Posts by GrapeBunch 825 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Apr 2015
Years ago I found an HP Laser printer in a dumpster. Honest, I wasn't diving, it was a shallow dumpster and the lid was open, it was flaunting itself. I lugged it home and after some work with a left-handed screwdriver discovered something the shape and colour of a Smartie or M&M in a place where it was not in danger of being crushed, but definitely messing up the work flow. Don't know if the person I passed it along to still has it. LaserJets were workhorses, then.
Sounds like a manoeuvre from Asimov's Foundation trilogy. In my humble experience, Lexmark printers sort-of work, but their 100+ MB driver packages do not. I'd tend to go with some earlier suggestions: if you have a lot of images, get a good laser printer. Not so many images: online. Text or monochrome images only: cheaper laser printer.
"China's said that they're willing to pick up the reins where the US left off so an agreement which was supposed to exclude China could now make the Pacific countries very China centric."
Canada's already vassalised to China through FIPPA, so they (we) will probably be enthusiastic. I have nothing against Chinese people, but I thought godless commies should be held at arm's length. That was the subject of Harry Truman's inauguration speech in 1949, how incorrect the Communists were. What a difference a few trillion yankee dollars make! Lucre, not Truth, drives this world of ours. Oops, sorry, everybody knew that.
American Association of Retired People. Old people (I guess I am one) and their close cousins, people who grew up in households headed by people who survived The Great Depression (1929-39?) tend to be super conscious (not to be confused with Jung) about expenditures, even if they aren't constrained forever by a measly pension. They re-use printer cartridges, for sure. On a good day, the rest of the population hardly prints anything. On a bad day, the rest of the population "has no idea of the value of money". There, I've said it.
So, is there any nation or even jurisdiction in this whole wide world with good cheap broadband internet? I'm crossing UK, US and Canada off that potential list right away. In Canada, the happiest seem to be the ones who haggle by phone with the provider every time the service comes up for renewal, and in this UK thread I'm seeing a lot of the same. As they used to say: "That's one hell of a way to run a business."
Not the way I read the report. "Computer misuse" accounts for 1,966,000 reported incidents, of which 1,300,000 are "Computer virus" and 667,000 are "Unauthorised access to personal information (including hacking)". That leaves -1,000 (rounding error) incidents for your name calling, PTW.
If there are 1.3 million virus infections reported to the police, there must be hundreds of millions of actual infections. In my country, I'd expect reporting a computer virus to the police to be at best a pointless exercise. Are UK cops more diligent? Or are expectations higher?
In all likelihood, they are Eastern Gray Squirrels, Sciurus carolinensis. Red squirrels tend to be retiring. "East" being the direction of many threats, and "Gray" the colour of heartless bureaucracy, maybe this appellation could win the Internet, before destroying it. I rather like Red Squirrels. Hate Eastern Grays and imposition of smart meters with a passion. I would not be a good Buddhist. See, on the Report Card, the Buddhism tea-cha wrote "Lacks compassion. Could do better".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDppeMt0FeQ
a pop song from 1970.
I'd speculate there's jurisdictional rasslin going on. I'd guess that to enforce $ the Indiana judgment, the college will have to go to an Illinois court. And that Triano is saving his best efforts for that encounter. IANAL.
In Canada, there is a government policy, called "Multiculturalism" under which you celebrate your ethnic heritage. Or, frankly, anybody's ethnic heritage. There's a lot of pale-skinned people who get very happy on the weekend of the Jamaican celebration, for example. I think it has a deeper educational purpose, to help people realize that "united we stand", as opposed to the individualistic model where individual rights are protected only by heavily-armed individuals. By the same token, people in each country are going to call themselves whatever they want, so let's celebrate that, too. Each labeling anomaly, if you like, is conditioned by events that outsiders rarely fully appreciate. Educate yourselves, if you wish, but afterwards you may say "I'd rather not have known that."
My grandmother telegrammed my father: "You're not marrying a [racial or religious affiliation omitted] are you?" but later grandmother and mother got along "like a house on fire" (that's a Good Thing). The divisions and hierarchies that our ancestors found central, hardly matter anymore. And that's also a Good Thing.
