Posts by alisonken1

SpaceX launches 2 lunar landers on path to the Moon

Re: Navigational error?

I thought the Moon was a waste of time and they were just going straight to Mars. Isn't that what the Dear Leader said not long ago?

This is a customer launch - not a SpaceX launch. Also, cargo, not crew.

A New Year's gift from Microsoft: Surprise, your scanners don't work

Re: "It seems to work or fail randomly for different users in different situations."

"Linux has been so long in development and they still can't be arsed to make it consumer friendly. Geek arrogance at its very worst."

Interesting. And when did MS take Windows out of development and make it a long-term only-needs-security-updates consumer-friendly system?

So far, the only consumer-friendly part is that they got the computer hardware guys to pre-install Windows. If consumers had to install Windows on their computer, forget it.

At least with Linux, I can have a fully-functioning system in less than an hour (complete with updates) that doesn't require searching for extra drivers.

Re: OMG why are you using windows 11?

I'm running an HP MFD - but it's a ~10-year old laser printer from HP (M127).

Also, I'm not running Windows at home (except a work VM for the rare WFH project).

Printer and scanner have never been a problem for me.

Of course, it would probably help if I printed more than 20 pages a year :)

But the joys of Laserjet is that I don't have to worry about clogging the printhead with so few print jobs.

Public developer spats put bcachefs at risk in Linux

It's a case of overhype (somewhat).

Yes, Linus rants are infamous when they go out. No, the rants really do take some time to build up.

He never just blew up for no reason and not on the first try. With that said, if you were a long-time kernel developer and tried to post something that was not correct, then yes - you did get an eyeful of email/postings.

If you were just starting, then he would encourage you and give directions. As long as you were receptive to advice and mentoring, you never received a rant.

Photoshop FOSS alternative GNU Image Manipulation Program 3.0 nearly here

Re: Ah, GIMP

> > The difference between "do you want to save first" and "if you continue, you'll lose changes" is just a couple clicks.

> And now we see why the GIMP UI is crap. There ya go. Exhibit A. Thank you for making my point.

And now we see the molehills that people are willing to die on rather than real progress.

Musk's Starlink rockets to 4 million subscribers

Re: Global billboard?

Nah. That was Harrison in Heinlein's "The Man Who Sold The Moon" - although I don't think Coca-Cola was the logo that was going to be used.

Not sure about the Russian side of things.

Bring the joy of train delays home with your very own departure board

Re: Time to finish a beer?

Then you have to include

1 drink walking time

3 drink walking time

stumbling time

and hope the patron's can read it

SpaceX faces $663K FAA fine for Musk's alleged launch impatience

Re: Payback

The customer buys the launch, not the seats.

Whether they use all the seats available to them doesn't matter as far as price per launch goes.

Unless it's a rideshare - then the launch customer can adjust their customer price, but not the launch price.

SpaceX Polaris Dawn mission completes first commercial spacewalk

Pressure differential in an EVA suit is ~5psi. 1 atmosphere is ~14.7psi.

Space suits are not pressurized to 1atm because of the inflation tension at the joints - too high a pressure differential and you can't move anymore (ref. first Soviet astronaut EVA issues).

Win 11 refreshes delayed, say PC makers – and here's why

Re: Lovely Jubbly

I'm running a 10? 15? year old Dell Optiplex 7020 at home with Fedora Linux.

The only thing I did to it was add an SSD and extra ram (32G total).

It even runs Windows 11 in a VM that's faster than the new Dell 5000 machines we have at work (purchased within the last 6 months).

the wife even kicks me off and takes over my computer so she can do her Facebook, email, and online banking. Using Firefox on Linux.

Boeing's Calamity Capsule returns to Earth without a crew

"Successful" as in "did not damage the ISS on leaving and hit the spot we aimed for on landing."

So, not _real_ heavy duty lifting, but some lifting, yes.

Starliner's not-so-grand finale is a thump in the desert next week

Re: Pneumatic connectors

I've also heard that the suit cooling design is different.

