* Posts by jake

26584 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Jun 2007

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Experimental WebAssembly port of LibreOffice released

jake Silver badge

Re: Erm... no...

1) And the concept is flawed.

2) Shotgun shells will become so cheap, we'll all use them for swatting mosquitoes!

3) Theoretically, assuming infinite cache size that never gets flushed.

Yes, I'm thinking about how small MY resources are when compared to those of a multi-billion dollar global advertising company.

jake Silver badge

"It's by far the most efficient way to do it in a browser."

But hardly the most efficient way to do it. And it never will be, either. Not by a couple orders of magnitude.

jake Silver badge

Re: Erm... no...

""Can we do this" is the starting point for a lot of good things that less inquisitive folk would never find."

It's also the start of many a trip to the ER (A&E, CD, CW ... ). Or the Morgue.

"Can we?" should always be paired with "Should we?".

Cost/benefit analysis isn't just for Finance.

Can I jump The Strid? Hold my beer!

jake Silver badge

Re: 600/12/0

"No."

That was my initial reaction, too. Curiosity got the better of me.

As usual, my initial reaction seems to have been accurate.

That's another half an hour I'll never get back ...

jake Silver badge

Come to think of it ...

... WASM is a trademark name of another programming language. I wonder if this potential legal conflict has been taken care of.

I wonder where my T-shirt with WATFOR FOREVER emblazoned on it went ...

jake Silver badge

Re: As far back as the mid 1990's?

vi and EMACS can be WYSIWYG editors ... if your printer is a 1403 or a Selectric or a daisywheel (or the like), and you are the proud possessor of the correct display font.

jake Silver badge

"Also, need it be pointed out why WebAssembly exists as a thing? Look at efforts like PNaCl and asm.js to understand why all browsers have embraced it."

Because it's good at forcing advertising on people who have absolutely no interest in the product being advertised, all the while extracting as much personal information from that person as possible?

jake Silver badge

"An X server was the first use case I had for Windows? Is it still possible to get one?"

If you absolutely must inflict your poor little computer with the drek from Redmond, Cygwin/X comes to mind.

That's x.cygwin.com for those who prefer copy/paste to pointy-clicky.

jake Silver badge

Re: Single user vs Multi-user collaboration

"Paramount is the multi-user part, where documents are accessed simultaneously by the users."

Why in all the levels of hell known to the collective psyche of systems administrators world-wide would anyone want a clusterfuck like that for a common office suite? People can't/won't agree to something as simple as when to have a fucking meeting ... do you really think they'll agree on the final format of something as personal as a document or spreadsheet?

Beware of what you ask for ... tinkerers abound.

jake Silver badge

Re: Single user vs Multi-user collaboration

Good gawd/ess ... What on earth is your company doing that requires all that grief? Who invented it? Does it make money, or is it a sink?

jake Silver badge

Re: Got curious. Clicked the link.

It's just JSON self-immolating again.

jake Silver badge

Got curious. Clicked the link.

After several minutes of "Downloading/Compiling...", it failed with "TypeError: Body has already been consumed."

This is on bone-stock Slackware 14.2-stable ... might try it on Slack 15.0 tomorrow, if I can be arsed. Probably not.

Yes, I know what the error message means.

Privacy and computer security are too important to be left to political meddling

jake Silver badge

Re: "It went to court and the photographer won."

So getting your picture taken while you are in a public place is a privacy violation? If you're THAT paranoid, perhaps you shouldn't leave the house? I mean, my gawd/ess, somebody might recognize you while you are out and about! And THEN what would you do? Get them arrested so they can have their minds appropriately wiped?

jake Silver badge

Re: "It's unlikely that news agencies (print or broadcast)"

There are any number of tourist guidebooks with random street scenes from all over the world. These street scenes are often "holiday pics" taken by the author, and contain pictures of all number of people. I can guarantee that not many of those people, if any, has signed a piece of paper authorizing that use.

It would seem these supposed laws of yours are somewhat ineffectual.

jake Silver badge

Re: "that's only true if they're not in public"

Of all the evil things that alpha-goo does, why people chose to bitch about streetview images (which any untrained chimp could provide at the drop of a camera) is beyond me ...

Take a look at the image right across Downing Street from Number 10 ... it's blurred. WHY? Everybody (even this Yank in the Wilds of California!) knows it's #23, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

Here's a link to the goo-pic.

The mind absolutely boggles.

jake Silver badge

"Not the Fourth Amendment, but in the original text that ONLY gave the vote to significant landowners. Hmm..."

We were talking about the Fourth specifically. However, if you insist, the Magna Carta only gave rights to the barons, The US Constitution, as written, did not specify who was and was not allowed to vote. That little detail was left up to the individual states. Various amendments have, over time, limited State powers over who is, and is not, allowed to vote. See the 15th, 19th, 24th and 26th amendments.

"And the whole Three Fifths Compromise, too."

Repealed 'way back in 1868. No doubt you remember this happening vividly.

"What in the Bible were the Founding Fathers avoiding?"

The entire religion thing. But they weren't avoiding it, they were rejecting it outright.

