Posts by jake

Driving under the speed limit is legal, UNLESS your are blocking other traffic. Here in California, it's a moving violation. "Impeding the flow of traffic", to be precise. Ticket, court, points on driving record, insurance rates go up, etc.

Even if you are going 5-over and other traffic is stacking up behind you, you can get pulled over for the same thing. Note that in this case the cop could give you a ticket for both impeding and speeding ... but you'll probably only get the former.

Basically, the actual speed of the flow of traffic is not your decision to make, so if you are being a dick and forcing YOUR opinion on speed on everybody behind you, you can get cited.

My brother's father-in-law decided to enforce the local speed limits by driving at the speed he, personally, thought should be the limit (usually 5 to 10 MPH under the actual flow). He finally received so many tickets (and lost in court) that he no longer holds a valid driver's license.

Note that driving over the limit can also get you a ticket ... if you draw attention to yourself, especially. So don't be a dick, and don't drive like an idiot, and chances are you'll never talk to a cop. Simples.

No, no, no ... NeXTSTEP was a fairly decent OS that was later perverted into MacOS.

Re: A few minutes away

Except that minute is the length of time it takes to do something.

_{Don'tcha just love t'English?}

Re: pedestrianism

Methinks Mr. Bryson was telling an entertaining tale rather than presenting an accurate travelogue.

Re: pedestrianism

As a Yank, I walk everywhere within reason. So does almost everybody I know.

Re: pedestrianism

I seriously doubt the Bering Strait crossing will be built within the lifetime of the walker. For lots of reasons ... some of them even make sense.

Re: pedestrianism

Don't confuse a single testimonial with reality for the whole. If you do, I doubt you'll even ever visit anywhere as far away as Hull. And that would be sad.

Re: pedestrianism

Oakland and Sacramento are, as you know very well, exceptions to the rule. Walking in the US is (in most places) not only considered quite normal socially, it is applauded as being the healthy exercise that it is.

Re: pedestrianism

Remember, that story is based on an incident that happened to Bradbury while walking on Wilshire Blvd. in Los Angeles during the height of McCarthyism. Paranoia was rampant during that era.

Re: pedestrianism

Some wealthy neighborhoods are like that, mostly due to paranoia of strangers. The vast majority of the US wouldn't even notice that he was there ... although I know some curtain-twitchers who would call the cops because he was smoking. Fortunately this kind of twat is rare.

In some neighborhoods, a stranger skulking around in the woods behind the houses would definitely get the cops called out ... although again, that is mostly paranoia raising its ugly head.

Re: pedestrianism

There is no Federal jaywalking law.

So-called "jaywalking" laws might be implemented at a local level, but in reality even if they exist they are usually ignored UNLESS the jaywalker is putting others at risk.

Re: pedestrianism

It should be noted that the USA as a country does not have any jaywalking laws.

Pedestrian regulations on the wheres, whens and hows of so-called "jaywalking" may, or may not be contained within an individual state or city's traffic laws. Many states have no such law, and said law, if it exists in any given town or city, is usually ignored by all and sundry, including law enforcement.

Re: pedestrianism

I walk pretty much everywhere, if it's under a couple miles or so. That's everywhere from extremely rural (over two hours, by road, from cold beer) to downtown in the largest cities in the US. I have never been in danger of being "hit in the head with a car". Not once.

Re: pedestrianisms

That would be very unusual ... but then I have known a dude who would fire up his car, hit the garage door opener, drive to the end of his driveway (perhaps 40 feet), roll down his car window to get the mail out of his mailbox, then reverse the procedure.

I pointed out that in his neighborhood the mailman would cheerfully deliver directly to his house, if he liked. He told me to not be so silly, he was perfectly capable of collecting his mail from the box out at the street.

Two weeks later, I noticed his street box was gone ... and there was a mail slot next to his front door.

Note that this is completely abnormal.

I'm a generation older, and my parents agree.

Oh, bullshit.

No cop in Berkeley (San Francisco, Oakland ...) would dare to pull over a bicycle, much less ticket the operator for a traffic infraction. The nature-nazis would have his/her head on a platter before the top of the hour.

It's called the California Stop. The "California Roll" is sushi invented for people afraid of raw fish. I've never hear the phrase "Hollywood Roll", but I'd imagine it describes a bum stealing from a passed out drunk at the corner of Sunset and N. Highland.

It's not fear. It's pragmatic.

I was expecting our hero running across The Boss in flagrante delicto in the dark corner behind the servers ... It happens. It's soul scarring. Mind bleach doesn't exist. Whisky helps.

Re: Guns at the ready

You usually can't diagnose stuff while it isn't running.

Besides, where else will you sometimes have the opportunity to look at Mars, Jupiter or Saturn through largish optics? Yes, there are arguably more important places in the Universe, but those three top my list when given the chance to pick an object to point a 'scope at "just for fun".

