Posts by jake

Re: Apple

Yeah, back then the phrase "I'm going to put a couple caps in it" was fairly normal, and didn't (usually) result in a quick call to security ... There was another batch of bad caps in the '99 through '07 era, or thereabouts. In '08 a friend was overheard to suggest I "put a cap in it", regarding a particularly pissy power supply. The "well meaning"[0] manager called security, who called the cops. We weren't taken downtown, but the rest of the building was quietly evacuated around my lab, and we were close to getting cuffed before sanity returned to the scene.

[0] For "well meaning" read "nosy know-it-all busy-body". She was actually commended for causing a panic and half a day's loss of productivity! The mind boggles ...

Re: There’s a quote:

The Heathkit H11 (contemporary with the Apple II) was a 16-bit home computer in the days of 8-bit computers ... The Apple I is an interesting historical curiosity, but it was hardly lusted after .... even when it was new.

Re: Mighty Maxim

There used to be (still is? I don't know ... it was forty years ago, or thereabouts) a gambling & drinking establishment in Auburn, California. I can't remember their name, but I do remember their bumpersticker:

<bar logo & name> "Liquor in the front, poker in the rear"

The logo was a silhouette of a prospector panning in a creek.

Whose definition of "obscenity", Kemosabe?

Re: So long as it's not mixed thread...

I went to school both in Blighty (uniform) and the US (no uniform). Trust me, even in so-called Uniform you could tell which kids parents had money and which kids parents were skint. And who was a punk, who was a mod, who was into pop, and the poor laughed at kids who had been brainwashed by the BBC into believing that Abba was decent tunage. You can try to stamp out individuality with a uniform, but most kids will rebel against it. I think it's in the human DNA ...

Re: Hmmm, how the hell?

I use a green screen. The live background is variously the hog pen, one of the ponds, a very long distance shot of the Golden Gate (from a friend's place in the hills above Berkeley), my IBM 1401, PDP-11 or other old iron (depending on what is fired up and doing work at the time), a shot between a couple rows of tomatoes or grapes, one of the fish tanks, one of the many CalTrans traffic cams, a street view of Sonoma's Plaza, or anything else that catches my fancy at the time.

It would be good to see him back.

STOB, too.

Plus ça change ...

Re: Ban all Homonyms!

MLK's RPM is increasing daily ... Last time I read it, his most famous speech didn't contain the line "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will judge white people by the color of their skin, instead of the content of their character."

Sadly, however, that is exactly what is happening / has happened. I am a racist merely because of the color of my skin, regardless of anything I may have said or done (or not said or done).

The truly daft thing is that even though my skin is white, I am not a Caucasian ... and in fact, I am more of a minority than all the so-called minorities calling me a racist. Such is the logic of the uneducated, ignorant world we live in.

It probably was from personal recollection. He was in his mid eighties when he was my teacher in the early '70s.

Re: These idiots are truly trying to re-write history to make it politically correct.

"There is a valid point that celebrating someone we no longer think should be celebrated is a bit odd."

Who is celebrating anyone in these cases? They are a point of history, good or bad. If they were good, teach why. If they were bad, similarly teach why. Whitewashing over the bad dishono(u)rs the good, some of whom were working against almost unimaginable odds ...

The statues, place names, etc. already exist. Use them as tools. Instead of pouring millions of dollars into eradicating all traces of them, put half that money into schools to teach the kids why, exactly, we don't act like that today, in the modern so-called "civilized" world.

Ive been called "racist" for suggesting the above. The mind boggles.

Re: These idiots are truly trying to re-write history to make it politically correct.

"They want this stuff taught more in schools, not less"

Actually, no. They don't. I've seen several "experts" on childhood learning[0] on DearOldTelly recently stating outright that we must completely erase our history (or at least hide it from the children and other non-researchers), because teaching kids what their Great Grandparents were up to is actively promoting institutional racism, and thus a form of child abuse.

[0] Most with letters after their names, and promoted by one school of higher learning or another.

Re: maybe there is hope

First you have to get them to pretend to be human ...

Every time someone says "OK boomer" to me, I respond "No need to cry, little one." Seems to shut them up in a hurry.

Re: Please think of the Australians

The box their beer is in, of course, same as us. Silly question.

Re: White dwarf

Hand me the pliers.

Back in the '70s, my O-level History teacher in Yorkshire called them slates. His counterpart here in the States called them chalkboards.

Re: "Does that have the same effect as foreigners calling a Scottish person 'English'?"

No, not at all.

Yupik and Aleut people are armed and well trained in the use of rifles, but sit quietly and smile slightly at the idiot furriners trying to figure out how to address them.

Scots are not armed at all, and get extremely violent at the mere thought of being compared to the English.

Re: Ban all Homonyms!

"Incidentally, "Perseus" should be changed because "perse" is a vulgar word for 'rear end' in Finnish."

By Hercules' Great Globular Clusters! I'm shocked to hear that. Shocked, I say. We must immediately ban Finnish, it's for the greater good of us all! Will no one think of the children?

Re: Ban all Homonyms!

The "eye of a needle" passage (Luke 18:25) was written in Koine Greek, not Hebrew, although parts of the other Gospels might have originally been set down in Hebrew ... "Luke" (whoever that was) probably wrote a few other Acts of the play, as well.

