Posts by Herby 3058 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Dec 2007
When you add the tonic, you need to make sure it is all sealed up so the bubbles don't come out of solution!
All of this begs the question (stated above): When will someone try this out. The research questions:
Is Gin better than Vodka? Does vermouth make a difference? Olive, or Onion? Shaken or Stirred?
With the default being that you need to search for things all the time (from reports, I haven't used the thing!), maybe the proper thing to enter into the search box is:
"Decent interface"
And presto chango, it goes back to W7 (or something similar).
As for Microsoft's own use, maybe they should take a poll of their local users and see if they are using the latest machines/releases that one can get from the local Best(worst) Buy store. It would be interesting to do a network scan to see what the inventory really is! Oh, and how much re-training did the secretaries (Administrative Assistants) need to do?
This is the problem. This bunch of jerks (that is a polite term) like to throw their weight around. In some cases in conflict with other acts of the federal government. I know of one case where someone on the coast wanted to get a permit to accommodate the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) and build some REQUIRED wheelchair ramps. Oh, no, that would have a negative impact on the coastal environment and would not be allowed. So you are damned if you do and damned if you don't. I don't remember what the solution to the problem was, but it wasn't pretty.
So, it is a typical government agency full of people who think they are doing the "right thing" even when they aren't.
As for the wedding proper. He should have done what Bill Gates did. Rent an island for a day (and the helicopters that go with it) and be done with it. Are there any wagers on how long until a divorce happens? Of course this begs the question: Was there a pre-nup?
If you don't like Mint/Ubuntu, you can always go to Fedora.
Yes, that is what I'm using now, and with KDE it does the job quite nicely here at work. I got the Fedora (17) install disk and slapped it in the drive on the brand new Laptop that I was given when I started here, let the partitioner reduce the size of the W7 mess (I gave it some expansion room, but not much), and it worked just fine. I mount the W7 mess and sometimes (not very often!) boot back in W7, but it does the job for me.
Yes, this is just my experience, your mileage will vary (see store for details).
The progression continues.
The biggest cost is getting the things into orbit. Past experience indicates that once you pay this, the rest might make a profit. Of course those who invested in getting the birds into orbit will have lost all their money by then, but who is counting.
An Observation: Why is it that the "poor" nations seem to be around the equator?
Doesn't the Amazon flow OUT from Brazil (into the Atlantic Ocean)?
Of course Brazilian has come to mean something entirely different (being very sparse) and maybe that is what they were thinking about, stripped bare!
Parting comment: Of course, it is Microsoft, so it goes into the "We don't care" category.
Just look at Globalstar & Iridium as a couple of examples. Sure these are telephone based things, but data is data even if it is voice data, or internet data. Just give me a big pipe to push the data through.
As with any system of this type, the biggest concern is capacity. Will the system have anough to satisfy all of its users as a reasonable speed.
Wish them well in any event. Nice being below 45 degrees (more like 37.5 or so).
Guardian sets up bureau in Quito, Ecuador.
Tomorrow...
Guardian abandons bureau in Quito, Ecuador due to observing press gagging, and lack of any (meaningful) story to file.
In a week?
ElReg expresses a card table and laptop to cantina. Makes deal with owner for WiFi access. Encourages "leakers" to have a seat.
Months later.
Said card table is quite active as everyone is playing internet games. No "leakers" yet. ElReg decides it really wasn't worth trouble, as nothing really happens in Ecuador anyway. Good thing components were castoffs from BOFH operations. We understand that one of Simon's bosses may be exiled there as well.
Someone will get the idea to send out LOUD (amplified) broadcasts that they are coming around at "great speed" into an intersection, where all OTHER vehicles will stop. Clear sailing for the hacker (until another similar boffin does the same).
The possibilities are endless, should be a fun time!
Just makes other vendors look better.
Do you really think that after the action (whatever it is) Dell will be the company it once was? I have doubts. It appears that other people who rely upon Dell for their boxen share similar thoughts.
Anyway, time will tell. Watch this space (next year) for an update.
It seems to me that these appear similar. They BOTH rely on the low/no cost of transactions. The SPAMmer basically has a zero cost method of emitting junk messages (at least until he is caught), and the HFT guy has little cost in his transactions other than the cost of the security itself (which goes up/down by mere pennies). Sure there is a hardware cost, and for both people there is an ever escalating "arms race" that they need to compete in, but the actions are quite similar.
Now if there were a cost per transaction (however small), that would make the HFT guys think before trying to eek out the gain of a small amount (read cents) on a stick price the frequency might lower as the margins need to be better to recover the cost of the trade. This could be accommodated with a minute (.01% maybe) price. Another option might be to only allow "publishing" of trades on one-second intervals. Plenty of time for average people (like me) to see what is happening, but for the HFTs it would be an eternity, allowing everyone to catch up with the information at hand.
