* Posts by jake

26589 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Jun 2007

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US court rules: Just because you can extract teeth while riding a hoverboard doesn't mean you should

jake Silver badge

Re: Alaskan treats

I'm sure somewhere in this vast country[0] you can find somebody who deep fries that kind of thing. There are mentally disturbed people all over the planet.

[0] Probably New York City. Git a rope ...

jake Silver badge

Re: Alaskan treats

To be fair, Cadbury Kraft Foods Mondelez International doesn't make chocolate eggs, either. They make an overly sweet milk confection egg that almost, kinda tastes like pseudo-chocolate. On a fair day. If you squint.

jake Silver badge

Re: What on earth...?

"What on earth is an operatory?"

Specifically, a dentist's surgery. According to the OED (second dead tree edition) the word has been in use in this meaning since the mid 17th century. Later, any surgery was known as an operatory. From the Latin operatorium, meaning workshop.

jake Silver badge

I've seen "hoverboard" tooth extractions ...

... but they didn't target a problem tooth, and I rather think that they weren't actually intended.

I also saw a dude face-plant on a Segway once. Came up spitting blood and Chiclets like an NHL player.

jake Silver badge
Pint

Re: Alaskan treats

"Ahhh... but do they have Argos?"

Sure. Example: Argo fuck yourself.

(An example, not directed at you personally, Peter X ... have a homebrew :-)

South American nations open fire on ICANN for 'illegal and unjust' sale of .amazon to zillionaire Jeff Bezos

jake Silver badge

What do South American Nations have to do with it?

The word "Amazon" is a Greek word describing a group of people living in Libya a couple thousand years ago. I'd say Libya has more of a claim on it than either Brazil & hangers-on, or that megalomaniac Bezos.

'I am done with open source': Developer of Rust Actix web framework quits, appoints new maintainer

jake Silver badge

Re: Not just open source

And it's only become a problem because a few entitled induhviduals have been fed a bill of goods and think that "every child is a winner" so all their contributions simply MUST be valid. Mummy said so!

During the meanwhile, in this particular case the adults in the audience are yawning. Or pointing & giggling, depending on how many glasses of Recovery they've managed.

jake Silver badge

Re: He's not wrong

"There used to be."

Disagree. Individual projects, yes. But an over-all OSS community? Nope. That only existed in the deluded dreams of rms and a few like-minded idealists.

Remember that Sonos speaker you bought a few years back that works perfectly? It's about to be screwed for... reasons

jake Silver badge

"Remember that Sonos speaker you bought a few years back that works perfectly?"

No, no I don't remember that. At all. But thanks for asking.

Probably has something to do with my mid-1980s Boston Acoustics studio monitors, which still work perfectly. And the fact that I'm highly unlikely to be sold a pig in a poke. Me Dear Old Mum didn't raise no fools.

The delights of on-site working – sun, sea and... WordPad wrangling?

jake Silver badge

HP GPIB is far from dead.

A friend of mine just bought a milking machine for his goats. It has a IEEE-488 bus for diagnostics. It's brand new, came off the production line in October of 2019. I've also seen it in new marine equipment, aviation equipment, and equipment for geosciences ... and I rather suspect it'll be a standard for MILspec gear until roughly four hours after the heat death of the Universe.

jake Silver badge

Re: How did that work ?

It probably wasn't WordPad, it was probably an early version of Write (Win 3.0 or earlier) and our pal Javier misremembers.

Procedure was something like rename program.exe to program.txt, open it in Write, make changes, close file accepting changes, then rename the .txt back to an .exe. I might be off slightly in the details, but that was the gist of it. Folks in the know had this version of Write in their bag o'tricks disk and moved it from version to version of Windows.

I have kept a copy of Win3.0's version around for this very thing (and a few other bits and bobs) right up until today, on my last Windows machine (Win2K, which I only keep around for ACad2K. She's airgapped, so fageddaboudit.)

Help! I'm trapped on Schrodinger's runaway train! Or am I..?

jake Silver badge

Re: Threadripper

A Tesla owner getting mud on the undercarriage? That would mean living in the RealWorld. Next you'll be expecting them to understand what TCO means.

jake Silver badge

Re: Enquiries

Instead of guessing, you could call the bus company on your telephone (remember how to do that?) and ask for a schedule. I'm fairly certain that they will be more than happy to provide such a thing to an actual fare paying customer.

This tactic worked nicely before there was a go ogle, it works nicely today, and it'll work long after go ogle is put out of our collective misery.

jake Silver badge

Eh?

You have strangers keeping you up at night with their farting in your own home? We welcome tourists here at Chez Jake, but that is taking things a step too far!

jake Silver badge

Ah, yes. Early '80s Ozzy.

