* Posts by bill 27

96 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Oct 2012

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'Chemical cat' on the loose in Japanese city

bill 27

Re: Poor Kitty

Yup. Considering the first thing it would have done is try to lick itself clean/dry.

CLIs are simply wizard at character building. Let’s not keep them to ourselves

bill 27

Re: Intuitive GUI? My arse.

I recall back in the bad old days when sometimes the UNIX box wouldn't run X...boot into single user mode and I'd end up root. vi was the tool to fix whatever was wrong, and the sh would change too since things were generally statically linked, couldn't count on libraries being available.

FCC boss says 25Mbps isn't cutting it, Americans deserve 100Mbps now, gigabit later

bill 27

HAHAHA!

I'm doing good to get 2MB down and 500K up! Then there's whole reduction in speed if I go over my monthly data cap.

North Korean satellite had no military utility for spying, says South Korea

bill 27

Re: What was this satellite for?

"(which surely still belongs to North Korea)"

Does it? How far off-shore was it recovered, may it was in international waters? Flotsam, jetsam, lagan, derelict and all that nautical crap.

Clippy designer was too embarrassed to include him in his portfolio

bill 27
Happy

It LIVES!

As shown by...

www.eviscerati.org/comics/hd/2023/01/you-must-unlearn/

Tesla batteries went from fully charged to fully disabled after botched patch, lawsuit claims

bill 27
Pint

Re: Everybody throttles

"I spend another pile of money for a new peripheral to replace one that won't work anymore"

Now, now relax. Just because I'm using a nice 15ppm HP laser printer that I was gifted by my lawyer 25 years ago when the latest/greatest software upgrade orphaned it...My total investment, other than electricity when I turn it on, is a replacement toner cartridge (possibly two, been a long time).

FCC calls for mega $300 million fine for massive US robocall campaign

bill 27

Didn't call me...

But boy did the politicians call...and call...and call...and call...then they started sending me text messages...

iFixit stabs batteries – for science – so you don't have to

bill 27

Re: Hmmm

As Phil said. I've firsthand experience with that situation. Blew a small fortune dumping large amounts of baking soda/water solution into the engine compartment. Metal radiator cap worked it's way loose and shorted the positive anode to ground...driving along minding my own business, about a mile from home, and there was this dull boom/thud from the front of the vehicle.

bill 27

Re: Energy has to go somewhere

Lucky it didn't arc. Happened to someone I knew, finals on a UHF transmitter.

Logitech, that canary in PC coal mine, just fell off its perch

bill 27

My preferred device.

I've got 4 keyboards within my sight are they're all Logitech KB/Mouse combos. There's another couple at my other place. Lately I buy parts and build my own machines.

NASA to send prototype robot surgeon into space

bill 27

Re: May I just be the first to say-

*initial_incision_complete*

*probes_inserted*

*appendix_removal_initiated*

*system_reboot_in_progress_please_wait*

Linux may soon lose support for the DECnet protocol

bill 27

IIRC, and I'm probably wrong since it's been about 3 decades, the "AA-00-04-00-xx-yy" address was rewritten to "yy-xx-00-40-00-AA" as the MAC. That way, in hardware it would do a bit compare. First mismatch and it bailed because it was for a different address.

512 disk drives later, Floppotron computer hardware orchestra hits v3.0

bill 27

Re: tonal range

Drat! I had a nice 3.5" HD that would have worked wonders in the percussion department, what with some of the broken off heads rattling around inside of it.

openSUSE Leap 15.4: The best desktop on the RPM side of the Linux world

bill 27

Re: SNAPPER

I once had a conversation with someone about whether or not a disk would weigh differently depending on how it was oriented. Because the magnetic fields of the bits would align differently to the earths magnetic field.

FWIW, all 5 of my computer still have SNAPPER disabled. I just did the last upgrade a few minutes ago on this one.

bill 27

SNAPPER

I disabled it long, long ago. I got tired of running out of disk space (6GB is disk space just isn't as big as it used to be, fatter bits I guess). I just checked...it's still disabled on the computer I just upgraded to 15.4.

Canon: Chip supplies are so bad that our ink cartridges will look as though they're fakes

bill 27

Starting to like my B&W laser printers more and more (a really old HP that I was gifted by a law office when Windows abandoned it somewhere around 2000, and oddly enough a Canon I bought several years ago). I actually have an ink printer...I keep it around to scan things with.

