Posts by jake

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: 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.

Re: Hire a few hundred thousand biplanes.

There are (or can be) even more unmanned drones, which are quite a bit cheaper ... and can be maneuvered in whatever number, and whatever pattern, you care to feed into the computer.

Re: Hire a few hundred thousand biplanes.

In our ever-so-politically-correct hell of a modern world the phrase "Crop Duster" is considered derogatory. Instead we are supposed to use the term "Aerial Applicator".

Note that most of the guys and gals I know who do it for a living say "Fuck that. We're crop dusters.", so I don't have a clue who is making this decision.

Re: "Those are rather different reasons to those expressed by fellow backbone provider Cogent"

There have been rabbits sucked into jet engines at takeoff. I would imagine weasels, if in a similar place at a similar time, would suffer the same fate.

Re: Don't Mention the War

AYBS's "German Week" was broadcast half a year earlier.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezAfRcLwpdM

Re: Hire a few hundred thousand biplanes.

RFE/RL still broadcasts to Russia and Belarus in their local languages, so presumably somebody's listening.

Re: Hire a few hundred thousand biplanes.

No need for such an expensive undertaking. I suspect the Russians will listen to Aunty Beeb, VoA and Radio Free Europe on the radio, just as they always have.

Nah. Just a trifle chilly for office space, at least for most people, and hardly fatally cold ... although SWMBO might argue the point.

Considering the OP was wearing a coat, I would think even a person of the rudest intelligence would understand he was speaking in Fahrenheit.

Re: I want to believe, but...

I had a friend, now sadly passed away, who was an architect. He drew houses for a living. Not just any houses, but houses that were a joy to live in. I realize this is peculiar, but he had an excuse.

You see, he grew up in an original Frank Lloyd Wright designed and built abomination. He wanted to make sure nobody else had to grow up in such a cold, uncomfortable, useless excuse for a shelter ever again. His words, not mine.

Re: The current poster boy for this being our favourite Russian dictator.

From personal experience, I'd say half are drunks, half are stoned, half are brainwashed, half are ignorant oiks and half voted for him "because Daddy always voted a straight Republican ticket".

Obviously, there is some overlap.

Re: I worked in companies where HR actually run the business.

"What do you do when it's HR doing <illegal thing>?"

You get your ducks in a row, retain a lawyer, make sure your paper trail is clean, and then call them on it, starting with reporting to your direct Boss, and working your way up the management chain. When they fire you, place it in the hands of the landshark. They will probably offer to settle out of court, possibly in the high 6 figures or low 7 ... At that point it's a matter of asking yourself how much your ideals/scruples are worth.

Have fun! :-)

Re: He who shouts loudest is often wrong

I believe the cavalry officer was saying the gentleman in question wasn't marriage material for his daughter(s).

Different times, different memes.

Re: Similar tale in a hospital

"He'd read all the management books"

Have you read any of them? Basically, they teach you how to increase your latent psychopathic/sociopathic tendencies.

Re: The current poster boy for this being our favourite Russian dictator.

That depends. Are his lips moving?

Re: Business as usual

"Under no circumstances should I try to set up or run my own company or become a 'self-employed consultant' as I am just not that sort of person."

That's what so-called "aptitude testing" told me when I was in high school. I've been self employed since 1988.

Re: I want to believe, but...

"I've rarely seen any justice, let alone biblical."

Same here. But I have seen it occasionally ... Extrapolating across the entirety of ElReg's commentardariat, the proverbial Thinking Man would have to conclude we haven't yet heard the bulk of the stories out there.

Re: I want to believe, but...

" It just doesn't seem plausible. "

About a billion years ago in Internet time, call it roughly 1985, my Boss and I were in my office talking to the company owner on the speaker phone. The guy in charge of Advanced Manufacturing slammed into the office, making all kinds of demands, threatening us with firing and worse of we didn't drop everything to do his bidding. Until the owner's voice came out of the telephone, saying three magic words: "Dave, you're fired." ,,, My Boss was given the newly vacated AdvMan seat the following morning, and I took over his position. The owner cautioned both of us separately "Play fair with everybody, I don't like assholes". Needless to say we took him at his word.

Re: The current poster boy for this being our favourite Russian dictator.

The accent fooled you ... the actual chant was "FOUR MORE BEERS!"

Seriously, though, how drunk would you have to be to vote for Trump?

Re: re: countries that haven't ventured an opinion on the invasion and shelling of civilians

I suspect that most of the downvotes in this thread are from kids who were born too late for Usenet.

The downvotes for the OP are probably from people who recognize the post as yet another attempt at starting a simple flame war, which nearly always gets quite tedious.

I'll just leave this here.

_{Now where did I put that pages-long .sig ... Ah, well. Wrong font anyway.}

Re: Safe Heaven for Hackers

The commentard known as Clausewitz 4.0 suggests: "The west is pushing Russia to become the true, undeniable safe heaven for hackers."

As a hacker, I feel perfectly safe here in the heaven called California. Somehow I rather think I wouldn't feel quite so safe in Russia.

If by "hackers" you actually mean "crooks", kindly say "crooks". Ta.

Re: re: countries that haven't ventured an opinion on the invasion and shelling of civilians

PDNFTT

Re: Yay!

Lamppost? Isn't accidentally falling out a window de rigueur over there?

One wonders if that gymnast tart he's been boinking knows that the fastest way to a man's heart is between the fourth and fifth ribs ... with his level of paranoia I doubt anyone else could get close enough.

Re: Linux Bias?

No, I mean vi ... ed is just the core, Bill's contributions are what makes vi vi.

I'm fairly certain you can substitute the name of any other country in the so-called "developed world" for the US in that paragraph. Security agencies as a whole work that way. It's in their remit, whether written in officially or not.

Re: RH kernels

"Red Hat kernels apparently bear little relation to their headline version number. They backport and tweak an insane amount of stuff, so that kernel is probably no more 4.18 than my hamster's brain firmware is."

Now ask why nobody with a clue uses RedHat kernels.

Re: Linux Bias?

"the only thing that motivated Microsoft to get up off their lazy, unconcerned, condescending 'sofa' to fix their shortcomings."

Microsoft has fixed it's shortcomings WRT bugs? Really? Post proof or retract.

Re: Linux Bias?

I think you'll find that it's not the type or quantity of bugs that people here rail against, rather it's the attitude that Microsoft exhibits towards the concept of bugs in general that people don' approve of.

Re: Linux Bias?

All hardware sucks, all software sucks, all languages suck, all text editors suck[0], and all OSes suck. And of course let's not forget the fanbois/fangrrls, who suck in all kinds of spectacular ways.

[0] Except vi, of course ... the One True Editor.

Re: Linux Bias?

"Sigh, why this angry?"

Have you honestly never run across sabroni, Chris? It's always angry ... usually to the point of dropping all pretense of logic. Which is a shame, because in rare bouts of lucidity it is apparently a fairly knowledgeable coder, and technically more than competent.

Re: One word: DUH!

"I don't suppose you bothered to read their article, did you?"

Of course I did. It's a subject I'm quite interested in.

"Not sure what papers from the 1960s you have in mind, but they do cite literature back to 1982."

Check out what Minsk's AI group at MIT and the fine folks at Stanford's SAIL were doing ... both contributed heavily to the subject, starting in the early 1960s. Their papers from the era are pretty much canon, even today.