Posts by EagleZ28

NASA to stop using names like 'Eskimo Nebula' and 're-examine' what it calls cosmic objects

Re: Ban all Homonyms!

At least some of them, of the "Race Studies" variety, have redefined the word "privilege".

According to them, it now means "an ABSENCE of IMPEDIMENT"... instead of the ADDITION of something special.

Of course, it's just a mere coincidence that the change of definition yields the result of making far more White people "privileged"... and yes, he was referring to White privilege initially, but paused and changed it to "all privilege really...".

Likewise, they defined the word "microaggression" so that ONLY the dominant cultural group COULD commit a microaggression, thus giving all other groups a "free pass"..

They are also trying to redefine "racist"/"racism"/"prejudice" so that minorities are somehow unable, by definition, to be "racists" or "prejudiced".

I got 99 problems, and all of them are your fault

Re: It sometimes works the other way

In general... USUALLY... I agree... life IS too short...

On the other hand... "once bitten, twice shy"... and "Screw me once, shame on you. Screw me twice, shame on me."

Re: It sometimes works the other way

To the best of my knowledge, Seagate doesn't have an industry-wide "dodgy rep".

What got me so angry was the added insult... they'd send me a new one... for MORE than

the going retail price, with S&H being extra, of course, when they should have replaced it

for FREE, since it was under warranty when it failed.

At the time, I worked for a company who assembled and sold machines which came with full computers.

If our customers had a drive go bad at 50 of 52 weeks into a warranty, it could easily be that long before the bad drive came back to us and then we'd have to get with the supplier...

While your #1, ending the suffering too quickly, is certainly a valid point, I most respectfully submit that your #2 is variable...

After the keyboard has been... ahem... put through those paces, I'm not certain anyone would WANT to use it, so any damage sustained might not be a problem...

... and if someone might want to use it anyway... try using a Keytronics 101-key AT keyboard. Those things could (can) survive a trip to hell and back.

Re: It sometimes works the other way

I once bought a Seagate hard drive, which went bad on the SAME morning when I had to make an international flight, and so was unable to address the issue.

On the day that I returned from my trip, I contacted their customer service, as the drive HAD still been in warranty when it went bad.

Nope. No luck, even though their own date of manufacture on the drive meant that my story was quite likely true... and I had offered to send them pictures of my itenerary and passport stamps to prove it.

The best that they would do for me was to offer me a special replacement price on a new drive... which was actually HIGHER than common retail price, even BEFORE adding shipping and handling fees.

That just added insult to injury.

Since then, I've never bought another Seagate hard drive... nor has any company I've worked for, when I was the one making the purchasing decision... and I've never recommended them, either, when I was asked for advice concerning which drive to buy.

That was 26-28 years ago... and I've bought enough hard drives for my OWN systems, not counting my employers', to cost them WAY more in lost sales than what simply honoring a single "potentially barely expired" warranty would have cost them.

Of course, if they HAD honored it, then I would STILL be bragging about how good their customer service was, stil be recommending them, and probably ONLY them...

SOME people know how to carry a grudge until it dies of old age, THEN have it stuffed and, ahem, MOUNTED.

(Sorry, I just couldn't resist!)

First alligators, then dogs, now Basil Fawlty is trying to standardise social distancing measures

Re: But what would the measure be...

" I'd be too engrossed in admiring the plumage!"...

and for this reason, perhaps the distance which one can throw the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch might be a better measure.

Provided that one doesn't spend too long reading the manual.

Amazon gets green-light to blow $10bn on 3,000+ internet satellites. All so Americans can shop more on Amazon

Re: serve the public interest

The article states that the purpose is to provide HS internet in areas that don't already have it.

In my home area, AT&T phone lines SUCK... even by 1980's standards, never mind TODAY'S standards.

There's also no cable TV.

Cellular is metered... but otherwise not bad in my local area... good cell coverage...

