* Posts by Dr. Ellen

316 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Jul 2007

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Starting over: Rebooting the OS stack for fun and profit

Dr. Ellen

Magnetic core memory

Back in the age of dinosaurs, the first computer I was allowed to get really intimate with was a CDC 3100. Its memories were kept on ferrite doughnuts - TINY doughnuts - physically woven into a tapestry of wire. ALL the memory in the computer was persistent. It had 8k 24-bit words, later increased to a stunning 12k. And you just turned it on. Everything else was external, on punchcards, punched tape, or magnetic tape. If you wanted the 3100 to do the same today as yesterday, you just turned it on, and there it went. Every bit was as fast and as permanent/changeable as any other.

There were, of course, drawbacks. Each bit in the tapestry had to have wires threaded through it, neatly, carefully, and expensively. And cramped.

Work for you? Again? After you lied about the job and stole my stuff? No thanks

Dr. Ellen

Re: Being polite is great

I almost always get along well with secretaries -- as a writer and publisher (fannish subtype) I almost always know what she's doing, and can probably do it myself. But I somewhat lose it when the secretary can't do her job. Had one with problems formatting text. It turned out she was of the typewriter generation, and simply could NOT come near the right edge of the page without hitting the Enter key. Now I myself am of the pen-and-ink generation, picked up typing in high school, and met my first computer - IBM 704 - in 1959 or 60 - and didn't have that much trouble with using the Enter key, or not, at the appropriate time. I sat down at her desk and demonstrated the computer would do it for her. After half an hour of trying to convince her she fled sobbing to the Director and said I was being cruel to her.

I guess I could have been. My voice had certainly gotten louder and more insistent. But that woman was aggressively insistent upon her ignorance, there and at many other times.

Being polite is great. But unless you're an angel, it isn't always possible.

Save the Mars Sample Return mission, plead Congresscritters

Dr. Ellen
Big Brother

Delay, delay, red tape, delay

If the government and NASA stall long enough, Elon Musk will have to go to Mars and pick the samples up himself. Providing the regulatory agencies don't strangle him to death in red tape.

HP customers claim firmware update rendered third-party ink verboten

Dr. Ellen

I've used quite a few inkjet printers - HP, Epson, Canon - and had poor luck with replacement cartridges or inks. Since I don't use them that much, mainly for things with color, official cartridges aren't THAT onerous an expense. If I want to print out lots of something, that's what the laser printer is for.

Microsoft pulls the plug on WordPad, the world's least favorite text editor

Dr. Ellen
Thumb Up

Word Processor?

I liked wordpad. For a short and simple (couple lines) job it worked without adding all kinds of extraneous formatting characters. But its main virtue was that it would try to open ANY file, and often come close to succeeding. If nothing else, you could probably figure out what the file was, and what programs worked with it.

Science fiction writers imagine a future in which AI doesn’t abuse copyright – or their generosity

Dr. Ellen
Pint

Where computer 'intelligence' is REALLY needed

I write. I have a couple books out there, complete with copyright. I also write fan-fiction, which plays loose with others' copyrights in a more transformative manner, without copyright. I live with a writer who has maybe thirty books out, complete with copyright. We desperately need computers, because terrible things happen to your handwriting after several decades of keyboarding.

A virtuous use for AI would be as a proofreader or a copy-editor. It could warn if I'm using the same simile or word too often. It could probably tell if I'm using the right word out of the set {to, too, two}. It'd hardly be Nirvana, but it could warn us when we're making clangers.

Dr. Ellen
Facepalm

Re: Short sighted sci-fi

Fritz Leiber's "The Silver Eggheads" comes close. The writers write with computer assistance (e.g. give prompts) but take the credit. When the computers go on strike, the 'authors' are unable to write.

