Posts by jake

Re: Obviously should be ride of the valkyries

Perfect music as our e-scooter riding heros are swept off to Valhalla.

Well, to be fair ...

... most of that time is spent finding, and then using a charger.

So ...

... just like CB radios back in the day, then?

No, not that new-fangled thing. Gossip, the only method known to man for moving information faster than the speed of light.

Re: Nyan Cat

That was an old & tiresome waste of bandwidth when it was still Poptart Cat.

Re: Obviously ...

When I first saw that scene[0], I immediately thought it would turn out to be a hit&miss engine powering a mechanical horse. I still think it'd be funnier my way :-)

[0] Trailer while watching another film at Harrogate's Odeon, of all places.

Re: Missing options

"Though, having horses, do you need an e-scooter?"

No.

But then I'd see little need for e-scooters if I didn't have horses.

Re: Repeating:

I think it'd be funnier as written :-)

Same for electric cars, right?

Re: Missing options

Upvote for the Jetson's car. Perfect noise for the annoying things. Would cut through the noise of city traffic with ease.

I'm fairly sure that I saw on a documentary that you Brits have a chain of shops called "Grot" that sells such items.

Re: Serial to VGA? All you need is an adapter!

Soldering? Crimping, Shirley.

_{Still got all the tools .... and a pile of misc. breakout boxen. Often use 'em, too.}

Re: In the pilot's defense...

"One of my past jobs used to be to document standards."

Made a living suckering companies becoming ISO 9000 compliant? Me too ... it was good money for a while, but after a couple years I couldn't stomach the sheer uselessness of it all anymore, and dropped it from the list of services my company offered. Chasing paperwork in the name of mediocrity gives me hives.

Re: Over the years I've discovered that ...

See my opening sentence.

Re: Glad I use Alpine!

I prefer pine to alpine, but will happily use either.

Spurious? Sounds to me more like paranoia ... or, more likely, somebody got caught red-handed.

Re: Eyes

Yeah, but back then bloated monstrosities like EMACS (sorry, rms!) were the exception, not the rule. Even Sendmail was four years out in '79 ... and Apache's httpd was 16 years away!

_{Argumentum ad absurdum usually makes one look silly, and upsets the pig.}

Re: Glad I use Alpine!

Sounds to me like you want a service manager, which doesn't really belong in an init when you think about it.

Re: Meanwhile in the NHL

Syntax error, unable to parse. 2 minute minor.

Re: Bury it in the desert. Wear gloves

Not only is the systemd-cancer NOT Linux, Linux doesn't even need the systemd-cancer to operate.

GNOME is simply awful. Why people continue to propagate the charade is beyond me.

Yes, the basic utilities included with all (most?) Linux distributions (and BSD) are very well designed, secure, and reliable.

Re: Eyes

"When did rm get replaced with bloatware?"

Not replaced with, augmented by. Was the logical answer when bloatware authors decided to scatter files in so many sub-directories that using scripts to remember where they are became necessary.

For rather small values of logical, of course.

Sad, innit?

Re: Meanwhile in the NHL

What's hockey got to do with all this?

Re: Glad I use Alpine!

"sometimes one needs systemd evil"

Can you provide examples that are not contrived just to prove the point?

To date, I have never, not once, seen a place where the systemd-cancer is needed.

Re: Polkit

"It meant that in the case of an installation with multiple operators the privileges could be shared out appropriately by giving an operator the specific passwords they needed."

Still can, if you know what you are doing. Slackware makes it (relatively) easy.

Re: Polkit

Bastardization of the concept doesn't negate the origin.

Re: I doubt any business allows any old user to connect to a Linux terminal

That was quite kind and gentle of you, sabroni. Mellowing with age?

Re: Eyes

Don't make mountains out of molehills. It's just another bug. It has been patched, and faster than commercial software usually is, by a wide margin. No more problem.

There will be more bugs in ANY codebase as large as a Linux distribution. When found, they will be patched just as quickly as this one was.

::shrugs::

Re: Polkit

How about polkitd?

Re: Polkit

Except it was in development before the systemd-cancer existed.

Veneer brickwork.

Most veneer brickwork is less than half an inch thick. Comes in "sheets" of maybe a dozen or two "bricks" that are installed at the same time, saving time (money). They even have corner pieces that preserve the illusion of being full bricks. Putting up full-sized brick where these faux versions will do the job does nothing but waste money.

Re: Under the floor

Who needs keys with filing cabinets? I have one lock pick that'll open almost all of 'em, and about as fast as with the key.

Re: there is a lot of faux adobe - stucco, instead of siding

"Doesn't that require a lot of maintenance?"

No. In fact, none at all in the 60+ years my parents have owned theirs in Palo Alto. It's essentially a layer of concrete mixed with just enough fibers to reduce cracking, and the colo(u)red stone powder (usually off-white) of your choice.

Easy to do, and inexpensive ... when my parent's house was built in the early 1950s, they framed a standard stud wall, threw a layer of roofing felt over it (40lb, I think), then a layer of what is essentially chicken wire, and then troweled about 3/8s of an inch of the concrete mix onto that. Texture as you see fit, wait for it to cure, and you're done.

The result is weather and insect-proof, and does a fair job at keeping warm air either in or out in our mild climate. No need for paint (even on scratches, dings and dents), resists mildew (even on the North side), lasts virtually forever, and the entire house is on a slab foundation that "floats" in an earthquake, so it doesn't even crack.

