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DonGateley

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In 1967, as a soon to be graduate from a university in what is today called computer science, I applied to the NSA and nothing about that interview was nice. I failed the polygraph on two consecutive days and that's all she wrote. What tripped me up was the question "have you had any homosexual activity." The pen almost went off the graph when I truthfully said, "no."

Where and when I grew up that was about the worst thing that could be said of a young male. On the trip to the interview my magic magnifying mind had wondered about whether sensitivity to a question alone could cause truth to appear to be a lie. Of course the question that popped into my mind which I anticipated was the question on homosexual activity. Well, having thought about it beforehand, sure enough I reacted strongly. It was just as well because the overall interview had shown me that I didn't want to work there anyway but it was still traumatic to be accused of lying and about that in particular at that time.

For a short period of time I questioned my sexuality but can say that in the intervening 51 years there has not been one moment when I considered homosexual behavior. This is not to say anything negative about homosexuality, just how one's fear of responding to a question can cause one to respond negatively even with a truthful answer.

Times were different then and my attitude was too. I doubt I'd fear the question today given that my accepting attitude toward homosexuality in general has been normalized.

Actually I did think of the desirability of exactly this somewhere around 1984 or thereabouts. It didn't go further than a wish though because the only access to the Unix system that I'd installed for use by the group I managed was via dumb terminals and the DIY arena was nowhere near as rich as it is now. Especially in a building in a corn field somewhere between Rockford, IL and Belvidere, IL:-)

If wishes were fishes we'd all swim in riches. Really nice job moving beyond that!

If you believe your argument then you must find scientific study and discovery an exercise in making one dumber.

I'm afraid I find your argument to be a defense of ignorance.

I'd bet it depends on the kind of ant and the kind of termite. I'm in Northern Ca and haven't seen trace of a termite since I stopped killing the ant colonies.

I ceased killing invasive ants with borax, a substance taken back to the hive to destroy it, when during one such defense I saw them divert from the track I was poisoning to attack newly hatched termites that were emerging from under an appliance. They were incredibly effective. They also raid termite colonies and carry away the eggs. I switched to a lemon oil based repellent applied locally as needed.

There is no question in my mind but that Don Herbert propelled me into engineering. My fascination with the show started in 1951 when I was 7 and came to an end with my entrance into E.E. at the University of Illinois in 1962 strictly because there was no way my fraternity brothers in the TV room would stand for it.

I loved my career and have Don to thank for it. I'll bet there are a whole lot of us who owe our careers to his wonderful influence.

WebExtensions FAQ 11 years ago

As could be expected this has poked a hornets nest of opposition because of its implications regarding backward compatibility of extensions we use. Many of us are hoping for a fork based on the current release that will continue to evolve and be maintained and which values backward compatibility first and foremost.

Users can snapshot the current 40.0 release by copying the installation directory and creating a cloned profile for it with updates disabled. Personally I find the 42.0a2 development channel release to be backwards compatible with all extensions and to have superior memory management.

I was the one on the other side of that bet (not under this name.) It was multiprocessing. I said OS/2 would be there first and he said NT would. I'm not sure who won but we were pissed off at each other enough by the end of it, with some weird threats having been made, that dinner was pretty much out of the question.

Odd that you would remember that. I thought I was probably the only one who did.

He'd mop the floor with them. Systems, languages, environments, etc., etc., were trivial then compared to today. I worked back then in a few "labs" that looked a lot like that.

The importance of his answer and the care with which he framed it comes at the very end of the clip. Without specifying a context he cannot answer the question. Leading up to that one is made to understand that without limiting the question to a particular context, an infinite regress is unavoidable. Brilliant, well articulated point that most people don't think about.

That's great. I've followed her blog for a long time for her physics and her humor about it but never had a clue she was a YouTube personality and performer as well. A whole new Bee dimension (or 11) is revealed!

She recently shifted her physics research focus and I'm dying to see what she comes up with and her way of telling it.

"Satoshi Nakamoto" is almost certainly an alias, and maybe even an alias for a group of people.

Which would make it all the more appropriate.

There is no "Nakamoto Signature" entry on Wikipedia yet. Perhaps one with a tractable explanation would help get it going as a readily recognizable stand alone notion.

Caution that Lumo's site crashes Firefox. Could be due to the 25 or so trackers he employs or one of his plethora of bizarre adds or maybe the Ajax math typesetter he uses for notation.

Indeed! I've asked this a couple of places and got no answer. If it is functionally equivalent to dragging the address to a bookmark-bar folder called Pocket I become very suspicious of motives.