Boeing: Water cooled (similar to previous Apollo suits)

Dragon: Air cooled

Take with a grain of salt since I haven't seen the specs, but that's what I'm hearing on another tech site.

Re: It's more than hoses

They weren't standardized - it was a convenience at the time. The only time US and Russia docked were their capsules for a "Friendship Mission" - not a joint space station mission.

At that time, you could not dock a US capsule with the Russian capsule and vice-versa without an adapter ring.

It was only after the ISS had already been built with 2 dock types (Russian and US) and had been used for a while before the standard docking ring was designed.

Neither Boeing or SpaceX suits carry their own life support - these are just emergency decompression suits used during launch/recovery cycles in case there's a capsule issue.

Don't confuse in-craft safety (similar to snorkels) with extra-vehicular suits (similar to diving gear).

Re: Pneumatic connectors

It's not just the oxygen - it's the electronics too. Each suit is paired to the craft.

It's similar to the situation at the beginning of the auto industry - some cars used 6v systems, some 8v, then came 12v. After a while everyone realized the 12v system was the best overall at the time and standardized on 12v systems (24v for heavy duty trucks). Part of the problem was the power source (batteries), then the standard 12v lead-acid battery became standard.

Until multiple vendors start actually designing ships/capsules with standardized parts (not just the suits), then we can start talking standardized interfaces for electronics. However, until multiple vendors start designing systems and seeing the different interactions that can occur, you don't want to prematurely optimize. We're seeing the same thing with BEV's and charging. And payment processing.

EV sales hit speed bump as drivers unplug from the electric dream

How much energy does it take to generate hydrogen?

How much energy does it take to generate gasoline?

How much energy does it take to generate diesel/kerosene?

We don't have the most efficient portable power technology yet available, but it's a matter of what we currently have that gives the best overall results and economies of scale.

NASA will fly Boeing Starliner crew home with SpaceX, Calamity Capsule deemed too risky

Re: MuskX

... Billionaires only do things for money ...

In the case of Bezos, he started BO as a tax write-off.

There's a quote that not too long ago he was pissed that BO was starting to make money and he complained that they were messing up his taxes.

(or it could be my old-greybeard mind thinking of something else)

Linus Torvalds tells kernel list poster to 'SHUT THE HELL UP' for saying COVID-19 vaccines create 'new humanoid race'

Re: re: How about wanting everyone to know the truth

Upvote for Johnny Hart!

Sam Altman sues builder over $27M flooded, sewage-hit 'lemon' of a mega-mansion

Re: Having problems with shit filling your house

"Turning your garden? Spade. Edging your lawn? Spade. Planting spuds/bulbs? Spade. Moving snow? Shovel. Raking muck? Shovel."

Actually, I've found that edging my lawn is better with a shovel - the flat blade cuts very nicely on the concrete walk/driveway along the grass.

Agile Manifesto co-author blasts failure rates report, talks up 'reimagining' project

Re: Anecdata

"Oh, and pineapple on pizza."

Or as my wife calls it: Sweet Pig Pizza

Life, interrupted: How CrowdStrike's patch failure is messing up the world

"its not like we dont have enough resources in our computers.(lets face it 99% of all office work could take place on a WinXp machine with a 1 gig HDD and 250meg of RAM and no one would even notice..)"

I was kinda with you until you hit the 250M of ram. Unless office workers would be using WinXP embedded and not have things like browsers or office suites, I might agree.

Re: Microsoft to blame, surely?

Actually, it was not just "a data file" - it was a kernel driver (filename ends in .sys).

So yeah, it was embedded in the kernel.

No, I don't know why a virus definition file would need to be embedded in the kernel.

Re: Impact...

Work machines I manage related impact: zero

Our business SaaS provider impact: 100

Unfortunately, we just switch from on-premise to SaaS the beginning of the year. Just in time for this. The only saving grace is it only affected the back office people (about 30), not the main group (teaching professors and students).

Re: What's worse than...

Unfortunately, the bank holiday also affects your plastic too - so unless you have cash, be prepared.

(kinda sorta /s maybe???)

SpaceX hit by inflight Falcon 9 failure

Re: Data

Well, the booster did fine, only the 2nd stage failed a relight.