As for spammers, all we can do is hope that their economic model will eventually NOT make any sense. For the moment, it does, as maybe .001% respond but that is enough when you send out blasts in the millions of messages about enhancing drugs and the like.
Live & Learn
Standardized tests used for College admissions. Does one predict the other? The problem is that there was never a study to find out. They keep giving the tests, and Universities use them, but they never go back and check, nor do they re-test people after University graduation to find out if the tests actually made any sense.
If the object of instruction is to get "good grades", I suppose that high achievers will get "good grades". The problem is that do you actually learn anything? When it comes to things like driving, the indicators ARE there (traffic citations), but getting one of these every few years just means you are taking shortcuts (but officer I thought that sign that says "85" WAS the speed limit sign). It is an unfortunate fact of life that practice and theory should be the same in theory, but in practice they aren't.
So, life goes on, and HR droids will continue to ask silly questions. Like dismiss people who don't have 5 years of C++ experience in 1985.
Great boxes. Superior real-time ability. Amazing what you can get done in a small footprint. I was in charge of a machine that had only 80k bytes, and we did LOTS of stuff.
Nowdays, a laptop has more processing power, but doesn't come close to the real-time interfaces.
As for another subject: The time in Unix/Linux is (most of the time) a signed 32 bit number. When it overflows in 2038, it will go negative the other way, and with the given epoch of Jan 1, 1970, will go back 68 years or so to 1902. It will be exciting!
...put ALL of the stuff on a single chip and eliminate this co-processor stuff. Just have the CPU-GPU combo chip and hang some memory, and it generates nice video (HDMI/Display port) output. Add an USB port (or two) and you have about a 3-5 chip solution. It would be even better if the BIOS were contained in flash inside the combo chip as well.
Get with it, NVidia!!
p.s. Don't make the BIOS do that stupid UFEI signed stuff, I want to run a nice operating system!
It might be the end of things. One of these with the UFEI turned off might actually be a nice things to have, all loaded up with my very own software that I want to use.
Thing to do: Walk into the "Microsoft Store" and ask if I can load MY software on the Surface goodie. The shopping mall isn't that far away, so I may do it. Of course the Microsoft store is across the isle from the Apple store (wonder why?).
Maybe they want to sell to law enforcement at $5k each. Maybe if it gets published, the originators will sure for copyright infringement. Do I need an activation key? Is there any guarantee?
Big Bux are mine for the taking?
Ah, if it were so simple. Now if they put their minds to more productive ("How about a nice game of chess?") endeavors they might actually make an honest dollar or two.
So, I say to a buyer: "A fool and his money are soon parted!".
My degree is in Electrical Engineering, where things get done. Sure, it has lots of math involved, and I did get to write a program or two to solve some lab work, but the best part was that I was employed at a university "up the street" that I wanted to get into, but didn't have the grades to do so. It yielded an interesting mix of things as I interacted quite a bit with graduate engineers who were actually doing things (and solving problems) using a computer. As an added bonus, they paid me some money to do it. I ended up being the BOFH for a mid-sized 32 bit computer for a few years (I did PFY work before that) and was able to actually diagnose problems with the hardware and develop interfaces for stuff they had lying around, along with the software to make them play.
But that was the late 60's and early 70's when Fortran was king, and to do anything special you used assembler writing subroutines for the other Fortran jockeys you had in the shop. Later on I did learn C and true to form discovered that one can write Fortran in any language.
But... if you really want an understanding of computer languages, try Lisp. While I haven't used it, the assembler I worked with used lists for lots of its processing, and you could do lots of things with it. Another language to try is Forth. Study how it works, and see how it is implemented at the machine level. On an 8 bit micro (which you should design/build yourself) you get to know LOTS of details that will serve you well in later life.
As for C++, I compare the books written by the progenitors of the languages. The book The C language and Bjarne's book about C++ differ by about a ratio of 4 in the thickness of the book. While not a very good metric, go and look at the examples. In K&R the examples are complete and well thought out. Bjarne's book yields examples that often finish up with "// ...". This makes the language more difficult to understand and reveals that C++ is a moving target that is (probably) more complicated than it needs to be (kitchen sink?).
So, while you might not need it, an understanding of low level constructs can prove to be very insightful. Learn some. Make some lights blink, read some buttons, solder a bit, experiment. It will prove useful.
It woudl remind me of the scene in the Thomas Crowne Affair where Rene Russo pours a class of glop and drinks it after a trip across the pond.
Maybe it was the stuff, who knows.
As for "cooking" it, the stuff looks like pancake batter, so maybe it is salvageable after all. It probably does contain ingredients from my two favorite food groups: Sugar and Preservatives.
I hope that someone records the before and after weight to see if one can lose a few pounds.
That this guy was almost a prototypical BOFH. He didn't like his boss, used the data he had access to to embarrass his boss, the list goes on. The only thing lacking was a proper PFY.
So, does Simon work for the NSA??
