Posts by jake 28824 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Jun 2007
The ElReg Oracle has pondered deeply upon your question "Do women still wear slips?" and replies:
If you are old enough to reach the keybr0ad and still have to ask, the Oracle must regretfully inform you that you'll probably never know.
You owe the Oracle a pint and a smile.
Emily Postnews' two-bits: "A gentleman would never ask."
Well, to be fair you were seemingly advocating (or at least condoning) abuse as a choice ... not that there's anything wrong with that, of course.
Personally, if I were prone to such things as thumbs, I'd down vote you for using that tired old hoary meme of an icon.
"Sticks and stone may break my bones, but whips and chains excite me." —Unknown, mid-20thC
... at Stanford and Berkeley in the early.mid-90s, I had a handy list of seditious, lewd &etc addresses to filter on, which I happily sold on for the purpose of corporate firewall stocking. It wasn't just the new kids going to iffy sites, it was professors and grad students, too.
Daft thing is that officially the schools did NOT monitor which USENET groups were subscribed to, nor which posts a user "read". It was a privacy/freedom of speech thing. We even told the users that up front, it was part of the "using USENET" package. But for some reason, the PTB insisted that we had to log all WWW activity ... and we told them THAT, too.
So they knew that USENET use was unlogged, but the WWW was logged ... and (essentially) the same content was available on both. The vast majority chose the pointy-clicky-thingy anyway, at which point we knew society was fucked.
It's all been downhill from there.
To some it's weeds. to others it's insect, bird and small mammal habitat ... fish and amphibian, too, if you are on a watercourse or other wetlands. All you have to do is "accidentally" find a plant or critter on the protected species list, and <bam>, no more yard work!
Now all you'll have to do is convince a Judge not to allow the local greenaholics to evict you.
PG&E is a whole 'nuther kettle o'worms. Don't get me started ... Suffice to say I'm working on a master-plan to take us completely[0] off-grid. I've had it with those fuckers. (Not the guys & galls in the trenches with hardhats & work boots, I'll hasten to add ... it's the suits and ties that are the issue!)
[0] Pseudo-off-grid, I should say. We'll still have gas/petrol, diesel and propane.
... if the authorities are going to imprison an addict for a couple weeks, Shirley it makes sense to ensure that they have the means to imbibe their drug(s) of choice for the duration of imprisonment? It is well known that addicts will do almost anything to feed their jones ... breaking quarantine would mean nothing to most smokers in need of a nicotene fix.
Sorry, mea culpa, for some reason I read that as "psychological screening". They also did that ... and quite extensively,too. My point was that their training was pretty close to the same as the actual astronauts, but without the physical NASA space mock-up training aids.
As you wrote: "Why can't she be chosen on merit? Why the tokenism?"
Because Tokenism is the new black; It's what is in fashion these days. Who needs merit when we've got a quota to fill‽‽‽
Paraphrasing Malcolm X: “What gains? All you have gotten is tokenism — three or four Women in a job, or at a lunch counter, or on the Moon, or as Vice President, so the rest of you will be quiet.”
That was my take on it, too. He paid his money to embiggen[0] himself in the eyes of <somebody(s)>, thinking there was no way it would ever happen. And then it did, so he chickened out, the nameless, faceless over-bidder with more money than brains that he is.
Playmobil at eleven.[1]
And you wonder why he'll remain an AC 'til his dying days ...
[0] Hey, it's a perfectly good ElReg word!
[1] Doesn't this whole spoiled billionaire vs. spoiled billionaire cat-fight deserve a full-blown ElReg Playmobil reconstruction? Or is it just me?
I got THREE sets! One from BOAC, one from Pan Am and one from TWA :-)
Flying BOAC as an American family in the mid 1960s was an exercise in frustration ... the Very British ground and cabin staff were even more snooty towards Yanks than most ElReg commentards. We only flew them twice ... Dad figured the first time was a fluke. In his mind, no public facing company could be that rude to it's customers and stay in business for very long. I guess he didn't realize they were State owned ...
Way to quote out of context. What they went through was a lot more extensive than a psych exam. They also did a lot of physical testing, and training ... which NASA ignored, being the misogynistic good ol' boys club that it was in the early '60s.
If anybody cares, look up The Mercury 13.
Link for the anti-pointy-clicky: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_13
.
As I said, Wally's an astronaut. Did the training, should have had the oportunity to go into space decades ago. The other three are just tourists ... not even that, really. What is the proper noun for a rider of amusement park rides?
The payload specialists & etc. who spend time in space are definitely astronauts, they've been through the training and spent enough time up there to do meaningful work. I would say the early test pilots in the astronaut programs are also included. But the three pure "look at me, I'm rich!" tourists? Not so much.
Who is angry? Just musing on the obvious need for the English Language to mutate a little bit once again.
To be fair, Wally's an astronaut ... but on this trip, she's just a passenger on board what is in essence a Vomit Comet taken to it's illogical conclusion.
Perhaps we should change the "been into space" meaning from "poked nose above Kármán Line" to something more along the lines of "entered stable orbit requiring engine firing to return to Earth".
Basically, if you ever thought something about something, you will always think that and can not ever be thought of as thinking anything else. There is no rehabilitation for anyone, about anything, at any time. Ever.
