Posts by Herby

Tried to compete with...

The Radio Shack Color Computer ("CoCo") and really didn't do a reasonable job.

The CoCo had a reasonable version of Basic when powered on, and could be purchased with a reasonable amount of memory (16k was available) off the shelf. It had a bunch of cartridges thad actually DID things you wanted to do (you could even get a spreadsheet one), and the whole thing was priced pretty reasonably. The CoCo even went through a couple of upgrades along the way. If you were really adventurous you could get OS-9 (cut down Unix "-ish") to work with floppy disks.

Me? I bought a 4k model that lasted at 4k for about 1 hour after I opened up the box. I upgraded it to 32k before the day was done. Somewhere I still have the box buried somewhere, and it is at 64k bytes. The 6809 processor was a pretty good 8 bit CPU (probably the best overall!).

Fun times.

Shakespeare was right...

In other news, one should only agree to contracts that exist on fewer than (I'm guessing here) 5 pages. If it is any more than that, give up and ask for a re-write.

I'm sure that the contract mentioned was WAY more than 5 pages, and equally confusing.

In addition, my understand of contract law (here in the USA) is that ambiguities favor the one who DIDN'T write the contract. I'm sure that Sheldon's roommate agreement is equally as complicated as a SAP contract, and equally confusing to all involved.

With new releases...

I wish that they would put up on a site (kernel.org?) a nice 3 page treatise that explains the "highlights" of the release, in somewhat general terms. Sure there is lots of detail in the commit logs, but a digest would be nice.

Then we could all get our heads around why release 4.xxx is the one to have (or not).

I know, wishful thinking (*SIGH*).

Switch??

A nice physical switch should be right next to all web cams as a matter of course. Of course some vendor will just make the switch a digital input that tells the computer to disable the camera, but at least it would be a switch.

Ideally it would make the light next to the camera go green. When the camera is "activated" the tally light would go red, of course. Maybe a manufacturer is listening, but I have doubts.

Wikileaks of its day...

Look the _New York Times_ still is!

It's all blurry to me...

Look I've got presbyopia, and things that close just DON'T FOCUS. So unless they get a re-focusing program that pre-distorts the image, it just won't work for me.

So, enjoy it while you can. Of course it has been observed that those who spend a good chunk of their life doing "up close" things don't focus on distant things as well as those who take a while and enjoy the scenery, so I can recommend it for those either.

Good luck!

Colossus, the Forbin project...

Enough said...

My opinion: The movie was terrible, they destroyed lots of perfectly good 1620 front panels!

Absolute power...

Corrupts Absolutely.

The problem is that the CBP agents aren't given enough training and are "just following the manual" when they visit upon you their terrible wrath. You see, in order to be "fair" they need to treat everyone "alike" and the manual makes no leeway for anything. I have been wanting to build up a nice wooden mock-up of an iPhone with a proper picture on it, just to see what they think of it. You can easily put it in one of the non-skid sleeves (I have one on my phone now) and it would be very convincing to show. They would have a terrible time trying to get it it open up. I would love to see their faces when they try to make a forensic copy.

Of course I am an American citizen and haven't had much a problem entering the USA even when I came back in December of 2001. That was a nice flight, as there weren't too many people on it at the time. Life goes on, and I do hope that CBP gets some common sense and understands the minutia of digital devices. If you really want to smuggle things in, a 64Gbyte micro SD card is pretty easy to conceal these days. You could put it under a postage stamp quite easily, and not be detected.

Of course, does CBP look at posts to ElReg to find out if I should be "inspected"? Time will tell.

Artificial intelligence isn't.

Enough said.

As for news stories being fake/real (or whatever category they want to be put into), I'll vote for "fake" until proven otherwise. So, take everything with a grain of salt.

Advanced...

Now that you young whippersnappers are off the lawn, I can go back and remember when "text editing" was an 029 keypunch and a deck of cards. You could even do a "cut and paste" if you wanted to.

Than again I'm an old geezer in some regards.

In those days lower case was for wimps. I also remember the commercials on TV about "working with your hands and not getting your fingernails dirty". That was someone who never replaced a keypunch ribbon.

We've come a long way. I prefer something like 'EDT' (I used it on a pdp-11 running RSX), and one of these days EMACS will get a text editor, I'm told.

Two words...

Equity Funding.

As the saying goes: "To err is human, to really foul things up requires a computer."

What could possibly go wrong.....

Kumputers is Perfekt.

That slamming noise is of the jail door being shut behind you.

All this means...

That climate "science" is NOT easy. To simplify it to small arguments and attempt to fit models to your way of thinking just doesn't work. A couple of months ago, I watched a video that purported to have THE solution to making $$$ in the stock market. It was "back tested" and that insured it worked. The problem is that it is very difficult to "forward test" models since they are changed to accommodate the changes observed. Wild predictions of any type based on the past just don't work, they have error bands. You can see it in the way hurricane tracks are shown. The band of prediction becomes wider for each passing day. When was the last time weather predictions were 100% accurate. They come close, but will they tell me that at 3:25pm the rain will start? I have doubts.

