Posts by jake

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson moves to shut Parliament

Re: Cut out the politics and stick to IT please

C'mon, AC - what the fuck are you up to? Can you please read the headlines and skip the obvious[0] political articles? And then don't bother reading the comments for same? And especially don't bother to actually contribute to said comments? Do you think you're working for Google or something?

[0] What part of "British Prime Minister Boris Johnson moves to shut Parliament made you think it was an IT related article that you had to read, anyway? Serious question, inquiring minds and all that.

Re: Benito Jonsolini

Goebbels. I stand corrected. Apologies, this Yank hadn't heard the ditty since roughly the sixth form in Yorkshire, ::mumble:: years ago.

And yes. Same here in the US ... As Walt Kelly wrote so succinctly "We have met the enemy, and he is us".

Now how the hell do we get out of the mess we've allowed to happen? One thing's for sure, if we don't all hang together we'll all hang separately ...

Pogo says: If you can't vote my way, vote anyway, but VOTE!

Re: Benito Jonsolini

Is there a corollary, to wit "The odds against anybody invoking Godwin in any given Internet forum actually having read and understood Godwin's Law approaches 1."? If not, there should be ...

Wiki "Godwin's Law" before using his commentary. Mike thanks you.

"Verhofstadt is nothing at all like Hermann Goering except at the most basic biological level."

Wait ... are you suggesting that poor old Verhofstadt has no balls at all?

What was that noise?

Oh. Just the Brits doing their damnedest to re-take the "world's worst government" award from us Yanks.

Out of curiosity, is it too late to teach people why bothering to understand what you are voting for actually makes a difference?

GIMP open source image editor forked to fix 'problematic' name

Re: "Even if our project falls flat on its face..."

All evidence suggests that Poettering works for himself, he's well known for not playing well with others. IBM/RedHat merely pays the bills.

Re: About time

"to many people sounds like it's named after a fetish character in a Tarantino film."

I respectfully suggest that most (probably over 85%) of the folks who might be offended wouldn't be caught dead watching a Tarantino film. Of the reminder, a vanishingly small number would have any need whatsoever of a program with the power and utility of GIMP or Photoshop. It doesn't take much to put a caption on a cute cat picture, so why suggest it to them in the first place?

Re: Divide and rule

"Have you ever tried searching for "gimp" from a school internet connection?"

Have you? I just did, using DDG. All the schools I tried[0] brought up GNU Image Manipulation Program related links, until the very bottom of page two (wiktionary.org: "To wrap or wind (surround) with another length of yarn or wire in a tight spiral, often by means of a gimping machine, creating 'gimped yarn', etc."). Seven results down on page three brought up mersenne.org (Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search), the rest was about the photo editor. Page four was all the photo editor.

I didn't go past page four. Most folks don't go past page two ...

[0] Stanford, Berkeley, SJ State, SF State, Santa Rosa JC, Foothill JC, Sonoma Valley High School, Palo Alto High School. All the results were identical.

Re: But it is taken

So was Slack. It didn't stop the kiddies from pre-empting it, though ...

I suggest ...

... nay, I DEMAND that every word, in any Human language, that might be misunderstood as something completely different than as intended by the speaker/author (regardless of the language of the listener/reader) be changed immediately!

It'll get rid of all puns, but at least the namby-pamby set will sleep better at night.

And you won't get arrested for trying to gift a German ...

Electric vehicles won't help UK meet emissions targets: Time to get out and walk, warn MPs

Re: Charging at work

Just to be serious here for a second ... Charles, have you never worked in (or on!) a big city, like New York or Chicago? There is, quite simply, not enough parking for each and every human who works in a big city to drive their own vehicle.

Just to tie this into the existing topic ... if you've ever tried to spec a power-hungry redevelopment, you'd also know that there isn't enough spare electricity to charge the motor vehicles of the few that manage to drive ... Most big cities are already tapped out when it comes to power.

Whether or not people should live and work like hamsters in a habitrail is another kettle o' worms.

Re: 422 comments? Don't have enough popcorn

I'll get started on that just as soon as I convince them to ban all those radioactive bananas.

Re: 422 comments? Don't have enough popcorn

I wasn't talking about a kernel of dried corn. I was talking about a popping kernel of corn.

Popping corn releases polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, for example benzo[a]pyrene (BaP), benzo[a]anthracene (BaA), dibenz[a,h]anthracene (DBahA) and benzo[b]fluoranthene (BbFA).

Re: 422 comments? Don't have enough popcorn

When you crack hydrocarbons in a very high pressure steam environment you wind up with all kinds of wild and wonderful chemicals. Even in short residence events, thermal decomposition is your friend. Or not, as the case may be.

