Re: it's like RAAAAAIIINNN ....
Maybe these muppets are electronic monks, which can hold many contradictory beliefs without necessarily blowing a bank of illogic circuits
Doffs hat to the late, great Douglas Adams
4248 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Apr 2007
"Galactic Accident" in the title referred to a cosmic prang seen all too often when those in charge of galaxies fail to watch where they are going. Really, really, really! You put them in charge of a galaxy and they think they are rulers of the universe!
Darn, now I'll have that song stuck in my head all morning
I remember writing simple MS-DOS programs that could (harmlessly) crash a computer, basically by catching interrupt 9 (keyboard) and processing it with my own interrupt handler, which did little else than IRET, effectively ignoring any keyboard input. We had two versions: crash.exe and hang.exe. Both did essentially the same, but hang cleared the screen and printed "Your computer has crashed", whereas crash made the entire screen blink as well, along with producing an annoying beeping sound. I just put these amongst the programs people were supposed to use, and waited to see which users were inquisitive and adventurous enough to find and then run these executables. I did not have to wait long before I was called to a computer that was beeping its top off, with an annoying flashing screen. I asked the used what he thought a program named "crash" would do, and got a rather sheepish look. They generally tried (in vain) to reset the machine using ctrl-alt-del, but hey, that is keyboard input, so got ignored. The trusty old reset button on the front of the beige box was the only way out. I didn't tell them that. Otherwise they would know what to do when next they tried hang.exe.
We had one sysadmin (who is no longer with us) who tended not to like automating stuff too much. This meant that whenever we needed new accounts for students or guests, he would fiddle around a while, and give you a list of new user names and (temporary) passwords on a bit of paper. I learnt the hard way, after many complaints by students, that it paid to check all accounts manually, to see if
a) the login actually worked,
b) things like home directories had actually been made for each account, and
c) that account A didn't by default write in home directory B and vice-versa.
I currently administer a small compute server used for teaching and research, and I have never been able to replicate these kinds of errors when using "adduser" to create new accounts.
I must say I like that display and spec. I frequently process BIG images of astronomical objects, many of which have a more-or-less 1:1 aspect ratio. 3:2 is fine, an 3000x2000 rather better than my current FHD screen. Sorely tempted, I must say.
Would that be security professional or security consultant? In my book the former actually diagnose and deal with real issues, whereas the latter know the right buzzwords, and get paid more if they can increase the hours they can declare whenever they scream intrusion!!!!. I suspect the plaintiff would be ideal for the latter category.
The alternative explanation would be that someone in system and networks at admin level is called Simon
Well, what with all the insecurity around brexit, I am glad I could get Dutch citizenship (having a Dutch mother and being born and raised in the Netherlands), but much to my surprise I could simply keep my British citizenship (which I got automatically through having British father). In the past they did a lot of huffing and puffing about dual nationality, but now suddenly there wasn't a problem. I still have a good five years of validity on my UK passport, and given the price of these things, I was glad I didn't have to discard it and get a Dutch one instead (and yes, I have Scottish and Dutch ancestry).
When stargazing, I am always amazed to see the ISS pass overhead, usually fairly early in the evening, when still illuminated by the sun sitting just below the horizon. With my big 16x80 binoculars, it shows some resolved structure, although it is hard to keep in the field of view as it moves along at quite a clip.
Whatever its problematic start, and doubtful future, it is an amazing achievement, and shows what we humans can achieve if we stop bickering for any length of time (or at least, bicker more productively). I'll raise a glass to all those who have contributed to this success.
Sorry, couldn't resist. I'll get me coat and silly walk out of here
there wasn't an saffron-clad, vaguely oriental-looking, elderly man with a broom named Lu-Tse involved.
Or maybe there was!! Nobody ever notices a sweeper!!!
Ah-hah!!!!
I can feel an extra exclamation mark coming up right now!!!!!
OK, I'll get out of here. The one with "Thief of Time" in the pocket please
to paraphrase Arthur Dent in the first episode of the HHGTTG radio play
Let's appoint a bunch of cronies from industry to write the rules in such a way as to optimise profit, and hang the consequences for the general public. What could possibly go right?
Sounds like another sell-out by government
My coat please, I want to get out of here!
True, make -j 32 on our 64-core Opteron machine does absolutely fly through big builds, but that is indeed multi-processing rather than multi-threading proper. We do write code that scales well up to 64 threads (up to 50x speed-up), but that only really works if you have serious compute loads (like multi Gpixel images) to process. Many applications don't use multiple threads very heavily.
The border between a mark-up language and a programming language can be vague. Maybe a sensible definition of what is a programming language or not is whether it is Turing complete. If it does not allow you to write loops, I doubt it is.
Curiously, in this sense, LaTeX is a programming language, as the ifthen package provides quite neat while and for loops, and the calc package sufficient numerical manipulation to be Turing complete. I would not want to implement anything other than LaTeX docs, packages, or class files with these features, however.
Sometimes opening the mail (in a mail client that doesn't open or run anything that I don't personally tell it to) is the only way of determining that it is phishing (or any other form of spam). Once I have classified it as phishing or spam, I report it as such before deleting it.
According to the Campaign for Real Cats (doffs hat to the late, great Terry Pratchett), all real cats are Schrödinger's cats, and are quite capable to tunnel through doors using everyday quantum mechanics. The only reason they might give their humans the idea that a door is an impediment is to annoy them, and make them buy (preferably expensive) RFID enabled cat flaps, in part to get back at humans for putting a chip in them in the first place. After installation of said device, cats will then either ignore it, or sabotage it (or both)
And an extra thumbs up for reminding me of that Tom Lehrer song. Might learn to sing that on my way to work, although "I hold your hand in mine", "The Masochism Tango", and "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" do confuse other cycling commuters enough already.
The modem song is a stroke of genius
My faith might be a (tiny) touch higher if they had upped the build number. Still calling it version or build number 1809 suggests they haven't rebuilt (all IDEs I have used automatically up the build number whenever I do a rebuild), which suggests a "your holding it wrong" attitude to the reported, rather serious, bugs. Even from a marketing droid's perspective, upping the build number by some significant value (say 42), suggests some hard work has been going on behind the scenes, which would in some way support their "we treat any data loss seriously" public statement (which in all likelihood should be "Seriously? We treat data loss?").
Well, I actually do back up all my photos and videos on an external back-up drive, and back that up on a different drive as well, and have them in lower resolution in the cloud as well, should all my drives fail. Having said that, I do feel I will add some more back-up storage, just to be safe.
You can't have too many back-ups, and Lu Tse would say (doffs hat to Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter)
In more ways than one. Hats off (mine is the grey Tilley today) to the entire team at NASA.
The sun is rather quiet now, but hopefully the Parker probe will be able to study the sun as it reaches maximum in 6 years or so. As an avid amateur solar astronomer, I will be following this mission closely (but at a safe physical distance).
Astronomers have the slightly weird habit of calling all elements beyond helium in the periodic table "metals". Statistically, they are right most of the time, but it confuses those with any education in chemistry. A low mass, ultra metal poor star like this will only cook up helium from hydrogen during its extremely long main-sequence lifetime, i.e. no metals even by astronomical standards. When its main-sequence life ends, it may start creating carbon, but I doubt it will produce any real metals