Digital memories are disappearing and not even AI or Google can help

Dr. Ellen
Pint

Re: A strikingly important article

I stated using a TRS-80 III and Scripsit in the mid-eighties. Unreliable cassette tapes indeed, but there was a lot of writing done. We bought a TRS-80 IV because it had a floppy drive and could read model III cassettes. Could read them if they were recorded at the proper speed, that is.So we had to run everything into the 3, re-record it, and save it on floppies. We also had a Commodore 64. The two-headed Commodore 128 could read the 64 tapes and turn them into CP/M disks. I don't remember all the details, but we eventually got everything onto an MS/DOS machine in DOC format. DOC went through quite a few changes itself, but we kept up. Today, I have a couple terabytes of data, painfully transferred from one machine to another, one format to another, and one storage device to another. And whenever possible, I save files in RTF, JPG and other reasonable formats that seem like they will last, and back up on two terabytes of spinning rust. The cloud? Too many strange things happen to data there,

But I still maintain an external floppy drive and an external DVD drive just in case something shows up.

US nuke reactor lab hit by 'gay furry hackers' demanding cat-human mutants

Dr. Ellen

Re: Not Furries

There are furry catgirls on Spontoon Island.

http://spontoon.rootoon.com/SPwArt/Lono02.gif

Dr. Ellen

Re: And here I thought...

I can't argue too strenuously against your point. Some distinguish between mysteries and science fiction - I'm one of them. Many fields are bedeviled by the lumper/splitter argument.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumpers_and_splitters

I'm obvious a splitter, while you're a lumper. At their extreme, lumpers would take anything that tells a story in pictures, accompanied by words, as a graphic novel. I, on the other hand, distinguish between manga and manhwa, And even though I see Marvel and DC as fitting in the same bucket (much as they'd hate it) I would split off Archie and Disney.

Now about that Bayeux Tapestry ...

Dr. Ellen
Coat

Beware the law of unintended consequences

Be careful what you ask for. There are quite a few species of catgirl. What if you got Nuku Nuku or the Puma sisters? (By the way, you'd be much more likely to find catgirls in manga than graphic novels.)

A cheap Chinese PC with odd components. What could go wrong?

Dr. Ellen

Re: OK this is El Reg but...

I have an Ace Magician, which came with Windows 11 installed. I added 2 TB of spinning rust for data - the machine has a dedicated space. Wouldn't be surprised if there were one factory turning out these computers under many brand names. I use it a bit more intensely than the standard civilian, but not terribly so, and it behave itself well and does the work. And it hangs from the back of my monitor, so I don't have to look at the wires going every which way.

Hold the Moon – NASA's buildings are crumbling amid 200-year upgrade cycles

Dr. Ellen
Big Brother

There ARE alternatives

Simple enough - hire SpaceX to do the job. NASA could save enough on red tape to pay for everything, and it wouldn't take 200 years, either.

Cardboard drones running open source flight software take off in Ukraine and beyond

Dr. Ellen

My favorite was when they made an Ikea chair fly -- well and gracefully.

Dr. Ellen

There is a channel on YouTube called Flite Test. https://www.youtube.com/@FliteTest . Their specialty is making foamboard RC planes - some of which are amazingly improbable. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=720HKxvyTEg . But from simplest on up, they make the plans https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=flite+test+plans available, and demonstrate putting them together.

the flight control gear is another matter: they set up for RC, often with on-board cameras. Drone hardware and software is probably the expensive part.

'Slow AI' needed to stop autonomous weapons making humans worse

Dr. Ellen
Flame

Accountable?

"Afina added that "there will always be a human accountable. That is for sure."

This is - dumb. All my life, I've watched governments, people and agencies alike, do stupid or evil things, things that would have had me or you in court or in jail. I haven't seen that many heads rolling, or even job losses. When there were job losses, they were mainly low-level folk caught near the calamity, not the people whose orders caused the calamity. Accountability in governance is even less effective than reliability and truth in ChatGPT.

Where are the women in cyber security? On the dark side, study suggests

Dr. Ellen

Re: So these figures mean...

The world is filled with arguments, but supplying data and references in a comments column is hardly the place for them. "Woke" summarizes a whole lot in one word, but most of us know what it is, Our opinions of the phenomenon may be different. Similarly, "dog whistle", while vague, summarizes a lot of arguments. I use "cooties" to indicate ritual contamination. If nothing else, it grabs people's attention, giving me a chance to explain.

Most every group has their own dictionary these days, and complains when others don't use it. I, too, have my dictionary. If you don't like it, tough. I've been accused of ableism, for instance. Damn right! To me, it translates to "I need such-and-so done. Can you do the job?" It's pragmatism - why hire somebody who can't do the job? It's also something for the job applicant to consider. If you're on a functioning region of the autism scale, go for detail-oriented work or quality control. Don't ask for the front-desk job. If you love working with people, that front-desk job would be fine, or maybe sales.