Instead of "utter mongrel", I prefer "hybrid vigour". Unlike the royal houses of Europe, eh?
Some years ago, Opera dined out on being standards-compliant. First, they were not really that compliant, as some features (I guess it was HTML 4 at the time) were not implemented, even after months and months. Second, as we see here, standards-compliant does not mean secure. When in doubt, do as the Tor browser?
I am reminded of a couple of unscientific coffee promos from my (relative) youth.
Edgar Cayce, AFAIR a studio photographer during the day, used to fall into trances and say things that he could have no knowledge of while awake. Speculation: he plugged into Jung's super-conscious. Anyway, at one session he was asked about coffee. He said that coffee, taken on its own, was a food, it was good for you. But if taken with milk or cream, it formed an indigestible mass in your stomach and was bad for you. Of course, even if you accept the scenario, the "entities" who gave the advice through Cayce, now over 70 years ago, could hardly have had access to science (such as it is) on coffee.
About 20 years ago, I also read about coffee enemas (yes, you read that correctly) touted as a cure for certain cancers. Unlike some other alternative treatments (such as tiny amounts of the pits of fruits in the peach family, which is larger amounts would kill you dead), this one would be a nightmare if they ever wanted to do a double-blind test. You'd have to come up with a liquid that looked like, smelled like, tasted like coffee even to a connoisseur, but wasn't coffee, for the control group. The enema treatment does weirdly go with the results of the caffeine study. IANAD.
I opted to go with a provider that is even more expensive, but the service is good.
... then later the same day I discovered that shaw.ca in March is discontinuing offering web space, which up to then had been included in the monthly bill. This is not separate billing, it is simply discontinuation of the service. Thank goodness for the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, but shaw.ca has abandoned its faithful customers, left us high and dry. I thought the sentence was modest enough, but it is hubris. Well at least, that makes Canada's broadband services easier to categorize: too expensive, lousy service, please find an exception.
"rest of the world" is not necessarily cheaper. Canada, for example, has a small number of providers, each with a geographical area of dominance. Typical complaint is that it's too expensive and the service is lousy. I opted to go with a provider that is even more expensive, but the service is good. The equivalent of $us 50+ per month for 300 GB bandwidth. Canada is frozen wasteland of course, but I'm talking about the urban areas hunkered down over that 4,000 mile undefended border. We'd like to be like Korea for internet, Scotland for Whisky, France for cheese, Italy for God (whether it's of the Abraham and Isaac variety or the pasta flavour), and so on, but izznt--so we have some goal to occupy the otherwise idle hours.
"Grade Point Average is a calculation from all of your test scores averaged"
GPA was explained in detail in a later comment, but it's actually an average of your marks or grades which include course work such as term essays and even subjective factors (as exploits the plot line of many a movie). Test scores are a wholly different mystery, the most notorious being LSAT, for which the keener may buy textbooks or hire coaches.
Education in Canada is a Provincial responsibility, and I believe that in the USA it belongs to the States. So in North America you have at least 60 educational jurisdictions. And yet, there is a surprising level of consistency. "School" consists of 12 levels called Grades (not to be confused with grades, which are course marks). The simplest division of "school" is "Elementary" (grades 1 to say 8) and "High School" (9 to 12), though there can be variations, for example "Middle School" (5 to 8 maybe), "Junior High School" (8 to 10), "Senior High School" (11-12). "Secondary School" is a synonym for "High School". In USA, High School students are Freshman (Grade 9), Sophomore (10), Junior (11) and Senior (12). Then if they go on to Post-Secondary Education = College = University, the whole nomenclature is repeated: Freshman = 1st year and so on. So persons A and B may be "Sophomores", but differ in age by 4 or more years, you need to know the context. Just as you need to know the context in Britain for say 2nd year at various levels.
