Just another WordPress site
From the comments:
When I took my daughter earlier this year, she was carrying a little BB-8 toy, and the stormtroopers ordered her to hand it over. She took off running, and they gave chase for a bit.
via Super Punch
When Stormtroopers spot a child dressed as Kylo Ren at Disneyworld
“It was supposed to be a heart.”
(via source)
“It was supposed to be a heart.”
(via source)
The post Heart To Heart appeared first on AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com.
An anonymous reader writes from a report via Business Insider: Microsoft is planning to lay off 2,850 more employees in the next 12 months or so, according to Microsoft’s full 10-K report it filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Part of the document reads: "In addition to the elimination of 1,850 positions that were announced in May 2016, approximately 2,850 roles globally will be reduced during the year as an extension of the earlier plan, and these actions are expected to be completed by the end of fiscal year 2017." Business Insider reports: "The first 1,850 layoffs mentioned here were mainly from Microsoft’s struggling smartphone business, including 1,350 employees in Finland working at what was once Nokia world headquarters. These layoffs also included people in Microsoft’s salesforce, which was recently reorganized and saw the departure of COO Kevin Turner. In total, Microsoft laid off 7,400 employees in its last fiscal year, which ended on June 30th, 2016. The new layoffs are a continuation of the same plan, and include the sales group as well as others. About 900 people affected by the new layoffs were already informed during the sales reorganization, according to a person familiar with Microsoft’s plans."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
via Slashdot
Microsoft To Lay Off Another 2,850 People In the Next 12 Months
GIF
Christophe Gans’ version of the fairy tale, starring Vincent Cassel (Jason Bourne) and Léa Seydoux (Spectre) is coming to the United States this fall. And with this trailer, it’s officially the best-looking of any of the recent cinematic attempts to do these fairy tales justice.
Seriously, everything in this trailer is rich and the whole thing feels weirdly dreamlike. There is a lot packed into these two minutes, including the parts of Belle taking the place of her father and her deal with the Beast. But there also seems to be flashbacks to the Beast’s old life, something going on with Belle’s family of a ruined father and many siblings, and what looks like a bit of Jack and the Beanstalk thrown in for good measure.
Beauty and the Beast (or, with the original French title, La Belle et la Bête) will open in select cities on September 23, 2016.
via Gizmodo
Christophe Gans’ Beauty and the Beast Is the Most Beautiful Thing We’ve Seen In Ages
Empty Shell, LLC: their website home page reads “Unique Firearms Design,” and they’re not lying.
The one we’re talking about here is called the XM556 Microgun, and it’s a motorized gatling-style gun that fires 5.56 NATO ammo like it’s going out of style. Oh, and it’s designed to be handheld, which makes it the first of its kind.
(Image: Empty Shell, LLC)
Here’s a quote from their website:
After working in the firearm industry… [we saw] a consistent pattern. Products typically evolved from companies looking around at current trends and trying to get on board before they caught on.
When we founded Empty Shell in 2014, it was decided that we would not go that route. We will only bring products to market that add value to the industry and have a large advantage to the end user. We will never sell something that you can find easily somewhere else. We also only add team members and vendors that understand our vision and are talented enough to produce parts with the same commitment we have in developing them.
About the XM556, they have this to say:
The XM556 is a new platform system… designed from scratch. The parts are not just a smaller imitation of the larger M134. An absolutely all new style of bolt was conceived and designed to eliminate current known issues with the M134. The bolts combined with many other improvements have been made to not only extend the life of the gun but reduce wear and reduce or eliminate stoppages.
Right now, they’ve uploaded a total of three short videos on Youtube. This first one shows the gun chewing & spewing 100 dummy rounds of ammo.
This next one shows a very short test.
And finally, the video below shows a “belt” of linked rounds being fed into the gun and then fired. This thing sure goes through the ammo quickly!
Here are some specs:
Want…
The post Motorized Handheld 5.56mm Gatling Gun: The XM556 Microgun appeared first on AllOutdoor.com.
via All Outdoor
Motorized Handheld 5.56mm Gatling Gun: The XM556 Microgun
It may not be all about the tables anymore, but the DBA role is still essential—even if the person doing it doesn’t have the title. (credit: Michael Mandiberg)
For those of us who have been in the information technology realm for too long, the title "database administrator" conjures up very specific images. We picture someone pulling hair out over issues with backups or snapshots not happening, schemas growing out of control, capacity plans blown up by new application demands, sluggish queries, and eternal performance tuning.
That old-school role of the DBA still exists in some places, particularly large enterprises where giant database clusters still rule the data center. But virtualization, cloud data storage, micro-services, the "DevOps" approach to building and running applications, and a number of other factors have significantly changed how organizations store and manage their data. Many of the traditional roles of the DBA seem to be moot in the shiny, happy world promised by the new generation of databases.
"NoSQL" databases don’t require a pre-defined schema, and many have replication built in by default. Provisioning new servers can be reduced to clicking a few radio buttons and check boxes on a webpage. Development teams just point at a cloud data store such as Amazon Web Services’ Simple Storage Service (S3) and roll. And even relational database vendors such as Oracle, Microsoft, and IBM are pushing customers toward data-as-a-service (DaaS) models that drastically simplify considerations about hardware and availability.