OTHER than satellite, the only option that I have is a radio-freq-based provider... and soon the trees are going to grow tall enough to block that weak signal, and I can't very well go around "topping" other people's trees to clear a line-of-sight. (Yes, tree leaves will block that signal.)

Also, for more competition, isn't Google supposed to be doing something very similar?

Re: Use of personal data ?

MITM/Man-in-the-middle -

I think (might be wrong) that there are already laws in place in USA... and probably all of EU and Canada and Aus/NZ to prevent that kind of thing...

Or our existing ISP's would already be doing it.

Re: Use of personal data ?

"Disney *and* Disney+ is a thing? Both content creation and distribution? Seems sucky for the consumer."

It's nowhere near as bad as the UK's BBC... The government and the content creation and distribution.

It's also like Amazon Prime and Netflix... both of which are also both creators and distributors.

Copyright law provides some protection to the creators from anti-competitive business practices.

"Variety is the spice of life" provides even more, since people are almost inevitably want several different distributors in order to get different creators... the shows they want to watch.

With the US election coming up, when better to petition regulators for a controversial way to chill online speech?

Re: More obvious signs ...

How do I calculate?

YOU appear to be referring to COVID19? I don't count it on Trump's "scorecard"... HE didn't cause it.

If people choose not to wear masks and not isolate as much as is possible, that's on them... THEIR choice.

BTW -

I recommend large frame glasses to help PROTECT your EYES from being a point of infection.

Safety glasses... tinted/not-tinted as appropriate.

Back to Trump's "butcher's bill"...

Has he started a WAR? No. Kennedy and LBJ dragged USA and thus some of our allies into Vietnam.

Clinton is at least partially responsible for 9/11... Clinton had a perfect opportunity to try to reset relations with Russia, but he was "too busy" playing with Monica and cigars... and "Black Hawk Down" and Somalia...

Obama and his drone strikes... ISIS/ISIL... Syria and his "line in the sand"

ILLEGAL immigrants DIE trying to "break in" to USA, because of "coyotes", desert/dehydration and heat stroke, etc. STOPPING that (which he appears to have SLOWED) helps PRESERVE lives...

Bush II - Iraq and Afghanistan.

Truman - Korea and the start of the Cold War.

The "sanctuary cities" on the other hand ENCOURAGE people to try to immigrate illegally.

Re: "The Fairness Doctrine would have made Fox News [..] illegal"

You've got a pretty clear take on the US media.

Back in the 80's, it used to be slightly Left/Liberal/Progressive, BUT it was also often (not always), BALANCED out by the individual LOCAL news stations.

As time went on, the nationwide MSM kept drifting further and further Left... the "spin" became overwhelming... blatant... to the point where Conservatives were no longer WILLING to put up with it, which they HAD been... and often still are... to a point. Conservatives became accustomed to having the Left-view crammed down their throats.,, at least when they had no other choice.

Then, along came Fox... and they suddenly HAD a choice... Likewise with talk-radio... and a few surviving newspapers.

IMO, the NYT and WaPo and CNN (etc.) would have done FAR better to try to serve both sides of the stories equally... to try to EDUCATE their readers/viewers... Instead, they chose to alienate half in order to "gratify" the other half.

If Fox is a "devil", it was the MSM that gave birth to it.

Re: "The Fairness Doctrine would have made Fox News [..] illegal"

FOX News ONLY exists because the other (TV) news outlets became so heavily Left-biased.

FOX News is #1 in US because it's the ONLY Right-leaning (national/international, as opposed to purely local) TV news, while the MSM is so numerous (and completely Left) that it divides up small pieces of the total Left-leaning viewership.

Also, it's not simply that the MSM is Left-leaning... they often insult the Right... and quite frankly, slander and/or libel them, as well.

Just some examples...

"Flyover country"... as if the only part of the US which matters are the two coasts.

"Covington Kids" - the MSM universally panned them as Christians (probably correctly) but ALSO as RACISTS... without evidence... AND as the instigators of the "racist incident"... definitely NOT correctly.