There is absolutely no historical evidence whatsoever that Hebrew letters were assigned numerical values during the time period that 1 Kings 7:23 was written. Anybody suggesting otherwise is a charlatan, probably looking to separate fools from their money.

Re: Languages

Marx was resting peacefully with the advent of TehIntraWebTubes.

And then Capitalism discovered it.

Now he's spinning fast enough to keep kremvax powered up ...

Re: Woke Science!!!

FAKE TRVTH!

::ZOT!!!!!::

_{Would that that worked on RealLife[tm] politicians ... of every political stripe.}

Re: Ban all Homonyms!

::shhh:: You'll spoil the fun.

"In this case, what should NASA do?"

In the world of bureaucrats, they must do something. This is demonstrably something, so it must be done.

In the world of sane people, sometimes doing nothing is the better option.

"Would we persist is referring to a co-worker by a derogatory nickname that that person had asked us to stop using?"

Of course not. But that's misdirection, and you know it. We are talking about technical terminology, and the way we have named inanimate objects. This is a completely different subject. Thread hijack attempt noted and ignored.

If "the next addition" is easily fixed (as is the Web site), are you volunteering your services to do that job until that job is complete? Willing to put your time and labo(u)r where your mouth is?

Re: What's next?

Washington State needs to be renamed because Washington was a slave owner.

Washington DC needs to be renamed because Washington was a slave owner and Columbus was worse.

Here's a mind-boggling fact: There are school districts here in California actively working to change the names of all schools named after any US President or other historical figure who ever did anything even remotely non-modern-era-PC. Really.

There is also a movement here in California to rename everything named after Sir Francis Drake, because he was a slave trader. (If you don't know the history, look up "Drake's Bay" and then Drake himself on the usually suspect Wiki.)

These idiots are truly trying to re-write history to make it politically correct.

Re: Arabic star names

So the Arabic star names ARE offensive to you, Hollerithevo? Shall we change them all immediately, lest your virgin ears accidentally hear them again someday?

Or are the words only offensive in certain contexts, none of which have anything to do with astronomy, thus making changing the names utterly pointless?

Supposedly ...

... "gammon" used in this context means one's face looks like a ham.

Name calling, in other words. One wonders if Naich understands what the term "hypocrite" means.

Re: Goodnews

If you tried to turn Shakespeare politically correct, there wouldn't be anything left!

Here's a short list of examples.

Re: Languages

Exactly! We should immediately ban the use of any language that mandates grammatical gender.

That'll show the sexist bastards!

Re: What's next?

Speaking of which, how long before Blazing Saddles gets the chop? (I see YouTube finally pulled the "Germans" episode of Fawlty Towers. Fucking gootard assholes.)

Re: Ban all Homonyms!

Absolutely untrue. Look at all the arguments over which translation of the Five Books of Moses is the correct one.

And by "solving" a non-problem ...

... how many problems are they going to create? For example, are YOU volunteering to pay for the reprinting and distribution of all the textbooks containing the words that must be sanitized/purified by this hyper politically correct insanity?

Re: What's next?

Albedo means whiteness. And clearly Solstice is a heathen term.

Re: VMs in VMs...

Back in the day (late '70s) one of the kids learning about virtualization on the Mainframe asked if self-virtualization was possible (i.e. running a VM in a VM). The answer was yes ... So naturally, someone (unnamed, to protect the guilty) decided to see how deep they could get the virtualization to go.

Turned out you could bring a very high-end IBM mainframe to its knees almost instantly ... much hilarity ensued.

Re: @werdsmith

As dmr put it (on a.f.c, dated 05/12/99): "If you actually typed "sync; sync; halt" then I can see the possible timing issue. However, if you were told to type "sync" and then do it again, this had to do with giving you a chance to ponder whether you remembered to do it at all the first time. Dennis"

People used to type sync<ret> sync<ret> halt<ret> to shut down the system; The second sync was there "just in case" because the first one didn't seem to actually do anything. Kind of a cargo-cult variation on sysadmining. My friend put them all on one line, separated by the ";" end of command character ... which, as dmr rightly pointed out, could indeed cause timing issues if the first sync hadn't finished before the second one started up. Thus my "unclear on the concept" comment.

While I still know a few folks who use sync<ret> sync<ret> halt<ret> to shut down the system, I don't really recommend it. This is all legacy stuff now. Instead I suggest shutting down your system according to the instructions of the maintainers.

Has it really been over 7 years since Evi went missing? Where does the time go? ... RIP, lady. You are still missed by many.

Re: @werdsmith

It's a long tradition ... One friend of mine used to use the line:

# sync; sync; halt

Clearly unclear on the concept :-)

Re: How's August working out for you?

Once the sewer pipe was opened, the resulting spill rusted out all the rest of the plumbing and there is no sweeping the worms back into the can behind the now bolted stable door.

It's still September of '93.

Re: Adding a comment sometimes caused compile failure

Here in the United States[0], we would ask Count von Count.

This distraction brought to you by the number 4 and the letter F.

[0] And a few other places.

Re: How's August working out for you?

No. It's still September.

Monday, Sep 9841 1993 to be precise.

Re: Trivial Biscuits

Should have used Larsen's Biscuits. Probably would have brought a smile to the face of many a bitter admin this Monday morning ...