Posts by jake

Re: Mazda's Infotainment is a pile of garbage

Oddly enough, I still manage to get by with good old fashioned AM/FM receivers. Suits news, traffic/weather reports and baseball (in season) just fine. Broadcast music all sounds odd to my ear, so I avoid it.

Re: HD radio

"There was a time when this was a .co.uk site"

And yet, contrary to the failing memory of insular xenophobes, mostly of the AC persuasion, it somehow has managed to publish articles from Silicon Valley near daily over all these years.

Re: GIGO for the goddesses sake!

How about another 90% to the fizzheads who figured broadcast radio needed to have a software controlled receiver which should be capable of displaying pictures. Where I come from, that's called a TV, not a radio, and watching TV while driving is contra-indicated.

Re: IBM did marvelous documentation

The AS/400s came out in the late '80s, after the bean-counters started running the show. They existed a few years too late to be included in the proper documentation list. Sad, that ... they are still useful machines, in places where they make sense.

Re: Some people find themselves in hell... and build ladders

My blender has a shiny metal bottom ... It's a 1950s Osterizer. Did you know you can still get all the necessary parts to make these old jewels sing again?

Re: Best manual

That wasn't just a manual, that was The Coherent Lexicon. Possibly the best over-all operating system book ever published. It is still a valuable tool today, with the caveat that the details of CLI commands have changed, but that's easy enough to check with modern man pages.

It is available for the download here, but I suggest finding a dead-tree copy on fleabay or the like. I've also seen it in used bookstores, mainly in University towns. Why dead-tree? Because it doubles as a reference manual, and to date computers don't come close to actual books when looking up shit in a hurry.

Couple the Lexicon with a copy of ORA Power Tools, 2nd Edition (the Drill Book) and you've got a really, really good starter's kit on REAL system administration ... but again, with the above caveat.

You can also download & play with the actual Coherent OS, should you want to. A legally downloadable copy is archived at TUHS, here.

Exactly.

If your eggs are all in the cloud, it makes absolutely zero difference what kind of admin credentials you have ... you are still nothing more than a user, with no control whatsoever over the hardware you've placed your eggs in.

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

When I was at DEC, various powers-that-be tried to convince me to move from the atrocity called BSD to the wonderfulness that was VMS. I resisted. Never regretted it.

Re: Redbook

The IBM manuals from back then are, indeed, good enough to restore the gear. That's why my 1401 (and attendant bits & bobs) runs today as well as it did back then. If you are fortunate enough to own any of that documentation, hang onto it. If you can't hang onto it, find a place to donate it. There are many places that accept such material for long-term storage and proper archiving.

What's wrong with compressed EBCDIC?

Kids these days ...

Re: Remember O'Reilly & Assoc books?

I still have several linear feet of ORA books. They still come in handy, occasionally.

Yes, that's why they are dead.

Re: % in email addresses?

Should have bounced it off the USGS site in Menlo Park. We routed to all connected (and friendly) "in the field" mining sites, world-wide. ...!stanford!USGS!<yoursite> would have done it. Oxford knew how to get to Stanford.

Re: Teenagers

"EBG13-rapelcgrq, V cerfhzr."

Qba'g or qnsg, gurl gevcyr EBG13 gurve zrffntrf sbe rkgen frphevgl.

Npghnyyl, gurl ner cresrpgyl snzvyvne jvgu choyvp xrl rapelcgvba, ohg eneryl obgure hfvat vg. Ab erny arrq.

Re: How to stop it dead.

"Why would something be on the table if it is not under current discussion...?"

Because it's not figuratively in the hand of the current speaker, being waved around and having attention drawn to it. Instead, it has been figuratively placed on the table ("tabled"), where it can be ignored or brought up again at a later date.

"cards on the table" is something very different ... it means you have displayed your entire hand to all and sundry; you are not holding anything back.

Separated by a common language, indeed.

Re: There is lack of balance on both sides

"At times your not as alone as you think you are."

How about we change that to "On the Internet, everybody knows you're not alone."

Re: Much cheaper plan:

"This “parents should do their job” crap betrays massive levels of arrogant, smug ignorance. Absolutely clueless about the real world. Thick as shit."

Well, yes. But should you really be talking about the parents like that?

Re: Dead Cat

Misplelers of teh wirld UNTIE!

Re: Much cheaper plan:

"but can't be bothered."

