* Posts by HereIAmJH

455 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Aug 2010

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Google confirms Gulf of Mexico renamed to appease Trump – but only in the US

HereIAmJH Silver badge

Gulf of Male Fragility

Well, it is bordered by the nation's wang. Maybe we could do like Dubai and build some artificial islands. Stretch Florida down to the Bahamas and gain some length. Too bad our Cuba relations are so bad, we could go that direction and then to Haiti/DR and Puerto Rico and really be impressive. Bigly even.

HereIAmJH Silver badge

No he can't, the US has a little thing called the Constitution.

Come back in 4 years and tell me if we still have a Constitution.

So far Congress does not seem willing to stand up for the rule of law but the judges most certainly are.

Look up the term Constitutional Crisis. What happens if the Trump Administration just decides to ignore the Judiciary? At least until it gets to his pet Supreme Court. The US Marshalls are the Court's enforcement officers. And they are part of the DOJ. Which master do they serve? Google "what happens if trump ignores the courts", the results aren't comforting. It doesn't appear the framers of the Constitution considered what would happen when two branches of the government acted unethically.

HereIAmJH Silver badge

Re: Jesus is depicted as looking like ...

There are two versions of the Bible. One is the Old Testament.

There hasn't been a new edition in over 2000 years.... They're almost as bad as George R. R. Martin and The Winds of Winter.

The biggest microcode attack in our history is underway

HereIAmJH Silver badge

The Reg is British????

It's really sad to see what The Register has become these days. It was once a superb tech news site for British IT professionals.

TheReg hasn't been exclusively British for a very long time. Tell me, what has Paris Hilton ever had to do with IT. Other than being drooled over by horny computer geeks. I have been coming here for decades and I wouldn't waste my time on a British only tabloid. Couldn't care less about your ex-pat royals either. While I would prefer a little less politics and a lot more new tech news, these are the articles that are getting the views. And here we are. I will say this article made such a hard turn my neck hurts. And I still don't know if microcode is going to be a serious threat in the future.

Maybe it's just the Internet out to destroy our lives in new ways. I remember refusing to buy new gaming systems when they introduced hard drives. At the time I said "this will just encourage companies to release half finished games because they can freely distribute bug fixes". I knew it would be bad for consumers, and I never thought about DLC or micropayments. If you ever feel like a slave to your technology due to spending so much time updating them, maybe it's the Internet's fault.

And while I don't care for American politics, I'd take Trump,

If you'd like Trump and his buddy Elmo, feel free to come collect them. I'd even buy you a Koffee, or contribute to a GoFundMe, if it would expedite the pickup.

Alternatively, please take good care of Belize. It's the only Central American country where English is the official language. And I may need to immigrate to a country where it's cheaper to live and has healthcare. If we keep going with the tariffs, inflation is going to go up faster than a Musky rocket.

Musk’s DOGE ship gets ‘full’ access to Treasury payment system, sinks USAID

HereIAmJH Silver badge

Down votes

Down voted by my stalker bot within 15 mins

Look at it this way; if you never get downvotes you are either in an echo chamber or no one is reading your posts.

HereIAmJH Silver badge

IRS

Most Americans' experience of how bad things have gotten is through the gestapo department known as the IRS, an out-of-control body that is a law unto itself.

I don't personally know anyone who has had trouble with the IRS. But most of my life I have associated with middle class people. Those of us who work W2 jobs where employers deduct payroll taxes from every paycheck. (Most of the non-1% pay the bulk of our federal taxes through payroll taxes) For me personally, the worst year I had was 2011 as the result of drawing unemployment during Bush Jr's recession. Unemployment benefits are taxable and most states don't withhold payroll taxes. That can make filing the next year a little unpleasant. Even when I was young, naïve, and skipped filing a couple years because my refund was so small. The only thing IRS did was told me to go back and file those prior years. And if I owed any taxes, there would be a penalty and interest.

On a similar note, if you've got a tax return coming this year, better get your Federal filed ASAP while they are still making payments. No government services are guaranteed any longer. And if Elmo fucks up the payment system the US's credit rating will get downgraded. (that means the cost of the debt will increase, making it necessary to cut more programs or run a higher deficit) Trump and Elmo both have a tendency to just not pay the little people when it suits them.

