deepmind/ ...and neural net startup headed by Geoffrey Hinton: http://media.utoronto.ca/media-releases/u-of-t-neural-networks-start-up-acquired-by-google/...
• Commented on So ...
  You consider something new like the upcoming Merchant Princes trilogy, or Neptune's Brood, or Rapture Of The Nerds. Then you walk to the bookshelf, pick up Rule 34, and begin re-reading....
• Commented on Spoiler Thread
  Shouldn't that be: "GOOD NEWS, EVERYONE"?...
• Commented on Spoiler Thread
  Follow-up to my previous take on The Apocalypse Codex: I was wrong. Sometimes a Bug Hunt is the right thing in a series, because otherwise the pacing becomes predictable: creeping dread, creeping dread, creeping dread [1], Reveal, BLAM BLAM BLAM...
• Commented on Spoiler Thread
  I like the unspoilers. Page 3 had "Which is why I didn't get a chance [...] to save our marriage", then Mhari showed up. I thought "Aw crap, not the misunderstanding-about-psycho-ex-breaking-up-a-couple trope", and ongoing plot points (the not-a-date, the ring...
• Commented on "Write me something fresh and new, but make it just like the last one"
  I feel your pain. Every once in a while I have to attack something entirely outside my wheelhouse just to keep from going mad writing the software equivalent of "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All...
• Commented on Another deceptively simple question
  Hmm. On further reflection, bit rot would be a problem; annotations or references should be contained within the data blob as external links are not guaranteed to exist, let alone be reachable if the network goes down or is otherwise...
• Commented on Another deceptively simple question
  Hyperlinks might start showing up in booklike objects. I recall a French translation [1] of Brave New World, with footers explaining the Shakesperian references for those more familiar with Racine and Moliere. [1] which increased the science fictional displacement nicely...
• Commented on Snowden leaks: the real take-home
  Proles with heart disease because of job uncertainty? That's not a bug, it's a feature: insurance rates go up, making insurance companies more valuable even if they skim a constant amount, and the rentier class wins. Again. And if said...
• Commented on Snowden leaks: the real take-home
  Saving money isn't the true purpose. Getting lobbying money & campaign contributions (none dare call it bribery) from the body shops, however, has decorated many a free-market pol's portfolio....
• Commented on Snowden leaks: the real take-home
  My situation is somewhat different from yours, yet the frustration is the same. At $ORKPLACE I'm the only engineer working on signal processing, which for a telephony outfit might be considered slightly useful. Without false modesty, I've come up with...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: The Jennifer Morgue
  This article is well timed: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/06/10/4097735/single-payer-is-needed-cure.html "He further pointed out that the administrative cost of health care insurance is one of the major drivers of escalating health care costs from 1980 to 2005. According to Friedman, the administrative cost of...
• Commented on Minor hiccup
  It needn't be current imperial superpowers, either. France is still involved with skullduggery, mostly covered up except in the case of a monumental balls-up such as its operatives being caught after sinking the Rainbow Warrior. Locally it's well known the...
• Commented on Press Release: Stross Uncloaks Secret Media Project
  I've always wanted to exercise my inner Ben Burtt. Tell me when & where and you'll have Wasposaurus Rex sound effects to curdle your blood....
• Commented on The ticking clock
  "I was hoping to see in the comments someone proposing that, at the limit of their lifespan, they would start a project that would actually change the world for the better in some way, but mostly you just see career...
• Commented on 2512
  I know precisely what the word means, and used it with malice aforethought as a retort to the imputation of intellectual dishonesty. Greenwashing indeed. Pfaugh....
• Commented on 2512
  If a dispassionate presentation of facts is what you call greenwash, then I plead guilty, sirrah....
• Commented on 2512
  30 years? My erstwhile neighbourhood was built fifty years ago and everything still stands quite nicely thank you very much, even despite Canadian winters, and the older (yes, I know, bloody UKers) parts of town are doing well after eighty...
• Commented on 2512
  Transmission losses will happen either from an internal combustion engine or a power plant, but the power plant is much more efficient, with some well over 50% [1] as compared with 25% for an automobile engine -- and accumulated losses...