"Deplorables" - This single comment by Hillary probably was enough to cost her the election... by itself. A lot of Americans who had voted for Obama, TWICE, decided to vote for Trump instead of Hillary.

Russian Collusion... They've been on an don about this since Trump won the election... but it wasn't Trump and his team who colluded with a Russian to put lies into the Steele Dossier and then used that to weaponize our own legal system... AGAINST Trump. No, that was the Left, the Dems, and the MSM.

More... I could list more, but that would turn into an entire book...

Dems more focused on who could/might beat Trump...

Yes, I agree...

Universal healthcare in USA?

The Dems aren't REALLY for that... too many doctors are Dems... and the insurance companies have too much power... with BOTH parties... INCLUDING the Dems.

Medical malpractice lawyers tend to be OVERWHELMINGLY Dem... because the Dems are in favor of UNlimited lawsuits, while the Reps are in favor of limits. If we in USA go to gov't healthcare, like England, Canada, etc., it would be, in THIS country, FAR harder to sue for ANY amount... because we have to have the Fed. Govt's PERMISSION to sue the FG. Essentially, it would put the ambulance chasers out of work... along with the medical insurance companies and all of their employees, as well as quite a few employees at the hospitals who handle billing... and that is a LOT of votes/voters... not to mention money... which is MOST of the reasons that Obamacare went the way that it did.

Universal Basic Income -

OMG...!

Okay, this sounds nice... getting a paycheck for just being a warm body...

Beyond THAT, though... if it's "universal", then who the hell is PAYING for it?

The government can't give anything to anyone without first taking it from someone else.

So, if everyone is getting it, then who is the gov't taking it FROM in order to... give it to everyone?

Are they just printing money like it grows on trees? Maybe. Of course, that causes inflation... which

means that they are just giving with one hand and taking with the other...

It wasn't the White supremacists who elected Trump.

The very rich aren't enough in numbers to swing even a couple of counties, much less a single

state, much less multiple states... any more than my one vote could have turned MY state from red to blue... or even my *precinct*... which is smaller than a county, for our friends in the UK and elsewhere.

As for the White supremacists... there probably aren't enough of those to fill even ONE Congressional District... which would take about 730,000 people. THEN... you'd have to get them all to vote one way.

In the OP's argument... for Trump... which would mean getting them to vote AGAINST abortion. Ha! I'd bet that a large percentage of WS's are just as PRO-choice as they are ANTI-whatever-other-race(s), which simply means that you can't count on that particular group voting, as a group, for any specific candidate.

The buyers don't want people smart enough to think for themselves.

The buyers don't want people who are too honest to BE bought.

The buyers don't want people are too personally wealthy.

The buyers don't want people who are too independent.

In a lot of cases (hopefully not all), you can substitute the word "establishment" for buyers,

and the same things will apply.

There, you have the reasons that Bloomberg didn't win the nomination... too wealthy, and probably also too independent.

There, you have the reasonS that Biden DID get it... he's "likable"... by every standard listed above.

There, you have the reasons that Trump was such a long-shot back in 2016... and why so

many of "the establishment" didn't like... and so many still don't... and also some of the

reasons that so many people voted for him, first in the primaries, then in the 2016 election.

(*I* was not one of them.)

Re: More obvious signs ...

Forget what Trump SAYS...

Look at what he DOES... or more to the point, does NOT do...

Most importantly of all... how many people has he killed or gotten killed?

Love him or hate him... the answer to THAT question is...

less than even Kennedy in his half-term... two years... and FAR FAR FAR less than LBJ.

Less than Harry Truman... and less than BHO, too.

(BTW, I didn't vote for Trump in 2016. Who I vote for in 2020 is going to largely depend on who Biden's team picks for VP.)

Someone made an AI that predicted gender from email addresses, usernames. It went about as well as expected

Re: Work with facts

It was used as a more "socially acceptable" term for "sex" because "gender" was NOT something that... ahem... two people could do together.

Did anyone else notice THIS little gem?