Remember those scatological jokes you thought were so funny in the third grade? How about the locker room humo(u)r when you were 14? Ever compare a classmate to something nasty, or laugh at a "funny" accent, or the way someone in another country does things?
Ever been seen laughing at George Carlin? Jackie Mason? Bill Cosby? Dave Allen? Benny Hill? Are You Being Served? The Goodies?
Be afraid, be very, very afraid. The Ultra-PC are taking over. You might very well be next to be ostracized over something you USED to think (or think funny), but no longer do.
Ask yourself "How many spare hours would I have if I didn't watch telly, and I didn't play video games?". If you're a normal, modern human it probably adds up to over 1500 hours per year. Half a century or so adds up to 75,000 hours. One can accomplish an awful lot in 75,000 hours. (Obsessing over various local Sports teams can easily add another several thousand hours to this figure, as can religious activities, etc. etc.)
Next, throw in the fact that I cheat ... When I was in high school, I discovered that I got by just fine on 4 hours sleep per night (swotting for O-levels while still maintaining time for drinking playing rock & roll demanded it). I've since discovered that I do even better on 3 hours sleep per night and a one hour siesta after lunch. After around 50 years, that's another 75,000 hours ... assuming a so-called "standard" eight hours of sleep per night.
I've spent the spare time[0] pursuing things that I find interesting, fun, and satisfying.
What are you doing this fine Sunday afternoon?
[0] It's not actually "spare time", we only have a finite amount, use it wisely.
The first thing I plug into my laptop is a docking station. The docking station has a large screen attached to it ... and a "dumb" terminal that gets a simple login prompt thrown at it. So large screen, small "native" laptop screen, and a dumb terminal. This is a minimal configuration for a desktop as far as I'm concerned.
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.
A friend of mine reached behind a large bank of relay racks and managed to get his Rolex watchband across the 48V supply ... The resulting loud "CRACK!" and fans spinning down, coupled with the smell of roasting/burning pork, were rather disturbing. To say nothing of the screaming. I managed to calm him down & get him to the ER ... Xrays showed little balls of gold melted into his wrist behind the 3rd degree charring. The surgeons later told him he was lucky to still have full use of his hand. Today, 25 years later, the scarring is still impressive, despite skin grafts. He got a new band for the watch, and now wears it on his other wrist. It still works.
And people wonder why I always take off my wedding ring when working on electrical stuff. Yes, that includes cars, trucks, boats etc.
Testing code in situ before going live. Most of the live computers are at research facilities of one sort or another and are used to monitor/control/log other equipment. Old stuff to be sure, but it still does the job.
Why? Because I can, primarily.Restoring and running old computers is a form of meditation for me. But research, maintenance of old scientific systems (somebody's got to do it!) and a misguided sense of tradition are other reasons. It can also be quite lucrative.
I was aghast on my first day of primary school in Blighty. One of my new classmates asked to borrow a rubber ... This Californian knew about prophylactics at the ripe old age of 9ish, but had never actually seen one, much less been in possession of one. Fortunately, the teacher had a few cross-pond clues and translated for me. I think she was more embarrassed than I was ...
"Grow lights use a considerable amount of electricity."
Not necessarily. The ones I use in the nursery greenhouse use little more electricity than standard fluorescents.
"Be sure to have a good explanation for your electricity bill if you grow plants indoors."
One valid answer could be "I'm mining crypto currency". (Actually. in my case I have a couple of mainframes and a small cluster of vaxen running most of the time ... but they are making far more money than mining bitcoin ever could).
I've been using trackpads on laptops for so long that I don't even realize I'm using one anymore. Works better than a mouse, at least I don't have to take my fingers off the keybr0ad. I honestly don't understand why people bitch about them ... at least when it comes to general purpose computing. Specialty computing requires specialty input devices.
Just commenting, not complaining. I rather suspect that most casual observers wouldn't even register the generations between the 'scope and the Elliott. My own 1401 often has a similar unit sitting on top of the console, as does a lot of the gear down at the CHM in San Jose ...but for some reason it's still somewhat jarring every time I see it in a photo.
I figured that board was some kind of latter-day breakout box, and wondered (with those DIPs it Shirley has no place in an 803!). The only reason I didn't ask about it is because I didn't think anyone here would have a real answer. Ta. :-)
I hope to visit next time I'm in Blighty.
The Honeywell AGT1500 happily slurps marine diesel.
I've seen gas turbines run on marine fuel oil (No. 6) and so-called "Navy Special" (No. 5). They will run on pretty much anything burnable that can be injected into them in a fine enough form. Even coaldust and sawdust, although bearing wear can be a bit of a problem.
Last time I was in England for several months, a good friend, upstanding British citizen, tax payer, PhD research chemist for a big international company, offered me the use of a 9mm Browning automatic for the duration of my stay. I declined ... and was vaguely uneasy staying at his house for that time, despite the fact that here in my office in the USA I have easy access to several dozen rifles, shotguns & handguns. The "climate" around guns is different in England; as a Yank you have to experience it to understand it fully. Mostly, it's fear of the unknown (as you can see from comments here on ElReg and other places).
But the fact is that the guns are there. Even where they are illegal. In fact, by making guns illegal you are making a new class of criminal ... people who own guns, but don't actually do anything illegal with them. Thus, non-outlaws become outlaws at the stroke of a lawmaker's pen. And you are STILL not addressing the REAL problem ... actual, as opposed to newly invented, criminals.
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