* Posts by ScrappyLaptop2

18 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Dec 2019

White Castle collecting burger slingers' fingerprints looks like a $17B mistake

ScrappyLaptop2

Re: Burger slinger?

"The name originated in the 1940s, when sailors in the U.S. Navy would refer to mini-burgers as "sliders" because of their extreme greasiness. In just one or two bites, the burger would just slide right down! The slider was first created at White Castle, a popular American fast food chain restaurant."

And according to my dad, said burgers continued their entire journey in the same manner.

ScrappyLaptop2

Re: ...and just how are people expected to log into a system?

PNGs and JPGs are also "just series of numbers". However, given when the White Castles system was put in place, I'm going to guess it stored far less than everyone seems to be assuming. More likely (but not certain) it was only scanning maybe seven points of data for each fingerprint, hashing those & storing them. The hash was then used to unlock things & was likely no more complex than a PIN. No image of the actual fingerprint was stored and the whole thing probably sat inside a mostly standalone vendor supplied turnkey P4 or maybe Core 2 Duo box similar to the cardkey systems of the era.

Bringing cakes into the office is killing your colleagues, says UK food watchdog boss

ScrappyLaptop2

Re: What a load of cobblers

I always waited until my next-cube neighbor got up for a moment, then put it on his desk.

Version 5 of the Endless OS enters testing

ScrappyLaptop2

The org's curated content on the educational version is...interesting?

First "app" under Science and Experiments is...

"49ers EDU Digital Playbook

The 49ers EDU Digital Playbook is an interactive educational resource, designed to further the 49ers Foundation goals of harnessing football to educate and empower Bay Area Youth."

It's all about the San Francisco 49's & football. Not exactly "science" as I remember it...

Datacenter migration plan missed one vital detail: The leaky roof

ScrappyLaptop2

Re: What?

"So who starts a building refurb and insists (and gets their way) that each relevant service group (IT, Telecom, Security, Facilities, and the departments moving into the refurbished building) interact only with the "person in charge"?"

A: Several highly siloed companies I've worked for. None still exist, btw...

ScrappyLaptop2

Re: What?

I believe the OP called the view a latticework - that may indicate they were indeed used in the correct orientation, with each brick upright as it would be in a wall. The only way I can see that working though, due to their negligible tensile (vs compression) strength is if each row was nestled between I-beams. Such an arrangement would indeed be "leaky" to a flood from above.

Bing! Microsoft tests search box in the middle of Windows 11 desktop

ScrappyLaptop2

It's about time they (re)invented Active Desktop

But if I recall the reason it was pulled was because it turned out to be a security disaster to integrate a web browser with the desktop?

Experimental WebAssembly port of LibreOffice released

ScrappyLaptop2

1978 Xerox 850 Display Typing Systems

Fast WYSIWYG running from ROM. I haven't used one since the mid-80's maybe, but I do recall it being responsive enough that my typing was not hindered in the least. First touchpad I every used, too. The full page 'paperwhite' display was nice.

Alarm raised after Microsoft wins data-encoding patent

ScrappyLaptop2

Re: Ban software patents.

We like corporations the best here in the United States, at least if you look at our laws and consider who they benefit most. And the bigger the corporation, the better we like them, because they tend to have more lobbyists, and more lobbyists means a more profitable Congress. Microsoft is a big corporation, and contracts with at least 24 lobbying firms.

ScrappyLaptop2

Re: Patenting pi, digit by digit

Dark Reader browser plug in works on The Register. And pretty much any other site, too...

The inevitability of the Windows 11 UI: New Notepad enters the beta channel

ScrappyLaptop2

I care about it, if...

They do to the final new Notepad what they did to the snip/snipping (ie screenshot) tool.

No more proper "windows style" menu bar, just vague, stylized, minimalist line drawing icons without labels until you hover over each one.

ScrappyLaptop2

Re: Last decent version of Windows was

Windows 7 was the last version with a UX primarily designed for a desktop PC; perhaps that has something to do with it?

Are you getting it? Yes, armageddon it: Mass hysteria takes hold as the Windows 7 axe falls

ScrappyLaptop2

Re: one would think

They sure went through a lot of work making SQL Server run on Linux for nothing, then...

A fine host for a Raspberry Pi: The Register rakes a talon over the NexDock 2

ScrappyLaptop2

Ten years ago we called this the Droid Razr Lapdock 100

Same cumbersome cables to connect the Pi, same...everything. Probably a lower quality screen.

It was a satisfying repurposing of a newly surplused item when they showed up on eBay en mass, but turned out to be little more than a fun weekend project. There simply wasn't a practical use case until the R-Pi nano W came along. Even then, it was just a laptop. I ended up using mine for lugging out to headless servers in broom closets, IIR, but even that required an additional video adapter dongle.

There was that one issue with one of the power-good signal lines that required the most minor of hacks, but yeah - pretty much the same exact thing.

Vivaldi opens up an exciting new front in the browser wars, seeks to get around blocking with cunning code

ScrappyLaptop2

Re: I'm puzzled...

Or you can just install a User Agent extension on the Chrome store from within Vivaldi, change the browser ID to one owned by a corporation Netflix has an agreement with, and watch Stranger Things to your heart's content.

When is an electrical engineer not an engineer? When Arizona's state regulators decide to play word games

ScrappyLaptop2

C'mon - there's a Register article from Oct 2019 that says the opposite

(also, welcome to the American legal system where nothing is truly law until the Supreme Court rules on it a few decades later)

"After Mats Järlström lost an initial legal challenge in 2014, a federal judge in January this year ruled Oregon's rules prohibiting people from representing themselves as engineers without a professional license from the state are unconstitutional."

from: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/21/traffic_lights_changed/

If you want an example of how user concerns do not drive software development, check out this Google-backed API

ScrappyLaptop2

...in a future version if Chrome

"notice of Google's intent to officially support the API in a future version of Chrome"

Say, isn't Edge about to switch over to the Chrome engine next year?

Trump Administration fast-tracks compulsory border facial recognition scans for all US citizens

ScrappyLaptop2

Re: State border crossings, too

California's 16 border inspection station are manned by the State Dept of Food and Agriculture, not by Federal DHS. They were put in place to protect crops - and thus, the state's economy - from threats such as (originally, IIR) the Mediterranean Fruit Fly and have remained fairly true to that purpose by inspecting vehicles coming into the state. Especially commercial vehicles.

https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/plant/pe/ExteriorExclusion/borders.html