Depends on if you include both booster and second stage as a unit v. separate machines.

Db2 is a story worth telling, even if IBM won't

Re: IBM would attempt to execute a "cloud-first" strategy with Db2

"... But just look how much money they saved! ..."

Here's your missing /s

Time Lords decree: No leap second needed in 2024

Re: The negative leap second

"... Accurate timestamps do matter for logging, ..."

"... That's no longer the case with systemD lurking around. ..."

At least on Linux systems, timestamps are in seconds since epoch. With 64-bit systems, that brings up the Y2K38 issue, but it's expected that hardware will move from 64-bit to 128 bit systems by then, so the issue can be punted down the road again.

What this means is the system clock always increments. It's then converted using the datetime library to the appropriate local display time.

Logging is kept using system clock time, then converted to readable time when displayed. As long as the printout includes a system time column next to local time column (that could be UTC), then there is no ambiguity - the display time column could then be legally argued that the difference is due to physics rather than invalid readings.

American interest in electric vehicles short circuits for first time in four years

Re: The sight of a Telsa accelerating with a half million watts of power is heartwarming

"It's not FUD to point out that electrification won't save the planet if it causes us to use more resources and not less."

I think the FUD factor is in this line.

Technically, you are correct about the "... if it causes us to use more resources ..." - but the "IF" is doing a _very_heavy_load_ of work here.

Curious: are you not looking at the actual numbers? And are these numbers from actual (impartial) studies or are they from (I have an agenda) studies?

I'm not a zealot, but I have studied the situation. And I don't just "follow the crowd" when looking at EV TCO (including carbon issues).

Starliner to remain docked to the ISS into July – with no new departure date

Re: The crew is not pressed for time to leave

Actually, StarLiner is rated for 6 months. This particular mission has a 45 day limit due to (other reasons).

(edit: StarShip -> StarLiner)

NASA ought to pay up after space debris punched a hole in my roof, homeowner says

From other postings I've read, the homeowner's lawyer filed a claim with NASA - not a lawsuit.

If the claim is denied, THEN the lawsuit begins.

Oracle Java police start knocking on Fortune 200's doors for first time

Re: If an organisation does not use Java SE ...

<quote>which I will not quote on a polite web site.</quote>

This is a "polite" website????

Boeing's Starliner makes it into orbit at long last – with human crew aboard

Re: But will it fly twice?

<quote>The retirement of Atlas V does highlight the huge difference between the achievements of Boeing and SpaceX: Boeing only has a capsule, SpaceX has a reusable capsule AND reusable rockets.</quote>

Remember, they've already reused at least one of the capsules.

FCC boss wants political ads to admit when they were made using AI

I point you to Robert Heinlein's "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" for some light entertainment and AI.

Space Force boss warns 'the US will lose' without help from Musk and Bezos

Re: Mind the gap

Bada-Bing!

City of London ditches Oracle for SAP in search of ERP enlightenment

"this one will run and run"

BUT - the question is "in which direction"?

The battle between open source and 'sort of' open source is as old as software

Adobe has switched from selling software to selling subscriptions. You can download the software, but good luck trying to run it without an Adobe account.

At least with the Adobe software we use at work.

Scientists suggest possible solution to space-induced bone loss

Re: ...treatment for brain changes and other detrimental health effects of space exposure...

That effect is due to using mechanical means (motor) to rotate mass (rotor) - of course the "... equal and opposite reaction..." effect kicks in.

Possibly using something like balanced ion thrusters around the outer edge might do it - since the reaction is limited to the thruster location/angle and not a centralized mechanical mechanism.

Re: Mice?

Don't forget the documentary series Pinky and the Brain!

(y/t link to intro)

GNU turns 40: Stallman's baby still not ready for prime time, but hey, there's cake

Re: RMS contribution

...

My vague recollection from the late 1970s, was that he hated AT&T for refusing to make Unix(TM) free, and he decided that in retaliation, he was going to rewrite everything they did and give it away.

...

