Posts by jake

Seems it was a non-starter. No culture at all.

Re: stop using any number seen as unlucky

But there are also an infinite number of lucky numbers. Therefore they cancel out, right? Wouldn't that make so-called "luck" a zero sum game?

Re: Please repaint Darth Vader in different color

And lets not forget that the slave trade was thriving in Africa long before Europeans arrived. That's right kiddies, black people enslaved other black people. Several great African civilizations were based on the slave trade. The arrival of Europeans opened up a whole new market for the abhorrent practice.

Quit trying to make it a primarily American issue. That's just showing ignorance of history. To quote Wiki "The Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese, British, Arabs and a number of West African kingdoms played a prominent role in the Atlantic slave trade, especially after 1600."

Note that I am in no way condoning slavery. Anywhere. Ever. What I am doing is attempting to make people think before opening their mouths and exposing their ignorance. I know it's a lost cause, but if even one person learns something, it's worth the minimal effort.

Re: "how ingrained our prejudices are from our cultural upbringings"

It probably goes back much further than that. Think about a small group of humans a couple million years ago. Fearing the dark of night, because that's when the nocturnal predators hunted. The light of day brought relative safety. In other words "dark == bad, light == better" is embedded in our very genetics.

And let's not forget that those first early humans were undoubtedly dark skinned. The entire concept of black vs white being a racist thing is laughable.

"Maybe the only wrong cultural association is Freedom and USA, if it's still full of people thinking freedom is not for everyone."

Just had to get in a dig at the US, didn't you? Feel better now?

"Oh Grandad! You’ve made me reboot the computer! AGAIN!"

In the voice of Rocket J. Squirrel, of course.

Re: The Redmond Redwood

Nah. Redwoods are useful.

Re: How about

But ... but ... but ... We LIKE ol' Hol!

(I know, TINW ... but I'm pretty sure I'm speaking for most around these here parts.)

Re: Chocolate Factory alternative?

The Onion already exists.

Nah.

That describes all the big players.

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

Re: You will obey!

Updates that break userspace are one of the deadly sins of computing. Microsoft has been guilty of breaking userspace at least once a month for over thirty years ... and yet STILL people insist on using it? What the fuck?

As Anthony Weldon wrote in the 1651 tome The Court and Character of King James "The Italians having a Proverb, ‘He that deceives me once, its his fault; but if twice, its my fault.'.

Re: I'm so angry I can't think

"to somehow encapsulate all the frustration, annoyance, anger that MS continues to deliver"

Or, you could just stop using their bÖrkenware. Cleaner that way.

Yes, you can. I stopped all work on Redmond products over 10 years ago. My health, pocketbook and sanity are much better now.

Re: Good taste?

Like most humans, you probably taste like pork that has been on a junkfood diet.

Re: Bob

Hey! Leave our bob out of it! What did he ever do to you?

Re: hmm

Any reference to Edge will be seen by the marketards at Redmond as free advertising. Stop using it. Likewise, don't encourage their delusions of grandeur by even hinting they might be lords of anything.

Nah.

The shaft of blaxploitation fame is a hero, of sorts. Redmond isn't, wasn't, and never will have that status. (Ever read the book? Shaft was originally white ... Surprised me, anyway. Now you know why I always read the book before watching the Hollywood hackjob.)

ANYway, the "shaft" in Microshaft is more of the she got the goldmine variety ...

Re: I'm so angry I can't think

"the MS upgrade process can grind on for hours."

Days. I've personally seen it take over three days before the thing finally settled down into something resembling a working OS. Not exactly inspiring, that.

Re: I'm so angry I can't think

To be fair, Ubuntu has many of the same problems that Redmond and Cupertino have, and for the same reason. That reason? Trying to be all things to all people ... a task that not even one of the many "Gods" invented by humans have managed to do, even in myth and fable.

Re: bin there

"On the other hand , its a bit old , predictable , boring and childish."

You say that like it's a bad thing ...

Re: Impressive

"I certainly haven't."

Doesn't that make your commentary superfluous, by your own logic?

Re: OK, I'll bite.

"It's open source. If you need it, write it!"

I am aware of that. And yes, if I need it (doubtful) it'll probably be trivial for me to modify the source to suit my needs. But that's hardly the point. In the FOSS world, who writes code to lock you into a third partiy's code? Interoperability is part of the point. Especially when it should be easy to allow it to use any editor or viewer. Specifying Photoshop has got my jakey senses tingling ...

Re: I've no idea if it's particularly useful

Like building and successfully running a Rube Goldberg drawing. (You Brits can instead build a Heath Robinson drawing.) Useful for learning engineering skills, not much else.