Absolute proof that you don't need the headache-inducing Autotune and a multi-million dollar per year makeup contract perched on a plastic human analogue in order to fill a stadium with tens of thousands of screaming teenagers.

jake Silver badge

Re: Charity and Anarchy

When I run out of home-grown carrots & apples, I get mine from a local small farm aggregator. 50 pound bags for under $10 (less than half the wholesale price). They are mostly "blems", but the horses don't care. Nor do I ... twinned carrots and cosmetically ugly apples might not be sellable to millennials, hipsters & yuppies, but they are just as tasty as their "perfect" cousins.

jake Silver badge

Re: Enquiries

" after I told management exactly just how many privacy problems they were creating and the possible consequences"

I did the same for my Grand Daughter's school after her mum was driven to tears by the shear stupidity of the powers that be who supposedly ran the place.

"I even got them off Gmail"

My daughter handled that little issue for the entire school district when she was pregnant with the brat. One simple little BSD server, with a hot fall-back on another campus. Their email system has been running non-stop for around 10 years now, with nary a hiccup. Imagine that.

jake Silver badge

I once got out of a speeding ticket when my greyhound let loose with a rather thunderous, and extremely malodorous blast as the officer was exchanging pleasantries with me. The cop's eyes started visibly watering. When the dog let loose another, the cop beat a hasty retreat with a "drive safely, sir, have a nice day". ... Zip (the dog) was always prone to that affliction after partaking of ground-squirrels, but I never thought it would come in handy.

Google reveals new schedule for 'phasing out support for Chrome Apps across all operating systems'

jake Silver badge

Re: and giving users an inferior experience when compared to a native desktop application

"Anyone with any sense will block Go ogle with whatever blocking kit they prefer."

FTFY

jake Silver badge

Re: Typical Web Development

"20 years ago, in web development, perl was a big thing. 10 years later perl was quite gone from web development."

Actually, perl is still in use for Web development. Mainstream stuff, even. I certainly have no intention on giving up on perl any time soon. But don't take my word for it, ask El Reg.

jake Silver badge

Some of us never phased in go ogle in the first place.

It's been an obvious slow-motion wreck right from the git-go.

Spanking the pirates of corporate security? Try a Plimsoll

jake Silver badge

Re: Absolutely.

"that would just lead to someone being designated the official fall guy for this purpose (and remunerated accordingly)."

That would be in the tacit job description of the CIO in many "modern" companies, at least from what I've seen.

jake Silver badge

The two biggest problems in IT security today ...

... are the same as they have been for the nearly half a century that I've been making money in the IT world, and probably go back to the dawn of time.

The first is convincing management to throw enough money (resources) at the problem to have the correct hardware for the situation ... AND the staff to run it properly.

The second is the big problem ... 90% of the userbase is incapable of wrapping their tiny collective hive mind around the concept of security. This is doubly so for management.

jake Silver badge

Re: And AWS?

Allow me to finish that quote for you:

"and ultimately helped us achieve our most secure system to date—which all future Travelex products and services will inherit."

When all one has is a hammer, one tends to put all of one's eggs in one basket.

Register Lecture: Can portable atomic clocks end UK dependence on GNSS?

jake Silver badge

Re: bring back DECCA

But The Deccas are a guitar group, Mr. Rowe.

UC Berkeley told to cough up $5m in compensation to comp-sci, engineering students recruited to teach classes

jake Silver badge

Re: Just goes to show ...

I'm not certain I follow your line of thought here. Students have taught at virtually every "school of higher learning" world-wide, with no financial compensation, since time immemorial.

Note that I'm not condoning the practice ... nor am I vilifying it. I'm just pointing out the obvious.

jake Silver badge

Re: Exploded Ironymeter...

Don't confuse Cal with the town of Berkeley. They are two very different things.

jake Silver badge

Re: ... another thing about Cal and CS...

Neither UNIX or BSD existed at Cal when Woz was there. UNIX didn't get to Berkeley until 1974 (in the form of so-called "Research Unix", 4th Edition (upgraded almost immediately to 5th Edition)). Woz was gone before 1972. 1BSD was released in '77 ...

I am broot: The Reg chats to French dev about Rust tool that aims to improve directory navigation

jake Silver badge

Re: Stopped reading at "command line tool" ...

If you don't use the command line, you have been missing out on a good portion of nc's inherent power. Kinda makes me wonder if you know what you are talking about in other areas.

Note that nc is now mc, AKA Midnight Commander.

jake Silver badge

Re: I know I'm going to sound like a grumpy old man

And if you mix curses in with xargs and miscellaneous other scripting, you've got something even most GUI fans can figure out how to use, sans the overhead of a GUI.

jake Silver badge

As an old UNIX hacker, strangely enough ...

... I'm rather fond of one of the few useful tools that have been ported from DOS to the un*x world. That would be Midnight Commander (or mc, home page), which is a Norton Commander clone. It handles probably 98% of all my file management needs. Give it a try if you're unfamiliar with it. Something that has been around for over a third of a century must be doing something right ...

Tragedy: CES squeeze forces frequent flier hotshots into economy hell

jake Silver badge

Re: One wonders how many ...

But it's 60F (16C) in here! Typing for any length of time tends to freeze a body sans hat. Ilkly Moor's got nothing on a glass room ...