Re: 422 comments? Don't have enough popcorn

Popcorn? Can't have that. Popping corn puts carcinogens into the atmosphere, and even worse it releases water vapo(u)r! Don't you know that water vapo(u)r is a major greenhouse gas? Some even say it's worse that carbon dioxide!

BAN POPCORN NOW!!!!11!!1!one!!!

THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!!11!!!1!!1!1eleven!!

Re: Bicycles. Stop the tribalism and embrace the future.

"Nearly all of them actually <gasp> own and use cars too!!"

Well, yes. That's because cars are transportation and adults riding bicycles are an affectation and/or a hobby ... at least for the most part.

I don't bike to work. Too much trouble, and wastes too much energy. Instead, I live at work.

Re: Hydrogen? Seriously?

Your hacking jacket wouldn't last 15 minutes around here. May I recommend a good, old fashioned Levi's jacket instead? They survive several seasons of puling calves out of muddy streams and lambs out of the brambles[0], impromptu fence repair, tractor work & etc. ...

[0] Ever notice that sheep seem to be the natural prey of brambles?

Re: legal target

There is no such thing as so-called "renewable energy". Entropy says no.

It's this kind of fuzzy thinking that causes people with clues to question anything with a so-called "green" label.

Re: 50 miles???

I don't contribute to it, either. But then I refuse to partake of that particular dance. Life's far too short to waste in a stop-and-go commute.

And before some wag says it, no you do not "have to". You have decided to. It is your choice.

Re: Alternatively,

Ever notice that anyone who uses the term "snowflake" when discussing anything other than actual snow, or making a comment similar to this one, has absolutely nothing worth listening to?

Re: Alternatively,

"Bring back horse transport."

I took the buckboard into town this afternoon. One of the neighbors rode his horse over to harvest some veg from my garden yesterday, and the wife and I rode to his house for supper last Saturday. So don't laugh ... horses still have a place when it comes to transportation.

Re: 50 miles???

"Solar power makes sense in places like Arizona"

Not for running cars, not really. Distances in the Western States (even some Eastern ones, like Texas) are a lot longer than most folks think they are. Electric vehicles quite simply don't have the range when 800 mile round trips in a day are common.

GDPR...rrrse! Mass-mail fail as German biz asks UK resellers for consent to use their dealer data

Re: Ah, the joys of career-ending emails

I had filtering for my email nearly as soon as I had email (late 1970s), for various reasons. Bozo filtering was common on USENET by the mid 1980s. Certainly by the time of Canter and Siegel (April '94) filtering out such dreck was trivial at the local level. I know I already had filtering on the email systems I provided by that time ...

Re: Address book fail

There's nothing wrong with trying to look like Alice ... Marilyn Manson even made a couple bucks from the concept. Would have probably gone far if he had even half the stage presence ...

Re: Muphry....

Where have you been these last thirty-ish years? That particular pseudo-fumblerule was officially coined in 1992 ... and was seen on USENET approximately seven years earlier.

Don't you just love English? It's the crème de la crème of all languages, and the lingua franca of The Internet.

Time to spin the wheel of pwnage! This week, malware can infect your…. Android set-top box!

For the record ...

... MythTV still works quite nicely, should you have a need for such a thing.

Back to school with El Reg - how about a chunky Lenovo for the student in your life?

Re: Screen Resolution

We did a decent amount of work at 80x25 ... If we hadn't. you and I wouldn't be having this conversation.

The vast majority of so-called "computer work" is done in wetware. Glitter is a distraction and doesn't actually get work done.

Re: should be

My Granddaughter's machine will run Cupertino, Redmond or Slackware as she sees fit. She lives in Slackware unless the school forces her into Apple or Microsoft, and then she grumbles.

It took the school over a year before they noticed she was running Slackware. Then they threw a shit-fit. My daughter took great delight in explaining how stupid they were being ... My GD is a straight-A student, so obviously she was completing the coursework despite the crippled tools that the school district was trying to saddle her with.

Dixons hits back at McAfee's £30m antivirus sueball: Your AV didn't work on Windows 10S

Re: install a vanilla copy of Windows

"I spend my days fixing kit running Microsoft OSs,"

Shame that Redmond can't produce an OS that doesn't require constant maintenance. On the bright(???) side, I guess you're employed ...

"I'm not using something else at home just because."

I run a non-Redmond OS not "just because", but rather because it just works and I very rarely have any need to fix it.

Re: Windows 10S...as useful as a chocolate teapot

"Oh no, I don't want to make a fuss"

I don't want you to make a fuss, either. That's why we're taking it back now, before you start bitching about it every time you try to use it.

My god, it's full of tsars: A gun-toting Russian humanoid robot is on its way to the International Space Station

It's all in the name ...