Ontario responds to Trump tariff by pitching Starlink deal into the trash

HereIAmJH Silver badge

Re: beverages

It would make sense for Canada to require that SpaceX has a Canadian registered operating company located within Canada and maybe even in each province as well to be able to provide services to entities in Canada.

I think they should continue to cancel the contract, if a Canadian company can provide the service, just to show that actions have consequences. Chaos is the purpose of the tariff announcements. If they were simply a tool to force opponents to the bargaining table there would be no need to announce them until negotiations failed. The same with pulling the liquor out of stores. Just let the shelves sit empty for a week before putting things back.

Tesla's numbers disappoint again ... and the crowd goes wild ... again

HereIAmJH Silver badge

FSD

Musk's AI would probably lead the rest if he would swallow his stupid pride and put LIDAR or something similar on the car.

It was a gamble to keep production costs down. If it's just using machine vision they can simply do software updates to improve it's capability. If they had progressively added different sensors as the product matured and limitations were identified, they'd have to go back and upgrade all those cars that were pre-sold with FSD. To a degree they rolled the dice and lost anyway, since they have to upgrade the FSDv3 computers to FSDv4 computers. It wouldn't be surprising if they coded themselves into a corner trying to avoid retrofits, and end up spending more to trying to work around vision limitations. I wonder what happens to the people whose cars reach end-of-life before FSD is complete?

HereIAmJH Silver badge

Re: Them against us. Blindly follow the leader.

Only if they can figure out how to make it roll coal.

HereIAmJH Silver badge

Re: an alleged Nazi salute

He's rich mostly because his share of Tesla is so valuable, and (by market standards) that's quite out of proportion to its actual profit-generating ability.

Tesla stock is incredibly over valued. The market cap is higher than Ford, GM, and Toyota combined. And it produces fewer vehicles than any of them. Tesla had a 12.3% market share in 2023. For comparison, Tesla sold less than twice as many cars as Subaru.

Tesla's market cap is 20 times it's book value, which means that IF it was debt free, stockholders own 5 cents on the dollar.

Trump eyes up to 100% tariffs on foreign semiconductors, TSMC in crosshairs

HereIAmJH Silver badge

Re: Elections

Deporting Haitan murderers does not need "dignity"

Every human being deserves dignity. Even if you're escorting them to their execution. And note that the 8th amendment of our Constitution specifically prohibits cruel punishments.

I'm not sure what Haitian murderers has to do with this. Most people deported aren't even charged with a crime. Unlike our felon President.

And I don't see how offering a solution early in the conflict is backing down.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/29/americas/colombia-migrants-deportations-trump-intl-latam/index.html

But OK, Big Bad Trump made a small country pay for the flights to deport their citizens.

HereIAmJH Silver badge

Re: increasing self-sufficiency

We won't be wealthier. But the upper 1% will be. They make money when money changes hands. Bezos doesn't care about trade deficits. He makes money off of every item sold on Amazon regardless of origin. Their concern is with stock value, inflation, and the devaluation of the US Dollar.

HereIAmJH Silver badge

Re: Elections

Jump on the Trump train, pledge absolute fealty, and you re-election will be smooth as can be.

That is only if Trump can maintain his approval rating. Granted, MAGA, and Republicans in general are really good at turning out the vote. Here in the Bible Belt there is heavy indoctrination in the churches and rural communities. But a large voting block in red states are the suburban families. As long as you keep them fat and happy they will vote Republican. But if Soccer Mom can't afford to buy gas for their SUV to drive the kids to games and McDonalds, they could lose those voters. So Trump may not be needing them to get re-elected, but the GOP certainly does. As his policies systematically attack their bank accounts, the GOP will have trouble when they can no longer blame Biden. It doesn't matter how many billionaires he has funding campaigns if those people will not vote Republican.

HereIAmJH Silver badge

Re: Elections

The Columbians tried to call his bluff, but in that particular instance it was so one-sided in the US's favour that they didn't have a chance.

The planes were turned back Sunday morning, and Sunday the Colombian president offered civilian aircraft to bring his people home with dignity. It's a regular occurrence for the US to deport people to Colombia. Something like two planes per week. What pissed off the Colombian president was the use of military aircraft this time. And frankly, with Trump's sabre rattling I can't say that I blame them for refusing US military aircraft of any kind. The US has been known to invade their Caribbean and Central American neighbors. (not even counting CIA operations)

So by the time Trump threatened tariffs, there was already a solution offered. But that didn't soothe his ego. He needed to declare victory and make it look like Colombia backed down.

