Posts by jake

Re: Remote rebooting...

This is normally caused by the user slowing down and actually doing what they are supposed to be doing, instead of flying through one tedious procedure or another as fast as possible, thus making mistakes.

Re: Magic?

While most drives back in the day were susceptible to this in one way or another, some drives were more susceptible than others. Look up stiction. Some could be coerced into starting with a quick smack to the case at just the right place in the startup cycle.

The advice was always "It;s running NOW? Good. Whatever you do, do not turn it off until you have backed up everything important on that drive. Then replace it. It is no longer trustworthy."

Re: a GUI in the office was a dim and distant dream.

Conversely, the people using DOS were looking bemusedly at the people running Macs, Amigas and Acorns, wondering how they got any work done with no software to speak of.

And those of us with clues were running BSD (or perhaps Coherent), wondering why the rest of the world was putting up with illogically thought out, intentionally hamstrung systems that basically didn't work.

Re: even before PFY

"Earlier CPUs were controlled exclusively by the motherboard's timing circuits."

Earlier CPUs didn't have motherboards.

Re: Never quite that simple

In my experience, most secretaries have been praying for the End of the Word since the version jump to 6.0 signified that Marketing was now in charge of all software releases from Redmond ...

Re: a GUI in the office was a dim and distant dream.

As were my Suns ... and the SGI Iris connected to the VAX in my lab.

Re: Reminds me a bit of the "More magic" switch story

Reminds me of an AI koan ...

A novice was trying to fix a broken Lisp machine by turning the power off and on.

Knight, seeing what the student was doing, spoke sternly: “You cannot fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding of what is going wrong.”

Knight turned the machine off and on.

The machine worked.

Re: It's not pressure that you want.

"There's still enough volume to do the job well."

Trump is an ass and a liar. It is more than a trickle. It does do the the job, if barely, and it takes far too long to do it. I prefer a tool that does the job exactly the way I want the job to be done, and in a timely manner. Your mileage may vary.

Re: Newer ones suck much less

Well, to be fair, some parts suck, other parts blow. Some do both at the same time ... for example, do you have an extractor fan?

Re: As a side note ...

The water for the drill rig came from a largish (4,000 gallon) water truck, which refilled at a city hydrant as needed. We could have used pond water, but it hadn't been tested yet and I was paranoid about potentially contaminating the ground water.

Thank you for your concern.

Re: It's not pressure that you want.

The thing that moves the grime is the action of the soap. It takes moving water to rinse away soap+grime. The more water, the faster the soap goes away. It's a surfactant thing; a little bit of water just moves it around.

And sometimes I just plain like getting super-saturated in the shower, so I turn up the flow on the multiple heads. So does my Wife. It's just the thing after a long day on the tractor, planting several hundred feet of veggie starts, mucking out barns, running/fixing fence, or whatever. You got a problem with that?

Besides, low-flow showers, taps & etc. are a result of feel-good legislation designed to placate loud, yet ignorant, environmentalists (with a heavy emphasis on mental). Domestic water use is just a drop in the bucket (literally) compared to industrial and farm use. The domestic water use of the 12 full-time adults living here at the ranch doesn't even take 1% of our total water needs.

My water pressure isn't low. It's perfect for my needs. It had better be ...I installed it myself, starting with drilling the wells, so if it weren't I'd only have myself to blame.

Re: Whatever

Red Pandas are cute. That thing isn't. QED

Re: Oh has diddums thrown his toys out of the pram (again)?

At least the world will be a better place to live when the other side is back in power.

Note that we can still say "fucked" here in the US without fear of prosecution, unlike in your neck of the woods, apparently.

Re: Newer ones suck much less

"Today, pretty much any shower head at the hardware store over $25 will rinse away soap quickly."

Consider this an invite to come over and muck out the stalls in my barn. It'll be 102 in the shade here tomorrow afternoon, probably 120ish in the barn by midday, so you'll want to get started early. When you're done, I'll give you the option of two different showers in the guest house. One is a modern low-flow unit, the other most definitely isn't. Which would you prefer?

Some of us work for a living. Showers are an important tool.