Read 24 remaining paragraphs | Comments
via Ars Technica
It’s the data, stupid: Why database admins are more important than ever
When my family and I watched the entire Star Wars series in high definition, we realized that unfortunately some of the props were not created to look good in high def. Star Wars was way cooler back when was released, but even as a young gunslinger I was confused as to why a “highly trained” army of clone soldiers were such bad shots, and rarely (if ever) used cover.
In a world of Star Wars computer technology, why the heck is every gun 1) humanoid targeted, 2) must be fired exclusively from the hip, and 3) apparently made to such horrible standards that it has less accuracy potential than a slingshot?
Judging from the alleged intense training of Jango Fett and the DNA lineage of the Empire’s Clone Army, one can only assume that the guns are at fault. On the other hand the Rebellion handgun, carbine, and rifle blasters don’t seem much better, with accuracy only marginally better than a kid throwing rocks at windows.
Accuracy seems a little finicky. If Luke needs to shoot out a tiny blast door panel 75 yards across the shooting stage, he does it in one shot — but if he needs to pick off Clones standing 10 feet from him offering perfect frontal shots, he has to “spray and pray,” and he misses over and over.
The logical assumption is that all these shooters are well-trained, so the only logical conclusion is that the weapons themselves are garbage from a power and accuracy perspective. Watch any scene in any Star Wars movie, and you will be appalled at the hit ratio at even sub-seven-yard ranges. I didn’t get all nerdy and count shots, but the average hit ratio between either side with personnel-carried arms has to be close to 10%-20%.
That hit ratio is close to the U.S. military average hit ratios on 300-yard targets, but the distances of the typical Empire/Rebellion engagement appears to be at less than 50 yards. Keep in mind that the average Star Wars blaster is shooting an energy pulse (aka laser) which should be stunningly accurate considering there are no issues with rifling, bullet spin dynamics, wind deflection, etc.
The Blaster produces an laser blast which should, based on current laws of physics, have perfect zero-MOA accuracy at any range with no hold-over required. The only logical explanation is that the optical laser blast delivery lens system on every blaster is loose on every gun in the galaxy, which causes erratic accuracy.
I would blame the accuracy on the optics, but it seems that actually aiming a weapon is against the Galactic War Convention and shots can only be taken via a modified 1970s Spaghetti Western shoot-from-the-hip style.
Also amazing to me: None of the Star Wars weapons have anywhere close to the same firepower as a minigun or even full-auto fire like a standard Military M4 has. Even worse is the rate of fire the average blaster is able to produce, which seems to be about 60 rounds a minute at best.
If you had a 100-round blaster, wouldn’t you be doing your best imitation of Jerry Miculek to rain suppressive fire upon the clone soldiers standing without cover attacking you? So rate of fire I suppose was limited as well with the Star Wars blasters.
Logically, none of the Star Wars weapons make sense to me. I can drop a LaserLyte 9mm Laser Training insert in my H&K P30L and get more accuracy with a higher rate of fire than any weapon I saw on Star Wars.
The weight of the blaster appears to be about the same as you average-sized earth firearms, so why do these blasters suck so much?
Based on the impact take-outs of hero/anti-hero clone soldiers by Wookies, wrenches, and other hard objects throughout the movie series, we can only assume that the armor of the clones would be easily defeated by any modern firearm round.
Let’s contrast this with a few excellent firearms in my inventory which all have 1″ or better accuracy at 100 yards. My Remington 700 SPS 308 could have delivered one-shot kills of surface drones and random Clone soldiers out to 1000 yards. The semi-automatic DPMS GII 308 offers 20-50 round magazine-driven options for a lot of takedown power at a high rate of fire even in semi-auto.
From a troop-issued carbine/rifle perspective, my BPM Barnes Precision Machine AR and futuristic IWI Tavor appear to be amazingly advanced firearms with exponentially higher rates of fire, similar or greater power, and better accuracy… with about the same weight. Bonus: they can even be aimed at targets, which the Star Wars Blasters were not particularly well-suited for.
If we look at the hip-carried Star Wars pistol blaster, the Glock 20 in 10mm would be a hands-down winner. In a couple scenes I thought I saw Han Solo having to do double taps on a Clone or two. Conversely, the FBI has deemed the 10mm to be nearly magical, so I hardly doubt any handheld blaster could equal the 10mm power… I mean the FBI says so.
And let’s not even get into the topic of body armor and camouflage. What is the purpose of bright hard plastic that makes a ton of racket every time you move, inhibits mobility, and apparently offers nothing in the way of protection? I am pretty sure the clone army would have been better-served to run around buck naked or in one of those creepy unitard suits with just a blaster in hand.
Admittedly I am a Sci-Fi nerd. I love this stuff, but I found myself screaming all the shooting fundamentals at the screen this time around. It is actually a wonder with all the muzzle sweeps and finger-on-trigger gun handling that no one was accidentally shot in each scene. The bottom line is this: I feel well-armed, even by the advanced standard of Star Wars (although I do not have a Millenium Falcon to — usually — make the jump to hyperspace).
This article is what happens when you watch Star Wars after three glasses of Scotch, but I hope you enjoyed the comparison.
The post My Safe Has Better Guns Than Star Wars appeared first on AllOutdoor.com.