From the article:

"Constanza-Chock said. "Or the harm in opportunity cost of not showing employment ads to people based on misgendered assumptions.”"

NOT showing EMPLOYMENT ads... based on wrong gender assumptions?

That sounds like "sexual (gender) discrimination"!

Re: The complaint seems confused

"I'm dubious that any data available to an advertiser is of any use at all, to be honest."

Well, let's say a manufacturer, or retailer, of brassieres is looking to advertise their products.

They have to pay for each ad "pushed" to a viewer.

If they don't send those ads to... to people without "boobies", they can reach more *potential* customers with their advertising budget.

Re: Work with facts

Yes... In ENGLISH, and when referring to members of "the animal kingdom", including humans, sex and gender were the same thing.

It's been five years since Windows 10 hit: So... how's that working out for you all?

Re: Nope

I've been using MS since MS-DOC 3.1

I'd add that Win98SE was also pretty solid and reliable.

IMO, every 2nd iteration tends to be absolute CRAP... and then they get the NEXT one pretty good.

98SE, 2K, XP, 7... all good and solid.

95 (a &b), ME, 8.0, 8.1... all crap.

Oh... and back in the day, I also ran OS/2 2.0, 2.1, and 3.0

I had a lot of VERY high-end DOS-based programs... VERY expensive... and OS/2 ran them beautifully... better, in fact, than DOS... and likewise, it ran some critical specialized hardware device drivers quite well.

What evil lurks within the data centre, and why is it DDoS-ing the ever-loving pants off us?

Re: Updates are important!

LOL! My local land-line is doing well... REALLY well... to get 19.2K...

and that, by the way, is Kb not KB.

Re: SMTP ddos

"__________ is the number one go-to excuse for racists."

How does the person ORIGINALLY asserting this claim (probably someone at some Uni)

know that the person using the "excuse" is a racist?

Telepathy? Confession?

The volcanoes on Venus aren't dead, say astroboffins, they're merely resting, pining for the planet's lava fjords

Re: "they're merely resting, pining for the planet's lava fjords"

I wish to make a complaint!

When I looked at those volcanoes not half an hour ago, the astroboffins assured me that they were simply shagged out after a long... well... blow.

On closer examination, however, I noticed that the volcanoes appear to be nailed to their perch.

Oh, wait a minute, I think I hear something...

VOOM!

Mainframe madness as the snowflakes take control – and the on-duty operator hasn't a clue how to stop the blizzard

Re: Operator revenge

Speaking of Windows 3.11 and burping...

Back in the day, I had a friend and coworker who was using... Win95, IIRC.

I hacked into his computer and replaced the startup Windows bitmap...

I changed the word "Windows" to "Windoze", and added cracks to the various panes...

Then I replaced the startup sound with "Vom16??.wav"...

It was a rather "graphic" sound, in then-glorious 16-bits and crystal clear, as if it had been recorded in a professional sound studio... of someone doing a "technicolor yawn". It was so clear that you could hear individual droplets hitting the floor.

When he booted up his computer the next morning...

University ordered to stop running women-only job ads

Re: Keep up the +ve discrimination

Peter - I've read your comment several times...

"I rather admire the objective of 30% female staff 'so that they get a proper voice' in the culture."

Now, finally, I have a question.

When females (at least in Western culture) ALREADY have "a proper voice" in the ENTIRE/OVERALL culture, why do they NEED or DESERVE to have "a proper voice" in ever fragment of culture?

For an extreme example... do we give them a 50% say in what goes in gay-male marriages? That's a subculture. What about the things that go on (whatever those things might be) in a gay male bar or club or other social and/or professional event?

Do we give them a 50% say in what happens in the Boy Scouts? In male locker rooms?

Re: You can't advertise jobs for just women

Why do I get the feeling that those guidelines were written...

by a female...

with a BA in Gender Studies? (or Euro equiv.)

Re: Just the academic staff ?

If you can't have "real" equality, without also having "equality of outcome", then we need to *immediately* begin drafting in order to bring the ratio up to 50/50 in the occupations of "foxhole and trench personnel".