Dr. Ellen

Re: So these figures mean...

FDR is reported to have said, "Judge me by the enemies I have made." Sometimes a downvote is better than an upvote, though I usually like both.

Dr. Ellen

Re: So these figures mean...

These days legitimate enterprises ate terrified of being caught doing something non-Woke, and most of the Woke/discrimination lawsuits I've noticed have involved women as plaintiffs. Illegitimate enterprises don't care.

Duelling techies debugged printer by testing the strength of electric shocks

Dr. Ellen

A forty-year-old case of beer does not interest me. Instead, demand forty-year-old Scotch, or perhaps brandy.

Shag pile PC earned techies a carpeting from HR

Dr. Ellen
FAIL

Shocking

In early days, that pile carpet could have gotten you fired./ Walking on shag makes electrostatic charge, the bane of early computers.

FAA grounds all US departures after NOTAM goes down

Dr. Ellen
FAIL

Pot? Kettle here.

This will make it far more difficult for the FAA to scold or fine Southwest.

Rolls-Royce, EasyJet fire up first hydrogen-fueled jet engine

Dr. Ellen

Re: Hydrogen?!

I did mention that the containers for hydrogen gas had to be extremely sturdy, and were heavy. You might get by with an airship, where the hydrogen is (mostly?) not compressed, IF you are very very careful. Helium works in an airship, but we're having a helium shortage and really shouldn't be throwing it away in balloons (or ballonets). Reliable storage for a lot of hydrogen gas would probably weigh as much as the rest of the plane put together.

Hydrogen doesn't belong free in the air unless it is very dilute.

Dr. Ellen
Mushroom

Re: Hydrogen?!

Nor was it the case at the Cambridge Electron Accelerator in 1965. I wasn't there when it happened, fortunately, but earlier (before filling) I'd been crawling around the LH2 bubble chamber. That thing was sturdy.

http://washuu.net/cea-bang.htm

Dr. Ellen
FAIL

Hydrogen?!

Hydrogen is dangerous. It leaks through everything, and it is flammable. The mass of something able to contain enough hydrogen to feed an engine for a long trip is not something an aircraft wants to carry around. The Hindenburg disaster is a hint that when things go bad with hydrogen, they go bad very enthusiastically. To quote NASA, "Liquid hydrogen must be stored at minus 423°F and handled with extreme care. To keep it from evaporating or boiling off, rockets fueled with liquid hydrogen must be carefully insulated from all sources of heat, such as rocket engine exhaust and air friction during flight through the atmosphere." Gaseous hydrogen needs a very strong container, or something that can adsorb or absorb the hydrogen - then release it. Both are heavy.

NASA uses liquid hydrogen (with great precautions) mostly in UPPER stages. Dealing with liquid hydrogen in a main stage only makes all the problems bigger. The Shuttle engines used liquid hydrogen, but they threw the fuel tank away before they reached orbit. Wouldn't want the leftover fuel close to the shuttle and its crew and cargo for the entire trip. Wouldn't want airplane passengers sitting on it either.

The only place I can see hydrogen being really useful in transportation is for a train, where weight is far less significant.

Boffins hunt and kill cockroaches with machine vision laser

Dr. Ellen
Happy

Movie?

Perhaps not a full movie but it's been a manga and anime for years, and is also a video game. The starring laser eliminator is a doll named Hoi-hoi-san.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnHqgd1i2fY

Google Japan goes rogue with 5.4ft long keyboard

Dr. Ellen
Coffee/keyboard

This keyboard reminds me of the only movie Dr. Seuss scripted -- The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. from 1953.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgpfMxYFSmE (The significant part is at 1 minute.)

The crime against humanity that is the modern OS desktop, and how to kill it

Dr. Ellen
Windows

Re: System 7 - the horror, the horror.

Ah, the horror of the walled garden. I wouldn't mind buying a new computer, but they come with Windows 10 or 11 -- and have been "fixed" so you can't put Windows 7 on them. I'm still using Windows 7. If nothing else, Microsoft has stopped improving it.