In Canada the system is similar. When I was growing up, and it may still be true, we did not use GPA. We also did not use the Freshman ... Senior nomenclature, ever. In some places, schooling was 11 or 13 years, but that's pretty much disappeared except perhaps in Quebec, where after 11, there were two years of CEGEP and only then do students go on to College = University. 40 years ago, old people would talk about "Junior Matriculation" (or "junior matric") and "Senior Matriculation" although perhaps mostly in Ontario, and it had to do with the fact that you could leave school with your head held up high after 11, 12 or 13 years. But later in Ontario, you would take 13 years. Then a further 3 years at College = University would give you an ordinary (Bachelor's) degree, whereas 4 years at University might result in an Honours degree. But where I went, it was 12 + 4 for everybody, and the "Honours" could result only from taking more courses including certain specific ones. So if you wanted an Honours Math (not Maths in Canada) degree, in 3rd and 4th year you'd be learning a lot about Analysis, but if you wanted a vanilla Math degree, you could slack off with Geometry or Number Theory or Modern Algebra. In addition, if you averaged marks (grades) of 80% or more, the degree on your transcript (but not on the diploma) would be marked Class I, whereas 70?-79.99% would be Class II, etc. I bet they've at least tried to make things more standardized in the ensuing decades. In the Real World, a Math degree and a driver's license would go a long way towards qualifying you to be a taxi driver. Hardly anybody gave a flying puck about whether you had an Honours (except grad schools) degree, and nobody at all cared about Class I. On graduating, I purchased a Sealed Transcript of my marks, mindful of future employment opportunities. I still have it, still sealed, over 40 years later!
In USA, a College tends to be a 4-year institution that grants only Bachelor degrees. University would be a College + Masters and PhD's. In Canada, there is a tendency for a College to not even grant degrees. You go to a local College for two years and then possibly to a University to complete the Bachelor's.
Cross-pond Educational confusion extends also to occupations. In one genealogical Family Tree, some of my relatives' occupations were labelled as "Lecturer". To which I joked, I've got you beat, I'm a Haranguer. Deep down I probably knew what they were, but the England-based compiler of the tree relented with "University Lecturer". Here in Canada, that might be called "Assistant Professor" or "Associate Professor". By contrast, there was no confusion about what a "Wine Merchant" was, though we did remain with a mild disagreement about the person who was "Theologian" from one point of view, but "Missionary" from another. Even there, cross-pond differences in norms and expectations played a role.
Please excuse the verbosity.
If they put him away for 10 years, they will know where to find him when the Cyberwar begins in earnest. If he got 100 hours of Community Service, he might already have slipped off the radar and be a pansy pizza leftist in a grotty cellar stealing wi-fi. Now he'll be a hardened criminal, willing to Do What It Takes. I'm sure that the various alphabet agencies see this as a recruiter-friendly move.
His errors seem to have included using his real name, and supporting his product. This is America, where any kid can grow up to become President, but you need to keep your eye on the prize from a young age.
Here I am, a Canadian, and all along I thought that retailers could legally compare with List Prices. I already took that into account when contemplating amazon.ca purchases. My impression remains that some outlets (Brits might call them High Street shops) actually do charge List Price, in general, but of course most shopping is done at big- or medium- box retailers (how can I give this the right flavour?) such as Canadian Tire. Notice flavour but not tyre; mouse has strange bedfellows.
It's apples vs oranges comparing retail with utility. Were I a commission, I'd come down smartly on utility price misdirection. And I'd also have fined a whole raft of businesses (and gov't operations) here on retail practices before fining amazon.ca. I suppose it's not fair to give only a partial list. And nobody is talking about employee practices here, that is another topic.
amazon.ca customers have pretty easy access to amazon.com customer reviews, but I've found that amazon.co.uk comments are often more thoughtful, even if it takes a few extra clicks to find the exact same item. I've even purchased from amazon.co.uk, though not recently, on small items, being extra careful that they are fit for purpose on this side of the pond. Hint: if they plug into the wall, they probably aren't.
All should be considered as "bargaining position" nominees. The people he really wanted will be the people sitting at the cabinet table in, oh, March.