I'm just following that philosophical principal to carry a theory to its extreme ends in order to test it.

I don't recall the name of it...

Perhaps someone who does can remind me?

Re: You'd think a uni would know better.

I think there's a strong correlation between this, and things like quotas and such, and ...

"equality of outcome".

This university *might* achieve their goal of 30%... they might even achieve "equality"... 50%... but

they are going to have to *pay* for it... "through the wazoo"... That's going to mean high bonuses and salaries... and to be "equal", they'll then have to do the same thing for the male faculty.

That's going to mean teachers coming for one reason only... MONEY... and not because they *want* to

teach the next generation.

In turn, that will almost certainly mean a drop in the quality of the actual education.

Ethically, this quota is dubious, at best.

Financially, the quota is stupid.

Functionally, the quota is problematic in terms of the function of all schools... to *teach*.

I'm *almost* certain that "a competent woman in the workplace that supports gender quotas"... is an oxymoron.

Before someone goes to hammer me... I'm not really a "nail". (usually)

The two best bosses and one of the best CO's that I've ever had were all women.

Two of the *worst* were men.

The type of "plumbing" a person has isn't what makes them a good or bad boss... or person either.

To compound their difficulty, the available women IN those subjects are ALSO being actively "pursued" by the commercial sector, and if they chose to go into a hard science/tech field in the first place, there seems to me to be an equally strong chance that they want to DO things... instead of "just" teaching those things to other people.

Even worse (from the Uni's POV), those women are likely to be paid better, if not FAR better, in the corporate sector than in the education sector.

You know Facebook has an image problem when major nonprofits start turning down donations over political lies

Re: I must express my opposition to this

FB only has to censor speech in some countries.

FB is headquartered in USA.

IN USA, if FB censors speech, they then face a SERIOUS risk of being legally defined as a publisher, AND therefore open to being sued for libel... and THAT would mean that they would HAVE to censor any derogatory/insulting speech about anyone BY anyone, which just MIGHT be false, in order to avoid being sued for libel.

Just in practical terms, that would be an impossible task, so FB might as well "close the doors".

This is the reason that the distinction (in USA) between "publishers" and "platforms" was created... to PROTECT free speech, while ALSO protecting the organizations, like FB, Twitter... EVERY comment section... including THIS one.

Re: I must express my opposition to this

Laws, in order to maintain a just society, must be applied equally to everyone, to the best of our ability.

What happens if the telephone and internet companies, which are private companies, decide that YOU don't have the right to speak... not "here"?

What happens if restaurants decide that "Jakes" can't eat here?

Uh, yes, that actually IS illegal... and it's illegal because we had something very close to it before.

It was wrong then, even in privately owned restaurants open "to the public", and it's still wrong.

(Yes, in most places, owners/managers can refuse service to specific individuals, but not to "groups".)

More specifically on this subject, meaning FB, whom I do NOT like...

They ARE caught between a rock and a hard place...

Either they censor/correct HIM... and become a PUBLISHER...

or they censor NO ONE, and remain a "platform", which is what protects them from the

slander/libel posted by users...

And one more thing... free speech is one of the primary reasons that this IS still (mostly) a free country.

Even for people we don't like with opinions we don't like... because if THEY don't have the right to say them, then WE don't have (or deserve) the right to speak OUR opinions which THEY don't like.

For example, I'm sure that they would take exception to your calling them "mewling sycophants", just as HE would object to being called the "idiot in chief". Should you be banned for expressing your opinion of them in such deliberately insulting terms? Should The Reg be sued, and lose, for libel, or be forced to eject you? Should YOU be sued?

Re: Political lies

The problem with this is...

Who GETS to decide what is truth, and what isn't?

To put it in a different light... to get Trump OUT of the equation...

If you let hard scientists decide how many human genders there are... I think you'll find that, overwhelmingly, there are only two, unless you count real hermaphrodites as a third, instead of "both".