I also note that this thread has a VERY high percentage of Anonymous Cowards commenting. Probably coincidence!
Our American public generally doesn't like the "other" politicians, but is quite happy with "their own" politicians. Yes they despise congress as a whole but as is said in other arguments, they keep electing it.
Unfortunate as it is, we don't elect all 435 representatives we only elect one (unless you are from say Chicago, where the motto is vote early, vote often). That single one is the popular one in the district, and the rest of the country be damned.
We get the congress we elect. Unfortunately that is how it is.
Will you see the sales droids wear? They might as well wear the proper Red shirts so we know who in the away team isn't coming back to the mother ship!
I would have labeled this with the proper "Joke Alert", but maybe it isn't one!
Remember: Apple stores are known to have the highest sales volume per unit area of any retail store in the USA!
Oh, and don't forget: Ask: "Can I have this WITHOUT Windows installed?"
I went to the dentist a couple of hours ago, and was talking with the hygienist about X-rays. She made the comment that the X-rays used in dentists offices is MUCH less than it was only a few years ago (they now use electronic sensors, not film like they used to). I then pointed out that flying long flights (internationally) exposes you to LOTS more stuff than the simple X-rays you get on a yearly basis. The information I used related to high altitude exposure, but when you add in this little stuff, it can get excessive at times. When you only fly a few flights a year, the integrated exposure isn't very much, but if you are employed as part of the flight crew (main cabin, or cockpit) you get several trips in a month (sometimes over 4 long flights a week!) and for those people, it can add up.
So, to really find out, we need some silly "in-depth" study, when collecting the data might be as easy as taping a piece of film (suitably shielded from light) to the side of the plane with duct tape.
Then we get OSHA regulations and prop 65 warnings galore to scare the public!
...They have one of those ring shaped things over at SLAC (it is at the end of the two mile long slingshot). I even visited it. Granted, it is a few (40 years) old, but it did produce some good science (and may still, I haven't kept up). Yes, it is a ring about 100 feet in diameter ("small" by today's standards) but just put some bigger coils and pump up the volume, and you could be good to go.
And Yes, they DID discover particles there.
(among other things!). They encourage genetic diversity by deviating from the X86 platform. The X86 platform (now used by PeeCees and Macs and a bunch of Linux server boxen) is so inbred that we don't know all its foibles, and with every generation, it gets worse.
Thankfully these ARM chips and their systems are good because they are different (in a VERY good way).
Oh, and yes, they are big-endian processors, which is better for all involved (as I don the flame proof suit).
While a government tries to be noble about this, it is all a matter of "trust". While some "trust" the government to do the "right thing", governments (in general) just aren't trustworthy.
The problem is that this data scraped from every rough surface can be used for a variety of purposes. While one might be very "noble", many of the others are clearly NOT. This is the "big problem". Yes, I'm a nice (so I believe) lay abiding citizen, but given the data I shove around, if selectively presented, could be construed (like this message) as being "up to no good". So, yes, I allowed my parents (many years ago) to snoop on my room, I still kept things hidden from them (under my mattress, they were flat) so I would not be hung out to dry.
The same applies with a government that derives its power from the consent of the people. so, when you hear "trust me, I'm from the government", run like hell!
Is it just me, or does this look like a glorified pawn from your handy chess set.
Of course, they could have various attachments for it with different pieces for different amounts of "importantcy" in the company in question.
And yes, it is a defect that it won't transmit the impacts that are inflicted upon itself back to the "user".
So, we have a NEW definition of the work LAZY!!
When using these items, does anyone actually notice the difference? Of course that is other than when the windows graphic has a number below it?
Yes, a Megohm was 1,000,000 ohms, and a Megahertz was at 1000 on the AM dial (maybe 10, or 100). Us computer types seem to have gotten into a habit of thinking that 2^10 is 10^3, which while "close" (various technologies differ on this!) isn't exact. We just hate to recite long numbers.
Of course when someone said 20k for the memory of an IBM 1620, they really meant 20,000!
It seems to me (a non gamer for sure) that the suits at Microsoft really DON'T understand their audience. They seem "to know what is best" for everyone and think that the public "should be thankful" for their technology.
This attitude has detrimental effects on the population as a whole. They really don't trust the manufacturer and will probably vote with their pocketbooks. The net result is that a big financial rag (Forbes) is predicting that if Sony's PS4 does things "right" it might win the console war "by default".
It could come to pass that Microsoft will come out with Xbox One.1, but I won't hold my breath. The more likely event is that they will force a touch-screen interface on the FPS gaming community (which ought to be good for a laugh)!
Time will tell.
...to be (insert adjectives here).
Sure any thing that is a 'fashion statement' will have some elitism associated with it. Isn't that what marketing is all about??
Thankfully the cost of the fashion statement in telephones isn't in excess of $2000 as it can be with handbags (when a wallet will do!).
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