"PS. If the Constitution really matters, why the push to enslave women to their wombs despite a little something called the Thirteenth Amendment?"

It's a control thing. Brainwashing is ugly both in progress and outcome.

jake Silver badge

Could you please show me exactly where in the Fourth Amendment "the elite" are given any advantage? For your edification, I'll include the 4th in its entirety here:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Note that provisions in both the Bible and the Magna Carta that favo(u)red the elite were two of the things the Founding Fathers were trying to get away from.

jake Silver badge

That particular bit of paper, with that particular bit of ink, has stood remarkably well so far. I rather suspect that it'll stand for a lot longer than I will.

jake Silver badge

Oh, horseshit.

The Fourth Amendment exists for a reason, regardless of what little fifedoms like the FTC have to say on the subject. As SCotUS put it, the fundamental purpose of the amendment as guaranteeing "the privacy, dignity and security of persons against certain arbitrary and invasive acts by officers of the Government, without regard to whether the government actor is investigating crime or performing another function".

jake Silver badge

You are incorrect on your assumption about the US.

jake Silver badge

Obligatory Reply

"what do I have to hide?!"

Might I point out that you don't have a plate glass exterior wall in your shower, and you do have drapes over the windows in your living room & bedroom ... and hopefully there is a door between your toilet and the rest of your house. What are you hiding? Are you a criminal?

While I'm on the subject, presumably you don't want me to have access to your banking, health and tax information, and you don't want me to be able to access your computer/phone from my computer/phone without your expressed consent, right?

Privacy isn't always covering something illegal.

Hello Slackware, our old friend: Veteran Linux distribution releases version 15.0 at last

jake Silver badge

Re: my first distro

Nobody in this thread has suggested it was. In fact, mine pointed out that compiling your own kernel was rather pointless, other than as a learning experience.

jake Silver badge

Re: So much praise for someting unavailable today

slackware.com and mirrors.slackware.com both work fine from here.

Try again?

Real-time software? How about real-time patching?

jake Silver badge

Re: The Compaq Portable is also rather sewingmachine-shaped.

I hate replying to myself, but I just realized ... the Bernina has more computer power than the Panasonic that started this thread.

jake Silver badge

Re: The Compaq Portable is also rather sewingmachine-shaped.

You don't cope buttonholes, silly, you slit them.

Mine's a Bernina, it does the slitting for me ...

Beware the big bang in the network room

jake Silver badge

Re: But did he learn the biggest lesson of all?

Actually, those particular locked doors are to keep Bosses from flipping switches ... To keep the rest of the riff-raff out, we put locks on the doors of the server room (data center, whatever). After many decades, here's my list of folks who don't belong in Corporate Data Centers:

Middle management.and higher (applies to management track folks only).

Any corporate bod with a non IT related Doctorate.

Most children of employees (there is nearly always an exception or two).

Tour groups.

Vendors.

Janitorial staff/cleaners.

jake Silver badge

Re: But did he learn the biggest lesson of all?

I have one lockpick that'll open virtually all of them.

Microsoft veteran demystifies Abort, Retry, Fail? DOS error

jake Silver badge

Re: because MS-DOS was "heavily inspired" by 70s CP/M

"There never was a MS-DOS version of 1.4"

I have a copy that is labeled 1.4. It was an OEM version that was built to run machine control software. Near as I can tell, it is essentially identical to DOS 1.25, but with a couple hardware specific hooks in the kernel.

There were many such odd-ball versions. The oldest I have claims to be the 0.96 Pilot build version of IBM PC-DOS on the hand-typed floppy label (internally it reports as version 1.0). I know it's real because it came from the actual pilot build IBM PCs that the company I was working for at the time was asked to help evaluate for IBM.

Likewise, my Bridgeport CNC came with what claims internally to be PC-DOS 3.26b, but to all intents and purposes is actually DOS 3.3 ...

jake Silver badge

The networking hooks for PC-DOS existed as of DOS 3.0 (August of '84), but they weren't actually functional until DOS 3.1 (April of '85).

There were aftermarket networking options before this, but for the most part nobody cared.

jake Silver badge

Re: NT Cluster Service

Except Ask Jeeves (1997 - 2006) wasn't really a thing quite yet when NT Cluster Server (1997 - present) was first being built.

jake Silver badge

Re: I love you Martin Truely.

I went to school with a girl who had the surname Truely. Her ignorant English teachers tried to tell her it was misspelled, despite the fact that she knew her genealogy going back several centuries.

jake Silver badge

Re: NT Cluster Service

Probably a corrupt font. Windows, for reasons only known to the architects, doesn't display fonts. It executes them. That's right, kiddies, truetype fonts are executables, in the .DLL format. A corrupted font file could (can?) cause a GPF. There were kernel-space exploits based on this.

jake Silver badge

All this angst, and for what?

C'mon, people! MS-DOS wasn't an actual operating system, it was just a glorified program loader. Why on Earth would you expect it to do OS-ish things?

Besides, we all knew what that error message meant in the early '80s ... it's not like DOS was difficult to take apart to see what made it tick.