Yes, it is a boring expanse for a wall ... so the architects raised the visual appeal with door and window trim (LOTS of windows!), porches, roof lines, chimneys and the like. The whole is not altogether displeasing, in a tract house kind of way.

Brick veneer is common pretty much everywhere ... it's fairly cheap, ships well, is purely decorative, and non-structural.

Actual brick is common wherever there are good clay deposits and earthquakes are few and far between.

Essentially, housing is built of whatever is available locally that can withstand the conditions that mother nature throws at it. The Universal Building Code (UBC) spells it out in great detail.

The US is a big place ... what might work well in SillyCon Valley probably isn't all that useful in Chicago or Albuquerque or Miami ... or it's really, really spendy to transport alternate materials. I've milled Redwood beams and other smaller boards for a custom SIP on timber-frame house built in Vermont. The all Redwood interior came out absolutely beautiful (if over-kill for my taste), is to code, and should last essentially forever ... but the family paid an arm and a leg in shipping charges.

Re: 640k

It was not the original POSIX subsystem (based on XENIX[0]) ... XP and Windows Server 2003 used the new Windows Services for UNIX, which was essentially "borrowed" from BSD.

[0] Xenix was bog-stock AT&T UNIX Version 7 source, rebranded by Microsoft and offered to other companies "as is" to port to their hardware of choice. Microsoft was essentially a reseller of AT&T source code licenses.

Re: 640k

NT wasn't a fork, it was a new OS that included the OS/2 API, which was later changed to a Win3.x focused API after the unexpected explosion in sales of first Win3.0 and then Win3.1

Interestingly, NT kept the (minimal) POSIX API because Microsoft felt that chasing the government mandated FIPS 151-2 standard was worthwhile. This went away with the release of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.

Early NT also kept a variation of the OS/2 API, but it was depreciated more and more over time.

Re: 640k

Not so.

PRISM (Parallel Reduced Instruction Set Machine) was the architecture. The OS was called MICA ... binning this and then letting Cutler go (along with a lot of other high level engineers), only to attempt to pick up the pieces again with Alpha the following year is a major portion of what lead to DEC's downfall.

Yes, there are many creature-comforts that are well worth having on modern Ag gear. I particularly like the ability to spot adjust fertilizer quantity as it is being delivered according to the results of soil tests. Has cut my fertilizer use by around 50% and increased yield by about 15% on the AZ property where we grow most of our critter chow. Couple this with GPS controlled steering for planting and harvesting, leaving me free to keep an eye on the equipment and look out for rocks in the field has resulted in both fewer breakdowns, and less damage because I can usually spot it before it gets bad. If you produce large acreage crops, these things are a godsend. As are heated seats, air-ride cabs, air conditioning in the summer, proper lights at night, etc. etc.

Don't get me wrong, I love my 1915 Case traction engine ... and I enjoy demonstrating my manually operated 12 bottom plow ... but 8 guys to plow a field is not exactly labo(u)r saving. (Driver, engineer/fireman, and 6 guys, each one responsible for raising/lowering two of the actual plows. Can get away with 3, but 6 is more impressive at a county fair.).

We have issues in our modern society, but making Ag workers lives easier is something that all of us benefit from. Well, those of us who eat, anyway. Support your local farmer.

""No one will even need more than 640k Memory for a personal computer" - Bill Gates."

Bill Gates never said that. It's a myth.

However, I personally remember Steve Jobs saying that "128K should to be enough for home users!", at a meeting of the Homebrew Computer Club in late 1983, as he was demonstrating the original 128K Mac, just before the public unveiling. At the time, he had a point ... people were running flight simulators in 64K!

Re: Small farmers are a dying breed

"And John Deere is helping to plow their graves."

Nah. We're still hanging in there. JD kit brings quite a bit as scrap if you don't feel like parting it out yourself, and there are plenty of other vendors who are happy to work will us little guys without screwing us over.

Not all that bad.

As an IT consultant, I implemented a four hour minimum for on-site visits in (roughly) 1990, a couple years after I went solo. Double on weekends/holidays. A few clients balked at the new rate ... I simply told 'em "Don't call me unless you actually need me". Or, as I tell prospective new clients "It's my job to ensure we see as little of each other as possible".

A new issue arose. Convincing 'em to pay 4 hours for a one minute visit. The old TV repairman's maxim applied, "I'm not charging you for thumping your telly with a screwdriver. I'm charging you for knowing where and how hard to thump your telly, and for showing up to do it". The explanation seems to have worked ... although about four years ago a child CEO wondered why I'd need to thump a telly with a screwdriver.

This is NOT the reason for the lawsuits. The lawsuits are because Deere is a defacto monopoly, if your farm runs on Green.

John Deere is so bad that when attempting to restore a 55 year old tractor, the local dealership refused to sell me engine and transmission parts! Told me I was "stealing" from JD by having the gall to do my own work. So I called corporate to complain. They told me it was policy.

Needless to say, I have sold all my JD kit, and will never purchase anything from them again.

Re: "it has no natural predators,"

I suspect he jumped down and tucked it in the corner when I was replacing cheap old thin-walled copper water pipe with PEX ... probably when I had my back turned, taking the tools back to the shop.