Posts by jake

Re: Competition...

Funny thing is that Zappa was a Conservative who hated the direction the Republican Party was going. Look up his thoughts on Fascist Theocracy for a good portion of the reason why.

Re: If America wants to be great again...

"And 110v. What's that about."

That's about half the voltage coming into the the vast majority of household breaker panels here in North America. It's also plenty for household lighting and other low power applications.

Shirley you're not daft enough to think that one size fits all electricity needs?

I never said anything of the sort. I was discussing the perceived difficulty of using Sendmail.

Hindsight's 20/20.

Computer time was a hell of a lot more expensive than human time back in the day. Who knew the balance would shift so far and so fast?

m4 is just a general purpose macro language. I use it all over the place. Handy to know. Recommended.

Exactly, Ken.

A true AI derived from that .cfg would probably suicide immediately upon becoming conscious.

"must never"

Strong words, Kemosabe. Do you have the logic to back them?

What's wrong with Sendmail? Sure, it has a rather steep learning curve ... but I only had to learn it once, and it's been working just fine for me these last 40 years or so.

Re: Similar experience

That technique (two people at opposite ends of a table) is a technique they used to teach in Business Management 101. Another is three or four 'interviewers", each fluent in a different discipline, taking turns rapid-firing unrelated questions at you. I've found that both of them are deployed by companies that are more interested in playing mind-games than actually putting together a smoothly running business, and as such I generally recommend the interviewee fire the company immediately.

I'd check the power cord first, followed by checking if there was power at the socket, followed by the power supply itself.

_{Have VOM, will travel.}

Re: I may have told this one before...

"HR: "So, I want you to pretend you are a bap in the baker's shop. Tell me why I should buy you"?"

Me: Actually, I'm the baker, and I'm not for sale.

Re: I may have told this one before...

HR exists to protect the company from its employees.

Re: An error message I once received was

Truetype fonts were (are?) .DLLs, and thus were (are?) executables under Windows, instead of being read and then displayed as in any sane operating system.

Re: On yet another hand

Probably not a Watson quote. There is no evidence to suggest he ever said that.

However, Howard Aiken (the engineer who was in charge of building IBM's Harvard Mark I) once said Originally one thought that if there were a half dozen large computers in this country, hidden away in research laboratories, this would take care of all requirements we had throughout the country. ... It is thought that this is the origin of the Watson misquote.

Re: I totally agree with Microsoft on this one.

"Still, you would think that being able to have names of more than one character for your volumes would be helpful in remembering what’s on them."

Volume labels were allowed to be up to 11 characters going back to FAT12. (FAT8, if I remember correctly, was only 9 characters, but I only ran across that once or twice in the wild. so I might be misremembering.).

Re: One Thing Microsoft Still Clearly Believes ...

"... is that “26 drive letters ought to be enough for anybody”."

I totally agree with Microsoft on this one. What kind of idiot would want even 10 drives on a Microsoft system? There are now (and always have been) far more robust ways of storing files than anything that Microsoft has ever built.

This has been true since I was placed in charge of half a dozen Pilot build IBM PCs running the DOS 0.96 Beta.

The supposed "640K limit" was an IBM hardware limit, not an MS software limit. The IBM hardware spec was already firmly in place before Gates even heard about the project. Even if he had made the comment (which is extremely doubtful ... nobody has ever documented it), he would have just been agreeing with IBM's spec. And it wasn't really 640K, it was more like 704K, if you knew what you were doing. I find it absolutely amazing that this piece of incorrect trivia is still being parroted as fact after all these years ...

OTOH, I personally remember Steve Jobs saying that "128K ought to be more than enough for home users". It was at a meeting of the Homebrew Computer Club in late 1983, as he was demonstrating the original Macintosh, just before the public unveiling. At the time, he had a point ... people were running flight simulators in 64K.

On the gripping hand, none of this matters any more. It's all just an accident of history.

He once commented facetiously that there would never be a need for 3.0 because of the way 2.x.x.x was numbered.

Re: Here's my test for AI

"Feed it a page of search results and ask it to remove the crap."

Seeing as it seems that these days almost all search results (at least when looking for information) appear to be shit-pages created by a 'bot, it would have to remove itself. Are they programmed for virtual suicide? Would anybody care?

Re: No true AI

Just so you know, having read your posts for these last 10ish years, it was bloody obvious that you didn't write it ... so by extension I assumed it was probably LLM generated and so stopped reading about the beginning of the third paragraph.

Re: Defining Growler

"With or without beer."

Oh, with please. Definitely with.

Re: Depends on your definition of growler I guess.

How to tell us you've never even tried it without telling us you've never even tried it.

Seriously, dude, it's just a German-style lager. Try it once, you might be surprised.

Life's too short to have that kind of childish attitude about a simple beer ... Are you going to hold your breath and threaten to be sick next?

Re: Depends on your definition of growler I guess.

"Apparently yeast will create certain histamines in the fermentation process only with rice that is known to cause allergic-like reactions in humans."

Oreally. Which "histamines" are those, pray tell?

Last time I checked, histamine is one very specific molecule, C5H9N3, or 2-(1H-Imidazol-4-yl)ethanamine, if you like ... and all beers contain between 20 and 300mg/l. Budweiser is, in fact, on the low end of this, specifically because they use rice as an adjunct to their grain bill. Quite simply, rice doesn't produce as much histamine as barley or wheat in the fermentation process.

Re: Depends on your definition of growler I guess.

"How on earth did this recipe come to be 'developed'? I can't fathom the thought process of anyone thinking that a freshly run over cock would improve the taste of beer* !"

