* Posts by jake

26585 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Jun 2007

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Ericsson report details how it paid off Islamic State

jake Silver badge

Re: Tough Moralism

Whataboutism? Really? C'mon.

Quarter of a million lawyer disciplinary records leak

jake Silver badge

Re: They keep using that word, I do not think it means what they think it means.

"Which is to say, weather they intended to or not, they did in fact make the information public"

You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

On the other hand, when there's an appalling spell of whether ...

jake Silver badge

Re: Not a hack, an oops

"Reminds me of"

It reminded ElReg of that, too. Perhaps read the entire article next time?

Microsoft: Russia invasion of Ukraine ‘unlawful, unjustified’

jake Silver badge

Microsoft could best help ...

... by offering Russia all the free technical aid it wants.

US chip stocks undeterred by export ban to Russia

jake Silver badge

Considering all the supply chain issues ...

... who would be surprised that chip makers can still sell all they can produce? This is especially true, given the minuscule quantity that Russia uses in the total market.

Russia is the advanced persistent threat that just triggered. Ready?

jake Silver badge

Re: "NOW is your time to shine!"

"A part of the disinformatioin campaign."

Projection is an ugly thing.

jake Silver badge

Lard is a compact, high energy food source. It is especially tasty in US-style biscuits[0], which make for an easily cooked bread substitute. I've cooked this in an engine bay before, and also in a hastily constructed rock oven.

The Alcohol speaks for itself. If I were a young Russian kid forced to join in on this miserable and utterly useless agenda, I'd probably turn to booze, too.

[0] 2 cups AP flour, 1 Tbs baking powder, 1 tsp salt, 1/3 cup lard, 1 cup water (or milk). Can add about 1/2 tsp baking soda to change the pH for additional browning, but it's not necessary. Mix the dry ingredients, cut in the lard (rub the lard into the flour with your fingers), then quickly stir in the liquid (do not over mix, or they get tough). Drop by the heaping tablespoonful onto a baking sheet, pop into a 450F oven for 12-15 minutes, turning the sheet once. Makes about a dozen.

jake Silver badge

Re: Between that

"About 20% of USA gas (the real vaporous stuff) comes from Russia"

Bullshit. Almost all of the US's natural gas imports come from Canada. About 98%, in fact. Almost all the rest comes from Trinidad and Tobago. Absolutely none of it comes from Russia.

With that said, the vast majority of natural gas consumed in the US is produced here, in the US.

jake Silver badge

You honestly think a program designed to titillate the drooling great unwashed masses can provide insight into the psyche of an entire real-world nation?

They sure saw you coming, didn't they.

Oh, look, some yummy Kool-Aid!

jake Silver badge

Re: "if the data is safe from physical compromise then it's doubly so from virtual"

"All in all, I'd consider that a defeat."

Why? Because you can no longer access Facebook and other useless time-sinks from your work computers?

jake Silver badge

Re: "if the data is safe from physical compromise then it's doubly so from virtual"

"The problem with unplugging is that you can't get any work done."

Oh, horseshit. In fact, quite the opposite ... ALL you can get done on an unplugged network is work, because there is no way of accessing antisocial-media time-sinks.

Until some smart-ass manages to install Decwar or VTtrek, of course ...

jake Silver badge

Re: "if the data is safe from physical compromise then it's doubly so from virtual"

"I think it is way harder these days to secure from virtual intrusion than from physical."

Nah. If you unplug, they'll have to get physical before they can get virtual. This does not work the other way around.

A Snapdragon in a ThinkPad: Lenovo unveils the X13s

jake Silver badge

I'd rather see it open (fully open!) from the point that the POST routines see power. Far too easy to hide shit pre-bootloader.

jake Silver badge

Presumably, I'll want Pluton ...

... because of Microsoft's impeccable record on security.

Plans for UK rival to Silicon Valley ditched

jake Silver badge

Re: Silicon Valley is a destination for immigrant tech workers

It started long before the imigrant tech workers.

Post WWII, people from all over the world attended Berkeley and Stanford. They discovered that what became Silly Con Valley was a very nice place to live, and upon graduation, stayed here.

This lead to the plowing under of the orchards to create a new suburbia to house the large quantity of educated people. Many of these people had Engineering or Business degrees, some both.

In essence, an educated melting-pot made this place what it is.

