Re: of copyright...
Or they got a permission from the copyright owner. Sometimes it can be had for just asking nicely.
1143 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Feb 2013
"has a habit of using Excel as a tabular repository of unconnected data."
Joel Spolsky has commented that it was one of design goals for Excel 5 - a convenient way of keeping lists.
OK, found the actual quote:
"Over the next two weeks we visited dozens of Excel customers, and did not see anyone using Excel to actually perform what you would call “calculations.” Almost all of them were using Excel because it was a convenient way to create a table."
"(Irrelevant sidenote: the few customers we could find who were doing calculations were banks, devising explosive devices called “derivatives.” They used Excel to maximize the bankers’ bonuses on nine out of ten years, and to cause western civilization to nearly collapse every tenth year. Something about black swans. Probably just a floating point rounding error.)"
"What was I talking about? Oh yeah… most people just used Excel to make lists. Suddenly we understood why Lotus Improv, which was this fancy futuristic spreadsheet that was going to make Excel obsolete, had failed completely: because it was great at calculations, but terrible at creating tables, and everyone was using Excel for tables, not calculations."
Google did it too. Not sure if the option is still there. May have been an one-off joke.
https://www.eberlysystems.com/blog/2010/09/google-swedish-chef-bork-bork-bork/
Opera released a Bork edition of their browser, 7.03 or thereabouts, that applied the Chef accent only to msn.com pages. Part of a bigger dispute actually - MSN managed to bork pages served to Opera browsers and Opera in return borked MSN.
www.operasoftware.com/press/releases/desktop/opera-releases-bork-edition
extremetech.com/extreme/53428-opera-bork-bork-borks-msn-page
cnet.com/news/opera-says-bork-to-msn-standards/
As H.L.Mencken wrote in 1938:
"My own belief, more than once set afloat from this spot, is that it will take us, soon or late, into the stormy waters of Fascism. To be sure, that Fascism is not likely to be identical with the kinds on tap in Germany, Italy and Russia; indeed, it is very apt to come in under the name of anti-Fascism. And its first Duce, whether the Hon. Mr. Roosevelt or another, will not call himself a dictator, but a scotcher of dictators."
Which is a variation of the famous quip often attributed to Huey Long:
"When the United States gets fascism, it will call it anti-fascism."
If you use OEM master product key (not the key on the sticker) then you don't have to use phone activation at all. You can activate it with slmgr.vbs -ipk command. Provided that you have suitable SLIC key in the BIOS.
That's how Dell preload works, one W7Pro64 product key is used for all Dell machines that have W7Pro64 SLIC in them. Key itself is not secret, they are in a text file somewhere on the preload disk.
"I post AC so I can't use the icon, some can but I haven't tried to work out how to do it."
- Post as AC
- edit the post
- untick checkbox 'Post anonymously'
- choose an icon
- hit 'Submit'
Voilá. Post stays anonymous, but is decorated with an icon.
It's probably a quirk in the forum code and will be corrected Anytime Soon®. Enjoy it while it lasts.
"No, I am not going to translate either, they are not translatable as each will take half a page to explain"
True that. Some of those old proverbs have a long string of cultural (or historical) context attached. Without knowing the context they'd be rather bland.
Second issue: if the proverb relies on a wordplay,it may be nearly impossible to reproduce it in another language. Like this little gem:
"Можно ли хуем дрова колоть?"
"Можно, если хуй дубовый, а дуб хуёвый."
Or this joke that is relying on different uses of word 'чем':
Сидят рядом армянин и грузин.
Армянин бубнит себе под нос: "Армяне лучше чем грузины, армяне лучше чем грузины."
Грузин станет хмурым, но молчит.
Армянин опять: "Армяне лучше чем грузины."
Грузин уже не может вытерпить и орёт: "Ну чем лучше? Чем?!"
"Чем грузины."
/fwiw, apologies to English-speaking readers/
"The simple fact that it's a known, documented, issue just shows sloppy programming."
If I had a penny for every nasty bug that got classified as WONTFIX... Would be enough to buy a pint or two.
What is particularly nasty is dropping already sold configurations from the 'supported' list (and subsequently from internal 'to be tested against' lists if one is to believe that such beasts exist at all).
Heh, one case was quite egregious. Support for one particular FC adapter/switch combination was dropped after 2-3 years in the field. Without explanation of reasons. Documentation was changed without keeping a proper list of changes. Support drones telling with a straight face "no, it has never been supported".
Except...there happens to exist a printout of SAN support matrix from the time of purchase. Because it's only too sensible to assemble your Fibre Channel setup from supported components and keep a bit of local documentation about it.
"My Thinkpad P50 I bought this year doesn't have it"
None of the Thinkpads had it. Only some consumer models were preloaded with Superfish. And yes, Lenovo handled their blunder surprisingly well. They owned up and cleaned up.
In this sense OP is missing the mark by a wide margin. This is an article about Thinkpads after all.
Righteous yells à la "we will remember" would be more justified if people actually did remember.
Yup. JEDEC and hardware companies have some work to do.
Servers have had ECC memory for ages. In desktop computers it's also possible to use ECC DRAM sticks. Higher end motherboards usually support ECC just fine. It'll be a bit slower and twice as expensive, but at least it's an option.
