Posts by James O'Shea

Re: Advert

That's not a Windows problem, that's a bloody HP problem.

HP used to make good quality stuff. That time is long gone.

Hmm. The Phantom Downvoter strikes again. Amazing how that works.

Re: How about the ministers go next?

Be careful what you ask for. You might get it. Herbert Hoover was a STEM guy, from Stanford, starting as a mechanical engineer before switching to geology, and before being a politician, was a professional mining geologist.

Dwight David Eisenhower had a STEM degree from the USMA at West Point.

James Earl Carter, Jr., had a STEM degree from the USNA at Annapolis.

Several other Presidents and Senators have been graduates of the USMA or USNA, with alleged STEM degrees, 'cause that's what those institutions hand out. Few of them have actually used their alleged STEM education; some were very good, some were bad, most were mediocre. Hoover, who was in the 'pioneer' very first class to graduate from Stanford, did use his STEM education. And was an utter disaster as a president. As far as I know he's the only President with a STEM degree who didn't graduate from one of the military academies. It is possible that most don't want another Hoover.

Re: PWNED

Only if a meek little shoe-shine pup starts speaking in rhymes.

There's no need to fear; Underdog is here.

Re: So Musk has NOW entered the Ukranian war.......

that is not a 'peldge'. And I notice that you have failed to answer the other questions.

Try again.

Re: I for one can't wait till this works

Think of it as evolution in action. A squashed kid, a major lawsuit, one less self-driving car... After a while children will stop suddenly walking into roads. One way or another.

Exits, to 'Stairway to Heaven'.

I see your Ark and raise you Thor and Ogun and Huracan. And even Zeus gets a mention.

Crom is over there, drinking. If he cared, he could generate a light show, too. He doesn't care. Unless you spill his beer. Bad idea.

Re: There's an opportunity there

At home, I have a nice simple system: several external 10TB drives (soon to be replaced by something bigger) connected by USB3. Carbon Copy Cloner on Macs and Macrium Reflect on Windows and Clonezilla on Linux back up the entire contents of selected volumes trivially. I then disconnect the drives until next time. (Apple also has TimeMachine, but for best results, that shouldn't be disconnected.)

I have to invest in an array and software to feed it over the network... except that by unplugging the drives after the backup (to a disk image. usually), I cut back on the chances that someone naughty will play with my backups. Accidentally or deliberately. Using the 10 TB drives means I can stick multiple images on one drive. Single point of failure, but mitigated by TimeMachine on Macs and dropping images across the network on Windows and Linux. And dumping important files onto USB sticks. Multiple USB sticks, just in case. When I go to the array, I'd have to dismount and remount the array, and that might be... interesting.

At the office, we have tape. And arrays. And massive paranoia.

Re: functionality

You _do_ know that Office 97 will work in Win 10, don't you? The installer won't work (and neither will the installers for Office 2000 and 2003) but if you can figure a way to get it on the system it will, mostly, kinda-sorta, run. I know one guy who absolutely refused to move from Office 2003, and has been doing ever more elaborate hacks to get it to work on newer versions of Windows. I just let him know that he's on his own for support, the younger guys in the office back off slowly when 20-year-old software is mentioned. And he's responsible for getting it to read DOCX etc files, there was an extension that provided compatibility, I have no idea if it still works or where to find it, nor do I care.

Re: an arbitrary metric space

It's always good to blame the French. It's usually their fault, and when it's not, it should be.

Re: Suprising that Google hasn't heard of "SEO"

McAfee AV is extremely easy to remove. Watch this video for quick and easy tips on how. And on other important IT matters, especially involving backing up. Personally, I think that the back-up methods advocated in that video are vastly superior to most people's lame backup systems.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKgf5PaBzyg

Re: Orange man...

One upvote for the Stainless Steel Reference.

Sure you can. Indeed, it's been done. The problem is, in every previous case the beacon marked the place where the wreck was found... if the beacon survived the event that caused the wreck. Imploding at 3800 metres down will cause dieseling, where the imploding air causes everything in its path (which is everything inside the sub) to catch fire. Briefly. Until the water arrives to put the fire out. Very few things can withstand the dieseling followed by extreme pressures. Aircraft transponders will work even at extreme depths, but that's because the pressure gradually builds on the way down. Aircraft are designed o keep air pressure in, not water pressure out, and won't go very deep before cracking and letting water in, at which point pressure inside and out is equal and builds slowly as the aircraft sinks. They were already at depth, two hours out of 2.75 hours to target, when the signal was lost. If the thing imploded, there will be pieces of sub scattered over a wide area. USS Thresher, lost in a lot shallower water (2600 metres, not 3800) was scattered over 130,000 square metres. There will be fewer big pieces and lots of little pieces (No nuclear reactor or steam turbines). Don't even bother looking for bodies, the dieseling will have effectively vaporised them.

Re: Did it talk?

It's from Red Dwarf. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=talkie+toaster+red+dwarf

Red Dwarf showed the Federation as it really was: a fascist police state similar to, but worse than, East Germany.

