* Posts by Benegesserict Cumbersomberbatch

790 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Mar 2022

Linus Torvalds affirms expulsion of Russian maintainers

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Again, a close reading of history needed to tease out the subtleties.

Finland was the only democracy to ally with Nazi Germany. They fought together to expel the Russians from (then) Finnish territory in Karelia.

Finland did not participate in Barbarossa and when the Siege of Leningrad was taking place Finnish armies stood at the border and kept watch. Given their proven ability to take on the Red Army, Finnish support at that phase of the war might have been the difference between Leningrad being held, and it falling... which might have been the difference between Moscow being held, and it falling.

When Germany started to lose, the equation quickly turned to one of land and money for peace.

Woman stuck upside down under rock for hours after trying to retrieve dropped phone

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She was startled when she saw a drop bear.

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These paramedics are men and women who will intubate someone entrapped in the crushed cabin of a vehicle that has gone over a cliff and is stuck in a tree, having abseiled down to get to them. If they have to.

Is Gen Z still a label you want to attach to them?

China again claims Volt Typhoon cyber-attack crew was invented by the US to discredit it

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Re: Koalas, placid?

MariaDB [(none)]> DROP BEARS;

ERROR 1064 (42000): You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MariaDB server for the right syntax to use near 'bears' at line 1

I never did work out the right syntax to use near 'bears', I was running too fast.

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Re: Koalas, placid?

And if the marsupials were involved, it would be cyclones, not hurricanes.

One-year countdown to 'biggest Ctrl-Alt-Delete in history' as Windows 10 approaches end of support

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Re: Making the decision for me --

It could be a Three Mile Island nuclear reactor, watch as the coolant slowly escapes...

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Re: And we all know what that means...

You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

Techie took five minutes to fix problem Adobe and Microsoft couldn't solve in two weeks

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Coat

You know you're in trouble when the Big Cheeses have a meltdown...

Linus Torvalds declares war on the passive voice

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Re: Aggressively passive

I just had a nightmarish vision of COBOL in the passive voice.

FOR A 1 IS ADDED TO A

(Wakes up, sweating, heart pounding)

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Then listen to His Orangeness speak for more than a minute, and ask yourself, "How many Donald Trumps are there?"

Regarding first person singular and the T/V distinction: either we started treating everyone with respect, or nobody with deference. Nice that other languages are saying to do the same.

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Re: I'm British...

See comment by Jonathan Richards 1.

Passive voice leaves open the possibility, however implicit, that the act being described was not carried out by the commit being described. That is, unless one also explicitly states that, a usually painfully cumbersome sentence construction.

This act was done. By whom?

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Re: I'm British...

So you would not know how to react should you be confronted by a subjunctive?

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Re: Passive preferred in some languages

Don't you mean... "English-speaking Germans wrote all the early DVB specifications"?

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Re: A place of regrets

And I suspect, when you finally depart this Earth, you never will have done, either.

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Re: Simple Perfectly Rare and Raw Uncommon Sense

Stand up for your right to confidently split infinitives!

It is perfectly clear and grammatical English. Pedants only started complaining about it when someone pointed out that it is impossible to split infinitives in Latin, and therefore renders such an English sentence impossible to directly translate into Latin.

English people were doing it since before those Vikings-masquerading-as-Frenchmen invaded from Normandy, bringing their -er, -ir and -re verbs with them.

For a language that can give the world constructs such as abso-fscking-lutely, splitting an infinitive is child's play.

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Re: He's right, of course

There's a Dr Gödel here who would like to have a word with you.

If Dell's Qualcomm-powered Copilot+ PC is typical of the genre, other PCs are toast

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Re: Function keys on a touch bar?

s/keybo/leop/ would have run faster.

I don't know what pressing Delete will do, but it seems safe enough!

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Re: Ouch!!!

Only an enthusiastic yes is consent.

It's true, social media moderators do go after conservatives

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Re: Who is the judge ?

The lying vs misinformation distinction is pure customer relations bullshit. If you were suspended from Xitter for lying, what are the chances you would remain a customer and come back after the suspension ended, after they called you a liar?