BTW, note that it's Colombia, not Columbia. Unless you're planning to change the maps of South America too.

HereIAmJH Silver badge

Re: Broken clock, right twice a day?

On the other hand, with Donald in office, any new pharmaceutical manufacturer will have every waiver to get their factory built that they could possibly think to ask for. Where they would have been ham-strung in the past on environmental, employment, employee, union, compliance, licensing, and every other type of government tape, they're likely to have all of that waived with the wave of a presidential hand.

We could go back to the era before the EPA, when rivers caught on fire. Burning rivers are SO PRETTY. Do a little union busting, and before long we can have those 12 hr, 6 day a week jobs back. You'll be living in dorms on the company's property, that'll save a lot of wasted commuting time that you could be working. OHSA is such a nuisance. Suck it up, buttercup and get back on that assembly line.

In the rush to stop buying stuff from China, you want to become China?

HereIAmJH Silver badge

Elections

Trump isn't who needs to be concerned, it's the Republicans in Congress that will be worried. Trump is term limited, assuming we don't have another Jan 6. But every member of the House is up for election in 2026, and a third of the Senators too.

They made a big deal out of the price of eggs being a deciding factor this election. Something the President has no control over (bird flu). And it took Biden too long to clean up Trump's last economic mess, and didn't bring down inflation soon enough. But last week we narrowly avoided a steep increase in coffee prices because this administration can't be civil to people and fly them out on non-military aircraft without handcuffs. They probably would have used cattle trailers, if there was an airplane equivalent, because demeaning people makes them feel important.

All electronics, all cars, and all durable goods have semiconductors in them. The CPI will take a huge jump like it's the second coming of COVID. Assuming we don't have a second coming of COVID, or something similar, with the unfettered destruction of health agencies in the US.

So maybe some pain is a good thing. Tariffs could push us back into the recession that he created last term; eggs, coffee, iPhones will all become too expensive for the masses. And it will be the death knell for the Republican party. Tell all those enablers "you're fired", and we can talk about a proper impeachment. Why let the record stand at only twice.

Silk Road's Dread Pirate Roberts walks free as Trump pardons dark web kingpin

HereIAmJH Silver badge

Re: Pam Bondi - Attorney General

If you're being pedantic, no. Several were convicted of Seditious Conspiracy.

American Heritage definition of Sedition:

1. Conduct or language inciting rebellion against the authority of a state.

2. Insurrection; rebellion.

3. The raising of commotion in a state, not amounting to insurrection; conduct tending to treason, but without an overt act; excitement of discontent against the government, or of resistance to lawful authority.

So keep on telling yourself it was a 'day of love', if it makes you feel better.

HereIAmJH Silver badge

Commute vs Pardon

If the original sentence was too harsh, he could have commuted the sentence. That would have released him from prison while leaving the convictions intact.

And example is Leonard Peltier. Biden didn't pardon him, he commuted his sentence to house arrest. After he had served 50 years. At 80 years old, I doubt he is much of a threat to society any longer.

My suspicion is Don Jr is running low on coke.

HereIAmJH Silver badge

Re: re: Bitcoin, plus

I just wonder how happy the US law enforcement community is with their new president.

I'm surprised the Capitol Police hasn't seen mass resignations. I wonder how difficult recruitment is going to be in the future. And, if there is another attack on the Capitol, will they just stand aside and watch? The pardons made it a whole lot more dangerous to be in Congress.

This is how Elon's Department of Government Efficiency will work – overwriting the US Digital Service

HereIAmJH Silver badge

Re: So how long before Musk announces

They won't be looking to modernize the IRS. They are perfectly happy with the loopholes that allow them to avoid paying taxes.

HereIAmJH Silver badge

Re: While I'm asking questions ...

A lot of US spending has been pushed along by a fear of the Russians having something that it turns out years later they didn't. In present times is as much the Chinese as the Russians.

We have always been at war with Eastasia.

HereIAmJH Silver badge

Re: So how long before Musk announces

"When confronted with a problem you don't understand, do the part you do understand and look at it again" ~Prof. Bernardo De La Paz

I only wish I had been taught that in school.

Along the same lines as "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time."

Any of us who have been in IT for a while has seen big projects go down in flames. It generally starts with a death march to release date. Followed by a catastrophic launch. Then limps into a qualified success as deliverables are redefined. And finally, key players moving on to new jobs while the grunts clean up the mess.

