Posts by jake

Re: Remember folks.

But it must be true! IGotOut saw it on TV and/or read it on TehIntraWebTubes!

Re: Really?

Fireworks sound nothing like gunshots, even to something as imprecise as the human ear.

Re: Really?

Blanks sound completely different compared to their projectile firing brothers.

Re: ShotSpotter

"you can't reliably tell apart entry and exit wounds."

I've never had a problem, albeit when hunting or varminting. It is always (ALWAYS!) quite clear which is the entry, and which is the exit.

You do realize that in any "jihad", Butlerian or otherwise, us commentards will be among the first up against the wall, right? Be careful what you wish for.

Some of the graffiti in Pompeii and Herculaneum would be considered shocking even today. Graffiti from ancient Egypt was usually a trifle more flowery, but the meaning was obvious ... so much so that the Victorian "archeologists"[0] were shocked, and tried to eradicate it. Moving Eastwards to other ancient cultures, the pattern remains the same.

Methinks it's a normal part of human behavior.

[0]These days we would call them tomb robbers.

More to the point, have they ever actually accessed TehIntraWebTubes?

Re: Really?

Just mask it. Pretend you are making a movie, draw the appropriate permits, and Bob's yer Auntie.

Re: do people have a propensity to try to abuse AI systems?

After working with ELIZA and PARRY interacting with the general public while I was at SAIL in the '70s and early '80s, I can quite confidently state that the answer for adults is an unequivocal yes.

Children treat so-called "AI" pretty much at face value. As soon as they start to hit puberty, and into adulthood, most folks treat it as a toy and try their best to break it if given the chance.

Re: There's two big angles to this

"My choice is to either accept this awful practice, or render my phone insecure and unfit for purpose."

IMO, the iPhone is inherently unsecured and unsecurable, and is thus unfit for purpose. So I don't carry one. Simples.

Re: Naked babies

"forget about Parliament, instead think about 'the executives of your competition'..."

Seems to me that your MPs are executives of your competition.

Re: Knock-Off products

In these here parts we put the blinders on the horses, not the people.

Re: LaTeX

It's not a text processor so much as a system for marking up pages for desktop publishing.

I sometimes use vi to edit LaTeX documents.

Re: LaTeX

Yes, LaTeX is great. I've published with it for decades.

I wouldn't use it for an inter-office memo, though. Nor would I recommend MeDearOldMum use it to dash off a letter to her cousins overseas[0].

Horses for courses & all that.

[0] Yes, they still send dead-tree letters. They also use email. And various forms of instant messaging. And occasionally video chat of one sort or another.

Re: Does "compatibility" mean having the same issues?

Destroys the copy of the original sent to you, though. Best to open it and then save to a different file name, just in case any changes wreck the thing completely. That way, you still have an unaffected copy that you can use to help your friend/relative/favorite blob of grey goo.

_{As always, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions.}

Re: Does "compatibility" mean having the same issues?

"I'm not the best at keeping my software up to date"

This is a not a software problem, it's a wetware problem.

Re: Does "compatibility" mean having the same issues?

Same here. It's actually becoming quite common.

Re: Keeps gettin better

The correct quote is "The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from." —Andrew S. Tanenbaum

Re: "stop updating its Microsoft 365 product line for the ageing platform"

One could certainly make a case for a browser (any browser) being a "platform", albeit a really, really unsteady one. An OS, however, it most certainly is not.

.

_{amfM will now probably jump in and tell me why I'm wrong.}

Re: It's sad...

What do you mean,"back"? I use an abacus nearly daily.

Re: Point of Order.

"Then again I can't come with (m)any examples of companies that ship only excellent software."

They exist. Their code isn't inexpensive, though, so consumers aren't interested.

Pretty much. Until Netscape's employees saw the light and the Mozilla thing happened.

"where would someone have learned how to do that"

Call Demon and ask. They had the best tech support in the business.

"and obtained a command line browser that ran on Windows 95?"

As of August of 1994, Redmond was shipping "Wolverine" for WfWG, that included a TCP/IP stack (so-called "winsock") and command-line FTP program. It was included with Win95.

So to answer your question, dial up to Demon, and ftp lynx from the University of Kansas. Simples.

And yes, that's exactly what Demon support would have suggested in 1995 ... although it seems to me they had their own mirror of the Kansas site running on ftp.demon.co.uk/pub/ku/lynx ... failing that, I know for a fact that it was available at a SunSITE mirror near you.

"Perhaps by connecting to one of the online systems"

The OP already was connected to Demon.

In my mind, "having a life" includes learning to use the tools at my disposal so I don't waste my valuable time struggling with things that I don't understand.

"the irony was that I should have taken the hint and learned to navigate at the command line."

FTFY

Re: The community is partly at fault

To me it's a few prima-donnas who find issue with the slightest perceived hint of personality conflict, and then proceed to blow it completely out of proportion. Personally, I put those few folks on ignore, thus increasing the signal to noise ratio to something more meaningful. Same as have in comp.lang.perl.* these last decades.

Frankly, loud-mouthed complainers rarely, if ever, contribute meaningfully in any field. Plonk 'em (and their enablers) along with the obvious intentional trolls (and their feeders), and life becomes much more sane.

Re: Social distancing…

From my perspective, all of the idiots, regardless of corner (and some of their collateral damage, alas) are bailing ... leaving those of us interested in perl behind to work on perl instead of some social experiment that we never signed on for in the first place.

A perl club for perl enthusiasts doing perl things in perl time. Imagine that.

Re: Still a complete waste of money.

Oh, I dunno ... they succeeded in drilling that hole. If that were the entire mission profile, it would have been a complete success.

_{A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. —Lao Tzu}

Re: Still a complete waste of money.

"so what did you do this year to add to the sum of human knowledge?"

FTFY

Re: You're drilling it wrong.

But it has rounded corners‽‽‽

Re: Maybe they should have had a spraybottle of water on hand.

"OK, it would be a "contaminated"sample"

Not if they condensed it out of the atmosphere. It might take a few weeks to collect a large enough quantity, but if there is one thing they've got, it's time.

I'd be kinda worried about reconstituted mud drying back out and clogging up the works, though ...

Re: old sites

You wouldn't expect them to host the blinking "underconstruction" sign locally, would you?

Re: Maybe Windows 3.1 was a sweet spot?

The retronym is TUI, or Textual User Interface.

IBM's TopView and Quarterdeck's DesqView both worked fairly well (1985). I had Win3.0 (and later 3.1 & 3.11) running in a window under DesqView/386. It worked, and was fairly stable, but I didn't really see the point.

DESQview/X was a rather good option for remote GUI support of Windows boxen using *nix as the admin box. Spendy, though.

Question: what can I do productively with Windows 11 that I couldn't do with DOS 5.0 and DesqView ... Keyword "productively".

Re: Bullshit article premise

Whatever. I have never, not once, used amazon[0] to purchase anything (I no longer even shop at Whole Foods). And yet somehow I seem to have absolutely zero issues swapping money for any and all the goods and services that I need or want.

[0] It goes further ... I have never purchased anything online. Ever. And I'm not going to start any time soon, either. Far too much room for error ... or outright graft. And that's to say nothing of the huge privacy issues involved.

Re: Facebook

"Not sure where this post is heading"

That seems to be a (if not THE) over-riding meme on most social media. People babbling about things that have no goal, no meaning, and in fact no real reason for existence. And then getting applauded for it, so they do more of the same. Lather, rinse, repeat, ad infinitum.

_{Try blocking "thumbs" here on ElReg for a week (or permanently). It's liberating.}