Posts by jake

Re: California Desert

Nah. Contrary to the lies of the greenaholics, there are a lot more square inches of desert than there are square inches of desert rat ... and for the most part, the rats live in loose rocks and largish deadwood (cabins, mine sites), which are usually avoided by desert off-roaders.

Re: Je t'aime...

Out of curiosity, would you expect it to be better or worse than the original?

Personally, my answer to that question would be an unequivocal "Mu!".

Re: Melting pot

The Finns were traders, and undoubtedly some individuals joined their Scandinavian neighbors on voyages, but as a whole the Finns were mostly homebodies.

The article linked by the OP has far too many inaccuracies to list here.

Re: American Song Contest aims to tap Eurovision formula

"The singing and the competition aspect were dreadful."

FTFY

Re: American Song Contest aims to tap Eurovision formula

The one useful thing the eurodrival pap contest did was drive me away from mainstream radio and into the arms of Radio Caroline, which lead me to John Peel and sanity.

Re: For those wowed by how much DNA they share with people from other countries

"I mean, how can we be more like a banana than a bee?"

Well, bananas and humans are both known for concentrating radioactivity. Bees, not so much.

Bees are also quite cooperative, bananas and humans not so much.

Re: Surgically separated five percent?

"He's hung like a bear!!"

It's possible. I have the baculum[0] of a 200 lb adult American black bear, from California. It is just under 5 inches long. Polar bears, at ~1100 lb typically run just under 7.5 inches.

[0] It's legal, a gift from a tribe here in Northern California when I got married.

Re: "Or written a temporary bit of code that ended up becoming too permanent?"

I am always more than happy to do so :-)

I have done similar ... Bust a hole in the fuel tank of my truck after kicking up a branch in the wilds between Mono Lake and Yosemite. Climbed a hill to get my bearings (and hopefully a cell signal), and discovered a ranch off in the distance. Hiked about 8 miles with no trail to speak of, only to discover it was an unoccupied off-grid line-camp. Poked around a bit, and discovered a 5 gallon can of gas about half full ... I left a short note and the hundred dollar bill I always carry for emergencies, and carried it back to my rig. Not fun, but after strapping it under the hood, with a length of fuel line running to the pump, I made it back to civilization.

The following weekend, having located the line-camp on a map, I returned with a now full gas can, and a second as a "thank you". Nobody had collected the hundred as of yet ... so I added to the note, and left both gas cans and the money.

Re: Stealing more than fuel

I have cameras (and two-way voice, if I need/want it) out there now. Back then such things were cost prohibitive.

No. They don't offer stamps for kids on dirtbikes.

On the other hand, it's nearly always tourist season ...

Re: Flashlight

I always carry a AAA-powered single-cell Mag-lite. Little bits of good light are more useful more often than you might think.

Yes, I know, I should swap it for a more modern rechargable light with LED bulb ... trouble is I can't find one that is as easy to carry as what I have now AND seems to be built for the long-haul like the 30+ year old unit in my pocket.

I'm open to suggestions.

"Rural folk don't steal from their neighbours"

Transplanted city folks sometimes do. Once.

I'm sure it happened somewhere.

I had someone steal the fuel out of a riding lawnmower once. I had topped the thing up (three wimpy US gallons), then headed back to civilization, intending to return the following weekend to mow the verges of our access road. I got back two weeks later and discovered the gas cap removed and the tank empty ... but everything else was exactly where I had left it. This was down a 5 mile driveway, behind three locked gates.

Judging by the tire marks, it was three kids on dirtbikes.

Re: First time I heard of her -- thanks!

But it is denigration, and you know it. She got the positions she got in the late '50s and early '60s DESPITE being female in a world of men. Which means that she worked her ass off. Bringing race into the issue makes it sound like she merely lucked into the jobs simply because she was white, which is total and complete bullshit, and indeed a form of racism in and of itself.

Before you poo-poo this, THINK about it ... The only reason for your derogatory comment is because of her skin colo(u)r. Isn't that the very definition of racism?

I don't remember MLK saying "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will judge white people by the color of their skin, instead of the content of their character." ... do you?

Re: Paper tape at first.

I learned card weaving (kind of a cross between simple backstrap weaving and Jacquard ... look it up) back in the 1960s in Palo Alto. It was a bit of a fad at the time, you can see hippys wearing belts and headbands made this way in photos of the era. I made the guitar strap that I still use today in roughly 1970.

Creating new patterns (including lettering in a variety of fonts) is without a doubt simple programming ... Did it help shape my mind for the computer revolution that was to come? Probably. Hard to say for sure ... but I made sure to teach my daughter this deceptively simple technique.

Give it a whirl. It's cheap (you can make all the hardware at home, even if you're not particularly handy), relaxing and a useful skill in that you can make custom flat webbing for almost any need.

Re: Nee Petri

Depends on your perspextive.

Re: Interference.

Starting and stopping the lift played merry hell with harmonics in the mains.

Picture a data center in the basement of a tall building in San Francisco's financial district. Card punch up against a wall, near the ancient Otis heavy goods lift. Every now and again, at seemingly random times, the punch generated errors for a couple characters. Nobody could figure out why, not even IBM's field circus dudes.

Until IBM was traipsing in and out one fine weekend, upgrading who knows what hardware, as only IBM could. Someone (ahem) noticed that the gibberish was being generated about ten seconds before the elevator doors opened.