Is it possible that Giuliani Security is running up-to-date secure software that identifies itself as old and insecure? After all, it could not help security if any Tom, Dmitri or Kim can find out the exact level of the software you're actually running. Asking not as an expert but as a babe-in-the-woods.
No. "The business of America is Business". The gov't would not consciously harm the interests of (big) (US) business. Foreign gov'ts and foreign business? "Their loss is my gain" is an old standby.
Starting The Donald Administration on the wrong foot? Yes, I can see that.
I thought the measure's international consequence was more in the line of revealing one's arsenal, a vital step in deterrence of a global cyberwar. At the end of the movie Dr. Strangelove, the US and the SU together destroy the world. SU had set up a Doomsday Machine but, since Everything is Secret, had neglected to tell the US. Peter Sellers as the US prez plaintively asks, isn't the whole point of a Doomsday Machine that the Other Guy knows that you've made one? Alas, too late for that world. <ot>The destructive capabilities of Cyberwar have barely been broached. True, it will be impossible for Cyberwar to destroy life on the planet. OTOH, it should not be forgotten that at least two of the major Cyber powers also have world-swallowing nuclear arsenals. So you've got two vectors to jump from Cyberwar to Holocaust: one, one side could be hurting too much from the direct effects of the Cyberwar; two, supposedly everything is codes in briefcases and multiple fingers on multiple switches / buttons, but who is to say that an IDIoT (Intensely Destructive Internet of Thermonukes) might not be activated? You know, in the interests of efficiency and labour-saving? Impossible? Not when IDIoTs enter the frame. Right now it would take, what, seven minutes for either of two narcissists to End It All using current protocols. But what if that is Too Slow? Wouldn't an icon on the President's Desktop be Just The Thing?</ot>
Windows has no option to uninstall them, you need to dual boot into Linux and delete the appropriate folders under windows/systemapps
The very "Windows" thing for MS to do would be to download and reinstall the unwanted apps. But I congratulate you and wish you the best possible good fortune.
I'm guessing that the shade of green will be one of the 16 DOS-VGA colours. Just Because. My own happy text -reading and -editing colour combination is DOS bright yellow on dark red.
45 years ago I was fond of the theories of Immanuel Velikovsky, because he was vilified by the establishment. Partly. He also had some interesting insights, such as catastrophism. We mostly agree now that dinosaurs died out after a rock less than 15 km in diameter narrowly missed the Mayan Riviera, some 66 million years ago. I think that if Velikovsky had grokked that a mere 10-15 km rock could do such damage, he wouldn't have bothered with the planetary wanderer theories that he did come up with. In short, I don't think that Velikovsky (died 1979) can help us resolve the controversy over how the moon might have formed.
There's a great viral (25 million+ views) video from a month ago of Montreal traffic helplessly colliding in what would normally be considered a minor snow-and-ice event. It has a balletic effect, soothing if one is not laughing too hard. That might be more like the new moon-formation theory. Not to say anything against the ballistic effect of the cop car pile-ons.
It's not unlimited "availability" either. Not geographical availability, not time of day availability, (both of which would be available to the same extent under a lesser plan) and certainly not "we'll leave you in the plan even if you exceed the bandwidth we think is reasonable". That would be a kind of unlimited availability.
I haven't seen any evidence of "semantics", rather a 10-year-old trying to cheat at marbles.
We had the dotcom Bubble almost two decades ago. In a couple of years, I foresee a dotdot Explosion when our programming friends in unfriendly countries get up to speed on it. If you rapidly turn the electricity in one house on and off, hard to guess what might happen. But do it in a million houses at once, aye, there's the dotdot Explosion.
You're right, that is a particularly bad example. Here in Canada, I think it much more likely that a (foreign qualified) surgeon would retrain as a plumber. And don't forget that surgeoning is not "retraining", it's 7+ years of life, ending in a professional qualification, and requiring "A" grades throughout (including possibly before). A more typical route would be a fisher retraining as a plumber, or a filing clerk retraining as a dental technician.