_{Staring at Mars through the James Lick always gives me goosebumps. Dunno why.}

Re: Work or pleasure?

I'm white (although not Caucasian), and have never had any trouble getting into music venues in Motown. Racism is as racism does.

Re: Not necessarily an Osborne

"a 4 and half inch standard ball float that I'd painted black with the word "Bomb" on it."

Mine has the small word "Acme" in red above the rather larger BOMB in white ... and a small paper tag tied on with string that says "Property of Wile E. Coyote" on it. It's a prop I use to irritate so-called "building security" when doing pen-testing ... it's amazing how many secrets they give away when flustered.

Re: Guns at the ready

You're supposed to arrive at the observatory just after sunset, not just after sunrise.

Re: Work or pleasure?

Unless you start from a point in Detroit West of the M-39 (roughly), and then it's Cuba. Or Florida, if the rest of us get lucky.

Re: Firefighters

My official job title at Bigger Blue was "Floating Senior Member of the Technical Staff" ... I wandered from department to department, world-wide, putting out fires. Outside of running my own businesses, it was the least boring, most stressful and most satisfying job I have ever had.

Re: Portable? Shirley you mean luggable ...

The very used and old at the time MFM drive I put in mine has lasted forever ... the afore mentioned quarter million air miles, and then kicking around in my piling system for a couple decades before landing in the corner of my office here at the ranch. Still works, gawd/ess knows how or why.

Re: Portable? Shirley you mean luggable ...

"It could also have been an Osborne, a Compaq Portable, possibly a Kaypro(can't remember the size of the screen).

True enough ... but only the Panasonic evoked a sewing machine's looks.

"And the Panasonic Sr. has a 9" screen, not a 7" as mentioned in the article."

I think it's a safe assumption that "Paul" never actually measured it, and was going on memory. It *is* pretty small, although it is easy to use at 80x25. What's an inch or two between fiends?

"Trade me"

One of my nieces has "dibs" on her, sorry.

Re: Portable? Shirley you mean luggable ...

Yes, Kermit, at least early on. Then I added the option of Telix, and finally Procomm.

Re: Not to mention a reference

It would seem you have problems parsing null references.

Re: Site Acceptance Test

The first five times I went to Hawai'i, I landed at night, was met on the tarmac by a taxi & taken to the NOC, where I did what was needed in a locationless, windowless space, and then returned to the airport by taxi the following evening. I never saw a beach or any other scenery, not even from the air!

Re: I'm always pleased when BSD get a mention

"I suspect Unix would have lost out to VMS had DEC released their source code in the mid 80's."

Having worked at DEC, and put in a boat-load of time on BSD long before that, and knowing that DEC's source was available to researchers (at Berkeley and Stanford, certainly) ... no. DEC's code wasn't built to be flexible enough for the (then) modern world of near-ubiquitously networked systems. UNIX (and by extension, BSD) was.

Note that this wasn't a war of attrition, rather it was a fine example of evolution in action. None of us had any clue what it would all lead to, we just used what worked & built upon it, sometimes throwing out a whole chunk and starting fresh, until it worked the way we wanted it to work. All in all, I think it turned out OK.

Except the monstrosity known as the systemd-cancer, of course.

Re: I'm always pleased when BSD get a mention

There was no "priesthood". That was a myth invented by people who couldn't, or wouldn't, take the time and energy to learn how the system worked.

Ain't no magic sky fairies in computing, just a big pile of ones and zeros.

Re: Exactly.

But I can see everything that goes in and out of it, and I can physically reboot it (or turn it off!) whenever I like and according to whatever criteria that I like, and I can add and subtract hardware whenever I like, and I can be pretty certain that nobody is snooping on my business in any way, all unlike the meta-goo cloud.

Re: HD radio

::shudder::

I've seen that in both directions (Yank shows re-done with Brit actors, and vice-versa). Inevitably it just makes what was once merely awful into something excruciatingly bad.

Except for the fact that text is an image.

_{What, you don't read a page at a time?}

Re: Mazda's Infotainment is a pile of garbage

Inside of the haggis it's too dark to see.

Re: HD radio

Yeah, I've lived in the UK. Condolences.

Re: HD radio

Cars made in 2005 are considered "old"?

What an awful plastic throw-away world we live in ... When I were a nipper, a 17 year old car was just about broken in, not even middle-aged yet.

Re: Dead Cat

I make a lighthearted attempt at poking fun at the typoes that we all make occasionally, and you take it as the opportunity to denigrate somewhere around 85,000 kids who, through no fault of their own. are enrolled in a school in the BCPSS.

One of us is truly fucked up, and it ain't me.

PDNFT ... ah, fuck it.

Right choice? Really? Doesn't Debian still come with the systemd-cancer?