And lest you think I'm agreeing with the Idiot-In-Chief, I can assure you that it's only superficial. A stopped clock is right twice per day. Trump's an ass of the first water, and hopefully the public will agree with me in November and we'll never hear from the chump again. Until he gets that Emmy ... that daytime Emmy, for his hair.

It's not pressure that you want.

It is volume that washes away the grime. That's why I drill out the restriction.

I can give you as much pressure as you like on 2.5GPM, just by necking down the orifice and making the restriction even greater. Just don't go too far if you don't want to draw blood, or worse. (Don't look up "high pressure injection" or "hydraulic injection" if you're squeemish.)

You can often find real shower heads at junk shops. Be prepared to pay "antique" prices for units made in the '60s and '70s. Thankfully, you can still get the fittings and washers to rebuild them and put them to use.

There is also a grey market for imported units. The mind absolutely boggles.

Re: "Center"

"Anonymous for a good reason.... ;)"

ElReg knows your email address, IP address, etc.

So no, you are not anonymous. Not really.

HTH, HAND

Re: How nice.

"How does the nasty get deployed ? Phishing ? Targeted email ? USB carried by a sleeper agent ?"

Yes. And any other way the target lets their guard down. Same as any other rootkit.

Will there be any more questions?

Re: What nasties do the NSA, FBI, and their chums keep in their lockers?

Doesn't matter what TLA they may or may not have, nor what country they come from. I try to keep them all out of my business equally. What is on my computers is none of their damn business until a Judge legally tells me otherwise. At which point, I'll happily let them bore themselves to death, looking for stuff that isn't there.

Re: Which do you trust?

Which do I trust? Certainly not an article on Linux security that attempts to make its point using Windows tools owned by Redmond ...

Also, see ken's old ACM talk "Reflections on Trusting Trust".

Re: How nice.

"Also, it you're running Linux kernel v3 you clearly demonstrate you have no clue about IT."

Slackware (14.0 & 14.1 have no EOL at the moment) and Debian (Wheezy) still have maintained 3.x kernels. There is a need for old code on old machines. People with a clue about IT understand the realities of working with an installed base and take steps to see that it is as safe and as secure as practical. Including maintaining old kernels.

HTH, HAND

Re: Modules in Linux?

A module is a bit of code that hooks into the kernel to provide added functionality as needed. It can be hardware drivers, yes. Also support for file systems, extensions to the kernel API, and etc. They can mostly be loaded and unloaded on the fly, so no need for a reboot after some changes to the kernel in a running system (see "modular kernel" vs "static kernel"). Most modern OSes have support for this in one form or another.

As with most such thingies, there are advantages and disadvantages. I like the flexibility of modules on my working desktop machines, but prefer a static kernel in the servers (for example).

Re: "Four words you never want to see together..."

"Paint My House"

Re: "Center"

Lingua franca is from a bastardized North-med Italian trade dialect/cant. The Latin components are de facto and de jude.

More to the point ...

... what is this "Sysinternals®" thingie?

::eyeballs DDG::

Oh. So that's what happened to winternals/ntinternals. Poor thing.

Re: "Center"

"So these alleged Russians speak American do they?"

Like it or not, while American English (whatever that is!) is not by any stretch of the imagination the de jure language of TehIntraWebTubes, it is, however, the de facto lingua franca.

You agree ...

... based on something seen in a work of fiction?

This is yet another sad example of why our society can't have nice things.

Re: Most Americans call people like that ...

But you're not a redneck. You're a farmer. You respect food, because you know how hard it is to produce. You shoot the pig in a way that minimizes damage to the harvest, then dress it, cook/cure it, and eat it. Same as we do here in California.

Rednecks, on the other hand, add tannerite either before, during or after shooting the pig. Because BOOM! And then they leave the carcass for the carrion eaters. Consuming it doesn't come into the equation. Same here in California.

Rednecks are, for the most part, a worse problem than the wild pigs. Including here in California. Ever have the dumbasses tear up ~4 acres of freshly planted vegetable garden, doing donuts in their pickup trucks? I have. Three times. The third time I got it all on video, with cameras at all four corners and shots from two drones. Including the cops catching them red-handed, arresting them and towing off their trucks. The Judge was not amused.

