Posts by jake 28824 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Jun 2007
"Which bell is mum's, and which is her down't road?"
I can hear three of the neighbors variations on the theme. They have a completely different sound to my two ... one is "the dinner bell", a traditional triangle in my case. The other is "emergency", a WWII surplus hand-cranked air-raid siren. This last brings the neighbors running, too (although they know they are welcome to respond to "come and get it!" if they are hungry).
"PCs + Hummingbird X-Windows software replaced them."
I had pretty good luck with DesqView/X and the optional Motif and TCP/IP packages. Worked quite nicely with the existing (mostly) mixed DEC and Sun networks I was playing with at the time, but was a trifle spendy.
But then, coming from a BSD background all similar commercial products seemed a trifle spendy ...
"At least seems like it's moved from always being 30 years in the future to always being 20 years in the future."
It moved from 50 to 30 with the wide-spread adoption of general purpose user programmable computers. Late '50s. Ish.
30 to 20 happened when the boffins stopped carrying sliderules and started carrying programmable pocket calculators. We've been stuck on '20 years" since the HP-35 was new. That was 1972, for you youngsters.
Unfortunately, since the early '70s the Safety Nazis have increased in numbers faster than the technology ... I suspect that we are now back in the 30 year range. This morning's news conference suggested this was optimistic, in fact, when one of 'em said "another couple decades in the lab before we can start building a RealWorld example" (paraphrased).
That's 20 years before we can start building. And at a guess, the first large-scale plant will take at least 15 years (probably longer ... government project) from breaking ground to commissioning ... Well, do the math. Not before 2060ish. 40ish years.
We need copious new fission plants, and we need them operational 30 years ago, if not sooner. Everything else is whistling past the graveyard.
"As far as scientists can tell, quarks and gluons — the stuff that holds them all together — can't be broken down any further. They are quite literally the fundamental building blocks of all matter. Remember of course that scientists once thought the same of atoms, so who knows where this might go."
The Vermin only teaze and pinch / Their Foes superior by an Inch.
So, Nat'ralists observe, a Flea / Hath smaller Fleas that on him prey,
And these have smaller yet to bite 'em, / And so proceed ad infinitum:
Thus ev'ry Poet, in his Kind / Is bit by him that comes behind
—Jonathan Swift, 1733
Back when I worked for Bigger Blue, on Fabian Way in Palo Alto, we'd kill the mains power at 3PM on the last Friday of every month to ensure that the battery would carry the load long enough for the genset to warm up enough to take over (12 to 14 seconds). In the event of failure, everyone went home early with two hours pay ... I never got to go home early.
Yes, the generator would run indefinitely (natural gas, town supplied). There was a "hot spare" that could be switched to immediately on failure of the primary, and a "cold spare" that would be brought up to hot status while the primary was being repaired. They were capable of being switched from natural gas to propane on the fly, if needed. There was enough propane to keep running long enough for a diesel generator from the local national guard depot to be trucked over and fired up. Why all the redundancy? We built, tested, verified, certified, deployed, tested again on-orbit (sometimes again, at regular intervals), and generally kept an eye on satellites. From a potential major earthquake zone.
I was just putting the finishing touches on a small cluster of vaxen at SLAC one fine Friday afternoon. The annual Big Game between Stanford & Berkeley was to be the following day. A couple of grad students started passing a football (American version) between themselves. In the glass room (that wasn't glass). Just as I was threatening mayhem if they didn't knock it off, the ball hit the Big Red Button. Needless to say, a bunch of very pissed off people couldn't attend the game the following day. The grad student's computer privileges were suspended for the rest of the academic year. Personally, I'd have hung them by the thumbs in the Quad as a warning ...
There were lots of conference rooms like that in the early Silly Con Valley. Did they show you the lap pool(s), sauna(s) and hot tub(s)? I know of one building which had three of each, in each of the founder's office suites. None were ever used, to the best of my knowledge ... but were still maintained in fully working condition some 30 years later. What a fucking waste.
You never know what you'll find in an old house.
When we moved in to this place, there were two overhead light fixtures in the downstairs hallway, about a foot and a half apart. One was controlled by the normal wall switches, one upstairs & one down. The other was always on, with no switch, so we removed the bulb. It wasn't until I started tearing into the attic space to create my office that I discovered that the downstairs hallway light was controlled by the attic light switches ... Turned out that a prior home-owner decided that leaving a light on down three flights of stairs was a good way to remember to turn off the attic light ... but his wiring skills didn't include knowledge of using three switches to control one light. I added a third switch downstairs, and kept the overhead indicator.
When I first started working on the house (was a "Victorian" farmhouse before I bastardized it), I discovered to my horror that no fewer than 12 unused 3/4" copper water pipes were still pressurized, but were sealed off with nothing more than a wine cork and a couple well placed dents (peens). Seems the elderly gent who owned it before me was a bit of a DIY guy and decided to move two full baths and the kitchen sink. Seems he didn't need the old copper, because he was an early adopter of PEX ... Not a one of them dripped even once, judging by the dust underneath them.
"Now to find someone who can do spray insulation foam to stop the dripping!"
Spray foam insulation might hide the dripping, but it won't stop it. Being hidden, you'll fail to notice the rot setting in until the roof collapses.
"Out of sight, out of mind" is not a good thing when it comes to roofs.
At one SillyConValley startup, I volunteered to replace a bunch of power sockets after an insurance company denied coverage due to inappropriate paint. Took an afternoon, and the guy was nice enough to re-inspect it before going home, so we were allowed to occupy the premises on schedule the next day.