Masks, by the way - any mask is better than no mask. N95 is much better than a piece of fabric. I had to go through seven different makes of N95 before I found one that fit-tested adequately. 18 months as a frontline health care worker in the middle of the pandemic and I didn't get COVID. Two weeks after the mask mandate ended, I caught it from another hospital employee, who showed up for work while unwell.

Personalized pop-up was funny for about a second, until it felt like stalking

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Re: No banter please, we're British

Er, I'm afraid I don't quite follow you, Squadron Leader.

Now Dell salespeople must be onsite five days a week

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Re: Back to the old ways

As in, "There's the space that should be occupied by Alex. Where's the lazy sod gone this time?"

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Arrivederci, Au revoir, Auf wiedersehen, Hasta la vista... Baby,

Every fucking city's just the same.*

* Paul Kelly

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would be good idea leave out capitals conjunctions articles punctuation alter order word occasionally just case

OS/2 expert channeled a higher power to dispel digital doom vortex

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Re: In the days before t’interweb…

And correctly identify a pen, a wristwatch and a notepad, remember the name of the Prime Minister, draw two intersecting pentagons, count backwards by seven from one hundred to sixty five, read an instruction aloud from a piece of paper then carry it out, fold the piece of paper in half and put it on the floor, then remember the the items you were asked to identify at the start.

Intel thinks it's got a final microcode fix for recalcitrant Raptor Lake processors

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Re: "I'm surprised they didn't find an excuse to blame AMD."

I agree not over, but orders have gone out to someone in a back room somewhere to start fashioning a white flag out of a bedsheet, while the generals get their ratlines in order.

Of the four root causes, three of them are microcode fixes. If end user applies the microcode patches and the problem goes away, number 1. (the only one Intel can pass blame on) proves itself not to be a root cause.

A fine season in which to be a class action lawyer.

Cards Against Humanity deals SpaceX a $15M lawsuit over Texas turf tangle

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If the absence of a wall on CAH's land is an attractant to would-be immigrants, is the presence of high velocity launch ejecta at random moments a deterrent?

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Re: Seize it...

Taking away someone else's property that they have left on your land to have quiet enjoyment of your land, however, is abating a nuisance, which right comes to you as tenant of the land.

If they ask for it back and you don't give it, that's theft, but you're entitled for them to defray your costs for removal and storage before it comes to that.

I'm fortunate enough to live somewhere where dumping rubbish on private land is also an offense.

Microsoft cash to help reignite Three Mile Island atomic plant

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all that heat goes where, exactly?

Into the cloud, of course. How else are we supposed to make them?

Entropy is a bitch.

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Re: Not the only plant in consideration

Limit your banana intake. All that 40K.

Putin really wants Trump back in the White House

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Re: Re:And posting AC is a right wing signature with Coward

Only any degree of socialist as a subset of nationalist: if you weren't part of a Nazi's nation, you had no place in their society.

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Re: Good!

Let's have the negotiations in Munich.

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Re: Eric Hoffer had Donald Trump COMPLETELY figured out YEARS AGO---

Interesting how much those quotes apply to the people of Russia as much as they do to the people of the USA.

Elon Musk's assassination 'joke' bombs, internet calls for his deportation

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At a time when he's supposed to be convincing Americans to re-elect him to the Presidency, the best that his Orangeness can find to do to help the American people is to play golf.

It does help, in a way - it minimises the chance that he will be re-elected.

Australia’s government spent the week boxing Big Tech

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Hit them where it hurts. Make them pay in bitcoin.

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The name Putin springs to mind.

Fascist as an insult seems to have two purposes, and which one depends on whether you know what the word means.

Naturally his Muskiness calls anyone who won't let him do whatever he wants with his toys fascist (see Free Speech Absolutist). Naturally Putin calls anyone who won't let Russia do whatever it wants fascist (see Appeal to History). Naturally Trump uses it when his random number generator doesn't land on Antifa, Woke, Commie, or Dangerous Liberal (see Weird). Must make those impressionable plebs think the bad people are really bad.