Apple warns kit may interfere with implanted medical devices at close proximity

bill 27

Re: Aside: Nuts and peanuts and Mangoes

When I was a kid I lived in Hawaii. We'd see new comers breaking out in hives from their exposure to mangoes.

bill 27

Re: kit may interfere with implanted medical devices

My ICD was installed in October of 2010. I was told then to not get my cell phone (brand nonspecific) within 6" of it, meaning I should use it on my right ear. I had it swapped out last year, battery was going flat, and asked. Same advice. I also never carry the phone in my shirt pocket. My original guess had to do with the EMP coming from the speaker, but I did say guess. Now days, if I worried about it at all, it'd be people reaching out and reprogramming it, it has wireless access after all.

openSUSE leaps to 15.3 – now built with 'same binary packages' as SUSE Enterprise

bill 27

Re: way back...

"Haven't there always been at least two very viable alternatives to Red Hat?"

Could be, I remember I first installed Red Hat to transition away from Mandrake. I did it because Red Hat was supposed to be able to be upgrade-able instead of having to completely re-install when the next version came out.

NASA sets the date for first helicopter flight on another planet – and the craft will carry a piece of history

bill 27

Re: Penguins in SPAAAACCCCEEEEEE.....

Well it should put an end to the "Penguins can't fly" nonsense.

Housekeeping and kernel upgrades do not always make for happy bedfellows

bill 27

It's OK.

Honest...it'll keep on chugging until it needs something not in memory. IIRC is was the network that gave up the ghost first, not that I've ever run that command as root, why fiddle with just /usr go for /, just to see what happened.

What does my neighbour's Tesla have in common with a stairlift?

bill 27

Re: Summon the lawyers!

Living in America, well Alaska actually, I called my city council person about the pothole in front of my driveway. He actually showed up and talked to us! As he left, saying there wasn't much he could do, I asked that he contact the local Fish and Game people and have them stock it with trout. The next spring they came by and completely re-did the street.

Snap decision: 74-year-old Florida man wrests puppy from jaws of alligator

bill 27

Re: What did the dude expect, walking his pup close to the water?

Well...we did have a raven chase the cat up the stairs trying to corner it for lunch.

bill 27

Re: What did the dude expect, walking his pup close to the water?

And in Alaska we call people walking small animals trolling for eagles.

As an aside, when I read about this elsewhere they quoted the guy as saying that from here on out the pup would be on a leash. I thought, like you'll ever get that dog near water again. I once had a Black Lab that would run in panic when suddenly faced with an open body of water.

AMD performance plummets when relying on battery power, says Intel. Let's take a closer look at those stats

bill 27

Re: Battery beats AC?

Yep, I have a mix of Intel and AMD machines. The AMD's are newer simply because...well they're newer. The CPU models are:

Intel B940, the sole laptop, and ancient.

AMD A12-9800

AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2950x

AMD 9 3900x

AMD A8-6410

Intel G3220, qualifies in second place for age.

Needless to say I don't care about how well things work without wall power.

Whoa-o BlackBerry, bam-ba-lam: QWERTY phone had a child. 5G thing's newly styled

bill 27

Thanks for the laugh.

Ram Jam, huh.

Microsoft has a cure for data nuked by fat fingers if you're not afraid of the command line

bill 27

Re: Ooops!

Not anymore, I'm retired, but that doesn't mean I'm not still paranoid. There''s a reason things are called accidents, it's probably not done on purpose according to a schedule. I have got quite a bit of multimedia that would be impossible to recreate. When I was working, we'd tell people that while we'd do nightly backups across the network, if they left a file opened it wouldn't be backed up. So if it was lost...well we'd have the last good version somewhere, most likely. We backed up onto tape and rotated through them about every 6 months. Yes, we tested the tapes to make sure our backups were usable, I knew someone who went to restore his computer and discovered that he had 2 sets of completely unusable backups.

bill 27

Re: Ooops!

I took it as sarcasm. Me, I carry a backup, on a 2TB USB drive, with me when I leave the abode overnight, and have another in a fireproof safe that I update whenever. Those little USB drives are cheap. Mine are 2TB (have 2 of them), 3TB, 4TB, and 5TB. Then again on my desktop machine I have 2x8TB mirrored drives, which I have multiple backups my personal stuff, one done nightly and the older backups removed after a certain amount of time.

bill 27

Ooops!

Sigh...nothing like having backups. You know, running nightly, keep a week or two on hand just in case?