That's a whole 'nuther kettle o' worms that can't be fixed by removing the right of adults to communicate about adult things without requiring the permission of the government.

Re: Teenagers

As I wrote back in July of 2018:

"My eldest Niece reports that comp-sci students at her Uni implemented a "students only" UUCP network over the existing school network a couple years ago. It's mostly used for email, small file transfer, and a private Usenet hierarchy. Seems the thirty-somethings who are supposedly the administrators never learned UUCP and have no idea that what they are doing even exists. No, I'm not naming the Uni ... but apparently they are connected to other schools, world-wide, and the PTB are none the wiser. To get around draconian filters, they even have a couple links that are dial-up, over POTS, if you can believe it. Good for them! :-)"

Re: "Challenge"

"Task that must be completed to gain the respect of your peers."

That's an initiation, and rarely much of a challenge.

Re: Teenagers

That word "challenge". I don't think it means what you think it means.

Re: How to stop it dead.

Don't be daft. The Government will vote themselves, their familys (including their children, no doubt) and their sycophants an exception "for security reasons".

The new law(s) will only apply to the common people.

Re: https://jwst.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/whereIsWebb.html

"If they hadn't, they'd probably have tried to climb into the sleeping bags too"

In that kind of weather? They'd have wanted to be carried in in their sleeping bags ... and then be placed, bag and all, into our bags. Not a lot of insulation on our primary breeds of choice.

No, those aren't part of our pack ... but the pose is identical.

Three or four whippets in a greyhound's bag is common around here ... funnier is one of the greys attempting to fit into a whippie bag. Lazy-arsed comfort loving heat seekers, the lot of 'em.

Re: Do your bit for ElReg

"there may be benefits which countervail the costs."

Personally, I've never seen any. Near as I can tell, all Internet advertising comes postage due.

Re: Who else is getting ads for 4wd wheel alignment?

Ads? What are these things you call "ads"?

The big rig's tire alignment is easy. Only the front two typically need it. When any of the others are out of alignment, you have bigger problems,

Re: https://jwst.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/whereIsWebb.html

My dawgs are also (mostly) cute, and all are loving ... but they prefer to sleep in their crates. If I dare to get into bed at night before I close their doors, one or more of them will come nose-nose-nose me as a reminder.

Re: https://jwst.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/whereIsWebb.html

I've done that in a couple places over several days. My spouse did NOT steal the duvet, we didn't bring one ... but we did have two appropriate sleeping bags zipped together to share body heat. Quite cozy, actually. Sierras at around 10,000 feet, cross-country ski camping in Yosemite's back country. The dawgs stayed home for that one.

_{It's all in the equipment.}

Re: Overtime and over budget

Shouldn't that be updated to Khufu's Law?

Re: Fake...

"The fact is that nothing you will see is real. A mere artist's impression."

Yep. That's why they call 'em "art prints". Duh.

You can also access the actual data, which is not harmed producing the art.

Re: It's as if Second Life never happened

"I think Facebook is a regression. I have to keep tearing myself away from it because it’s designed and built to feed the addiction of novelty. We need a lot more than novelty in organizing human society or software advancement.” —Lee Felsenstein

Re: My first though...

Sounds like Uni all over again ...

Re: There goes the business case - not like the Sci Fi

How do you define perversion?

One person's perversion might be the Wife & I's occasional afternoon interlude.

Re: Who’s going to use this ?

While sipping a virtual beer, waiting for the virtual prozac to take affect, no doubt.

Personally, I'd rather turn off the computer & go play with the puppy.

Re: No Sendmail?!

"I suspect a few people would be surprised what can be achieved with sendmail.cf if you have half a clue of what you are doing."

Very true. It's Turing complete ... so I once wrote a C compiler in it, just to prove to myself that I could do it. I don't recommend anyone actually use the kludge, though.

Re: No Sendmail?!

It makes perfect sense for those of us brought up on machine code and assembler. Today's kids, who don't know the difference between XOR and NAND, perhaps not so much. As is usual with such things, the best way to learn it is to immerse yourself in it.

Re: my first distro

Compiling the Linux kernel on my home 386SX16 with a then largeish 8 megs of RAM took over a day in about mid 1993. It took me six tries to get it right. The end result increased my system's performance by about 3% ... I just used the stock Slackware kernel for several years after that. Seemed to be the pragmatic thing to do.

Re: No Sendmail?!

Don't worry, the version of Sendmail in /extra works just fine.

Re: No Sendmail?!

Joke?