The continuation of the Thomas Rid link refers to: "How Russia Recruited Elite Hackers for Its Cyberwar" and NYT indicates that they not only recruit criminals, they also recruit before cases go on trial. It's funny, earlier today, I was reading about cyberwar in The Guardian, and thought ... " so that is why USA applies such long jail terms to young hackers who sometimes don't even cause any damage, who are just joy-riders. It's so the USA security organization "recruiters" know where to find them for the coming cyberwar. If they were just let off with 50 hours of Community Service, they might disappear back into the woodwork, living the life of long hair and pizzas. Instead they will be hardened into remorseless criminals and easy to find, just the kind of troops needed in the first world cyberwar. The acronym WC1 or WC I does look like something you wouldn't want on your P-shirt.
The typo Protomac (for Potomac, the name of the river, for example) sounds like a neologism incorporating "Professional", "Macintosh", "Protoplasm", "Rota" ... all together: "It is the turn of which wanker, pretending to be professional, to bite the apple on this slipup." Did you see what I did there, "protoplasm" refers both to slipup and to wanker?
Brexitina? Hmm. Brexit has caused some people who didn't do their paperwork in time to become ex-Brit's, Brexit and exBrit are anagrams. The name Brit(t) seems to be Scandinavian, rather than British. Brex sounds good to me, unless you want not to be teased about shampoo. Call a girl Brix because she's so sweet?
May we join the EU? We're in roughly the same direction as Iceland, only a bit further. Apocryphally, our country name comes from the Spanish "Aca nada." Nothing there. They knew nothing of snow.
Science programming: through the magic of Internet, I have been able to partake of world-wide TV science programming in English. The worst: USA. They leave out the interesting bits, because those might require an IQ of 80 to understand. Because commercials perhaps, they re-re-repeat everything so that at the end you have the attention span of a gnat. Not a gnu, a gnat. Hoping to be contradicted on this one. If you do contradict me, please include the name of the good USA-based TV science program(me) or I will downvote you. The best: Australia. My theory is that they know they only have half an hour for Science, so they bloody well give it fair dinkum. The programme's name is Catalyst. My own Canada "The Nature of Things" is still OK after almost 60 years. Great program on how beavers were tricked into building dams where the humans wanted them, eh.
Finally, Britain. One of the best of 2016 was the four-part "Walking Through Time" with Tori Herridge. Her persona as a no-nonsense but kindly "head girl" worked pretty well. Since this was Channel 4 rather than BBC, I can see where the criticisms arise. BBC's "Trust Me, I'm A Doctor" isn't exactly a science programme, but it does invoke the Scientific Method. And despite the "I'm" in the title, it is actually presented by four MDs, and perhaps that's where the rub lies. I've noticed that when BBC has an hour-long science programme with just one presenter, it tends to become too much about the presenter, and not enough about the science. Goofy or gormless, regional accent or too much mascara, self-important or condescending, it just gets in the way of science. But in executive summary, if you're disappointed in BBC science programming, thank the many-headed pasta deity that you don't live to the west and a bit south. And I'm not being Scilly.
I tripped over a site: http://vogonline.planning-register.co.uk and, thinking, wow! this is a sub-site of El Reg with extra satire and irony! How will I be able to stand it? Will I explode with joy? Enabling Vogon planning poetry with Vulture Capital?
Gosh, was I disappointed. It's the Vale of Glamorgan Online Planning site. Not amusing in its tiniest iota. There is no proper story under which to file this horrendous news, the broadest meta-story will have to do. And a Happy New Year to you all, if you can stand it. I know that I won't.
If they did something now that had Window 7's UI, none of that advertising / snooping nonsense that is the final ruin of Windows 10, and a tabbed Windows Explorer, I'd happily pay £100 for it.
You already have it. It's called Windows 7. And you might have paid 100 quid for it. Except for the tabbed Explorer. I use xplorer2, which isn't tabbed, but has two panes and is very sweet. But I believe there is a tabbed and free equivalent. Or three.
PS: Windows 7 is far from perfect. Because Moore, they've had to take one step forward and two steps back with each OS iteration in order to incentivate you to buy the next OS. Can you imagine Windows 95 going at the speed of today's hardware? It could be argued that the best thing about 10 is that the new model frees them from that warped hamster wheel so they can give us "The OS We Always Wanted To Give You". Registered Trade Mark, ha ha.