Actually, it was because he couldn't hack the printer driver in AT&T unix in order to fix it to work with his printer.

THAT is what set off the RMS GNU revolution.

Talk about small things with big impacts ...

IT needs more brains, so why is it being such a zombie about getting them?

Re: Exams as a system

[snip]

As an analogy- it's better to learn how to use a library than to try to remember the name and location every book that's in it.

I had an actual job interview (phone) where I was asked about the linux "ldd" command. I could pretty much give them a step-by-step guide on what it does and how to use it.

My application was binned because, at the time, I could not for the life of me remember that "ldd" the command was an acronym of the words "linux dynamic dependency" - the part I could not explicitly remember was "dynamic".

Bad software destroyed my doctor's memory

Re: "radically alter the workflow of medical professionals, without their input"

Who wrote Genesis then?

Unfortunately, Genesis (the band) was already active with several albums before Phil moved from drummer to lead.

The sorry part, a lot of people won't remember that part.

Soon the most popular 'real' desktop will be the Linux desktop

You can ask the US DoD about that.

The Army is one of the largest subscriptions that RedHAT counts as a customer.

Re: Default

The common clay (y/t link)

And I wish the icon were true.

After decades contributing to science, John Goodenough powers down

Interesting.

I didn't know that "American" was a race. Last I checked, "American" was a nationality that signified the geographical location where someone a) was born b) claims citizenship c) other non-race-related geopolitical facts having nothing to do with skin color.

Might want to go back and re-educate on the definition of "race".

JP Morgan accidentally deletes evidence in multi-million record retention screwup

Re: That's 0.003108003 percent of their annual earnings

Well, A quick Google shows:

IRS: Link

3 years (individual returns except as noted below)

4 years (employment tax records after tax due/paid date)

6 years (not reporting income you should have reported)

7 years (file a claim for a loss from worthless securities or bad debt reduction)

Other notes: MeyersBrothersKalicka CPA link

10 years (some legal documents; e.g. cancelled leases, notes receivable, etc.)

Permanent (some legal documents; e.g. bills of sale, permits, contracts, etc.)

Chinese malware intended to infect USB drives accidentally infects networked storage too

Re: What operating system ?

Hmmm.

Windows. USB Drive. Autorun.inf ?

I'm not aware of a Linux distribution that allows autorun capabilities on drives - unless it's a boot drive, and only then when restarting the O/S.

I could be wrong since I've only really used 3 distributions (Slackware, Fedora, Raspberry Pi OS) - although I've followed multiple distros as well.

As far as clicking on an executable - linux doesn't use the filename extension as a reason to mark it executable either.

Tupperware looking less airtight than you'd think

Re: The death knell ...

It's not the glass that warps - it's the lids.

The one's he's talking about are the rubber kind, not the clear ceramic kind used for actual baking/showing at dinner.

There are some Pyrex sets sold with the blue color (or colour) rubber lids that snap on and create a (tolerable) seal for the fridge.

Some sets even come with both the rubber and glass lids.

The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10 as a Linux laptop

Re: Re:macOS is the worst of the bunch

I have an iMac all-in-one, 3.6Ghz quad-core intel i3, 8G ram, SSD, and 75M/75M internet at church.

The only software that's installed that is not part of Apple OS is Proclaim, OpenLP, OBS, and Chrome (OBS and chrome for live streaming).

When it's time for an upgrade and all software is stopped, it consistently sits at "Time remaining: about 15 minutes". For 3+ hours. And in many cases, I leave it overnight and have my wife shut it down when she comes in to work at the church the next day.

What's your opinion on why my system would take over 3 hours for an update? As noted, it literally does not do a lot.

Cloudflare engineer broke rules – and a customer's website – with traffic throttle

Re: Poor engineer

Promoted to Customer!

Laugh all you want. There will be a year of the Linux desktop

Re: No. Stop it.

... using GIMP to print a check ....

Last I checked, GIMP was for graphics.

For printing checks, there's Accounting and Finance Software ("30 Best Accounting and Finance Software for Linux" - UbuntuPit).

Or - you can even use LO or Office apps (with the correct template).