Laptops, fondleslabs, smart TVs, low-end routers and IoT tat are stuck with non-parity memory for the foreseeable future. That's the reason for rushing with software fixes - there are untold millions of vulnerable devices out there.
Not every NP memory chip is vulnerable to Rowhammer, though, it became an issue with high densities and high speeds.
"Lotus idea of inventing its own UI under Windows - and a less versatile one - was truly a stupid idea."
An early attempt to develop a cross-platform UI. Not entirely stupid, but it's bloody difficult to achieve. Because of so many compromises usability will be poor everywhere. I remember using Notes 4.5 on a Unix workstation with CDE desktop environment. It looked (and sucked) exactly like 4.5 on Windows and OS/2.
"But what really saddens me is the quality of commentards these days; an obviously futile gesture, yet no references to Kanute or the tide."
As it happens to be one of those widely misquoted and misunderstood utterances, it is actually a good thing. Quality of commentards in a non-ironic sense.
"I'd love to know just how much power gets lost due to the fancy method of transfer"
90%+ efficiencies are touted for high-current charging (as in some electric cars). Way worse for phones. Did a quick search, it's a surprisingly neglected topic. Lots of noise about saving the planet by unplugging that unused charger, which consumes whopping 0.1W or so, but...wireless charging is still kosher.
About the best overview is this:
http://batteryuniversity.com/index.php/learn/article/charging_without_wires
"I don't suppose we'll ever know if they were a credible military asset"
Probably more of a cool toy. But China is buying them up for some reason.
www.asian-defence.net/2014/04/china-to-get-former-greek-zubr.html
https://www.strategypage.com/dls/articles/Hovercraft-From-Hell-6-23-2011.asp
"as though MS "hating" is actually a real thing"
It's neither here or there. Most techies (myself included) have had a long love-hate relationship with MS. Can't live with them, can't live without. In other words, it's an abusive relationship.
As it happens with abusive partners, there is no standard way of coping with the situation. Some people have stood up and left. Some have succumbed to the abuse and became slaves^W true believers. Some have decided to stay around, rather begrudgingly, for a greater purpose like caring for innocents.
"I have to disagree. I never had any issues with 8mm Exabytes."
There were several product lines - classic Exabyte drives like 8500 (up to 5 GB), intermediate XL versions, Mammoth drives, and finally the VXA design they bought in. No prizes for guessing which lineage was the reliable one.
This page lists 8mm formats up to Mammoth
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data8
and this has formats after Mammoth
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VXA
As the story goes, Pablo Picasso once got mugged on the street. When he was trying to describe the mugger, one of police officers had a bright idea: "You are a famous artist after all. Why don't you draw us a sketch?" He duly did so. And it was a big success - by the next day police had arrested an unprecedented number of suspects. Five men, three women, two dogs, a horse with a chariot, two sewing machines and a bicycle.
"Where I come from (Finland) the taxman has set per diem rates."
Yes, Finnish system is quite reasonable. Per diem allowances are designed to cover meals and other small expenses without a requirement to document them. Larger expenses like hotels and transport are separate matters.
Tax code specifies maximum per diem rates that'll be tax free. Companies can pay more, but this will obviously incur an extra tax. Paying less is discouraged by employment laws. That's why most companies are using per diem rates from the tax code without trying to be clever about it.
For example, a full day in London has a per diem of 69 EUR. If the hotel accommodation includes two or more meals per day, then per diem has to be cut in half.
Official page in English
https://www.vero.fi/en/detailed-guidance/decisions/47405/taxexempt_allowances_in_2017_for_busine/
"there could be Ukrainian warheads at the least copied (or sold) on their way to NK"
Whut? Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan transferred their nukes to Russia in 90's. As per Lisbon treaty. Other states did not have any nukes to begin with.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisbon_Protocol
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-Soviet_states
Museum of Stalin. A visitor is strolling by the exhibition. He stops in front of the picture of Stalin's mother. Takes a thoughtful look and murmurs quietly: "Eh, she seems to be such an intelligent woman. How come she didn't have the wisdom to do an abortion?"
"Polynesia was not colonised from South America"
Yeah, but Heyerdahl's voyage was nevertheless a cool feat. It's remotely possible that South Americans did reach Polynesia and brought some bits of culture with them, but their genes did not survive into our era.
"Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin."
That brings back a political joke from the Soviet era.
"When do we get a freedom of speech like Americans have? You know, in America people can go near the White House yelling "Reagan is a moron!" and they won't be punished. Try something like that on the Red Square..."
"Oh, but we already have that freedom. You can go to the Red Square, yell "Reagan is a moron!", and you won't be punished. Even better, you are strongly encouraged to say that about Kohl and Thatcher too."
"But one highly specific byte (or couple of bits) of video ram being affected? Nah, don't believe it."
Possible if those cells are weaker than others. Most likely due to impurities. May be stable under normal circumstances, but flip when subjected to harsh conditions like high temperatures or strong EMI.
Hah. Will Intel modem business really last that long? Also, I'm not convinced that Apple doesn't hate SIM cards even more than they hate El Reg.
Let's make a prediction then: we'll likely see a Reg journalist being present on the launch of the smartwatch without SIM, without cellular modem, and during inquiry it'll become apparent that the smartwatch does not exist either. In the proper Cheese Shop style.