At another company, I was in the glass room when an insurance guy found a drip of paint on the BRB and pulled coverage immediately. Heads rolled over that one.
"it is clear that you have watched none of the videos on youtube by Ivan Godard"
Oh, I've seen 'em alright. Even seen him talk about it live (seminar at Stanford almost ten years ago).
I LIKE what he's selling. I'd really like to see it work. Would shake things up, and in a GOOD way.
Trouble is, I'm pragmatic. If it sounds too good to be true, it most likely is. And like most of us around here, I've seen vapo(u)rware far too many times to discount it as a long-term option.
Again, I like the concept. I'd love to have actual hardware to play with. I'm not holding my breath. I'm also not an investor.
This isn't "Rust is officially a Mainline Linux Kernel Language!", per se. Rather, it's "Rust might show up in some non-expirimental drivers, eventually. Maybe. If anybody (the vast majority of whom are very well versed in C) can be arsed."
Rust will not get into the mainline kernel until it has full GCC support. And we all know how the Rust community feels about working with GCC, which is written in the much hated and vilified C (BOO! HISS!). Last I heard, there were only two developers actively working on this, with an experimental partial Rust GCC front-end expected by mid-summer next year. Maybe.
No, I'm not anti-rust. I'm a realist. When the GCC front-end is ready, I'll check it out. Until then ...
No, Mainline kernel development is not moving to llvm/clang anytime soon. Not nearly enough hardware support.
"It is still being worked on"
So is the Linux Kernel. So is the Hurd Kernel. One does useful work nearly everywhere. The other?
"They have goals to meet to keep the funding flowing."
I suspect that "They have goals to keep the funding" is more accurate.
With that said, I like the concept. I'd love to have actual hardware to play with. I'm not holding my breath.
Except that most expert chisel users actually like the feel and sound of a sharp blade cutting through wood ... and I'll bet you a plugged nickle that a neophyte with your magical tool will find a way to hurt themselves.
Not that there is such a tool. Reality is king. And of course running code trumps all.
"(Yeah OK, so I don't see why they had to put those spirally things around modern nails that make them so much harder to hammer in, either)"
That's not to make 'em harder to hammer in, that's to make 'em harder to work loose.
Fortunately, spiral shanked nails aren't the only game in town.
"Its said an adze is the only sharp tool that one draws towards oneself"
Three others that I have used recently: Spokeshave. Drawknife and Scorp (aka inknife). And I usually use a cardscraper pulled towards myself; some people claim this is a no-no, but I find I have better control. (An Amish friend is teaching me to make his take on the Windsor Chair.)
Yes, there are many types of hand plane that are often or usually pulled towards oneself ... sometimes this is determined by the grain of the wood being worked, but not always. The kanna (Japanese plane) is pulled towards the user.
Most farming tools of the hoe family. Also pickaxes, mattocks.
Iceaxes, if you are unwary (an arm-swing is an arc).
A splitting axe's downward arc will often intersect with the operators feet or shins.
Etc.
"because I fundamentally believe that all information "deserves to be free.""
Are you sure that word "all" means what you think it does?
Or are you willing to give us all your name, address, telephone number, banking information, SSN (or local equivalent), mother's maiden name, wife's maiden name, the names of your sprog, all the above's medical history, (address, telephone, banking, etc. etc.) etc ...
Are you by any chance self employed? If so, I am in the same line of work (or about to be). Shirley you'll be quite happy giving me your complete client database, right?
And of course you have a plate glass exterior wall to your shower, no door to your khazi, and no curtains on your bedroom windows ...
"Around that time, the industry was moving much faster than this century. That was a *long* time."
Coincidentally, I was just looking at receipts from a long-time client of mine.
In January of 1990, he paid $1199 for a 40 Meg Western Digital HDD (with a one year warranty). In November of 1994, he paid $849 for a 1 Gig Seagate (five year warranty). That's roughly a drop from $36/meg to 85¢/meg.
The price of RAM lagged HHDs ... In 1990, RAM was about a hundred bucks per meg. By ~'92 it was hovering between $92 and $95 per meg, where it stayed until about 1997 when the price started to plummet. By '98 or so you could get SIMMs for about $5/meg.
People who weren't in the industry as adults during the late '80s and early-mid '90s have no clue how fast things were moving.
I do an annual cleaning & adjusting (if needed) of a couple of 8" floppy drives that have been in near daily use since the late 1970s. They are attached to a couple pieces of equipment at a machine shop located in SillyConValley. I've replaced the read/write heads, the motors and other parts[0] a couple times each with NOS[1] parts that I squirreled away in the '90s .... sometimes being a packrat helps pay the bills.
Granted, they aren't running Linux.
[0] We started calling them "Theseus's Floppy Drives about two decades ago ...
[1] New Old Stock ... brand new original box product that's been on the shelf for a while.
To be fair, 1973's RT-11 was a single-user system, so of course that single user would have access to the complete system. Also note that it was designed originally with no networking. Security concerns on such a system were addressed with doors, and lock and key.
In that era, the user of such a powerful computer was expected to be computer literate. These days, with a supercomputer in all pockets, people are expected to be computer illiterate.
How far we've fallen ... and still accelerating.
"Why didn’t they just use pneumatic lights if they already had air hoses for their hand tools?"
Perhaps because they didn't know such a thing exists?
For the copy/paste folks: https://www.airtools.com/products/pneu-light/
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2026
