Posts by Bebu 2075 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Jun 2022
《of course nobody in IT knows a thing about DBs except installing them》
Plausible deniability again? No sane sysadmin is likely to admit any more than that (and most not quite totally demented ones too.) System and network administration present just so many opportunities to completely stuff up without the whole new dimension that rdbms add.
Rdbms that used raw disk partitions for their table space always seemed to me an accident waiting to happen. Some PFY seeing a "unused" partition thinks I can makefs that for my collection of ...
"it is much easier when you can see a whole page at close to full size."
Always wanted something like the large e-ink monitors (eg BOOX Mira pro 25"). Almost everything I do on a computer as against a tablet involves looking at text for quite long periods so e-ink works fine even for editing (vi) - even man pages render faster than they did on a decent dialup connection.
The thing which was still really a dream 30 years ago was handwritten text entry, snuck up on me. :) Fairly low priced android tablets supporting pen input are surprisingly good.
A4 (and larger) e-ink tablets with pen support are already a thing with colour e-ink on the way. It took more than 50+ years for Dick Tracy watch phones to be feasible, 20 odd years for Douglas Adam's Hitchhikers Guide (an e-reader with a single title ;) to be realized, so I expect realistic paper like displays with excellent handwriting input before the cataracts get me. ;)
"Except instead of using the eject button/switch/slidey thing, he used a set of forceps!!!!"
Breech presentation?
Sound like the pcmia card suffered terminal birth trauma.
I have only encountered "foxed" in this sense referring to books but I assume by extension and possibly understatement it is applied here. The medico was clearly foxed by the method required to eject the pcmia card. :)
《You meow at the wrong dog. That keyboard shortcut is part of the driver. Most well known Intel, until they removed that shortcut a few years ago. Not M$ to blame here!》
The poetic justice of punishing a persistent miscreant for a misdeed they *didn't* commit can partially compensate for the myriad they *did*.
If these nutters weren't occasionally, and often accidentally, capable of mass homicide they would be a joke.
"The Life of Brian"'s "People's Front of Judea" (PFJ) ["What have the Romans ever done for us?"] would appear to be better organized.
Application forms, social media posts, weekly reports and chemical weapon/explosives documentation - only a police background check and working with children clearance appear to be missing.
Suppose we should be grateful that this lot were standing in the queue for a second helping of stupidity when the cluestick was being swung.
《Google contends the EFF is just spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt. "We believe the safe use of data can improve user experiences,"》
To paraphrase the delightful Ms Rice-Davies "They would say that would they."
Perhaps big G actually meant the EFF is just spreading (well founded) fear, (understandable) uncertainty, and (reasonable) doubt.
My being able to definitively specify that Google is not to use my data would definitely improve my experience.
If one only really wanted a stable Unix/Posix kernel/userland system to build on the various enterprise linux distros are one option but another option might be a *BSD distro (FreeBSD has ~5 year support for major releases) or an IllumOS based distro (eg OpenIndiana.) I suspect the kernel internals and interfaces in the BSDs and IllumOS change far more slowly and with fewer breakages than might be the case with the Linux kernel.
As an example I was really impressed SmartOS (based on IllumOS) especially in that it supported *both* kvm and bhyve virtualization.
《... that most developers want to be at the cutting edge of development, be it for the glory of acknowledgment or simply the exciting challenge of the constantly-changing project.》
And these same developers often have chutzpah to call themselves software engineers when they frequently have little more common sense or focus than a kitten chasing a laser pointer.
《Who could possibly be tired of PowerPoint presentations and words like "synergy" and "leverage". They're the reason we get out of bed in the mornings, aren't they?》
Probably why I try to leave the latter until the afternoon :)
As the late Mrs Parker was reported to say in response to the doorbell ringing (and I suspect to the sunrise): "What fresh hell can this be?"
For me Teams, Zoom, Slack etc are the fiends of this fresh hell, Powerpoint having become a rather stale daemon.
《That rules out my plans for an anti-gravity drive based on a magnetically bound pot of antimatter. Now what am I going to do with it?》
So not Cavorite then.
Still a pot of say 1.0 kg of antihydrogen when "reacted" hydrogen very slowly should make a pretty decent rocket engine.
Slowly as 1kg x (300,000km/s)^2 an inconvenient number of Joules :)
Might solve a lot of problems :)
I imagine not much post mid-Victorian technology would survive. Steam locomotives. Pre 1980s motor vehicle could probably have the electricals replaced or repaired but anything with actual electronics would have to be backported :)
Undeniably tragic if all the Tesla EV batteries were to explode during such an event. Yes tragic... still...