Like "rocket science" predictions of climate are difficult, and anyone who says different is just fooling everyone. Take some with a grain of salt, and look at predictions of 5 years ago, and see how they came out.

NOT EASY!!

So when do I short CSCO/INTC stock??

Given that this seems to happen after 18 months, one might want to calculate the time of first failure, and watch the stock go down. It could get interesting.

Of course, one wonders WHY the failure manifests itself after 18 months. Is there some flash component that gets used to determine elapsed time? We know the symptoms of the failure, but not the actual root cause (other than a bad chip design (DUH!).

In any event, not an easy re-work. BGAs are almost impossible, Surface mounts can probably be done in the field, but I wouldn't. Time will tell how this is handled (good, bad, terrible).

Me? No, I don't own any INTC/CSCO stock.

Where does the fine go??

To the government, of course. Do any owners of Visio TVs get a penny? Nope!

Typical government. They get the $$$ and the "injured" get zilch! Maybe I should copyright my personal information, so I can charge a fee!

Fun with phone calls...

Mine was wonderful. A friend of mine died a couple of years ago, and I took over his cell phone number because we had some contacts in common (I used Magic Jack). He had LOTS of debt (including to me), and I wanted to be in the loop. A couple of weeks ago, I got a call from a debt collector (surprise!) and I played along, he asked me what I was going to do about the debt of some minor amount (in relation to mine which was a few orders of magnitude larger). I told the guy I wasn't going to do anything. He then started out with all sorts of legal jumble and giving me a bad time. I really didn't care, he was much farther back in the (debt) line than I was. He ended up quite flustered, and it felt good for me. It was truly a BOFH phone call.

Another time a collection agency tried to collect on an older debt (over 5 years old) and when I asked for the date of the debt, he said the older date, and I replied "Good luck with that!". He hung up pretty quickly.

Every BOFH in training should take it upon themselves to waste AS MUCH TIME as possible for the guy on the other end. This makes their "profit" per man hour go down, and thwarts their business model.

Satire? I don't think so!

Maybe they will get serious...

About the malware and its perpetrators and actually go after them. Last I heard extortion was illegal.

Maybe it needs to infect a government agency, say the FBI or some such.

Reason for lawsuit??

Perhaps the data rate in Trump Tower was a bit off. You never know....

Option for 'ls'??

Maybe if invoked as root (maybe any user?) and arguments are '-rf' it should count the number of files it might delete, and say:

Wow over 1000 files, are you sure?

Me? Typically I do it without the 'f' option and see how it progresses, then abort and re-do with the added '-f' option as needed. I get very careful with recursive descents (with good reason!).

I might as well....

Die with a smile on my face. The alternative seems to be terrible. It is kinda like the tombstone that says:

"And I ate all that kale for nothing!"

Me? I like a nice juicy steak, baked potato (with sour cream, chives, AND bacon!). Of course if genetics has anything to do with it, I'll live into my 90's like my mom (still living at 98) and dad (lived to 94!). So, damn the studies full speed ahead.

Makes me long for...

The nice chain printer of old. Those 1403's could really put out the pages, all 132 columns of it, and writing notes on blue bar (I never did like green bar) was the way to go.

Try hacking a printer like that!

Yes, I do own a nice line printer, a 300 LPM band printer. Upper AND lower case!

Why not go after the REAL spammers??

And make us all happy. I get over 500 messages that qualify as spam and I'd like $500 for each one. I could retire on that amount of money.

Yes, wishful thinking.

Moral of the story...

Don't name the company after yourself UNLESS you want to be associated with it for your lifetime (which is a VERY long time). Pick something easily removed from your name, like "Traf-o-data" or some such.

Oxygen is interesting stuff!!

In normal atmosphere, it at a partial pressure of about 3 PSI. Things get interesting at higher pressures. A typical forge will use bellows air (which may increase the partial pressure to a bit more (6 PSI?), and then the coals do glow a bit hotter (there are several forging videos on you tube). Take things up to 100% Oxygen and you get a partial pressure around 15 PSI. Put just about anything in this, and if it starts reacting, it will keep going. The Apollo 1 capsule was pressurized to 5 PSI over atmospheric, for a total of about 20 PSI, and at that level LOTS of things burn. The concentration is around 6-7 times the normal atmosphere we breathe, and things will be go up in smoke. A welder's gas mix gets close to this and if you use a cutting torch, you can even turn OFF the acetylene after the cut is started, and the iron will burn quite nicely (and quickly) in such concentrations. Then you have what is inside the capsule, and with a small spark and 7 times the normal Oxygen, ANYTHING will go up in smoke, and VERY quickly at that.

A bunch of lessons were learned from the Apollo fire, and considering that all subsequent Apollo astronauts got home safely, it worked out OK.

The Apollo 13 "we've had a problem" is also related to Oxygen, it was a small spark inside an Oxygen tank (100% Oxygen again at high pressures) and things burned, and burned well.

Oxygen is dangerous, but combine it with other things, and you have "instant fire". Enough said.