In parliamentary systems it's much worse. In Canada, a person can become Prime Minister typically with 39% of the vote. It could be that in the Democracy of Ancient Greece, that same person might have been exiled (ostracized) by an overwhelming 60% of the electorate. Coulda woulda shoulda, but the same guy was Prime Minister until the 61% found a happy interlocking way to "vote strategically".
In the 1960 election, Wikipedia shows Kennedy winning the popular vote, but it's murkier than that, see this map and the commentary about Alabama at the bottom. Kennedy won in the Electoral College 303-219, meaning that there was only one state with enough EC votes to be called a "swing state", NY. Harry F. Byrd received 15 EC votes, though he had not been a candidate for President. Stuff that in your college and smoke it.
To the person who said that the EC is part of the system and then in the same comment went on to complain that the outgoing President should be neutralized, I say: "Your slip is showing!"
I rather like Obama's outgoing flourish. Even though USA and Russia are both nominally constitutional democracies, there's still a bit of antipathy toward "Rooskies", and Obama is making whatever conciliatory position Trump might have in mind look like he's being soft on the "Rooskies". That can work to the Dems' advantage in 2020 or even 2018. Despite Netanyahu's hissy fit, USA (b.1776) has been like both father and mother to Israel (b.1948), but being in the same family doesn't always mean getting what you want. Rare are the opportunities for telling a delicate offspring that they have gone too far, and this is one.
The diagnostic package should be (part of) a drone. Mountain stalls in a field, fly in the prophet!
Sufficiently small replacement parts, also deliver by drone. It might take a couple of hours to get to the stalled mountain, but probably faster than the mechanic in his or her vehicle.
Yes, I do see the irony that the proposed treatment for an IoT excess is more IoT-diocy.
Diagnostics should be digitally signed and digitally copied to the client. That will be a first step towards dealing with overcharging and fake repairs; maybe no further step will be necessary.
Sitting here, I can't see why the manufacturer should have to reveal source code. In any case, far earlier on the list of things that need happen is to break Microsoft software away from Microsoft operating systems--that's a vendor lock-in and conflict of interest that continues to cause undocumented (feature) harm.
As to theoretical harm, I don't see farm equipment endangering nearly so many people or so much property as "Smart" electric and gas meters. As that harm gets revealed, rest assured that they'll blame "bad guys" or "accidents" rather than themselves.
Nausea was my reaction to the story of "Gary". I too came a cropper after an instance of database / spreadsheet sorting. I took all the blame, too, and I deserved it for trusting that the other party would comply with an agreed-upon, simple, and precise division of responsibilities. During months of event planning, I had come to know them well enough! No matter how rarefied or sophisticated what you're trying to achieve, the most basic considerations may intrude.
This is the Captain speaking. On your monitors you will see:
my stick (bwahahahahahaha) < delete this
Those of you travelling today on the Port or left side of the aircraft will see nude videos of [handsome male celeb A] or [luscious female celeb B]. Those of you travelling today on the Starboard or right side of the aircraft will see on your monitors an abdominal surgery. I urge those of you on the Starboard side to take off your seatbelts, walk to your left, and partake of the, frankly, stunning videos enjoyed by those on the Port side. Any port in the storm they say, but these videos are really, really stunning. Please ignore the cabin crew, they are rather prudish.
There I was, wondering if our home router could be programmed to filter out nasties for all the computers here, and suddenly it is a weak link. I've been using microcomputers (as they were then called) since 1979 and dial-up melding into the Internet since 1988. Am I paranoid, or is the Internet (recently) approaching becoming too dangerous to browse? Taking into account all the websites that don't work with even fairly porous NoScript settings?
iOS devices on average are fairly benign, but do threats of this ilk make carefree iOS use a new conduit for pulling your whole network down?
Can we have an icon that communicates that questions are not rhetorical? Perhaps a big red ? on a yellow background?
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