But there is no way to upgrade the IT systems of the entire US government in 4 years. These guys will be long gone with fat wallets before accountability catches up. If you are into conspiracies, you might think that they are setting huge goals for a reason.

HereIAmJH Silver badge

Smaller government

Historically, the idea of "small government" babbled by the Repooplicans is just bullshit and lies they feed the public to buy their vote,

Smaller government is a misunderstanding by the voting public that is encouraged by the GOP. It's not about efficiency or saving money. It's about redirecting tax money to private corporations. Voters ALWAYS want more services for their tax dollars. (better yet, someone else's tax dollars)

Ex. rather than letting the army's trained staff handle the mess halls in Iraq, they outsourced it to private companies that did stupid stuff in the name of profits. (concentrating large groups of soldiers in a single location at the same time, rather than staggering meals throughout the day, because it was cheaper. Or failing to build proper water treatment facilities so that soldiers always had clean drinking water and didn't get electrocuted in the showers)

HereIAmJH Silver badge

Re: While I'm asking questions ...

Plus some of the MIC (new TLA?) companies have been making a killing due to the Vlad the Invader's war on Ukraine. Just to be clear I fully approve of the aid to Ukraine unlike the new administration.

Supporting Ukraine makes perfect sense, so of course the new administration wouldn't agree with it.

1. we flushed out all the old equipment and ammunition from our stockpiles and replaced it with shiny new stuff.

2. we got to see how older generation equipment worked against Russia's 1st line military equipment and strategies. (not some proxy country)

3. we got to encourage Ukraine to try out military strategies against one of our primary opponents.

4. we gained a lot of knowledge on new strategies from outside our military's echo chamber. (COTS drones, for example)

Not a single US soldier has been put at risk. We got the deal of the century to do the right thing.

HereIAmJH Silver badge

Re: While I'm asking questions ...

mainly due to high interest rates (that I believe started after it was privatized) which has some people attempting to pay the loan off 20 years after it was made and still not having made any real progress on the principle

When I had student loans in the 90s, they were on a 30 year repayment schedule and over 7%. (down from 8.25% due to a one time refinance option)

While I can sympathize with the rising cost of education and the indoctrination of the parents that their precious little snowflakes MUST have a college degree, the terms were explained to them in advance and previous generations fought the same issues. If you entered the job market in the Reagan years, you know that the difficulty of finding a good paying job isn't a new thing.

HereIAmJH Silver badge

Re: Giga

Because it's so much better to put your data outside your secure environment on AWS, Azure, Oracle, where you don't have control of the border security, network configuration, or host system. Requiring all of your data requests to exit your secure environment and transit the Internet.

The USG would require multiple datacenters for redundancy. (fortunately they already own 1000s). And surely if they are competent enough to set up cloud architecture, they would be able to segregate tenant space. Not to mention the USG has many data classifications and storage of those would require segregation.

The USG is the largest cloud customer for any provider. They have the $$$ to buy the equipment and hire the personnel to do the job properly. Expertise would not be a problem. Centralizing would improve compliance with a coherent, standardized security posture. The risks are all political because big companies would lose a lot of revenue. Bezos and his peers need more yachts.

And speaking of numerous servers getting hacked, see Salt Typhoon.

HereIAmJH Silver badge

Re: While I'm asking questions ...

I don't think he has done anything (officially) other than rename the agency. He would have considerable latitude though in interpreting how the agency performs it's mission. Technically the Congress is the only one with authority to allocate money, but as we saw from his last term the Whitehouse has access to a considerable slush fund for pet projects. It's not like they are being tasked to build a wall.

And Elmo's DOGE would still be separate. I suspect any position he would accept would be high enough to require Congressional approval. And who knows if he can pass a drug test.

HereIAmJH Silver badge

Giga

Could they license Elmo (from Sesame Street) to use as their mascot?

Now, how long before we start naming government facilities GIGA-<something>?

Although there is one bit of efficiency I would support. Get the US government out of the fucking public cloud. There is no reason an organization the size of pretty much every federal agency shouldn't be hosting their own cloud. How about this, USDS could build a huge cloud datacenter, 100 percent operated by Federal employees, and provide cloud services for the rest of the US Federal government. (just as long as they don't call it US GigaCloud)

Anduril picks Ohio for 5 million square foot autonomous weapon factory

HereIAmJH Silver badge

Re: Security

I'm slightly less concerned after I read that they will employ 4000. I read 'autonomous weapon factory' in a completely different way.