But as to people who deny international norms of legality, aggressively shut down dissent, use legal and extralegal coercion and the incitement of mob behaviour to oppress their opponents, and cry shrilly to populist sentiment to evade rational criticism - think, and you'll know whom the cap fits.

Historically, the definition of fascist has been so loose you could even accuse Santa Claus of it - him with his red suit, black leather belt, and armies of jackbooted elves, clamouring for domination of the whole world... I won't stand for it, I tell you!

If HDMI screen rips aren't good enough for you pirates, DeCENC is another way to beat web video DRM

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Coat

Re: and the like is doomed

I did, but my 3D printer wasn't big enough.

BOFH: The Boss is right, the applications of AI are truly staggering

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I just discovered AI is risk stratifying the CT brain scans ordered from the Emergency Department. So after he's stopped bouncing, it will be waiting for him when they wheel him in on a trolley from the ambulance as well

Apple owes billions in back taxes over Ireland state aid rule break

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I would love to find out that none of that $61.8b can be brought back into the EU without being subject to company tax.

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Ireland is the beneficiary

Indeed it is, but malgre nous.

The point of view of the Irish government in this litigation was, in short, the EU can't force us to collect a tax that, between us and the corporate citizen concerned, we have decided we would rather not collect.

It can. It's called the rule of law.

Trump taps Musk to lead 'government efficiency' task force

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Re: Musk's plan

Great Britain, circa 1640. No bill of rights. Star Chamber courts. Magna Carta a dead letter. Tax optional to the rich but penurious to the ordinary. Power distributed according to loyalty to the bloke at the top. Divided in two, but both parts beholden to the same person.

That was an interesting decade.

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Re: Strictly transactional RUMP move: everybody absolutely LOVES Musk...look at all them votes!

Accelerate the process: let's break up the world's monopoly of rich people into lots of smaller people and distribute the assets according to need.

Atomic clocks are so last epoch, it's time someone nailed down the nuclear clock

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Has anyone pointed out

...and accurate to one second every 40 billion years

4x1010 >> 7917 (The half-life of 229Th).

Techie made a biblical boo-boo when trying to spread the word

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Re: Missing detail

And my phone is pestering me with messages from banks that I have no account with telling me to "verify my login details", the post office for parcels I haven't ordered, the tax office of whom I can tell whenever I want to the nearest cent where my liabilities stand, non-existent missed phone calls from numbers that differ from mine only by the last two digits, or numbers that cannot exist in the national numbering scheme, or private numbers that call me and just give a recorded message saying "Goodbye", and people still wonder why electronic fraud is an industry in the terms of billions of dollars.

If you build a system that can be manipulated, it will be manipulated more often for fraud than for valid reasons.

But no-one's doing anything dodgy, oh no.

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Devil

One offense, one punishment

As to anyone who thinks an unsolicited phone call is a good idea, let alone an automated one, I say this: what Hastur did to the call centre in Good Omens when he escaped from Crowley's answering machine was true and righteous altogether.

So that's all right, then.

A nice cup of tea rewired the datacenter and got things working again

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Re: Johnny Foreigners!!!

Yeah, nah.

A last look at the Living Computers museum before collection heads to auction

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Just imagine how the Voynich Manuscript person feels about how their thesis was treated.

Bargain-hunting boss saw his bonus go up in a puff of self-inflicted smoke

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RFC 2324

A proper implementation of HTCPCP should have had 420 On Fire as well as 418 I'm a Teapot error states, perhaps?

To crew, or not to crew – that is the question facing Boeing's stricken Starliner

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Re: Groundhog Day

That's a circular argument.

Lego's Concorde is the only supersonic jet you can build for the price of a fancy dinner

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Re: What is the max skin temperature?

127+273=400. (K)

Microsoft's Patch Tuesday borks dual-boot Linux-Windows PCs

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It was clear from its inception that the Trust part of a Trusted Platform Module is not that of the owner, it's the trust of Micros~1.