We’ve had enough of your beach-blocking shenanigans, California tells stubborn Sun co-founder: Kiss our lawsuit

jake Silver badge

Re: Eminent domain

Again, are you going to get right on that, Public Citizen? Or are you just babbling?

jake Silver badge

Re: U.S. Constitution says what?

But Public Citizen, there is already a road there. And get this ... it's in the only logical place to put a road. Why would you waste time, money, and energy driving a cat up and down the already existent grade?

jake Silver badge

Re: I am rather surprised

We are civilized here in California. We tend to not take the law into our own hands. But thanks for playing, Public Citizen. Your opinion has been noted.

jake Silver badge

Re: Eminent domain

Who is "we", Kemosabe? The voices in your head don't count.

jake Silver badge

Re: Eminent domain

You going to get right on that, Public Citizen?

Somehow I didn't think so.

jake Silver badge

Re: I am rather surprised

Its not in a town. It's unincorporated county land, and the State itself has jurisdiction of the actual beach and right-of-way. He has essentially hired the correct lawyers to create a legal clusterfuck over who has right to access, how, and when.

And remember, removing the property of somebody else without permission is itself a crime ... even if that property is itself illegal. So no, it's not as simple as just removing the gate. From what I heard, one guy hauled his tanks and a cutting torch over & tried to burn the gate down. The folks in the court room tried to convince the judge that what he was arrested for WAS community service, and I suspect the judge was on their side ... He got 1 hour of community service. He voluntarily served 100.

I guess the asshole just feels a need to be universally hated by his neighbors. Not that the asshole is ever "home", of course. Yes, you heard me right, he doesn't even reside there. This whole thing is about power, and has nothing to do with privacy.

jake Silver badge

Re: Godwin

I suggest you read and understand Godwin's Law before asking that question. It might not mean what you think it does.

"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so." —Samuel Langhorne Clemens

jake Silver badge

Re: "Private".

Hey, no heavy-handed tactics with potential collateral damage, please! Some of us still surf there, despite the asshole's attempt to illegally block us. 'tis really a lovely beach. You should visit if you're ever in the area.

jake Silver badge

Re: "Private".

"He's unlawfully blocked that right of way is all."

"All"?

Blame of thrones: Those viral vids of PC monitors going blank when people stand up? Static electricity from chairs

jake Silver badge

Re: On tape?

"Taped it" is syllables shorter, falls off the tongue smoothly, and has been in the common vernacular world-wide for a few generations already. The exact meaning of words mutates over time, this is a prime example. I'd choose another crusade if I were you; life's too short to fight meaningless battles.

jake Silver badge

Re: Hold my LaCroix

"It was a really bad idea."

One might say shockingly bad, I'd imagine.

jake Silver badge

Re: For extra fun ...

Personally, I've always preferred White's. But then I've always worked for a living.

Tunage: Ian Dury ... you can guess the album.

jake Silver badge

Re: For extra fun ...

22 female office workers, when all was said and done.

jake Silver badge

Re: For extra fun ...

I'm more interested in whats between her ears than what's draped beneath it ... but whatever makes the Wife happy makes me happy. Happy wife, happy life. It's not a platitude, it's my modus vivendi.

If anybody pesters anybody about anything they ought to be summarily dealt with.

For the record, she volunteered. Wandered into my lab with something I needed to sign just in time to see & hear a rather large static discharge. She asked what I was doing, and said "Sounds like fun, can I play?" ... She eventually roped in 21 more of her colleagues ... It probably didn't hurt that I had been dating her clandestinely on and off for a couple years (the company had a "no fraternization" rule ... except for upper management, of course. The bastards.).

jake Silver badge

Re: For extra fun ...

Reporting actual observations used to be hailed as "science", not derided as "stereotypes". Political correctness can kiss my pasty white butt.

jake Silver badge

For extra fun ...

... put your favorite secretary in the chair while you've got it hooked up to the 'scope.

Once when testing for this kind of thing, I discovered that the average female office worker can generate upwards of 85KV walking down the hall to get a cuppa, but myself walking along the same path came up static free. Seems my unmentionables were made of cotton, hers were made of silk and petrochemicals. Her heels were leather, my soles were high-carbon rubber.

It might not be very politically correct to discuss such things these days, but then I don't get paid to be PC, I get paid to fix problems.

Ring of fired: Amazon axes multiple workers who secretly snooped on netizens' surveillance camera footage

jake Silver badge

Re: Why did they do it?

"Personally I'd prefer the CCTV footage to be backed up externally in case my NAS gets pinched."

So send it to the server you have hanging off your Great Aunt Ruth's DSL line in Duluth. Shirley all of us commentards have a personal remote file server or three, right?

Astroboffins discover Sun is surfing on 9,000-light-year gas wave that acts as Milky Way's stellar nursery

jake Silver badge

Re: Forget bringing a towel when hitch hiking the galaxy

Some of us have a few ...

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