Personally, I miss the cherries, plums, apricots, peaches, etc. ...

jake Silver badge

Re: Does the Tory Government Actually Know What It Is Doing ?

You don't want horses for that, you want mules. They are also happy working in teams of 20 or more, which would be quite handy when hauling the mountains of bullshit away from Westminster.

Computer scientists at University of Edinburgh contemplate courses without 'Alice' and 'Bob'

jake Silver badge

What woke up this hoary old conversation?

Just askin'.

Yes, I see CommanderGalaxian's comment from a couple days ago ... but that hardly explains all the commentardary that follows. Old threads get resurrected fairly regularly, but never to this extent.

US imposes sanctions as Russia invades Ukraine

jake Silver badge

Re: re. more blankets

I've noticed that the people who think trump is a strong leader are people who think that bluster, bullshit and bullying are fine leadership qualities.

jake Silver badge

Re: re. more blankets

International order of Clowns, Jesters and Tricksters on line one. Something about defamation.

Fancy some new features? Try general-purpose Linux alternative Liquorix

jake Silver badge

Why not futz with your kernel? Simple answer, really ...

If a given kernel works for your hardware, and gets regular security updates, there is no real reason to install a newer kernel. I'm still using 4.4.x in a lot of places, including MeDearOldMum, GreatAunt and Wife's computers. It does what it needs to do, is rock-solid, supports all their hardware, and blissfully stays out of the way while they use their computers. Can't ask for much more than that in an OS.

jake Silver badge

Re: I'm guessing that Devuan might [not] be able to use the Debian kernel?

How it is perverted by the various distributions notwithstanding, The Kernel itself is init agnostic, and Linus has stated it will remain that way as long as he is in charge.

Lightweight Linux distribution Slax rides again with v11.2

jake Silver badge

People really don't like their sacred cows gored, do they?

jake Silver badge

But will it run off initrd, as the original poster asked?

jake Silver badge

Did you add the add nvme kernel module in initfs.img?

jake Silver badge

But the systemd-cancer does it faster. Or so the developers claim.

jake Silver badge

"Is there a linux distrubiton I can run off initrd?"

The Tiny Core and Puppy distributions come to mind. There are others, but making your own custom version based on one of thse two is pretty easy.

For values of "easy" that include "fairly familiar with Linux, not necessarily an admin".

Make assistive driving safe: Eliminate pedestrians

jake Silver badge

Re: On foot, on crutches, in wheelchairs

It's a handy rule when panning for gold, though ...

AI really can't copyright the art it generates – US officials

jake Silver badge

Re: Who gets paid?

That's why the intelligent farmer (remember him?) plants his trees on and over ground he owns. We're not talking an apple tree growing out of a hedge somewhere after some slob tossed a core into it, we're talking about an intentionally planted tree.

I feel a "cloud" simile coming ... don't touch that dial!

jake Silver badge

Re: Who gets paid?

"What do the American equivalent of bona vacanta laws look like?"

Daft question. Who owns the apples, the farmer or the tree?

jake Silver badge

Re: Who gets paid?

"This could be a scheme to get the AI paid."

The AI won't get paid until $TELCO's switch-gear gets paid.

The owner gets paid for the work done by the equipment.

jake Silver badge

See the book "Why Cats Paint" and ask yourself who profited, and why.

jake Silver badge

Re: Waddaya mean ...

The point is that there is a need for programming the machine to produce the art prior to producing that art. The machine can not do it by itself, it requires an initiator. It matters not which human initiates the machine to produce the art, it was still initiated by a human. Without that human, the machine is inert.

I suppose you could invent a machine to program a machine to produce art, but at that point it's elephants all the way down.

"However, the idea that the public interest is served, or the constitution honoured, by granting copyright ownership to a piece of software... is an argument that I for one don't see."

Totally agree.

jake Silver badge

Re: Couldn't Pay Off Congress Critters

"there's still an excellent chance it will be torpedoed by some grandstanding wanker purely because their electorate have been brainwashed into believing they hate the people supporting it."

FTFY

jake Silver badge

"That is correct under current law and jurisprudence/case law in the countries I'm familiar with."

Which, when you think about it, is all that really matters. And is why ElReg wrote the article ... it's an anomaly, and thus news.

"However, presumably his whole point is that the AI should now be considered as a legal entity."