... "Skybot F-850 - nicknamed Fedor for Final Experimental Demonstration Object Research".

Since when did the Russians name their projects in English?

It's obviously propaganda, and like most propaganda it's useless bullshit.

Here's a top tip: Don't trust the new person – block web domains less than a month old. They are bound to be dodgy

Re: Hmmmm

"Once people get used to the idea, start blocking all of the crap TLDs too."

Start? Already done, by many people, in many places.

"You'll miss out on current events"

Some would say that is a GOOD thing. Short attention span theater might work well for sit-coms, but in RealLife it's pretty much a waste of time.

Re: How do you tell their age?

"if it became widespread people with dodgy domains would just register them sooner and let them sit before using them..."

Probably not. These people are in-and-out, the concept of having a bunch of inventory to keep track of is alien to them.

Re: How do you tell their age?

"it would make more sense to block them in the browser and make you click through to view them than for IT admins to do the blocking."

No. These are work machines, not your personal play toy. The company decides what is allowed, not you.

One word:

Duh!

I've been doing this for years ... but I put 'em on hold for two months, not one. Result: Uncounted scams&etc bypassed and only a couple of complaints, all of which were people unable to access their own vanity domains from work.

Eighty-year-old US 'web scam man' on the run after pocketing $250,000 in Dem 'donations'

I suspect ...

... John's not silent, he's just changed his handle and is refraining from trollingdiscussing politics and related subjects.

Good plan, John. This round's on me.

Re: party membership

"this is the Internet and we're supposedly adults."

Post proof or retract.

US soldier cleared of taking armoured vehicle out for joyride – because he's insane, court says

Re: Would that defense work for the idiot who took the USA for a test drive?

That's not insanity, that's senility.

Welcome to Hollywood, Claranet-style: You've (not) got mail, or hosted sites for that matter

Re: Claranet

Torn cork, cracked barrel & soggy pads.

How four rotten packets broke CenturyLink's network for 37 hours, knackering 911 calls, VoIP, broadband

Re: Going Postal?

More to the point, Jon Postel was probably spinning fast enough to power MAE-West as this was going down. (See 1980's RFC 760 if you don't know why this is relevant ...).

There is a reason ...

... that packets are SUPPOSED to evaporate when the TTL field counts down to zero. It's kind of an important part of packet switching. Did nobody bother to tell the engineers involved, or did they skip that day of school?

Security? We've heard of it! But why be a party pooper when there's printing to be done

Re: One rule for you...

Everybody (whoever that is) knows I'm the go-to guy if they have a lock that needs picking. Everybody also knows better than to ask me unless I know for a fact that they own the lock in question.

Criminal mastermind signed name as 'Thief' on receipts after buying stuff with stolen card

Re: really?

I would think that would be, oh, I don't know, maybe just about everybody who has ever bought one. What do I win for the correct answer?

Re: Constable Savage

Bad troll. No cookie.

Police costs for Gatwick drone fiasco double to nearly £900k – and still no one's been charged

Re: "London"

Nor is Southend. In fact, of the 6 airports which serve Greater London, the only one that's even close to London proper is City, and that's what, 6-7 miles East?

'Hey Google, remind Greg the locks have been changed, and he should find a new place to live. Maybe ask his mistress?'

Re: Dystopia, one improvement at a time

In the early/mid 1980s my much hacked Heath HERO1 would push the kitchen trash can over to the back door to remind me that it was trash day. After about a month I stopped it. Was cute, but useless ... and once, when the trash was top-heavy, it spread garbage all over the ground floor.

Re: Disorganiser?

You don't strangle 'em with IMPs, you drop 'em on the little sods.

Re: Dystopia, one improvement at a time

Michael, none of what you reference is an actual new invention. All of it incrementally builds on the work of other people. For example, Spanner is based on the Paxos algorithm, the protocols for which were first published almost ten years before google even existed.

Russian volcanoes fingered for Earth's largest mass extinction

Re: The Ends of the World@ jake

So overall, life is so damn good that you had to resort to a year old conversation to broadcast your vision of doom and gloom? C'mon, dude, it's FRIDAY!

Relax, have a homebrew!

Don't let your dreams be dreams! Itty-bitty space shuttle to ride into orbit on a Vulcan Centaur

Re: Mu and the Moving Invisible Target Conundrum

Back before the Eternal September we called it the blind men and the elephant syndrome.

And then there is the fact that some people enjoy being offended. Probably because it gives 'em something to complain about, which livens up what would otherwise be yet another drab, boring hum-drum day in their otherwise dreary existence.

As Emily Postnews might have said back in the early '80s, "Be slow to give offense, and even slower to take it".

Or, in light of the above thread, "We have to remember that what we observe is not nature in itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning." —Werner Heisenberg