• Announcements

    • Robin

      Welcome!   03/05/2016

      Welcome, everyone, to the new 910CMX Community Forums. I'm still working on getting them running, so things may change.  If you're a 910 Comic creator and need your forum recreated, let me know and I'll get on it right away.  I'll do my best to make this new place as fun as the last one!

The Old Hack

Moderators
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content count

    5,805

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    380

Posts posted by The Old Hack

  2. Posted

    One reason that they had trouble spotting him in time was that he was a complete amateur. Pros can at least be predicted. Amateurs will do something so mind-bogglingly stupid (using an officer staging ground as your base springs to mind) that eventually one will slip through due to a combination of unorthodoxy and the law of large numbers. There's a lot of amateurs in the world, far more of them than professionals. We are not in danger of running out of them any time soon.

  3. Posted

    6 hours ago, mlooney said:

    So far they have just been raiding the old USSR storage parks.  Those are gonna run out about this time next year if loses continue at current rate.

    Perun's latest video deals with this exact topic. One thing he pointed out was that they didn't actually need to empty them out to run out. They just needed to take all the vehicles that could reasonably be restored, often by cannibalizing the rest. The storage parks might still hold a lot of vehicles, just not any usable ones.

  5. Posted

    11 hours ago, mlooney said:

    To the best of my knowledge it's just been WarThunder that has the leaks.  To be fair it's the only one with modern (vs WWII and cold war era) vehicles and aircraft.

    Ah. But still concerning, and I just realized that this actually makes it more convenient for foreign agents looking for chance spills of vital information. Then again I wouldn't expect them to loiter on Total War: Rome forums hoping to obtain vital information about the latest generation of onagers or siege ballistae.

    Don Edwards and Darth Fluffy reacted to this

  6. Posted

    11 hours ago, mlooney said:

    Well, this explains why Trump is still alive.  His would be assassin was a terrible shot.  Enough so that the high school shooting club wouldn't let him come back after the first time he fired.

    The net is full of conspiracies but there is a depressing likelihood that the shooter was just a bullied kid who wanted to make a name for himself.

    Admittedly all possible reasons for the shooting I can think of strike me as depressing. It's just that this particular one strikes me as especially sad and futile.

  9. Posted

    1 hour ago, mlooney said:

    No, it works.  More or less.  Think I'm gonna change the name of this tread to "Technology, working or not"

    Fair. ^_^

    A friend of mine told me another phone story just earlier today. He had an old, old phone that could barely run a not completely outdated Android OS upgrade. He was so happy because now it could just about keep up. Then a week later he accidentally ran it through the laundry. That was too much for it, which I really can't blame it for.

  11. Posted

    8 hours ago, mlooney said:

    My cheap ass phone just rebooted, but didn't ask for my pass code to get back to the normal lock screen.  If I paid more than $35 for this thing and it wasn't about 4 years old this would bother me more than it does.

    Isn't this more a case of "Technology that should work, but doesn't"? :danshiftyeyes:

  14. Posted

    12 hours ago, mlooney said:

    That seems like a wise choice.  Was the next machine digital or did it have "infinite" spinning stamp wheels?

    It was digital. It cost a lot more than just repairing the old one but it also had a ton of new functions. It was in all ways superior to the old one. Even the secretary who hated me loved that darn thing.

  15. Posted

    3 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

     'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence'; yet to be proven.

    You would think yet there are still sufficient numbers of gullible thimblewits that believe in Marjorie Taylor Greene's 'Jewish Space Lasers.' Certainly enough to get her elected and re-elected.

  16. Posted

    4 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

    Well, to be fair, he doesn't have a whole lot of mileage left on his mortal coil. It's amazing he's made it this far, with his diet. If re-eleccted, he'd probably last out his term and do a solid four years of damage; he's likely to try to extend the term limit, as Putin did, and then he might have a few more years. I'll be surprised if he lasts another dozen.

    He is older today than Biden was in 2020, no?

    It's not as much that as a permanent dictatorship by any President after Trump I am worried about. That absurd SCOTUS decision will make it possible for any unscrupulous person of whatever party gets elected to basically do what they want.

    Darth Fluffy reacted to this

  17. Posted

    46 minutes ago, mlooney said:

    Yeap.  As one of those involved (granted just on the edges) it was a pain for a year or so in the mid 90s

    Around that time I had bigger troubles with the 1998 problem.

    Yes. The 1998 problem.

    At the time -- July 1997 to be exact -- I worked in a small branch office that served as a connecting point and legal advice for a lot of bigger office. We had a LOT of mail going in and out. I had just finished reading another depressing article about the Y2K problem and my eyes landed on our old and cantankerous postage machine which was very much mechanical all the way through and thought, "Thank God we at least won't be having any year 2000 problems with that." On an impulse I opened it up to see how it worked. And to my astonishment the wheel that stamped out the dates ended at 1997. If we wanted to be in business after new year, we would need that entire wheel replaced. Really terrible design.

    So I went into the office of the engineer who was running the place and told him, "Boss, we have a 1998 problem." He replied, "We have a WHAT?" After I had explained he assigned me the job of finding out how to upgrade the darn thing. I soon learned that this would cost so much that we could very nearly buy a brand new machine for that much money and told him so. He got so mad that he assigned me a new job: finding the best possible new machine that would not have this problem. I spent about a week comparing offers and we finally decided on one.

    Incidentally, during that I found out that normally people who used our old model didn't find out until just before or right after new year, and were always in a terrible bind as a result. My idle curiosity saved our office a lot of trouble and frantic effort. :danshiftyeyes:

    Don Edwards and Darth Fluffy reacted to this

  20. Posted

    Lincoln at Gettysburg:

    "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

    Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

    But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

     

    Trump at a rally near Gettysburg:

    “Our nation was saved by the immortal heroes at Gettysburg. Gettysburg, what an unbelievable battle that was. The battle of Gettysburg, what an unbelievable. I mean it was so, was so much, and so interesting, and so vicious and horrible, and so beautiful in so many different ways — it represented such a big portion of the success of this country. Gettysburg, wow! I go to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to look and to watch. And uh the statement of Robert E. Lee, who’s no longer in favor — did you ever notice that? He’s no longer in favor. ‘Never fight uphill, me boys, never fight uphill.’ They were fighting uphill, he said. Wow, that was a big mistake, he lost his great general and uh they were fighting uphill. ‘Never fight uphill, me boys,’ but it was too late.”

    It may just be me but I feel Trump's Gettysburg Address kind of lacks a certain je ne sais quoi compared to the original.

    Darth Fluffy and Don Edwards reacted to this

  22. Posted

    On 7/5/2024 at 3:55 AM, mlooney said:

    We've been remarkably fireworks free today.  They are starting now.  Explorer has taken up residence under the bed and is making her unhappy sound.

    Speaking of fireworks, this is a simple tale of inconsiderate people, carelessness and heavy-handed justice from the weather gods. It is well worth reading.

    https://www.tumblr.com/gallusrostromegalus/754913870711291904?source=share

     

    Darth Fluffy reacted to this

  25. Posted

    On 6/30/2024 at 7:22 PM, mlooney said:

    Most ancient/medieval armor restricts vision in some way.

    I think it had something to do with the designers' desire to restrict the ability of enemy weapons to inflict damage on the wearer's head and neck. I believe it can be reasonably argued that it is difficult to function properly on the battlefield once sufficient amounts of harm have been inflicted on those parts of the body.