If you allow "soft" scientists, "social" types, to determine "truth", then there will be a number...

which will then be debunked in short order, in order to add yet more.

US senators propose $22bn fund for new fabs on American soil because making stuff is better than designing stuff

Re: Meh

Codejunky -

Adding a bit more to my previous post...

Some jobs can be easily considered "low value", if all you're considering is salary/wages and income taxes... and even if you consider the *corporate* income taxes...

There are less obvious ones, though...

Loss of a major employer can completely wreck a local economy. It can wreck entire towns/cities, and not just the small cities. It can wreck *every* employer... or service... who depends on those people having jobs, and their children...

Take 50% of a school's children away, and you might as well close the school, because the remaining townspeople can't afford to pay twice as much... especially when half of them have also been laid off due to half of the town leaving to some other place to find work.

Then, you have other things that can suffer drastically, even catastrophically... like... wafer and chip fabs use a *lot* of electricity. PCB plants use a lot of water. Take those customers away, and those utility companies are forced to lay people, raise rates to the remainder of their customers, or both... and things like this then wreck that area's ability to *ever* recover by attracting new/replacement businesses.

What might be low value to a nation, might mean life or death to towns and cities...

Re: Meh

Codejunky -

The direct cost of the employees' wages/salaries aren't the only costs of labor...

In the US, there's also the cost Social Security which the employer must match, which adds about 8% to his/her salary... and then there is the additional cost of medical/health insurance... and other benefits such as 401k, and so on.

THEN there are other costs... such as regulatory compliance.

I was directly in involved in the PCB industry back in the 90's... and remember that chips are useless without PCB's... and I watched as Bill Clinton's EPA destroyed almost the entire US PCB industry... with a new regulation which required what were (at the time, and allegedly) impossible to meet levels of allowable emission of copper in their waste-water.

At the time, a number of very large makers of PCB"s were in the process of building entirely NEW plants, and they and others were also expanding EXISTING plants. When the EPA went through their final required review procedures (which *appeared* to have only been done *because* those reviews were required by law, as part of their economic impact review), those companies abandoned not only the new plants, but the plans to upgrade existing plants... and built them in China instead.

The only difference was the NEW regulation.

This is how a bureaucrat destroys an entire industry, costs the nation many millions of dollars in tax revenue, more in unemployment insurance paid out, destroys critical national defense infrastructure, and yet more in income taxes paid by the FORMER employees... all while a "Rhodes Scholar" sits in a somewhat round office and diddles an intern with a cigar.

It also didn't just put the US PCB manufacturers out of business, or drive them offshore... it also put their suppliers out of business or offshore.

Re: Meh

"Low value jobs"

It's an error to assume that these jobs are low value.

Some will be, of that I have little doubt, but many will be skilled technical jobs, and some will be skilled professional jobs... EE's, chemists, and so on. There'll be jobs for robotics people to program the robots, CAD/CAM people to do the layouts, and so on.

Secondly, the lowest jobs will still likely provide a potential PATH to promotion and gaining new skills of real value, as opposed to, for example, "flipping burgers" or "dispensing" Starbucks' coffee.

Re: Damn socialists

Don't worry about the "unfair government subsidies".

Within 5 years, the US will have another "progressive EPA" who will put the fab out of business with some old or new regulation... just as they did before. My guess is that it'll have something to do with "using too much water". Second guess is that it'll have something to do with carbon, cap-and-trade, and greenhouse gases caused by the massive amount of electricity the fab will need to use.

Re: Meh

VTCodger -

I don't know the specifics of IBM's sale of that foundry...

1) it may have been due to a temporary market glut in the type/tech of chips which that foundry was capable of producing...

2) It might also/instead have been that the particular foundry used an older technology which was "on its last legs" before becoming completely obsolete

3) The plant's staff would definitely have been union, probably well/highly paid.

Re: Meh

"What is worth more?"

I'll answer that with a question...

If you can't get the chips which you design manufactured... then what use is being able to design them?