Re: Security fail by design

Hmm. So... you can't change the screen background on Win11, eh? Golly gee whilikers, I guess that the one and only Win 11 machine around here isn't really a Win11 machine. That, or Microsoft is shipping machines with the company logo as one of the allowed wallpapers. Hmm. Let me see, can I change that? Settings/Personalize/Backgrounds. Hmm. Now the wallpaper is the original Apple six-color apple.

There's lots of things wrong with Win11. There's no reason to make stuff up. Especially stuff which can be demonstrated as total bollocks in under 30 seconds.

Re: Cool

Physics says how they must be constructed. If you have the very best reaction motor, a photon rocket, with an exhaust velocity of c, it is trivial to work out what the mass ratio must be to get to any delta vee you need. Mission delta vee is the total change in velocity required to complete the mission: gas to get there and back, that is. Delta vee is equal to exhaust velocity times the natural log of mass ratio.You plug in the value of your delta vee and your exhaust vee, you have your natural log of the mass ratio. And then you know what size ship you have to have. You can't get a better rocket than a photon rocket. (There are a few problems with thrust, but that's engineering. Fixable, with enough magic tech.) Now, if you have really magic tech and have a reactionless drive, you don't care about mass ratios. You do still care about power levels. Straight Newtonian physics, you don't even need to pay attention to Einstein, again dictates what size ship you need. If you're slower than life, you need life support for decades or centuries of travel. If you're fast than light, you still need life support for your trip time. That means space to park stuff. Again, it is trivial to work out what you need.

No, the classic small craft ain't big enough. They could be landers, sent down from a mothership in orbit, but the mothership is going to be quite large.

Re: Not only mice

Nailing him down would be expensive, noisy, and messy. Duct tape is cheaper, easier to use, and some can be deployed to take care of the noise.

Re: Quote from the religion of peace...

1 Samuel 15 is one of my fav Bible chapters. It's not the worst one out there. There's the ol' boy who sent his concubine out to be gang-raped to death, and then chopped her body into pieces and sent one piece to each of the 12 tribes of Israel. (Judges 12:25-30...) And there's the bit where a prince rapes his sister. Actually, rape seems to have been a very popular sport in Biblical Israel.

Another of my favs is where one ol' girl nails one ol' boy's head to the ground by applying a tent peg and a hammer. (Judges 5:24-30). And, yeah, there was more rape a bit later on. Rape was a very, very, VERY popular sport in the Bible.

And there's the young miss who prefers that her men (her many men...) have the, ahem, members of donkeys. An ancestor of Catherine the Great, no doubt.

There are all kinds of fun stuff in Judges and both 1 and 2 Samuel. And many other parts of the Old _and_ the New Testaments. But the Old Testament had the Really Good Stuff. Lots of it. And ol' Muhammad, umm, borrowed large sections of the Old Testament, including the Really Good Stuff, and re-wrote it a little. Often to make the Really Good Stuff be even better.

Re: VPN Anyone?

There are a non-trivial number of Mormons in Nevada. And, given that Nevada infamously is heavily into sex, gambling, alcohol, caffeine (a no-no in Mormonism) and the US Air Force, which is well-supplied with personnel heavily into sex, gambling, alcohol, and caffeine, the Mormons there tend to be, ahem, Hard Core.

Exits to 'Charlie, He's My Darling', a song that implies other practices that Mormons won't like.

Re: Distances

Err... I have to go to a location 70 miles from base twice a week. There is no recharging point near that location, not even a slow recharger. I have to go to a location 170 miles from base once a month; no rechargers within 10 miles of that location. There is a rapid recharger roughly 11 miles away. Every time I go by, all connections (there are a half dozen) are in use. Possibly I have bad timing. Possibly it's the only charge point in a large radius and is heavily used. Every once in quite a while, I have to go to a location 500 miles away. I have no idea how many rechargers are close; I suspect very few, if any.

Sorry, it's just not on, not until there are more rechargers.

Re: It's a phone

The iPhone. had 512 MB RAM and 16 GB storage. The Honeycomb had from memory, as I can't get hold of it right now, 256 MB RAM and 1 GB storage. It was pitiful. It could not run Ice Cream Sandwich, not enough RAM.

Re: You don't understand the issue at all

do what you like. Take the consequences.

Re: Xerox and foolishness

if you look up 'idiot' in the dictionary, you'll see a reference to 'Xerox Management'.

Re: Offers

They still are on about that? It's been years, decades even, since I last set foot in a WH Smith's, mostly because it's been a Very Long Time since I've been in the UK. I always felt lucky if I managed to escape a Smith's without chocolate or some such. One would think that they were a confectioners or something of the sort.

Re: "a 16-inch 2880 x 1880 screen"

That's a damn good question.

Re: Why can’t I pay in magic beans?

You can eat the beans, you can't eat the crypto. Beans are much more valuable.

Re: What a load of cobblers

Needs salt.

Re: Do not use

There are ways to bypass that nonsense, most of which being methods that MS doesn’t like. I don’t actually give a damn about what MS likes or dislikes.