Re: Unintended consequences

People have been fraudulently transmitting signatures electronically since the early days of faxes. That would be in the late 1800s (before the telephone, even!) for you kiddies who seem to think the history of our modern world started with iFads and go ogle.

Re: Unintended consequences

Chalk me up as another Yank who has never heard the euphemism used in that way.

The closest I can remember is the tongue in cheek "morning constitutional".

Re: Impressive

Literally really truly actually incredible.

Re: I remember when...

Mitnik is, and was, a putz.

Re: Plus ça change

In English, virii is properly pronounced viruses. In Latin, the word virii doesn't exist.

See the FAQ, section F, question 3.

Thomas Jefferson said: "Those who would trade safety for freedom deserve neither." I concur.

Re: Of course, being centrally controlled

"the amount of damage that a government can potentially do to an individual is orders of magnitude worse than anything any corporation could do."

Except the corporations run the government ... at least here in the United States.

I've often said that the fastest, easiest way to reform government here in the US would be to ban professional lobbyists. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to define "professional" in this context.

Re: Testing?

Here in California, Capitol Hill says they will start to lift the stay-at-home when testing reaches results for 60,000 to 80,000 people per day.

Also here in California, the labs are working double-overtime and have peaked out at around 30,000 results per day. They physically don't have the space or personnel to increase that number ... and the existing staff can't keep up the pace indefinitely, they are already exhausted.

So California will apparently never lift the shelter order as currently written.

Methinks folks are about to get very, very restless. And so the rules will change, just to keep the peace. Probably just in time for the existing government to appear to be "the good guy" for the next election.

I voted for Newsom, and had high hopes for the kid, but I think he's reached his own level of incompetence. He is clearly well out of his depth in this crisis.

Re: And what about the people ...

"They set up the USGS earthquake early warning system for you."

They did? Where? I've never seen it in operation.

If you mean that thing that Newsom was babbling about last year, it's strictly in Alpha Test ... and even when fully operational, I seriously doubt it'll really do anyone any good. (SpeakTyping as a guy who has been a consultant to the USGS for several decades.) Besides, the end-user app only runs on iOS and Android, neither of which I am willing to spend money on. So no, it's not built for me.

When I was at SAIL, we had several seismographs wired to send an alarm (sonalerts in all participants living quarters, ~100 participants) at the first sign of fairly low-level P-waves. After a year or so, not a single one of us managed to get out of the house before the S-waves got there. Needless to say, the project was dropped as useless. Now, decades later, it's my tax dollars at work. Gee, thanks. I'm sure I'll sleep ever so much easier.

Re: Automated contact tracing for Covid-19 is a fools' errand

"won't have any less false positives"

Fewer.

Re: Read the Act!

Do you honestly think that your government will think that the GDPR will apply to them after brexit is complete at the end of this year?

Re: Why not open source the app?

"I might be willing to run the app, for the public good, during the crisis."

What makes you think that the government won't find an excuse to perpetually be in a crisis where they contrive to 'need" the data provided by the app? Have they ever shown an interest in revoking serious privacy invasions after invoking them in a crisis?

I suppose you think those "temporary" taxes will eventually be dropped, too.

Re: And what about the people ...

Things like that have been happening since people figured out how to protect the elderly long enough for them to get into that state. Somehow we've managed to muddle through without chipping anyone.

Personally, I think it's a bad idea Slippery slope and all that.

Re: And what about the people ...

"I think it’s safe to say most of the working population have a smartphone"

I think it's safe to say that isn't an answer to my questions. I was obviously referring to people who do not have such a phone. Incomplete data in this case could easily be far, far worse than having no data at all.

Re: 1984 was a blueprint but....

"I really want us to beat COVID and return to normality."

Most sane people do. I am not convinced our governments are entirely sane, though.

Re: And what about the people ...

And who would call that number, anyway? Me, I'm calling my doctor if I get sick. I'm certainly not calling the government! When did they ever do anything to help me?

Re: And what about the people ...

My Dad doesn't own a cell phone at all. Never has. Never will. Mom has one, on a bare-bones plan, for "emergencys". It has only been powered up a couple times in the eight or so years she's had it. Nobody knows it's number, in her eyes it's dial-out only. There are zero apps installed on it. In fact, there is at least one voice mail message on it, but she doesn't know how to retrieve it. Doesn't care, either. "If it's important, they have the house number" is their general attitude.

This is very common in the over-70 set here in Northern California. Dunno about blighty.

Re: It asks for your location?

Shirley it has access to your phone's GPS data. If it doesn't now, it will eventually (probably in the name of "efficiency"). It's what your government does, if you hadn't noticed.

"Gould also admitted that the data will not be deleted, UK citizens will not have the right to demand it is deleted, and it can or will be used for “research” in future."

Be afraid. Be very, very afraid.