Posts by Terry Cloth

Really sad

I'm still using a Handspring Visor. It was the last PDA made with replaceable, over-the-counter (AAA) batteries. I carry a couple spares when I'm travelling, and the hell with finding an electric outlet I can hang around for a few hours. (And I can buy new ones in any place with pretensions to civilization.)

(And I have two or three more in my junk room, for spare screens or replacement.)

I am fairly confident there will be no more hijackings

Now that the public knows what's in store for any hijacked airplane, the passengers will tear any wannabe hijackers to shreds before they get to the front of the plane. (Ref. Flight 93.)

Or to most of the world, Mr. 1312

And to the computergentsia, Mr. 0x520.

Now _that's_ a conspiracy theory!

It must be something terrifying for the 0.000000000000000000001% of the global population to go to all this trouble for.

0.000000000000000000001% = [counts on fingers] 1e-21 people

x ~7e9 humans alive now = 1e-12 people

x ~1e12 cells/person = 7 cells.

I guess they've really gotta be the right 7 cells. Are they all in the same body?

Re: […] that the internet community would have free reign to decide […]

Oh, I dunno. Up until ICANN was spawned, the Internet community did indeed reign over DNS, IANA, &c. Didn't seem to do such a bad job, either.

Re: freeware?

I consider ``Free Software'' or ``open source'' to be a requirement to distinguish black boxes of unknown (and too easily malevolent) content from transparent boxes within which I can have a fighting chance of getting a known quantity. This distinction is not a ``GNU/Linux'' thing, but a real, non-philosophical, distinction necessary to protect my system.

It's not being ``ultra-specific'' to want to know whether you're being handed a box or dynamite or of nitroglycerine. One's a useful tool; the other's too likely to blow up in your face.

Pure invitation to over-enforcement

All enforcement fees should go into the general fund; the agencies should get their money through appropriations.

For any regulatory body (police, patent office, ICO, what have you) to get the money from its actions guarantees that in short order they'll be reading the law for profit, rather than justice.

Sales taxes are too complicated. Damn' straight.

In another life I was an IT consultant running my own company, and had to register with the state for sales-tax collection. I made it simple by only charging for my services, and any equipment needed I effectively had the client buy and pay tax for—thus no liability for me, and all kosher.

The real eye-opener was when they’d send me a monthly missive on changes to the tax. Tires taxed this year, but not next. Redefinitions of what was considered taxable clothing. “Clarifications” of changes they’d made earlier. This was a whole sheet of (pre-electronic) 8½"x11" paper each month. If you think any service could keep that straight for 45 states, plus counties and cities continuously, correctly, I have a pony for you.

I really pity anyone who’s a wholesaler, and has to keep track ot that morass. I suspect this is one of those situations where, if the state wanted do, it could audit anyone and nail them with a fine and penalties.

Why is no one mentioning the software?

As soon as I heard about the feathering extension, my first thought was software failure. The pilot unlocked feathering, but didn't activate it. Maybe the activation was triggered by Mach 0.95 forces the extension mechanism couldn't withstand, but that's a mechanical design with decades (centuries?) of mechanical-engineering experience behind it, and far less likely to fail than software.

As a software engineer I'm all too cognizant of the non-linear failures it's capable of. On my first job, designing embedded software to drive a new piece of hardware, I was all too aware that I needed to look closely at my code before I suggested the HW engineer might step in. In my decades of experience since, that never changed.

Google accuracy/desirability metric

Show of hands: How many of you have used ``I'm feeling lucky'' in the last month? In the last year?

It's been multiple years in my case, up until I simply quit using Google.

When they first came out, I was blown away by how good they were, and easily 1/4--1/2 the time, the Lucky button took me to what I wanted. If, as I suspect, its use has been dropping steadily (or even precipitately), that drop is directly related to the quality of their results. Too bad their usage hasn't dropped accordingly.

``[W]ho ... do you think you are to legislate ... the right to read my private ... emails?''

Her Majesty's government?

(I'd use a Joke Alert icon, but it's for real.)

Alternate grammar

True fact: when I read this comment, I thought a comma and a letter had been dropped:

[I]f you were drowning Messrs Gates and Ellison, I would throw you an anvil!

Fines for Microsoft---they're shaking in their boots

According to the first report I could come up with (USA Today), MS had some $78G in cash 18 months ago. They could pay a $250k/day fine for over 800 years (or probably forever, since that stash would yield $2.1k/day at 0.1% annual interest).

Of course, the judge could go with contempt of court and jail time for executives....

Can someone please release the source code for Multics?

I bet there's a lot in there to learn. On the other hand, the last backup was probably discarded in the '90s.