Posts by jake

Re: People with Reynaud's disease will shiver just hearing the term

According to my gay neighbors, that's pronounced LGB+57.

_{If THEY find it funny, Shirley I'm allowed to.}

Re: People with Reynaud's disease will shiver just hearing the term

"I feel like everyone is represented these days, except for Bread."

Bloomer is a type of loaf of bread.

Unless you mean the fairly esoteric Irish potato varietal ...

Re: Hanging…

Sounds like a stalker to me ...

Everybody I have ever known (ofline, in the RealWorld) uses "male" and "female".

This is not going to change any time soon.

PDNFTT

Ta.

Electrons having a negative charge upsets you?

Re: And the Amerification marches on

How is that American? Shirley your Golly sold you strawberry jam back in the '70s?

"Also ask them why bathrooms frequently no longer contain their namesake item. It's somewhat misleading to describe a property as 5 bed, 11 bath unless he's expecting people to relax and soak in a WC."

Here in CA, that property might be listed as 5 bed, 6 and 5 half baths (WTF is a half bath?). Or 6 full, 4 half and a powder room (downstairs guest toilet+sink). Or 4 full, 2 shower only, 4 half and a powder room. Or any other way to describe the rooms without actually saying "toilet".

Realtors are weird. Ever seen how badly they dress up an empty house? I'd rather see it empty ...

Re: common pain points

"Visually impaired people can say whatever the hell they want!?"

One wonders what happened to fellow commentard Shadow Systems ...

"We're peeking in the Puritan phase again but this too will pass and its proponents are being derided just as their predecessors were."

FTFY

Pardon me while I head you off at the pass, pardner.

Re: Way too complicated

More folk etymology than urban myth.

Splitting hairs, I know, but ...

Funniest thing about this one is it's obviously wrong. A "rule of thumb" always implies building without measuring or otherwise guesstimating something, not beating on people.

I learned to skin a cat from my Grandfather.

His dad was a muleskinner.

Re: Making a first pass

Thankfully, we can pass on the tomfoolery these people are spouting.

Re: Making a first pass

"Surely making even one pass is frowned upon?"

Been watching too much F1 again?

Re: "hanging processes"

I think every one of us here on ElReg has worked under a hanging ceiling.

The chandelier in my dining room hangs from the ceiling.

There are pictures hanging on my walls.

The roadbed of the Golden Gate Bridge is hanging from the suspension cables.

I just put new foundation in an old hive, it's hanging nicely in the frames.

Etc. etc. etc.

Re: "hanging processes"

It's not "black and white", per se, it's light and dark. Think about a small group of proto-humans a couple million years ago. Fearing the dark of night, because that's when the nocturnal predators hunted. The light of day brought relative safety. In other words "dark == bad, light == better" is embedded in our very genetics.

And let's not forget that those first early humans were undoubtedly dark skinned.

The entire concept of black vs white being a racist thing in this context is laughable.

Re: "I think it's reasonable to declare victory and move on"

"totally inclusive" implies everything ... To the best of my knowledge, I'm not in a black hole.

_{Although I felt like I was when I had to dig the tractor out of the mud down by the creek ...}

Re: Blind spot

All vertebrates, yes.

Cephalopods are not vertibrates. Octopus eyes are weird.

Re: Blind spot

Unless actually eyeless, they usually have the spot in question.

"The user of 'fire' as a verb in the context of employment is not permitted."

Oh, I don't know ... I know plenty of people removed from employment who feel they have been burned.

Re: "English has more words than any other language, , by a factor of two or three"

Oh, please. Everybody knows that Çekoslovakyalılaştıramadıklarımızdanmışsınız is a perfectly cromulant word to those who use it.

Re: Get a life, hand-wringers & namby-pambys.

Snowflakes come on one flavo(u)r: Frozen water. Until they are polluted by humans, of course.

I'm not upset at all about so-called "inclusive" language. Use it all you like! Feel free, if it suits you. Just don't try to force other people to use it. Forcing other people to adopt your views has a name, and I seriously doubt you want to be called that name.

Nice use of "dear" in your rather failed attempt to talk down to me. Is talking down to people considered "inclusive" in your mind? Somehow it wouldn't surprise me ...

Re: Some times there's a reason

"(well, Unixish; most of them were Xenix)"

Xenix was UNIX ... specifically, Xenix was re-branded AT&T Unix Version 7.

Contrary to popular belief, Microsoft did not write Xenix, they licensed it from Ma Bell.

Re: Very expensive lab equipment

"If only you had allowed export of the logging data as CSV, we'd still be purchasing equipment from you."

FTFY

Re: Better than a PM

I'm not just an operator, I'm a systems administrator. I'm here to do work, not to fuck around and daydream.

Re: ping

Yes. "ping" is not an acronym, and never was.

It was released as public domain software first (1984ish), later changed to the BSD license (1985ish). It was included in 1986's 4.3BSD. Obviously we used it in 4.2BSD as we were building 4.3.

Note that some variations of ping include an audible option. Handy occasionally. Usually annoying.

Also, see: https://www.catb.org/jargon/html/P/ping.html

Re: Better than a PM

Depending on the machine and your access rights, tell it to echo ^G to its console once or twice per second. Even if you can't personally hear it, the person sitting nearest to it will call and bitch about it.

Re: There is NO future for advertising.. NONE!

"adverting provides a pointer to likely quality."

I think I see a serious problem with your thesis.

"“clean rooms” provide a concept space where you AI avatar can inspect information to help you decide what to spend money on"

More like provide more fodder for my filters. A corporate shill working out of the 27th floor on Madison Avenue and living in a 300sq foot, $3500/month "apartment" in Manhattan (San Francisco, London, Paris, Rome, Tokyo ... ) has absolutely no idea whatsoever about the needs of Middle America, much less what I need out here in the wilds of the West Coast. Why should I pay any attention to them, much less allow my network to waste the bandwidth downloading their useless drivel?

Re: TV has been formulaic for at least a couple of generations

TV has been a vast wasteland since the 1950s. Hollywood officially went TITSUP[0] with the release of TriStar's Godzilla in 1998. It's all been downhill from there, IMO. Fire the lot of 'em, no great loss.

[0] Total Idiocy To Sucker Underbred Public

Re: Pandora’s Box is Split Asunder, Mars is into Minerva, and the Devil is in the Detail

"AI is not going away"

You're right. But it's time for it to start hibernating again. Winter is upon us.

"is only going to grow in stature"

It'll grow in stature, sure. It's already getting fat, and moving on to extremely ponderous and obese.

"and reputation"

It's sure got a growing reputation. That it doesn't work as advertised, can't work as advertised, and is nothing but pure marketing dross as advertised.

"and increase its intelligence hold"

Let's get this straight: There is absolutely no intelligence involved. Machines cannot now, and never will be able to think. All they do is repeat the garbage they are told to regurgitate. No machine has ever created anything new, nor had an original thought. Nor will they, at the current state of technology ... and most actual experts on the subject are pretty certain that it won't ever happen. Anybody who says otherwise is suckering you, in search of the almighty buck. Or trying to start a new religion, which comes to the same thing when you think about it.

Re: unique skills command high wages

Hardly unique. There are probably a dozenish ElReg commentards who wrote, and possibly still maintain ML code at least partially using COBOL.

And of course ELIZA (one of the, if not the first modern chatbot) was written in an extension to Fortran called SLIP (Symmetric LIst Processor).