Just about everything that has 'disrupted' life from the late 2000s would be kaput and much more besides.
Possibly the one situation where the 'preppers' have got a point. Still a mob of raving loonies imho.
The parts of the world where people live "off grid" because there never was any grid are likely to be least affected.
《Are these powered from the DC supply at the switch in the same way as POTS?》
If its anything like AU NBN it isn't. No power no network.
I have used a 4G/LTE connection which can run from a usb powerbank since ADSL was pulled. Really served its purpose quite a few times. A UPS would serve the same purpose especially if your broadband router and ISP supported a 4G/5G failover.
I thought faxes had actually died with voip. AU was possibly proprtionally the largest fax users back in the day but with the retirement of the copper POTS and mandated NBN (voip telephony) I assumed faxes had gone the way of the Norwegian Blue.
《Now if only doctor's offices would stop using fax.》
It may be the exception but our Drs get our imagining (X-rays, ultrasound, cat scans and mri) and pathology (lab) results via email and have for quite a while now. I suppose some places might use some sort of fax over Ip arrangement.
I quite liked faxes but some of the machines were peculiarly complicated and often mongrels to operate.
No. Not before Alphabet goes out of business - not in my time I would think.
I must have another go at getting Alpine to handle the Oauth2 part to do imap/tls with gmail.
Text MUAs must be easier for screen readers to handle. Alpine or Mutt. Others?
An alternative, I guess, is to forward the mail from gmail to a more friendly mail service. Possibly an opportunity for a mail sevice to receive the client's email, scan, process/decrappify (AI/ML?) it into a more accessible format.
Getting older and really noticing the optics are not what they used to be :(
《What they bought was a note on a blockchain (hopefully, that blockchain is still being mined and hasn't just evaporated) and that note said they now owned this copy of a URL》
I would have thought at least one or more crypto hash (eg sha256) or a signature of the gif file would be added to the blockchain entry. I have absolutely no idea how this nonsense was supposed to work but cleary didn't for the punters.
Musk's loyal disciples will be lining up.
Its all a John Lumic / Cybus Industries style conspiracy for Tesla to harness millions of human brains into a network intelligence to drive Teska's self driving cars so as not to T-bone locomotives or home in on emergency vehicle flashing lights. Based on my exposure to the Musk fanbase the raw material (brains) are sufficient defective to sabotage this cunning plan from the outset. It must be galling to be at best a third rate John Lumic ;)
The late Mrs David had some pithy comments, in a newpaper article reviewing a newly open pizza chain store in London, about what did and did not constitute a valid pizza which I would reproduce but the only online quote brings up a musky effing X. Barrington Bradman Bing McKenzie (Barry McKenzie) is fervently implored to insert either end of the pineapple into the X management.
I think ED only admitted (Mozzarella) cheese, black olives and anchovies.
"OSX came from NextStep which started with a Mach microkernel, didn't it?"
The Apple kernel is (open source) Darwin which always I understood more or less as a BSD 4.4 (FreeBSD) personality on top of a Mach microkernel.
Quoting from https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Darwin/Conceptual/KernelProgramming/About/About.html
"Up-to-date versions of the Mach 3 APIs that OS X provides are described in the Mach API reference in the kernel sources. The kernel sources can be found in the xnu project on http://kernel.macosforge.org/."
Would imply there is a fair bit of Mach 3 lurking in there. The DEC OSF/1 kernel had a similar genesis (from memory) but from Mach 2.5.
Not that Mach was directly related to RMS or MIT (was CMU) or to GNU other than the HURD kernel.
If we ostracised (cancelled) all the obnoxious pricks (dicks) in IT and computer science there would be sweet fanny left. Ditto for academia in general, politics and most other arenas.
《It's easier to bundle software as one, and have features unlocked as needed.》
My concern is that the unused/locked code is still there leaving a much larger potential target for exploitation.
If the code weren't there it couldn't be exploited.
Given the very low quality of embedded software generally and worse security this is a valid concern. This is undeniably the case for consumer devices but also arguably with business/industrial grade devices.