Somehow I feel better about autonomous-robots-with-guns than autonomous-robots-making-guns.

Shove your office mandates, people still prefer working from home

HereIAmJH Silver badge

Re: Just a thought

That depends on what your expertise is.

It really depends on what your employer feels they need. Do they need someone with 30 years of experience? And it depends on how technically competent the decision makers are. I have seen large corporations go through waves of layoffs, losing all the people with intimate knowledge of how the company works. And then hiring fresh people to replace them.

I've seen companies lay off developers working with language X and then hire people using language Y. The decision makers don't necessarily understand that the knowledge of their business is more valuable than the specific technical expertise of their staff. Imagine a business 'going open source' letting all their C# developers go and hiring Java developers. And then wondering why projects never meet user's expectations regarding business use cases.

Now Trump's import tariffs could raise the cost of a laptop for Americans by 68%

HereIAmJH Silver badge

Re: Replacing Imports

FILE_ID.DIZ

First the OS/2 story, now this. The Reg is making me feel really old this week.

HereIAmJH Silver badge

Re: predicted the price of laptops and tablets would rise 45 percent for American buyers

Trump can be expected to poison international trade, so that US allies are bullied into buying the US manufactured product over the cheaper and better non-US version.

Which allies would those be? Canada, Mexico, Denmark? If the US doesn't honor trade agreements, why bother dealing with us at all?

Top 5 US trading partners in November 2024

1 Mexico

2 Canada

3 China

4 Germany

5 Japan

https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/highlights/topcm.html

HereIAmJH Silver badge

Tax Cut

Everyone got a tax cut under Trump, the middle class got the highest % of a cut!

Not everyone. I received more per check, because they changed the withholding tables to make it look like you were getting more. But my tax return was decimated (literally). I lost some important deductions that far exceeded the increase in standard deduction as well. And I live in a Red state, not a high SALT one. An additional factor to this is my charitable contributions dropped dramatically, because I can't claim them without itemizing, and I no longer have the deductions to itemize. I estimate a 1 to 2% pay cut due to the 'tax cuts'.

I'll also note that after receiving part of the first COVID stimulus payment, I earned too much for any subsequent ones.

But I'll sure get to pay my part of the massive debt generated by GOP administrations. Taken directly from my Social Security checks.

HereIAmJH Silver badge

Re: Replacing Imports

States are starting to block Chinese purchases of farm land. But that won't stop other countries from buying it. More likely corporations will buy up all the small farms as they fail, as they have been doing for decades, giving them more pricing power. The large corporations will get subsidized by the Federal Gov't as 'too big to fail'.

HereIAmJH Silver badge

Re: Replacing Imports

I'd question the legality of using prisoners extensively for labor. But that isn't the reason chain gangs went away. They compete with private businesses and that is where the money is.

The majority of the undocumented won't be available to work. Some won't be capable, most will be expelled as quickly as possible due to the cost of housing and feeding them. It would cost more to arrest them and use them for labor than it would to just leave them alone and let the employers exploit them.

HereIAmJH Silver badge

Replacing Imports

The US imports over 330 billion dollars worth of stuff a month, peaking at 352 billion last September before dropping off slightly. Good luck replacing all that

There won't be any replacements. For the most part they won't be necessary, due to lack of demand. First we'll see hyper-inflation on anything with any imported content. You'll get some additional me-too inflation as big businesses never miss an opportunity to increase revenue. (IE domestic competitors will raise prices too, because they can) The economy will slow and jobs will decrease, increasing the pressure on household budgets. The only bright star for families will be prices for domestically produced food will drop, because farmers can't export due to retaliatory tariffs. That will be temporary though, because farming has tight margins and many farmers will go bankrupt, lowering supply in future years causing food prices to rebound.

But, even if we could gear up quickly to manufacture all the stuff we import, NOBODY wants to work a minimum wage manufacturing job. That is the only way you get close to price parity. Even then, it will require a lot of automation and robotics in the plants and huge $$ investments for all the shiny new equipment. In walks Dubai and Saudi Arabia and all our new domestic manufacturing will be owned by foreign investors.

Wrap it in the flag and put a 'Made in USA' sticker on it, that will solve everything.