Re: Over Here

I kill the varmints[0] with a bow ... A good, well-placed, razor-sharp broad-head will drop a pig faster than a similar well-placed 12-gauge slug ... seems there is less trauma to the meat, so the pig bleeds out faster (hamburger makes for a good plug). And in my opinion, the sharp arrow head seems to cause less mental trauma to the pig, as well. I have never hit a pig with an arrow and had it flip about, biting at the wound. I can't say the same about slugs.

I use my Martin Archery Lithium LTD where allowed ... and my aging Coast-to-Coast labeled, Browning built shotgun where not allowed. Other tools include a 7-foot boar spear, just in case you miss too badly and piss-off the pig (technique is "get a clean shot through the heart, but if you miss, place butt of spear on ground, set your back foot on it, and track charging pig's chest with the sharp end, all the while trying not to shit yourself"). I also carry my Kimber, in .45 ACP, for the coup de grâce if/when needed.

I always have "wild boar", smoked and/or salted & hanging, and in the freezer ...

Them boys is seriously tasty. They aren't really "wild boar", but a cross between domestic pigs and true European wild boar ... the wild ones were brought into California back in the late 1800s for so-called "sport hunting" purposes. They managed to cross with the more domestic variety, and so they look, act and taste like the real wild ones from Europe ... if a trifle smaller.

[0] I don't hunt anymore ... but I do kill varmints. The fact that some of those varmints are edible is happenstance.

Most Americans call people like that ...

... rednecks. And its not flattering.

Not surprising they are classified as dangerous in Blighty. Pretty much everything in Blighty is classified as dangerous. Except the actual dangerous things, of course. Like politicians.

Re: Apple

It's a popular slang phrase for shooting someone. Apparently some daft moron in the public eye decided that a real gun was just like a cap gun. Then idiots took the term and ran with it, seemingly not caring how stupid they sound when they use it.

Re: There’s a quote:

On day of issue, the Heathkit kit was $1,295, the assembled version was $300 more.

When the Apple II debuted, it was also $1,295 ... however that was some 8 months after the H11 had first come come out. By this time, the assembled Heath was in the $1,350 range and had twice the RAM of the Apple.

My Father was an Engineer at Philco in Palo Alto ... He introduced me to the wonderful world of Television, starting in the very early 1960s. My gear-head uncle taught me about cars & motorcycles ... and his sideline, fixing pinball machines.

Dad advised me against purchasing an Apple I, PET, or any of the other toy 8-bit computers ... said they weren't very useful. Then one day Dad came home from work with a copy of Interface Age which had an advert for a 16-bit Heath H-11 and said "Now THIS is a worthwhile home computer!". We built most of it in my apartment in Mountain View, but for reasons I can't remember (better fume extraction?) we boiled the boards on Mom's stove ... she still hasn't forgiven us.

The kit came with a 256k 8-inch single sided drive. I sprung for a second drive for the low, low price of $500 when purchased with the kit ... and later I had paper tape (PC11), cards (CR11), and later still a removable media hard drive (RK05) and DECtape (TU56). The H11 is probably the single best tool I ever invested in ... at least in the computer world. 40+ years on and she still boots and is still teaching kids how computers really work ...

DEC gear was, and remains, the single best teaching environment for learning the concepts of computing. Shame the franchise was squandered away.

Re: Apple

Yeah, back then the phrase "I'm going to put a couple caps in it" was fairly normal, and didn't (usually) result in a quick call to security ... There was another batch of bad caps in the '99 through '07 era, or thereabouts. In '08 a friend was overheard to suggest I "put a cap in it", regarding a particularly pissy power supply. The "well meaning"[0] manager called security, who called the cops. We weren't taken downtown, but the rest of the building was quietly evacuated around my lab, and we were close to getting cuffed before sanity returned to the scene.

[0] For "well meaning" read "nosy know-it-all busy-body". She was actually commended for causing a panic and half a day's loss of productivity! The mind boggles ...

Re: Too hard, too frequent, too unreliable

That would be a management issue, not a system issue.