Bit like buying the same portable computer which is sold to the consumer and the military markets but with the thermite charge only enabled by a software key in the MIL spec device. :)
From the article's headline I would have suspected the BOFH but for the facts a) he was caught b) has a spouse. :)
《When I went to Warwick uni in the early 90s, one of our Maths profs wrote his own book for the course -- "Derek the differentiable dinosaur". It was available for about 5 quid which covered photocopyiong charges, or we were free to photocopy someone else's copy if we wanted to, since it was all public domain."》
In spite of my doubts this talented dinosaur was for real ( thinking 'arry the analytic armadillo :)
"Differentiating Functions of Lots of Variables: Starring Derek the Differentiable Dinosaur : Mathematics and Imagination", Bill Breckon, Warwick University Mathematics Department, 1982
https://books.google.com.au/books?id=548JzQEACAAJ
Unfortunately apparently no (electronic) copy of this slender volume is extant (even on those sites which may not be named :)
When I read this last musky thought bubble it brought to mind the long past days when visiting the conveniences (xitter) in more classy establishments there was a liveried attendant who would hand one a pristine hand towel to dry ones hands and on leaving one left silver (2/6?) coin on a white mat on a white plate.
Xitter is definitely not classy but extorting chump change from its users isn't going to improve that. Still the image of Musk in livery soliciting a few bob from those using his tawdry conveniences is priceless.
"Cinemas have shown adverts for as long as I can remember too. Last time I went, a good few years ago, there was about 15 minutes of ads, followed by 10 minutes of trailers before the film finally started."
With allocated seating you just turn up exactly 30 minute after the scheduled kick off and catch the start of the feature.(Most complexes have bars :)
After living opposite a cinema complex for a couple years and watching few movies this never failed. Also the theatres were mostly empty. I suspect the times are pretty fixed in order for the projectionist to tend all the theatres.
I reckon you are so cancelled that you were never born - no wishing about it. ;)
One would be treading where angels fear, in going within a light year of defining "woman" - you have half the alphabet and an arithmetical symbol on your case before the usual (very suspect) suspects pile on. I think J. J Rawlings got pretty much incinerated by this sort of nonsense.
Totally confused by field work as it pretty much _does not_ mean farm work in this neck of the woods but rather students' or trainees' practicum or research material collection etc.
Such ex communication quells debate and quashes dissent.
《I suppose we should be grateful that the Americans use volts rather than an archaic system of measurement.》
I can offer to any L.Pondians who don't wish to sully themselves with the cheese eating etc SI units:
foot-pound per imperial standard charge - which presume one might define as the charge on two 1ft×1ft parallel square plates in vacuo separated by 1in which exerts 1lb force :)
If non north americans are curious about their 120V/240V system I found this video https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jMmUoZh3Hq4 enlightening and in AU rather scary (when compared with AS/NZS 3000:2018 Amd 2:2021.)
《I believe along with the obligatory frog pills - this one is supposed to be taken with a touch of salt.》
I think I would prefer the Dean of the UU any day. Slightly more coherent... and the frog pills usually return him to some sense.
Appears if anyone has the temerity to question the actions or policies of the State of Israel, even, as here, obliquely, the US religous right (purportedly christian) and associated lunatics pop out of the woodwork spouting this sort of incoherent nonsense.
I read once: "Politics is the success of failures."
Not really seen much disconfirmatory evidence since.
The saw "a little knowledge is dangerous" probably applies doubly in this context.
Maybe restricting cabinet to those with Classics Tripos and whose only ability is to quote, inapplicable passages, from Homer or Virgil in the original greek or latin might, prevent much of ideological meddling that has bedevilled more than one nation.
I know Boris has the Oxford equivalent of the Tripos but only a second so probably got the quotes wrong and then only from Apuleius (asinus aureus :) and Catallus. I don't imagine anyone ever got much sense out of him.
I suspect the caller's unhappiness had more to do with the cost of his son's interest in les femmes déshabillées than the actual provision of the images of the same.
How NSFW could these images be without attracting the attention of the old bill? I suppose in the day Altavista wasn't as willing as Google &c is now to ante up such material (and I imagine much less hrmm... tasteful.)
Probably has a lot to do with the notorious prudery of the English - I can not imagine even at that time an eyebrow would have been raised in AU. Our second public broadcaster SBS used to televised on Friday nights a lot of Continental (EU) and Art films some of which could be an "education" in themselves.