Remember the late '80s/early '90s so-called "Undocumented DOS" books that were, basically, just re-writes of FAQs from Usenet?

jake Silver badge

Re: NT Cluster Service

It was very helpfully letting you know that things would be all better about a month after the Eternal September.

Make assistive driving safe: Eliminate pedestrians

jake Silver badge

I think you'll find that the California Roll as we know it is Canadian, invented in Vancouver. The California variation was a moving target, morphing around all over the place, until pretty much everybody agreed that Tojo's variation from BC, hand rolled with the rice on the outside, was "the one".

If you look, you'll also find that the "fake crab meat" is also not American, see "Surimi" for more info (besides, real California Rolls use king crab, not surimi).

I think you'll also find that it's not "hideous" at all. Plenty of people who enjoy sushi and sashimi also enjoy a California Roll occasionally.

But thank you for sharing your misconceptions and prejudices.

jake Silver badge

It's probably one of those yuppies who think bolting their feet to the pedals is somehow "cool" ... and wonder why the rest of us laugh at it when gravity wins and it lands on its ear.

jake Silver badge

Driving under the speed limit is legal, UNLESS your are blocking other traffic. Here in California, it's a moving violation. "Impeding the flow of traffic", to be precise. Ticket, court, points on driving record, insurance rates go up, etc.

Even if you are going 5-over and other traffic is stacking up behind you, you can get pulled over for the same thing. Note that in this case the cop could give you a ticket for both impeding and speeding ... but you'll probably only get the former.

Basically, the actual speed of the flow of traffic is not your decision to make, so if you are being a dick and forcing YOUR opinion on speed on everybody behind you, you can get cited.

My brother's father-in-law decided to enforce the local speed limits by driving at the speed he, personally, thought should be the limit (usually 5 to 10 MPH under the actual flow). He finally received so many tickets (and lost in court) that he no longer holds a valid driver's license.

Note that driving over the limit can also get you a ticket ... if you draw attention to yourself, especially. So don't be a dick, and don't drive like an idiot, and chances are you'll never talk to a cop. Simples.

jake Silver badge

No, no, no ... NeXTSTEP was a fairly decent OS that was later perverted into MacOS.

jake Silver badge

Re: A few minutes away

Except that minute is the length of time it takes to do something.

Don'tcha just love t'English?

jake Silver badge

Re: pedestrianism

Methinks Mr. Bryson was telling an entertaining tale rather than presenting an accurate travelogue.

jake Silver badge

Re: pedestrianism

As a Yank, I walk everywhere within reason. So does almost everybody I know.

jake Silver badge

Re: pedestrianism

I seriously doubt the Bering Strait crossing will be built within the lifetime of the walker. For lots of reasons ... some of them even make sense.

jake Silver badge

Re: pedestrianism

Don't confuse a single testimonial with reality for the whole. If you do, I doubt you'll even ever visit anywhere as far away as Hull. And that would be sad.

jake Silver badge

Re: pedestrianism

Oakland and Sacramento are, as you know very well, exceptions to the rule. Walking in the US is (in most places) not only considered quite normal socially, it is applauded as being the healthy exercise that it is.

jake Silver badge

Re: pedestrianism

Remember, that story is based on an incident that happened to Bradbury while walking on Wilshire Blvd. in Los Angeles during the height of McCarthyism. Paranoia was rampant during that era.

jake Silver badge

Re: pedestrianism

Some wealthy neighborhoods are like that, mostly due to paranoia of strangers. The vast majority of the US wouldn't even notice that he was there ... although I know some curtain-twitchers who would call the cops because he was smoking. Fortunately this kind of twat is rare.

In some neighborhoods, a stranger skulking around in the woods behind the houses would definitely get the cops called out ... although again, that is mostly paranoia raising its ugly head.

jake Silver badge

Re: pedestrianism

There is no Federal jaywalking law.

So-called "jaywalking" laws might be implemented at a local level, but in reality even if they exist they are usually ignored UNLESS the jaywalker is putting others at risk.

jake Silver badge

Re: pedestrianism

It should be noted that the USA as a country does not have any jaywalking laws.

Pedestrian regulations on the wheres, whens and hows of so-called "jaywalking" may, or may not be contained within an individual state or city's traffic laws. Many states have no such law, and said law, if it exists in any given town or city, is usually ignored by all and sundry, including law enforcement.

jake Silver badge

Re: pedestrianism

I walk pretty much everywhere, if it's under a couple miles or so. That's everywhere from extremely rural (over two hours, by road, from cold beer) to downtown in the largest cities in the US. I have never been in danger of being "hit in the head with a car". Not once.

jake Silver badge

Re: pedestrianisms

That would be very unusual ... but then I have known a dude who would fire up his car, hit the garage door opener, drive to the end of his driveway (perhaps 40 feet), roll down his car window to get the mail out of his mailbox, then reverse the procedure.

I pointed out that in his neighborhood the mailman would cheerfully deliver directly to his house, if he liked. He told me to not be so silly, he was perfectly capable of collecting his mail from the box out at the street.

Two weeks later, I noticed his street box was gone ... and there was a mail slot next to his front door.

Note that this is completely abnormal.

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