Kitchen accident. Someone boiled a bunch of chicken parts wrapped in cheesecloth (for ease of removal) to make a stock. Stick the bag into a handy bucket to be disposed of later, not knowing it was a freshly sanitized bucked for beer. The household brewer decants a freshly brewed ale out of the primary onto the top of the bag, and then stashes the secondary away in the cellar for aging. Naturally, the kid who dropped the bag wouldn't have said anything, so the bag of bird parts wouldn't have come to light until the ale was ready to be either bottled or imbibed. In our modern society, once discovered they would have tossed the lot ... but back then, nothing was wasted. It still smelled OK, so they drank it ... and probably marveled at the mouthfeel and the clarity of the stuff. The cloves & raisins etc. were added later, probably by charlatans selling it as "medicine".

"* Leaving out the obvious cheep shot about (internationally available) American 'beers'"

British beers, you mean. The recipe originated in England, and was a crowd favorite by the late 1500s. America didn't exist back then. William III is said to have preferred Cock Ale over the finest French wines, and wouldn't drink any other beer... which probably says a lot about the state of the British brewing industry in the late 1600s. (Of course the British and French were at loggerheads back then, so claiming not to like French wine may have been political.)

Re: Depends on your definition of growler I guess.

Stories about one branch or another being able to drink the other branch under the table (or country vs. country, etc.) have been part of military lore since Sumer and Elam were at odds 4,700 years ago or thereabouts.

They have all been lies, regardless of origin. Pure, unadulterated bravado and nothing more.

_{And my dad can beat up your dad!}

Re: Depends on your definition of growler I guess.

The store-bought so-called "mini kegs" are a waste of money, IMO.

Cornelius kegs, on the other hand, are quite handy to keep around, especially for the home brewer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelius_keg

Re: Depends on your definition of growler I guess.

I've made Cock Ale, it's actually drinkable ... Translating the recipe into more modern terms: First you brew a strong ale (your choice), to make ten gallons. Next, boil a cock (old rooster works well for this!). Bust the boiled bird up with a mortar and pestle (food processor), bones & all. Stick the result into a fine cheesecloth bag with some mace (I use three or four flakes) and cloves (I use 8), and some mashed dates and raisins, about 8oz each. Soak the lot in a couple quarts of fortified wine (I use a young (cheap) version of Oloroso), until the ale is ready to come out of the primary. Discard the bird+spice bag, and decant the fortified wine into the secondary with the ale, discarding the sediment. Allow to sit and clarify for a couple weeks/month(s) before bottling. It's ready to drink after 6 or 8 months in the botttle at cellar temperature (42F (5.5C), plus or minus).

The added sugar from the raisins & dates makes for a bit more fermentation in the secondary. The gelatin from the bird seems to work as finings to clarify the brew. You can't taste the chicken in the final product, but the head is affected (more protein) (the head is minimal, but there). You can leave out the mace and clove (recommended, except for history's sake).

Frankly, while the end result is usually quite drinkable, I don't find it to be worth the effort ... I make it once in a while (nine times in 35 years) just to blow people's minds.

[edit] Do not add salt & pepper, veggies, etc. to the boiled rooster. Make soup with the stock from boiling the bird.

Re: Temporary temporal problem

Or just post. It's not like the badges mean anything ... We already know who you are.

_{Badges? We don' need no steenkeen badges!}

Re: the number of days in a year is not an integer

Oh, c'mon. That's hardly "civilization", now is it?

It never had any purpose at all for agrarian activities.

Re: International Earth Rotation Service

But remember that they still use the old initials.

Saves money on stationary and business cards.

Re: F-91W

"my 2024-vintage F-91W is no more clued up!"

To be fair, that watch doesn't track the year.

Re: time zones

See the tz database, sometimes called zoneinfo.

A quick look shows a pretty good rundown at the always suspect wiki:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tz_database

Re: Hey Sophos, how was it for you?

Sophos still exists?

Huh. Who knew.

Re: First they came for the leap seconds, then they came for the leap days...

"There are two reasonable time systems"

There is a difference between "time", the dimension, and "what time is it?", clock/calendar time.

I run on three major clocks, and one minor one.

The first is TheWife's monthly cycle. If you are married to a woman, you'll grok.

The second is the seasonal clock handily provided by the Solar Year & the Earth's axial tilt with respect to its orbit. It is totally out of my control, but I plant my fields & breed my critters by it, as humans have since time immemorial. Trying to change this is a fool's errand.

The third is the clock provided by the Master clock on my network, which syncs up to an atomic clock once per day (ntp.org works for most purposes ... I use something else), which all of my machines adhere to. This is for computer record keeping more than anything else.

Context is key. There is no "SingleTimeStandard[tm]", and never will be. With the exception of The Wife's, of course.

The minor fourth clock is my dive watch. I wear it when appropriate. It's kinda important ... but it could be completely out of sync with the three major clocks in my life and it wouldn't matter at all.

As a side-note, I don't wear a wristwatch day-to-day ... and haven't in nearly half a century (since my HP-01, back in 1977). In my mind, they are completely pointless. Everywhere you look these days you can see something giving you a pretty good approximation of "local time". Humans living life to the second or minute (or even ten minutes!) is counter productive. Even when baking bread ten minutes either way won't kill you, or the loaf ... Relax, be patient, learn to make cheese, cure meat and brew beer.

The planting calendar is one of the most important tools hung on the wall of the seed barn.

I have a stack of them going back to the late 1800s. When combined with the farm journals, I have a pretty good idea of what I need to plant, when, this Spring (which looks to be wetter than normal, but not outside historical data).