HereIAmJH Silver badge

Re: Even assembly in the US doesn't mean no tariff

So he'll do just a little bit so he can claim "promise kept" like he claimed he "built the wall" when he built like 20 miles worth out of a 2000 mile border.

And Mexico paid for it? He won't even go that far, he'll just say the 'deep state' kept him from doing anything. Most of the things he ran on this time, he was going to fix last time. Drain the Swamp, build The Wall, solve illegal immigration. He achieved none of them, but it was always someone else's fault.

What he will do is carve out exceptions for industries that 'contribute' to him. Then complain about 'Deep State' or Libs blocking his plans. Or throw out another conspiracy squirrel to distract the weak minded so they forget about tariff promises.

Zuck takes a page from Musk: Meta dumps fact-checkers, loosens speech restrictions

HereIAmJH Silver badge
Joke

Re: We need more Bluesky thinking

Mastodon on the other hand provides all the things Bluesky promise they will one day.

Does it have cat pictures? And racoons?

HereIAmJH Silver badge

Re: Trump isn't president of the rest of the world

If I start getting that back I'm gone for good.

So now would be a good time for a Facebook/Instagram rival to go viral. Like BlueSky and Mastodon did with Xitter.

Frankly, if Facebook Marketplace traffic would go back to craigslist, nothing about FB would interest me at all.

How the OS/2 flop went on to shape modern software

HereIAmJH Silver badge

Re: BBS

I gave up my BBS mid 90s partly due to y2k. But mostly due to Fidonet dying. Usenet just wasn't the same, and Fido Echomail via Usenet was a bitch to moderate.

There used to be a protocol stack for OS/2 that allowed people to connect to your BBS via TCP/IP. It looked like a modem to your BBS software. At the time you needed a static IP, but now you could use dynamic DNS. Local software was the same DOS BBS/Mailer that we ran since the late 80s. By that point though I wasn't hosting any longer, I just ran a private node and pulled the Fido groups that interested me.

HereIAmJH Silver badge

Re: I agree to some extent, but still think a lot of it is about memory

Running 'only DOS apps' is hardly using OS/2! You might as well have used Desqview or Desqview/X instead..

Running DOS apps under OS/2 was better than Desqview. Multitasking was better and you didn't get screen bleed through if a background task wrote to the screen buffer directly. A lot of DOS apps were not Desqview friendly. It has been 30 years, so I don't remember how we changed our apps to display graphics safely under Desqview.

One of the things people used to do to show off OS/2 was to start a floppy format and then change apps and show that everything hummed along nicely. With Desqview that brought all of the other tasks to a grinding halt until it completed.

OS/2 was particularly nice for BBS operators that ran multiple nodes or wanted to be able to use their computer without bringing down the BBS.

HereIAmJH Silver badge

Re: Developers! Developers! Developers!

> Dumb, because why would developers now bother to write a separate OS/2 version

I disagree.

People said the same about WINE 25 years ago. If Linux could run Windows apps there'd be no market for native ones.

This was an argument that we had in the 90s. IBM had to be aware of it. Many did their best to support vendors that released native apps, but most often we were told to just use their Windows version because they weren't going to port. I probably still have Stardock's OS/2 Essentials and Galactic Civilization around here somewhere. Virtual Pascal too.

The reason Linux businesses have survived is because it wasn't pushed as an alternative to run Windows apps via WINE. Native 'Free' software is what has driven Linux. People simply aren't running Windows apps there. But who knows, maybe 2025 is the year of the Linux Desktop.

HereIAmJH Silver badge

PC Networking

Windows networking was based on LanMan, which came from IBM and was included in OS/2. (I think you needed an OS/2 Enterprise Edition) You were still locked in, you paid for it in client licenses on your server. Didn't matter if your server was LanMan, Netware, or something else. I don't remember any of them offering peer-to-peer sharing, like we have now.

NetBios, NetBuei, AppleTalk, IPX, all of it was a mess at the time. I found NetWare 3.x to be the easiest to set up on all the OSes. DECNet seemed fairly problem free, as long you didn't mind spending $250 for NICs and a license. We basically used it so we could run terminal apps on PCs to log into our Vax cluster. As long as no one kicked their cable loose and killed everyone's network on the string.

