Posts by jake

Re: Naming conventions.

Pre-Alpha is what we used to call pilot build. It's usually an internal-only engineering release that helps test not only the product, but also the fit & finish and end-user initial reaction without alerting the competition that you are near a public Alpha release. Alpha is a limited "best customers only, use at your own risk" external test program. Beta is a general release, but still use at your own risk.

Devuan overloaded the term to mean "We're running this up the flagpole, is anyone other than us interested in such a release?". The answer has been an unequivocal YES! ... I would probably switch to it if Slackware were to go TITSUP[0] tomorrow.

[0] Totally Incapable of Transferring Selected User Packages

Re: "fear of a battering with delicious cheesesteak sandwiches"

Folks in the so-called "flyover states" are usually considered more rural than the states of the folks doing the flying over, which is the point of the attempted insult. As such, your colleague was probably not from such a state. Us rural folks know what food looks like before it gets packaged by Safeway.

Sheep are common in pretty much every state .... however, we don't really eat a lot of sheep (or goats) here in the US when compared to other protein sources. So it wouldn't surprise me if even one of our more rural denizens went a lifetime without seeing a freshly harvested sheep hanging. But I'd be flabbergasted if he thought the carcass was that of a dog. He certainly wouldn't be distressed about it.

Re: "fear of a battering with delicious cheesesteak sandwiches"

Being a foodie, I'll leave the Pat's vs Gino's argument alone in this forum. Recommend all y'all do the same. I also recommend you try both and make up your own mind.

Re: "fear of a battering with delicious cheesesteak sandwiches"

You don't buy mulled wine, you heathen. You make it.

And you don't make it, either, if you can help it ... Instead, one strives to make wine that is drinkable without polluting it.

As a side-note, you can add Cowgirl Creamery to your cheese collection.

https://cowgirlcreamery.com/

Re: "fear of a battering with delicious cheesesteak sandwiches"

Some of the best Camembert and Brie I've ever had was made right here in Sonoma County, California.

https://marinfrenchcheese.com/

They ship. Try it before you poo-poo it.

Re: "fear of a battering with delicious cheesesteak sandwiches"

"Do the Merkins know what real cheese is though?"

Yes. Do you know what a merkin is?

"They think cheese come out of a squeezy bottle!:

No. So-called "American" so-called "cheese" is no more American than it is cheese ... The inventor of the narsty artificial plastic cheese substitute was a dude named James Lewis Kraft, who was Canadian.

Re: The sad, but perhaps quite probable thing

"It will run out of power."

Which makes me think a little. Why? Why not replace the RTGs? Take a look at this picture, the RTGs are the three prominent canisters. How difficult would it be to replace them as a unit? Here's some perspective on the complete package.

Shirley we've done far more difficult robotic repair jobs in space. And certainly more costly module replacement. We could stack two loads of fuel in orbit, enough to accelerate to a fast enough speed to intercept, and then to slow down to match speed. G forces are nearly unimportant with no squishy meatware to worry about. Likewise food, water, etc. Simply latch onto the probe, unplug the old units and plug in the new.

Yes, I know, the devil is in the details ... but it's only rocket surgery. (It's also low on hydrazine ... obvious answer is obvious.)

Which brings up the question: Why bother?

To which I answer "Why not?" ... it'll be a much better, and longer lasting, PR stunt than that Musk twat littering all over LEO just so survivalists can upload cute cat videos from their supposedly off-grid homesteads. With all of the on-board science packages warmed back up and functional, who knows what we may discover?

Re: It's a different world

75%‽‽‽

Ah, the eternal optimism of youth.

Re: It's a different world

That's not a car, that's a flying billboard. It's a fucking advert. An eyesore. Pollution. In space. Musk should be ashamed of himself, but I doubt the twat knows how.

Re: It's a different world

She was singing about pocket calculators, in all their very red LED wonderfulness. The HP-35 came out in 1972, the cheap-as-chips TI-30 came out in '76. Also by 1976, I was selling fully assembled calculator kits, mostly HP, Heath and Sinclair, to students at Stanford and Berkeley at what I thought was a fairly hefty markup.

The song is suggesting that a kid could do a lot better than pumping gas for a living, maybe purchasing a calculator could get him started back on the intellectual pursuits he demonstrated in school ("try to do what you used to do").

Re: It's a different world

If you have to ask, you will probably never be issued one.