Das reboot: That's the only thing to do when the screenshot, er, freezes

bill 27

Ah yes...long, long ago I was a sysadmin. We took care of the "Classified" side of the shop. I had an "Unclassified" desktop that they'd left me enough privileges to install a screensaver on. A really nice BSOD image. The other side would wander down to update somethingorother and invariably hit the power button first. At least they didn't complain to me...my other one said "Puppies, the other white meat".

Reg readers have not one, but TWO teams in Folding@home top 1,000 as virus-bothering network hits 2.4 exa-FLOPS

bill 27

Yeah, I've got 4 machines running Rosetta or World Community Grid, I'm almost in the top 1000 for Rosetta, but only 5000 for World Community Grid. Heats the condo nicely though. :-)

Must watch: GE's smart light bulb reset process is a masterpiece... of modern techno-insanity

bill 27

I didn't realize...

that Wally worked for GE in his spare time.

Never let something so flimsy as a locked door to the computer room stand in the way of an auditor on the warpath

bill 27

So one day...

As the first one in for several hours, I got to work and discovered I'd forgotten my key. I crawled through the window where stuff was passed out of the room. Next priority task...unlock the door, from the inside, and go make coffee.

Woman calls cops on shadowy baddie barricaded in bathroom... to discover: Roomba gone rogue

bill 27

I named mine Rachael, and not unlike the movie one...she's pretty oblivious as to her origin.

Crispest image yet of Ultima Thule arrives on Earth, but grab a coffee while the rest downloads

bill 27

WOW!

So I'm watching the old TV show Firefly and this picture pops up...

In Windows 10 Update land, nobody can hear you scream

bill 27

Re: Rigorously Tested

I think all the testers had new duties assigned. They had to go back to high school.

Microsoft still longs to be a 'lifestyle' brand, but the cupboard looks bare

bill 27

Microsoft Bob.

http://www.ibiblio.org/Dave/Dr-Fun/df9507/df950713.jpg

Windows Notepad fixed after 33 years: Now it finally handles Unix, Mac OS line endings

bill 27

Ahh...one less thing to worry about.

Now I can remove that bloated unix2dos file.

US Air Force networks F-15 and F-22 fighters – in flight!

bill 27

Belly pod.

Well there goes the belly fuel tank you need when you burn all your gas doing those neat vertical flying thingies.

Naughty sysadmins use dark magic to fix PCs for clueless users

bill 27

Once upon a time I got a phone call telling me their monitor was on fire. I figured it had gone up in smoke and said I'd get the hardware guys to look at it. He said "No, it's on fire. There's flames coming out the top."

SETI's mega alien hunt shovels more data onto IBM's cloud

bill 27

Uhhh...SETI@IBNCloud different from SETI@home?

So. Why don't people talk to invisible robots in public?

bill 27

I've always advocated giving broken phones to people who walk around talking to themselves. That way the rest of us would think they're just having a conversation with someone. I mean, how could you tell otherwise?

Warrant-less email snatching by cops, Feds under threat by draft law

bill 27

Hey!

I have that doormat. It was given to me by my lawyer.

Dodgy software will bork America's F-35 fighters until at least 2019

bill 27
Alien

Contractor name?

What's the name of the company developing this software? Where is the original contracting official working now?

HP Inc won't shake you down for ink in 3D printer era, says CTO

bill 27

Got 3 printers for my personal use. 1 is a HP, nice laser printer given to me after it became abandonware. 2 are inkjet/scanner types that I bought after throwing away the HP ones because I got tired of the ink problem.

'Microsoft Office has been the bane of my life, while simultaneously keeping me employed'

bill 27

It's like deja vu all over again.

Back in the stone ages, that'd be the 70's, I had a process that ran on a XXXXXX computer. The process would start, remove a old file, create a new one and take off. Blew up. Finally figured out that if I put a sleep between deleting and creating it would work. Seems that the multi-processor/multi-tasking was screwed.

Who hit you, HP Inc? 'Windows 10! It's all Windows 10's fault'

bill 27

Screen logo?

I could swear that's the one I had from OpenSUSE before I changed it. Yes, it WAS MS's fault it was there.

Website admin cPanel hacked, loses a bunch of folks' contact details

bill 27

"Passwords ought to be safe too, but cPanel is taking the opportunity to get customers with older password encryption to change up anyway."

Uhh...how old is old? At least gimmee a hint!

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