Turned out that the motor for the lift was drawing so much current when it first started that it was inducing errors in the punch on the other side of the wall. Nobody put two and two together prior to this because the lift rarely went into the basement (that level was key-protected) ... until IBM was in and out that morning.

Re: Funny how all the big guys think they can turn their hardware into a subscription service

"I don't pay monthly for the right to drive my vehicle... I pay my road tax annually!"

That's for the right to use the roads, not the right to drive your car.

Re: Subscription Services!!!

I use water, electricity and gas. I produce sewage that needs to be taken away. These are actual physical things that are consumed or removed.

The heater for my car seat and remote start capability are neither consumed nor a waste product that needs removal.

Re: OTA updates?

Again, it would be best not to buy into such a hair-brained scheme in the first place.

Re: They already do it on their GPUs for virtualisation

"but I see it purely as money grabbing and wish we could dump them."

Should have voted with your wallet. I did.

Re: OTA updates?

And instantly void your warranty. Not advisable. Best not to buy into such a hair-brained scheme in the first place.

Re: Things / Ideas

"In the real world most people make disappointing purchase decisions."

Absolutely. However, as the family geek/nerd and resident gear-head, I am usually consulted prior to large purchases of anything vaguely technical being made, including personal transportation. Most of my friends also bounce questions off me for this kind of thing. I'm sure many others among ElReg's commentardariat hold a similar position of trust among friends and family.

This is one of those things where we should be passing the word early and often.

Read the fine print before signing anything, people. The word "contract" has a meaning in Law whether you like it or not.

Re: turn on car features, such as driver assistance, through subscription services.

"But turn off any feature which my car has in the showroom when I *buy* it, and I'll see you in court."

Toyota has stated they are planning on doing just that. The most common two that I've heard bandied about are heated seats and remote start ... They plan on selling you the car with those options, and then after a couple years, they will turn them off unless you agree to pay a monthly "service fee". Apparently they are planning on doing this with cars already on the road.

Re: Zorin, Ideal for beginners

But Linux gives UI[0] access to EVERYTHING, whereas Redmond (in its infinite glory) has decided that there are aspects of Windows that users (and their admins) are not allowed to access. Fuck that.

Office is not really a competitive advantage, outside the shallow minds of the gullible. Bundles are for the easily lead down the garden path.

[0] UI is short for user interface. Perhaps you meant to specify either Command-line User Interface or Graphical User Interface?

Re: @RegGuy1

The buzzphrase you are probably looking for is "focus follows pointer". Windows had it natively as an option starting with Win95 (registry hack ... I believe TweakUI could make the change). It's useful for some things, hellaciously annoying for others. I use it probably once a month or so on Slackware w/KDE (pointy-clicky: System Settings -> Window Behavior -> Window Behavior -> Focus, a slider gives 6 different variations on the theme.)

I have three monitors, the native laptop screen, a much larger external monitor, and a dumb terminal. The laptop has 2 virtual desktops side by side, just in case. I rarely use more than one. I can also hot-key into 6 command prompts (this last is stock for Slackware).

The external monitor has 6 desktops, in a 1x6 grid. 5 are in near constant use, the 6th is kind of a scratch pad.

The dumb terminal is just that ... IBM 3151 (amber) at the moment. Handy if the GUI goes TITSUP[0] (rare as that is these days), and I do most of my serious writing on it.

[0] Total Inability To Show the Usual Pr0n^H^H^Hictures.

Re: What ?

To be fair, servers shouldn't need rebooting often enough for it to matter how long it takes. Shit, my desktops rarely get rebooted. This isn't Windows.

Re: @RegGuy1

Have you tried the supposedly "hard" Slackware yet/recently? Works for the Wife, MeDearOldMum, and my Great Aunt.

Re: Android Apps

It's based on the Ubuntu toy. No need.

Re: you will need to pay up if you want access to desktop interfaces styled on Windows and macOS

"Having said that I wish Gnome would stop doing its stupid things'

Some people have been wishing that for a decade and a half or so. The rest of us have decided that Gnome's developers are irrational, and that Gnome is no longer worth bothering with.

Re: you will need to pay up if you want access to desktop interfaces styled on Windows and macOS

"Isn't that why people use Linux? Because it's not Windows?"

No. I use Linux because it's stable and works. Windows is fragile, and frequently doesn't.

Re: Support for Ukraine

Just donate the same money to the charity of your choice. No need to change your distribution, eliminate at least one middleman taking his cut, and YOU get any tax benefits, not said middleman.

Re: pointlessly pedantic, but...

"Unless, of course, you were talking about American cars with a fastback roof line"

Not exactly. By way of reference, here's a photo of the Beach Boy's "Little Deuce Coupe". The original fastback mustang was called just that ... the Fastback, while the hard-top with a trunk was and is called a coupe. Etc.

On the other hand, the most beautiful hard-top car in the world is indeed a fastback, and called a coupé, but it's not by any stretch of the imagination American. In fact, most of us Yanks pronounce its name incorrectly ...

Re: Or

Exactly. From what I've seen, the so-called "Russian hackers" are opportunistic skiddies who delight in graffiti and other defacement, along with ripping off the ignorant, using tools produced elsewhere.

There are probably several dozen people reading and commenting here on ElReg that are technically more competent than any so-called "hackers" that I've noticed coming out of Russia.

Re: Or

They listen to the radio, broadcasts from the West, in their own language.