I started programming on an IBM 704 back in 1959 or 1960. I'm eighty now, and tired of learning new languages and interfaces. So it's old computers, and that's okay -- people are throwing them out. So I can grab them and train them in my ways. It's cheaper.

NASA scrubs Artemis mission yet again because SLS just can't handle the pressure

Dr. Ellen
Devil

Liquid hydrogen is an escape artist!

I was working at the Cambridge Electron Accelerator in 1963. Right next to the beamline I was on there was this gigantic block of iron (or steel - I didn't check its pedigree). It was a liquid hydrogen bubble chamber about ten feet tall, or three meters. It was still in its youth, and had not yet been filled with hydrogen. I graduated (1963) and went back to Minnesota. The first time they filled the chamber, very carefully, the diabolic machine exploded. That was on July 5, 1965. Obviously, the hydrogen had not behaved itself.

http://tech.mit.edu/archives/VOL_085/TECH_V085_S0235_P011.pdf

You have to be insanely sure of yourself to come anywhere near liquid hydrogen.

Record label drops AI rapper after backlash over stereotypes

Dr. Ellen

Re: Call centre accent spoofing.

Sometimes it's a real call center - in India. If the accent is more legible after going through the gizmo. I do not have the best of hearing. I don't ask for English, though; I ask if they have anybody who speaks Midwest American English. This is, of course, when I make the call. Otherwise, I pick up then hang up for any call from an unknown name or place.

California to phase out internal combustion vehicles by 2035

Dr. Ellen
Facepalm

Re: Not going to happen

If they want flying cars, their only chance is to lure Elon Musk back into California.

Apple to compel workers to spend '3 days a week' in the office

Dr. Ellen

No authority figure likes the masterless man, and the masterless woman is at least as frightening. Apple bosses want to be able to give their peasants a hard stare now and then. Far too many bosses and officials yearn to live in a feudal society.

Bad news, older tech workers: Job advert language works against you

Dr. Ellen
Boffin

Re: So?

If you're Steven Hawking, maybe. (Myself, too. I came back from some rather serious surgery with instructions not to do a number of things, including lifting heavy objects. I was called in from medical leave to help the librarian, and some exhibit designers. "Think of me as an associative memory bank right now," I told them, and helped them find things.) But that was temporary.

By and large, I had other things to do in my daily work. Sometimes a piece would be missing from an artifact. I had to recognize something was missing, and make a replacement. The educators wanted electrostatic generators for a class, with all the accessories. I designed and made them. Then, after I'd learned how it was done, I wrote and illustrated a booklet so they could make their own. I suppose that counted as handing my work off to muscle - but it had to be educated muscle to be able to use the tools needed.

This was no art museum. I'd be lost in an art museum. This was a museum full of made things. from the last three centuries. To really understand and explain a made thing, you need experience with it. Ideally, you make one yourself.

And once I'd made enough, I would farm it out to the people that wanted it. See, there are several things you can want from an object. You may just want a lookalike to put on display. You may want the original object, preferably in good condition. (Sometimes the "good condition" takes a bit of work. The rules are different in a technology museum.) Sometimes you want a work-alike, so you can demonstrate things. But whoever does these things needs to be an artisan, a maker. The intellectual shades into the physical through many stages, and you sometimes need to lift things. Some of them weigh perhaps an ounce; some of them weigh more. The worst I ran into weighed 180 pounds; it was broken because the previous guy who tried to move it dropped it. I never should have done it, but I got away with it.

Eventually I looked over the things that needed to be moved. Fifty pounds seemed reasonable to me. If you wanted less, I'd accept thirty, or even twenty-five pounds. If you were a trained watchmaker, electronics technician, micro-machinist, or gunsmith, even just ten pounds would be acceptable. All those trades involve taking complicated things apart, seeing to whatever needs doing, and putting them back together in the same order. The mind and the hands must be in harmony for this kind of work.

You want the person repairing your car to know cars. When somebody rewires your house, the electrician must know the job, because it's going to be inspected. If you write an article and give it to a typist for a neat copy, the typist must know the difference between < and > . (Good thing I type-read that one, eh?)

You simply do not have the time and patience to educate someone in the intricate details of doing the job.

Dr. Ellen

Re: So?

When my hands lost some of the necessary dexterity, I did. quit the job.