This SBS was later responsible for my seeing "Madame Kovarian" sitting on a bed, starkers singing "Teddy Bears Picnic" to her companion in "Zed and Two Noughts" which was akin to "a paradigm shifting without a clutch.*" ;)
"F*&£ THAT"
The SGI and Sony branded 21+" monitors were a challenge. Fortunately the office chair seat's pneumatic lift could read the desk's height where these sods could be shimmied onto the chair. Lower chair's seat and push seat to destination and drop monitor from the chair onto some cardboard (for the sake of appearances) and "F*&£ THAT."
Sad to say buggered more office chairs than these monitors :( Most monitors were still working when the great scouring occurred which followed manglement's discovery that LCDs used less energy (and presumably had a lower TCO.)
The crt screen glass was quite pretty when faceted. My father used to try out the fancy new facets using this glass as it was freely available from the local refuse tip, was easy to cut and polish and had a decent refractive index. The tip workers used a decent length of reo rod to prod the tube into imploding.
Ditto for an old hp intel x86 chromebook. Reflashed the bios and have at various times installed win10, bsd, various linuxes without any problems. The battery always was rubbish so it never got any serious use.
For me the lower case key lettering was always weird although no one else ever seems to notice.
The only reason I would buy a chromebook now is if it had an unusual cpu eg risc-v but if the vendor locks it down there is not much point. More capable risc-v sbc are becoming more common and like a rpi4 / 8g are a better option.
Stuff of nightmares.
Won't even let Java near mine. Rather return technologically to the 1960s than let Larry &co near my PC.
I have a nasty feeling we are seeing a world that is very close to that hypothetical dystopia.
If Larry were offering a "spaceship to the future" it would be the Golgafrincham 'B' ark reassembled with a coat of whitewash slapped the cracks.
《Wait till you inhale burnt rice after our floormate tried cooking rice in a rice cooker. Parents didn't include the other vital ingredient as well as rice.
Water》
A classic. Gen Mai Char? ;)
Half a clue wouldn't go amiss either.
In these parts, parent used to hand their offspring embarking on life's adventure a copy of The Commonsense Cookbook. I still had my 1970s edition until a few years ago but I had by then been seduced by Elizabeth David and even had a copy of the slightly obscure Culinary Jottings. :)
Immediately brought to mind how Angel Islington in Gaiman's Neverwhere was disposed of by Door (?).
The other side of the Universe I think would a good start. The eternal umpire would have pulled up stumps by the time either Islington or Xitler got back.
"spend more meaningful time together." -- "setting the tone" -- "...we must be better stewards of getting into the office,"
Deserves a trip to the basement (FSB) or carpark (BOFH) in my book.
When has productivity coming off a non-zero base ever been tripled... anywhere? Even the most dunderheaded management has ever been able to suppress productivity to that extent ... that would require incredible creativity.
If empty buildings are worrying then turn the lights off and grow mushrooms which metaphorically I guess they are.
《What it lacks is the kind of experience that comes with having a body and living in reality.》
A good point. How does one fully define "pain" to a piece of software - for a human a bloody good whack will do it. :)
More seriously pain and more importantly its perception or experience is quite complicated. Ticklishness might be interesting - heaven only knows what these systems make of "tickle your fancy."
Humour in its many forms defeats a good many humans so I imagine a fairly bleak machine interpretation of "black humour" or even the notorious English dry humour which confounds more than a few septics.
The question of reality (which according to physicists ain't what it used to be :) is probably more of a challenge. We take a lot of the world we live in for granted but the whole humungous body of science is just our mere scratching at the surface of that world. I assume we exist at relative ease in such a complicated world partly because we are a product of it.
The bar graph in the article from top to bottom is pretty good rank ordering of least to most useful. Hard to imagine what use a plumber would have for AI - a 1/2" shifter is much more useful tool (can even re-adjust attitude.:)
Some of the categories are a mixed lot - I suspect we could do better with fewer architects but with more engineers.
Poets like most callings (vocations), are usually fairly safe from the hazard of making a decent living so the risk of being replaced by a machine is infinitesmal. A professional Vogon poet "does not compute."
In AU we probably avoided this type of american general fuckedness when we said NO to the "Australia Card" back in the '80s (I think.) Its also illegal for your AU tax office (ATO) tax file number (TFN) to be used (recorded) in this manner.
Drivers licence numbers have been/are used in this manner which unfortunately in AU states where that number cannot be changed (WA) the same grief follows any of the many data breaches AU has endured. AU organisations implement "world best practice" in the crappiness of their data protection. (Transl. World = US, Best = superlat. Worse)
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