Agreed. However, it would appear that his opinion is in the minority. For very, very small values of minority.

jake Silver badge

Re: Trademarks vs patents

"That sentence in the article puzzles me"

Why? It's just another datapoint in the same genre of the rest of the article.

"the article is about copyright (which in the US you have to apply for,"

Incorrect. Here in the US, copyright is automatically granted to the author of an original work.

jake Silver badge

Re: Who gets paid?

Perhaps he's built a robot[0] and is hoping to get it legally declared a human?

Why is the question.

[0[ A girl robot, of course. Mayhap I've just answered my question ...

jake Silver badge

Re: Waddaya mean ...

Arguably, the programmer parsing her code as she writes it means it has "run" long before it hits the hardware.

jake Silver badge

Waddaya mean ...

... "without the help of a human actor"?

Without a human programming the machine, the machine would have been inert and thus wouldn't have been able to produce the so-called "art".

FreeDOS puts out first new version in six years

jake Silver badge

Re: I only had a 286

I have an ancient 386 that runs DOS 5.0, 4DOS, QEMM ... and DesqView. With either Win3.0 or Win3.1 in a window. It'll happily run Lotus alongside Windows :-)

Other boot options are 4.2BSD, Coherent 4.1 or OS/2 1.2

jake Silver badge

Re: Multitasking DOS led to OS/2??

That wasn't actually an "instead", it was an "as well".

IBM has always had multiple OSes on the boil.

jake Silver badge

Re: Virus with your DOS sir?

If this were to become common, I'd agree with you. As it is, however, I rather think that this is one case where security by obscurity might be a help.

With that said, of all the freedos machines I'm aware of[0], not a one of them is hooked up to any network other than sneaker-net.

[0] Probably in the high hundreds, possibly over a thousand.

jake Silver badge

Re: "It installs to a FAT32 partition"

I'm fairly certain that all the Walnut Creek Slackware CDs allowed installing direct from the CD ... assuming, of course, that your CD drive was compatible with the bootable kernel on the CD. Many were not back then.

Disclaimer: I didn't work there, I was just a beta tester for them ...

jake Silver badge

Re: Does it work with Hyper-V? And if so, how?

So don't use a Hyper-V VM for things it's not designed for. Simples.

Although I've seen cordless drills used as hammers ...

jake Silver badge

Re: Virus with your DOS sir?

The world of PC viruses started long before ubiquitous networking was a thing.

jake Silver badge

I'm sure someone you know, somewhere, has an obsolete machine capable of running FreeDOS available to you for the low, low price of "Take that old pile of crap away!".

Note that it's not me calling a perfectly usable computer an old pile of crap ...

jake Silver badge

Re: single tasking ?

Note that you can still boot Linux into single-user mode (or other run-levels). Just be aware of what you are doing if you choose this option.

jake Silver badge

Re: I miss Norton Commander.

I still occasionally use Midnight Commander, a GPLv3 clone of the Norton offering, on my *nix systems. It's a useful tool, and a lot more powerful that it looks on first glance. Recommended.

N.B. Be VERY careful if you choose to run it as root ... it will do exactly what you tell it to do. Don't say I didn't warn you.

jake Silver badge

Re: RHIDE!

The editor used by RHIDE is called SETEDIT, and is available on SourceForge.

Obviously, it's at setedit.sourceforge.net ... but check your favorite repo if you don't feel like doing the quite minimal work to compile it for yourself.

jake Silver badge

Re: HP had DOS too

HP's OEM version of MS-DOS was customized to handle HP's non-standard Vectra hardware, begining with the first release of the Vectra line in 1989. Eventually HP saw sense (people wanted stuff like Flight SImulator and Lotus to run) and standardized their version of the hardware to run a generic DOS instead of their custom version. The proprietary HP hardware largely disappeared from the Vectra line by the time the 486 was ubiquitous.

If you have one of these ancient machines and want to play with it, but you've discovered DOS and early versions of Windows do not work properly, you'll need the correct software for the hardware. As is often the case for this old stuff, someone, in this case The HP Computer Museum, has archived the stuff. You can download most of the required software here.

Experimental WebAssembly port of LibreOffice released

jake Silver badge

Re: Impressive but useless

I wouldn't go as far as to say it's utterly useless. Presumably the folks who built it have learned quite a bit about the tools they have at their disposal.

Now if only they can keep it out of the hands of marketing/management ...

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