Now, as an encore, could you please tell me how to tie my shoes? Bonus points for including tying a necktie.

Dr. Ellen

Re: So?

Look. This was a technical museum. Sometimes the object has hundreds, or thousands, of parts. Sometimes, also, it might have loose screws or bolts. Worse -- it might have corrosion. I would have to lift it onto the work bench, look it over, maybe turn it on its side to check things out (if it seems safe to, and if it even has a side it can stably be rested upon). I might have to open it up. I might have to make something to replace a damaged part.

As an example: I was at the workbench one day when the Director came in with a visiting scholar. The director pointed to an interesting object off to the side. "Can you show Mr. Visitor that one, and explain how it works?" I picked it up and looked it over (it was 1930s electrical equipment with a 1930s cord and plug) and decided it was safe to plug it in. I did. It did nothing, so I unplugged it and looked it over. "There's a loose screw, and it needs some adjustment," I said. So I tightened the screw and made the adjustment, and it worked.

I ask you: could you tell somebody how to do this, in two minutes, with an audience? Lord love a duck, I couldn't even have told the Director! He was a scholar, but of history. I was a scholar, but of technology. Hired muscle is probably neither.

The motto of MIT is "Mens et Manus" -- Mind and Hands. They work together, and curator is one of the jobs where they have to.

Dr. Ellen

Re: Don't know about that

Our writing is drifting back to Shakespeare (or even Chaucer). In times past, there was no such thing as universal literacy - people spoke as other people spoke, and gave little thought towards their inability to read or write. The more informed could write, but the words they set down were spelled according to the way they thought right. (They didn't all agree.) William Shakespeare's name has been spelled in many ways: during his lifetime it was "Shakespeare" in his published work, but he used "Shakspere" in his signature.

People weren't ignorant during the Middle Ages -- but books were hand-transcribed and enormously expensive. Many people had never even seen a book up close and personal. They got their entertainment from bards or plays, and their news from travelers and criers. You can learn from listening, but spelling doesn't come along with it.

Today we get much of our news and entertainment audiovisually. Texting? The spelling can be abominable. And the writing of many reflects it, especially when homonyms enter the picture. Ah, well -- if Shakspere could live with it, so can we.

Dr. Ellen

Re: So?

I must be able to communicate -- I wrote a novel and sold it. You, on the other hand, still haven't explained why the museum should hire two people to do a job better handled by one.

Dr. Ellen

Re: So?

You really do not understand the job. The curator knows the strong and weak points, where, when, and how to lift things. This is a matter of muscle memory and dexterity, and it's almost impossible to explain how the job should be done. Curators have to do these things themselves if they want them done correctly.

If you try buying an AI and hiring some muscle. you have problems. AI is stupid. It doesn't have a lifetime of experience; and having the lifter-and-carrier means you have to hire one -- plus pay huge sums for an AI and train it.

And if that's not enough -- when you hire the muscle, the ad will still have the requirement to lift fifty pounds.

Dr. Ellen

Re: So?

I worked as a museum curator. This is a job that's part intellectual, part physical. When you are working with an artifact, sometimes you must pick it up and move it. Most of the artifacts were 50 pounds or less, so when I retired, I noted that any future curator should be able to handle 50-pound objects. (There were some that were considerably larger -- moving them was a group project.)

This is ableism, of course. So? It was part of the job.

Amazon can't channel the dead, but its deepfake voices take a close second

Dr. Ellen

Re: Telemarking deep fakes never work

I could use an accent translator that would let me understand the assorted flavors of voice at help centers. If they could be turned into American Midwestern, they'd be one hell of a lot more useful. But as many have warned: fake voices could be dangerous in many ways. The useful is outweighed by the hazardous.

IBM-powered Mayflower robo-ship once again tries to cross Atlantic

Dr. Ellen

Re: Here's the "crew".

There is a large network of buoys (NOAA has about 1300 of them) collecting data on surface ocean conditions. An international organization maintains a fleet of Argo profiling buoys. These float about 1 km below the surface, then descend to 2 km. They then rise slowly to the surface, collecting info on temperature, pressure, and salinity. Once at the surface, they transmit their location and information to satellites.

Those buoys and floats are unmanned. But they are in communication with scientists, and when one has problems, a crew can be sent to fix or replace it.