Winsock and the Internet moved us into TCP/IP as the standard. (Which was also available for Win95, via Trumpet)

HereIAmJH Silver badge

BBS

(Bulletin Board Service)

Bulletin Board System

If you were a Service, then you were commercial in the eyes of your local Bell mafia and needed to pay triple the price for your telephone lines.

Our local group negotiated with our Baby Bell that a BBS utilizing 4 or fewer lines and not charging a membership could continue to pay residential rates.

HereIAmJH Silver badge

Cost

Overall cost was a big issue for small businesses and home use. OS/2 Warp v3 launched big, and a lot of people tried it. Sure you could get DOS/Windows for 'free' on a new Compaq or IBM, but a lot of people were building compatibles at the time. Because Compaq and IBM were expensive. IBM forced higher costs into OS/2 because it required better CPUs (remember the 386sx vs dx?) Then it required more RAM to run well. More disk space (in the days when we were buying megabyte sized harddrives and data CDROMs were relatively new) Then there was the "buy hardware from the approved list or take your chances." Nothing like fighting to get your PC to boot because you chose the wrong brand of RAM. Or bought a 'clone' NIC instead of a 3-COM. Of course, hardware was also limited by available drivers. (mouse, sound card, video, etc)

Then Warp 4 dropped and it was the same problems with higher hardware requirements. Once the novelty wore off people went back to Microsoft whose product worked well enough. Most people didn't care about true multitasking or hardware abstraction. And nobody but developers cared about the OOP in Presentation Manager, extended file attributes in HPFS, or short cuts that actually followed the files.

Personally I only used Win 95 at work. At home I went DOS/Desqview, Warp 3 & 4, then NT 4 to 2000 and up. I skipped most of 95 fun, all of 98, ME and Vista.

Second Jeju Air 737-800 experiences mechanical issues following deadly crash

HereIAmJH Silver badge

Localiser location

The localiser was on the far end of the runway. They didn't need to clear it because they weren't flying over it. They touched down 1200 meters into the runway and skidded off the remaining ~1600 meters and then an additional 250 meters into the ILS berm. To be clear, they were touching ground for nearly a mile before hitting the berm and still estimated to be moving at 150 mph.

HereIAmJH Silver badge

I had also wonder whether the pilots were familiar enough with the airport that they knew about the absolutely idiotically placed medieval siege defense wall that they put the Localiser on, keeping the gear up for a better chance to clear it.

They wouldn't have been looking to clear it. If they were aware of it at all, they would have been expecting to stop long before they got to it. I think they trimmed for the abort and quit thinking rationally at that point. It has me wondering what their simulator requirements are and if they train for engine failures on approach.

Probably going to be a while, I'm looking forward to blancolirio analyzing the CVR.

HereIAmJH Silver badge

Re: Not a landing gear problem

In addition, they were on final approach and configured for landing prior to the bird strike. They should have just continued to land. If both engines had been damaged in the strike they wouldn't have aborted. Which supports the opinion that they shut down #1 by mistake. I suppose there could have been a subsequent second bird strike on the abort, but it's not supported by the video and would require exceptionally bad luck.

Ironically, flaps and gear down would have helped them. Flaps, because once lined up for the runway they needed lift and not speed. Since they underestimated, or didn't account for ground effect, putting the gear down would have shed speed to help offset the fact that they wasted 1/3 of the runway.

HereIAmJH Silver badge

Not a landing gear problem

They aren't similar symptoms. The second flight had a 'landing gear issue' shortly after take-off. So either the landing gear failed to retract or the system couldn't determine it's state. They turned around and landed. Wouldn't have even made the news if it wasn't for the previous crash.

The crashed flight appeared to make no attempt to prepare the plane for landing. No landing gear deployed, no flaps, no spoilers. One thrust reverser deployed. It doesn't appear that there was any kind of problem with the landing gear.

Once the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder are analyzed there will be answers, but currently it's looking like the flight crew made a series of mistakes following a bird strike on #2 engine.

US airspace closures, lack of answers deepen East Coast drone mystery

HereIAmJH Silver badge

That's not a drone

So when he becomes POTUS in a month's time and can be told what Biden's been told will he share that with us?

He's already getting National Security briefings, and if there was anything actually going on he would know it. The only Deep State is in his demented mind.

But conveniently, what is no longer headlining the news? Tariffs, and what they are going to do to prices. Welcome back to the daily dramas of the Trump administration. Conspiracy squirrels to distract the masses.

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