Re: Rassen frassen

That's why on DOS one of the first things I did was set TMP=D:\TMP and TEMP to D:\TEMP ... most folks probably still don't know it, but Microsoft uses TEMP for user temp files, and TMP for development temp files. Pointing them at separate directories can save headaches occasionally.

Depending on how far the new kernel deviates from the old kernel, you might very well have new commands with new names that supersede old commands. Installing the new will not get rid of the old, which can raise all kinds of merry hell.

This was especially true in the early days of Linux, when people were still in shell-shock after the UNIX Wars and weren't quite certain which direction Linux was going to move off in.

Re: $12.46 in transaction fees

And better trousers.

Re: Call Waiting...

"Hereford? I remember the Gateway packaging as being black & white. Herefords are a mid-brown with white faces."

There are Black Herefords, but you are essentially correct. The Gateway packaging was Holstein, or Friesian, depending on where you are in the world. Read the always-suspect Wiki for more on the history of the Holstein Friesian breed ...

Hormones have nothing to do with the genetics of colo(u)r in cattle.

Whart is really fun, and I run across it surprisingly often ...

... is when you get on-hold music that is one of the old Muzak orchestral recordings of The Beatles ... but it's clearly a digital recording off a stretched 8-track tape.

I just hang up. My old ears can't handle that kind of abuse.

A couple weeks ago I was in the Sonoma Whole Foods talking to one of the employees when the unforgettable strains of 1977's Elton Motello song Jet Boy, Jet Girl came over the background music. I looked at the guy and asked him if he had any idea what was being played. He shrugged & said he'd never heard it before ... Most of the 60-somethings in the store were quite amused, but one old biddy threatened mayhem if they played it again in her hearing. Poor thing.

Re: Call Waiting...

It's all part of the same metropolitan area, and doesn't alter my point that it wasn't just a small hick cow-town as you implied.

By way of reference, the three states meet here. You can zoom out to see the physical relationships between the cities mentioned.

Re: "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers" - T J Watson (attributed) was right!

There is an interesting article on who may or may not have said something like this on the always suspect Wiki. See here. Worth a read.

With that said, I categorically reject the concept. Computers come in all shapes and sizes and uses. There will always be a use for another computer, probably up to (and possibly beyond) the heat death of the Universe.

Re: So I'm not the only one .....

Many of us did call it BetCoin back in the day.

Re: Call Waiting...

To be honest and fair, Sioux City, Iowa (the "small town") had a population of over 83,000 people in the year 1985, when Gateway 2000 was founded. The two counties it is in had a combined population of over 120,000 people. If you throw in North Sioux City (S. Dakota) and South Sioux City (Nebraska), Sergeant Bluff (Iowa) and environs, there were in excess of 200,000 people within a 10 mile radius.

Re: Call Waiting...

Gateway 2000 was the epitome of excellent customer service ... at least in comparison to Microsoft. To this date, I have never, not once, ever, seen Microsoft truly resolve a customer support call, with the exception of resolving activation issues.

In the '70s it was an industry standard joke trying to get help with Microsoft's version of BASIC. By the '80s, I actually had the companies I worked for pay the IBM premium for PC-DOS (as opposed to the identical MS-DOS), just to get support which had clues.

After over 30 years, I finally threw up my hands and stopped all contact with Redmond, as of January 1st, 2010. I even removed it from all[0] my household computers, and no longer took any contracts that had anything to do with Microsoft software. It's been over a decade now, and I haven't missed it a bit. Recommended.

[0] All except one ... I still have a Win2K machine that runs AutoCAD2K, and that is all. Hopefully I'll have all my CAD junk transferred to a more FOSS friendly solution before she dies ... Before you ask, yes, the old girl is airgapped. And no, in 21 years I haven't needed technical support for her from either company.

Re: Distorted

Maybe not the concept of SciFi itself, per se, but rather a meta concept.

I think it was Ted Sturgeon who first voiced the revelation ...

Re: Very unlikely

"Interesting that the image produced had good construction of the face but almost ignored the hair."

Not all that surprising. The victimsubject of the research was a guy. Ask any gal, us men never notice their hair. This is proof that it's not spite or rudeness, we really don't see it. Its just not important to us, for whatever darwinian reason.

So, ladies, if you're getting your hair done just to make yourself attractive to men, you may as well save yourself a few quid. It's now been scientifically shown that not only does it not work, it apparently can't be made to work ... we're just not wired that way.

