Posts by JSIM

Re: You would think by now...

Re: MAD non-magnetic construction. Can confirm this. Years ago they used the same brown stuff PCBs used to be made of for constructing various parts, especially structural parts.

Re: You missed a tagline there

Turn! Turn! Turn! is another, but I was focused on the cause, not the effect. I also went with a classic.

I like smoke and lightnin', Heavy metal thunder, Racing with the wind, And the feeling that I'm under

Yeah, Nauka, go and make it happen, Take the world in a love embrace, Fire all of your guns at once, And explode into space

* With apologies to John Kay, born in Tilsit, Russia.

Re: Gopher

"If you knew a few good gopher nodes"

gopher holes

Re: I must say I'm surprised....

Castors! Fitting, that it sounds like a cuss word. Never met one that didn't eventually cause me trouble.

While Google works on the latest design revisions of its custom-built racks, beefing up the castor specs, no doubt, they could do better.

If the racks have wheels, I assume that one design goal must be quick and easy physical swapping/removal/addition of fully loaded modular rack assemblies.

Ditch the castors for something like a custom-built roller jack to raise and move the custom-built rack. Two mating jacks, front and back, joined by lifting bars inserted through the rack. Foolproof quick connect fittings for all cabling, fibre, cooling. Solid footing. How about a super-rack system - like a rack for racks, maybe, while you're planning your next 1000-rack deployment?

Re: TU-144

I was quickly scanning through posts, stopping at the eye-catching "TU-144" in yours, and started to read it from its beginning.

By that time, my brain had already processed "TU-nnn", "Russian...copy" and the article context together, and provided its analysis: DEC TU series 1/2" tape drive, unknown model number. Possibly Russian-made to go with the VAX 11/780 they copied.

Re: Elon Musk was on hand to offer advice.

I can't criticize his personality based solely on the media reports and SM posts that do not lavish praise on his tremendous ambition, drive and achievements.

I can easily look past relatively unimportant things when it seems to me that Musk has rather quickly and successfully built a few now globally leading industries that are answering some of the most urgent needs of the future - extending our domain beyond the earth's atmosphere, and finding practical fossil-alternative ways to store and use electrical power. This path also hints at some real concern for mankind's future. Some would call that a noble quality. We could use a few dozen more like him.

With continued work and good fortune, in a few decades, I wouldn't be surprised to find Elon (or someone like him) commandeering asteroids and building artificial planets.

Re: Don't confuse the American people with the American government.

Not so fast. 50 percent of those "people" voted for the current state of disgrace, and probably will double down after their huge folly and do so again. Sorry, but the other half isn't doing nearly enough to restore the USA's once golden but now dead-and-buried international reputation. The USA IS its people. Government of the people, by the people, and for the people. They were taken in by the world's most successful confidence man, and now, everyone is constantly "winning". Well, there's a sucker born every minute, as it is said, and it seems that there is an enormous supply of them in America. It's a damned shame.

Re: Minty

Smells great when you go over it with the mower.

Re: What amazes me...

Yes, they're focusing on the breaking brownface news because they know people like you will lap it up. At least something on a slow news day and in a quiet election run-up, guaranteed to send Trudeau's haters into joyous convulsions. This minuscule "scandal", will be forgotten in a few days, and the 3 anti-Trudeau comentards here and their ilk will have left their usual dinners of nothing and nothing with an extra helping of nothing. Nothing to do except troll around IT forums spreading hate.

Re: Units

"we estimate the wind speeds are in the ballpark of 328 feet (100 meters) per second"

Last I checked, el reg is British, so FFS, why is it writing "meters" and not "metres"?

There's the right way and then there's the Merkin way.

Re: Took your time over this

Wednesday evening I first read about this, at the Guardian I think, and came here next. Couldn't find it. Been finding everything I've looked for here since around Y2K at least. No time to check every headline with the name Facebook in it and I was scanning for something like "Millions of Shocked Users Left Frantically Rubbing Smartphones as Social Media Heavyweight Falls Flat on Its Facebook - Ongoing Global Outage Knocks Out Services" or at least the word "outage."

What I overlooked was "What today links Gmail, Google Drive, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram - apart from being run by monopolistic personal data harvesters?"

My bad, but it just did not register. I'd seen news about Google's problems late Tuesday EST (again elsewhere and didn't find it here) and did not put 2 and 2 together to come up with a title that sounded like a quiz, so I really can't be hard on Jon Smit myself.

Anyway, I think I liked Jon's post better than kierenmccarthy's, even though he made a mistake. For myself, I could have used a link. When you're reading this at 150% (because eyes) with AdBlock, "on the right. Over here --->" is somewhere else, I don't know.

Re: Quality

I wonder how those re-purposed Kentucky coal miners would have done.

No, not really.

Re: Rodentia

"the evil ones"

That would be evil indeed.

Mouse balls ran over everything on the user's desk for months and years - dried sugary coffee cup rings, lunch remnants, dead skin particles, hair, all manner of dust and dirt - over time resulting in very sticky dirty balls and accumulations of the aforementioned filth behind the balls.

Mouse first-aid was always to remove the seizing ball, wash it with soap and water (never, God forbid, in your mouth - YUCK!), and replacing it after picking out the dust bunnies from inside the ball sockets. If that didn't fix it, it went into the bin. Balls would frequently be salvaged and kept as desktop novelty items (relatively heavy for their size - good for fidgeting) and were often used for fun and games to relieve boredom during night Ops shifts.

Re: Spaaaaaace Foooooorce!

Thanks! Never heard of SF before. Had to watch it through, it was so bad it was good.

Interesting: The bridge AI computer (D.O.R.C.) speaking with a German accent just like the Robin Williams voiced Dr. Know in Spielberg's AI. Coincidence?

Your reply: "Just a hunch."

What you were thinking: "I deal with morons every day."

Re: Hero ?

Can you simulate this? Marketing wants to know.

Well, big chiller/blower on top of the sim bay, big flexi-hose to the sim roof, integrated air ducting (nice whooshing noise) to the retracting-window-weather-injection system. Beefed-up pressurization. CO2 fog and maybe a little snow thrown in. Real oxygen masks. Barf bags.

Instructor's station completely sealed off, of course. Lexan.

Re: Men Vs Women

Yup. 0/0 for me too here in The Great White North. Don't see them, don't hear about them. Noone I know or have met wears them or talks about them. I don't even see any advertising. I don't need gyms to stay fit, so I don't know what goes on there. The wearables are yet another fad that I have no interest in, and it seems that I am not alone.

Maybe most people are still too busy getting over the novelty and thrill of playing children's video games and texting drivel back and forth with their smartphones in the subway (underground for you chaps) to pay any attention.

PS. Fitbit? Is that the part of me that never gets tired?

Re: "next generation of artists will come from. How will they survive?"

"Most people get paid once to do a day's work, they don't expect to get paid for that day's work over and over for 70 fsking years."

You make it sound like it's a terrible thing and Neil's fault that he created music that people still love and that he and others can still sell and make money from 50 years (not 70) later. Why should anyone else benefit from the fruits of his labour more than he himself? You are way off-base. You are quite correct though when you say that you don't know.