On Mars or Titan, there is data to be had, but no repair crews. This (admittedly limited) AI ship is 'learning' how to operate without human assistance. We're going to have to learn this sort of thing if we want to explore where none have gone before.

Supreme Court urged to halt 'unconstitutional' Texas content-no-moderation law

Dr. Ellen

Re: Balkenisation?

Cuss-words are indeed a puzzle. Worse, they vary from place to place, group to group, nation to nation. The US Supreme Court has taken up the puzzle many times, though they use the term "fighting words". There are certain combinations of letters that cannot be used on license plates. (They probably vary from state to state.) Let the cuss-words through, I guess.

When it comes to climate change, I disagree with you. I'm eighty years old. I've lived through a lot of climate panics. In the seventies the climate panic was another ice age - global cooling. The earth did not freeze. But the climate narrative shifted to global warming. The earth did not boil or burn. Now we have to worry about climate change. Clever people! Climate changes all the time, so their warnings are unfalsifiable.

What we've experienced is the climate warming by a degree or two as we climb out of the Little Ice Age. I approve. When climate scientists set their sights on maintaining the pre-industrial climate, they had a lot of choice. They could have picked the Medieval Climate Optimum. Even better, they could have picked the Roma climate optimum, or the Cretan one. Instead, they picked the Little Ice Age. Warming from that is an improvement.

See? I disagree. I'm a doctor. (physics) Doctors disagree.

Dr. Ellen
Facepalm

Re: SPAM, SPAM SPAM SPAM!

Definite "unintended consequences". There are always unintended consequences. That's one that definitely needs reworking.

Dr. Ellen

Re: Balkenisation?

Alexander Pope asked, "Who is to decide, when doctors disagree?" The problem with social media censorship is not the filth and obscenity. The problem is the "lies". Who decides what is a lie? Who watches the watchmen? There are very few issues that don't have reasonable arguments on both sides; witness the debate over global warming.

(See? a lot of you just downvoted me for saying there were reasonable arguments on both sides.)

If it's a defamatory lie, with serious consequences, lawsuits for libel can be a remedy. If it's a statement about reality, the remedy for speech you don't like is more speech. And the moderators should be free to remove the cuss-words. We don't need the cuss-words. If you're literate, you can cuss without them.

Repairability champ Framework's modular laptop gets a speed boost

Dr. Ellen
Thumb Up

I had a TRS-80 III back in the day, and later upgraded to a TRS-4. But I, too, longed for a TRS 100.

Climate model code is so outdated, MIT starts from scratch

Dr. Ellen
WTF?

Re: A language they cannot read?

Lord, lord - my first language was Fortran. But this was long ago, circa 1960. Now there are so many languages running around we have the Tower of Babel under construction.

Android's Messages, Dialer apps quietly sent text, call info to Google

Dr. Ellen
Devil

Re: That rogue programmer was a clever devil!

I heard (it was on the Web) that the programmer studied what tests the cars would have to pass, then wrote engine management software which could detect those tests happening, and made sure the car passed them. This was as much reverse-engineering as cheating. There have been many court cases about such things.

Use Zoom on a Mac? You might want to check your microphone usage

Dr. Ellen

Re: Just looking in

That is exactly what I do. Not that I say anything controversial or business-related, bu that's this week. Who knows what will be controversial next week? And I usually have all external connections on my smartphone turned off -- the battery lasts longer that way. I only turn them on when I am making a call, or expecting one.

The monitor boom may have ended, says IDC

Dr. Ellen
Happy

Re: Blue Christmas

As I type this on my computer, I am looking at a pretty decent monitor. When I click a few buttons on the remote, I am looking at a television. The only fly in the ointment is poor speakers. It has other tricks I have not explored, and it's about as large as my desk can accommodate. Why should I buy something else?

Dutch nuclear authority bans anti-5G pendants that could hurt their owners via – you guessed it – radiation

Dr. Ellen
Big Brother

Re: Total Point Avoider

Vandal Savage has been around a very long time.He was one of the major villains for the original Green Lantern, first appearing in GL 10 (1943). He's still running around, because he is immortal. Back in the old days, they could make him behave by threatening him with a life sentence in the pen. Immortal, so long and boring ... These days , he'd be released on a ridiculously low bail.

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