The concealed bit is so you don't scare people who are afraid of their own shadows, sending them off to make a nuisance call to the local police department. (Yes, I have carry permits. No, I never actually carry off my own land, unless I'm hunting or target shooting or the like.)

Re: @File_id.diz OMG

"No time to load yet time to disengage a childproof lock ... are you sure about that?"

Re-read what he wrote. The very placement of the gun (over the steps) was the lock. It was out of reach of curious small children, and being over the steps there would be no easy way to stand on a chair, etc. My family used a similar mechanism for the always loaded varmint guns.

Yes, always loaded. Seconds count, and if they hear you chamber a round they are gone. If you have never had a varmint problem, you might not be able to fully understand. Count your blessings.

Re: Stop me from buying a car? Probably not.

The only thing 4WD does is allow city folks to get deeper into the shit before getting stuck.

Re: Stop me from buying a car? Probably not.

""ludicrous mode" destroys driveshaft splines"

Only because shit modern cars are built down to a price with the cheapest components possible.

Re: Stop me from buying a car? Probably not.

"the most mediocre current car is more reliable and will last longer than even best Japan could put out in the 1970s"

My '72 Datsun 240Z (Nissan S30, Fairlady Z) has over 400K miles on it, with no more than routine maintenance. She still runs and drives just fine. Likewise, I've been racing her sister, a '72 510, for a long time now without anything but bodywork falling off.

On the otherhand, my Dad has had to junk four medium to high end Japanese sedans in the last dozen years because they fell apart to the point of being not worth repairing according to his insurance company. I gave him a newly restored '65 Mustang Fastback for his 85th birthday and told him to drive the shit out of it.

"Who carries a point contact file or knows how to adjust a distributor vacuum advance these days?"

My dad and I. We replace clutches, shim gears and adjust valves, too :-)

Seriously, it's not exactly rocket science. Having upwards of a dozen computers in one car that do everything and anything, probably up to and including letting you know when it's time to wipe your ass/arse? That is WAY past the ridiculous for a simple transportation device. My way can be repaired by the side of the road with nothing more than a nail file, some chewing gum, bailing wire and a length of tubing. I'm home while you are still waiting on a tow truck.

Re: Stop me from buying a car? Probably not.

Purchase a Hondata ECU (or similar) and get thee to a tuner. Tell said tuner you want better than factory HP and torque when you give it welly, but better economy when putting around town and cruising on the freeway. The results will surprise you ... Note that you can retain the factory computer for a yearly check if the local motor vehicle system insists on it. Simply unplug the Hondata and plug the factory unit back in, and you're back to where you started.

Yes, recycling cars is easier on the Earth than purchasing a new one every couple years.

Re: Stop me from buying a car? Probably not.

"It's fairly certain that your 1995 Fiat has worse emissions and will handle substantially worse if pushed to the limit of its stability."

Don't mock the man just because he drives a Fiat! If he likes it, it's good enough for me. (But then I'm probably the wrong person to talk to ... I have purchased, driven, sworn at, worked on, sworn at, restored, driven, sworn at, worked on some more, driven, sworn at while driving, and ultimately sold no fewer than 14 '50s and '60s Alphas ... But I can stop any time. Really. After this next one ... )

The chippery is there as a result of many, many levels of feel-good legislation to keep the greenaholics quiet. There are now so many layers of crap that perfectly good engines struggle to produce power. For example, your average run of the mill Honda four cylinder produces around 160 HP. If you nuke the factory chips, you can extract 600+ reliable horsepower out of the very same motor ... and still get very good fuel economy if you keep your boot out of it.

Re: New British Chip Factory

A note to the North American contingent: When they type chips they mean fries even though the story works our way, too.

Re: "94 per cent reckoned FOSS code was as good if not better than the proprietary option"

Nah. "Better" is subjective, no measurement required.

Re: "94 per cent reckoned FOSS code was as good if not better than the proprietary option"

How do you figure? Re-reading the article, I see nothing at all about errors (or lack thereof) in the code, just commentary on usability.

Re: "94 per cent reckoned FOSS code was as good if not better than the proprietary option"

I think they were talking about the functionality of the code, not the beauty of the functions and algorithms (etc.).

Re: IBM is doomed to die, eventually

There are many patents from now defunct companies that stop anybody else from using their technology, often even in a support roll.

Note that I'm just the reporter, I don't necessarily agree with it.