We salute you who dies to make the space program what it is!

Amazing what small things do.....

In my case it was cleaning CRTs. The office (answering services) had operators that smoked like chimneys and with the static build up on the CRT terminals (it was the early 1980s) they would get pretty dirty. We used to always have a nice bottle of Windex available with a bunch of paper towels and during a break in the action, would clean the screens. Then indicate to the operator that we had enhanced to operation to the latest version (or some such drivel). The result was the operators thanking us profusely that their terminals were working MUCH better and that they noticed that they were MUCH better.

Sad part is that this could be repeated on a monthly basis, and achieve similar results. (*SIGH*)

Wrong numbers are fun...

In my early days, I got wrong numbers a couple of ways:

In the first case, someone looked up my name in the phone book (yes, we had them back when) and since my name matched the name of his realtor (as I remember), and he wanted to play gold that weekend, I was more than happy to oblige, and we setup the tee time. Hopefully the poor sod figured it out when the links didn't have my name or tee time in their books.

In the second case, the numbers were transposed. My number ended in '8488' and the local eatery ended in '8848'. In that case I was more than happy to accept reservations, with "no problem" added.

Presently, it is a little more annoying. The local car wash, which hires anyone who can breathe at something close to minimum wage, has their number as x5yz, and my number is x8yz (numbers redacted for convenience). This leads to getting phone calls as dawn is breaking asking about employment and such, which is not conducive to my current sleep pattern (being awake with hours with single digits, ugh!). I stumble across the room and pick up the phone while my wonderful wife starts cursing at the phone. I TRY to be polite, indicating that they shouldn't have such fumbly fingers, and hope for no repeat call.

All in all I try to make the best of it in my own special way. (Chuckle, chuckle!).

Yes, good advice...

"If you’re concerned that you’ve had too much to drink, it’s probably a sign that you have, and a taxi Uber is in order"

FTFY. Got to have the IT angle in all good things.

Of course, you might want to check the BAC of the Uber driver as well.

IPv6...

Yes, we need 128 bit addresses. Really?? An address for every grain of sand on the planet?

Yes, the 4 billion addresses for IPv4 isn't enough for every human on the planet, but 96 bits more, not really useful. IPv7 ought to pare it down a bit to something more reasonable. In my book, I'd settle for 48 bits, which strangely is the address field on ethernet (there may be something there).

Yes, Microsoft needs to eat its own dog food, hopefully BEFORE it releases things to the general public. This seems only right! There is the big FAIL!

Sounds like me to be a good reason....

to stop inhaling toxic heated substances. Like those that contain nicotine, or THC (take your pick).

If you want oral gratification, a nicely formed wooden dowel will probably do the trick. Paint the end "red" and the body white, and let everyone complain at your inert oral fixation.

Who is next??

Seems that El Presidente is a pretty busy guy these last few days. I wonder if a person named Clinton is somewhere in the stack of papers, or just waiting till 11 AM on Friday (EST).

Maybe I'm to cynical (or not!).

Heard this one before??

Microsoft in 2000 or so. Microsoft licensed computer vendors on a per unit basis, even if said unit didn't have Windoze. Primary reason why it is difficult to get Linux pre-installed from a computer vendor is my understanding.

Of course if FTC goes after Microsoft, I'm sure others will be pleased, but I'm not holding my breath at all.

Great business model if you can get away with it.

Fuel...

Is how I refer to the AM elixir of choice. Coffee in, code out (and some minor waste products we don't talk about). It has been that way for many a moon, and will continue as well.

Live long and prosper? Sure, there is a correlation. But there is also a more than casual correlation between breathing air and living long as well.

So, if a cup adds a week to one's life, I may even see the Unix epoch pass by at the age of 88. Highly likely since my mum is 98 and going string! She still drinks coffee as well!

Costs to government??

The article mentions that it took 11 driods from the DMV 4 hours to count the coins. With a little math, that works out to $68/droid/hour (I'm rounding here). Being as this was "overtime", and with generous government labor contracts, and given overhead, (lights, taxes, etc.), one can easily assume that the government lost money on this transaction.

So, opening up all the rolls of pennies (50/roll) was more than a waste of time, it was a waste of valuable taxpayer money as well. Common sense would have dictated that the DMV should have taken all these rolls down to the local bank (they most likely originated there anyway), and said "DEPOSIT PLEASE" and let the bank handle the problem.

Sadly common sense in a government agency doesn't exist, so they did it the "hard" way. (*SIGH*).

Where does the $4.3e9 go?

Not to the people who were actually hurt (the owners of the vehicles) that's for sure. That much moola becomes a nice line item in the budget on the income side.

Oh, well.

At least...

It isn't North Korea. There if you look the wrong way, your life expectancy goes down a couple of orders of magnitude.

As for the good old USA: Corruption, yes, we have heard of it (somewhere....). I believe it is called "politics" in some circles.

Just a few years early in the prediction...

Yes, Scott McNealy was right. The all seeing eye is here, just the prediction was a few (33) years early.

(*SIGH*)