Posts by jake

Re: Samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, lutetium, scandium, and yttrium...

Looks like they are all wet in comparison.

Shirley you mean Crysis, not Doom ...

Re: Fear Not

"FBI agents signed for the laptop, and provided a custody receipt."

The chain was completely busted between the time ... somebody ... dropped the laptop off with Mac Issac in April of 2019 and October of 2019 when the FBI picked up the useless thing. That's half a year where anybody could do anything to the box.

As for the second or third-hand copies thrown about by the completely untrustworthy convicted criminals with an agenda (Bannon and Giuliani), who the hell knows what kind of bullshit was added/dropped from those copies of copies. All we know is that forensic evidence shows that there definitely was stuff deleted, and there was nonsense added (email with bogus headers, for example). As such, those copies were a non-starter as evidence before the copying was complete.

I do keep up. That's just stumping. Biden is not running for political office any more than Bush is.

Note that Biden WAS investigated while STILL in office. Don't you remember how much time Congress wasted in so-called investigations, instead of doing their job of making their constituent's lives easier?

Re: This used to be so common it has a name.

That's pronounced MicroVAX II.

They were a lowish cost series of fairly capable machines. Not particularly good boxen, but not what I would call particularly bad, either.

The drives were always (to the best of my knowledge) mounted horizontally ... if the test equipment manufacturer mounted the entire computer sideways, that could indeed have lead to increased wear on the drives, which were not designed to run when tipped on their ears.

If you find one in running condition, they mostly ran VAX/VMS or ULTRIX. Mine all ran BSD, but that's only because I got paid for that. I'm pretty certain that mt Xinu built a commercialized version of BSD for them. There was also a version that ran DEC's RTOS, VAXELN ... these were the ones mostly used in automated test kit and industrial controls.

Re: *!$#&@ Bluetooth

Goats?

These days people don't even know how and when to properly wave a rubber chicken.

Re: The best way to learn something is to teach it

Grandpa once told me that he didn't mind teaching me things because whenever he did, he learned something new for himself.

That stuck with me. Smart man, Grandpa.

Re: They're already

From what I understand, it's their personal phones.

They should all resign in shame ... but the MAGA party doesn't know what shame is, apparently.

Re: I didn't even notice ...

Most of the folks I keep an eye on use the Slackware-stable kernel (5.15.161), along with a cut-down version of the distribution, plus a few packages on an as-needed basis.

I personally use the very same cut-down -stable for the business machines, and slack-current (6.12.20) for nearly everything else ...

... except my kernel development network, now mostly quite comfy on 6.14.0

The way I see it, I occasionally run into issues with the bleeding-edge dev stuff, so leaning on PV to keep an eye on day-to-day life only makes sense ... and after over thirty years, I see no reason not to trust his take on the subject. I also report bugs, and sometimes offer patches, and contribute to Slackware financially on an irregular, but more than occasional basis.

Re: Oops

That's more than just a bit in the tinfoil hat territory, that's full-fledged MAGA-cult whackjob territory.

IF there were such a briefing at breakfast this morning, those channels would be tossed and new ones created before lunch. It wouldn't take a veteran programmer four hours to build a secure chat app using well known algorithms. Call it another day or two for it to be usable by the current idiots in charge without hurting themselves, including making it pointy-clicky.

I wonder how long it would take to propagate the lie that Al Gore invented the algorithm, and so each one has a democrat controlled back door in it ... BAN ALL ALGORITHMS NOW!

Re: DEC Rainbow from my youth

"what will we have to display from computing in the 2000s?"

FTFY.

The answer is "nothing". There is no modern kit worth saving. Kinda like modern cars, it's all bland, mirror-image same-same throw-away, with no design to speak of, and certainly nothing worth caring about or remembering three or more decades into the future.

Re: actually, n0

Polling, when done right , is actually a useful look at the pulse of a group of people.

However, many of them do it wrong, and the results are bullshit.

Exercise due diligence when viewing poll results.

Re: Is it just me?

"it's no riskier than downloading a random EXE on Windows."

And that somehow makes it OK?

How far we have fallen ...

Re: Hey!

No need for a taxi. Their transportation back to Earth has been parked at the ISS since last September, fully fueled and ready to go.

No matter how many lies President Elon and his Court Jester Trump (and the village idiot Vance, and the pandering Press, and the Klown Kourt in Kongress) care to tell, they were never "stranded". Not even close.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Crew-9

Re: Control Data Corporation ALGOL-60

My 1403 with the TN chain[0] runs at the same speed as when it's running the ALL CAPS chain I use for PL/I ... Depending on the actual characters being printed, of course.

[0] No typo, she's an early 1401 from before the train upgrade. She started life as a Model 1 and was field-modified (by IBM) into a pseudo Model 3 in about 1974. If you squint, she kinda acts like an N-1, but without the fancy sound deadening. She does about 23 pages (~1400 lines) of 11X14 (132 columns) per minute. Can crank up to over 6 feet per second if the printout contains a lot of blank lines. She can empty a box of fan-fold faster than you can kill the print process. That's a joke (kinda), the print buffer is only 140 characters (of core), so killing the process, if you can, stops the printer pretty quickly. Yes, she'll spit out a lovely arc of paper if allowed. Not recommended .... folding it all back up is a pain in the butt, and it's getting expensive (if you can find it).

I don't have much use for her these days, mostly banner printing and old Fortran/COBOL code. I'm going to keep her around anyway, just for the shock value. The silly thing is LOUD at full-chat. If anyone is wondering, I keep her on rubber isolated feet, in a box made of two layers of 1 inch lead-foam with two inches of rock wool in between and a triple-glazed plexi window ... the neighbors are thankful.

Re: The thing about bubbles

"If the bubble did burst - there would be an enormous amount of DC capacity flooding the market"

That's just empty warehouse space and a pile of obsolete junk. Easily dealt with. Feed it through a crusher, separate out the heavies, and sell it off as scrap.

More to the point, think of all the AC capability that will suddenly be available. When (not if!) the bubble bursts, there will be so much unallocated electricity on the market that I won't be a bit surprised if the price per kWh were to enter into negative territory[0]. People dabbling in power futures will be jumping out of windows by the dozen.

_{[0] Don't laugh ... there is historical precedence.}

Re: If you want a general purpose computer ...

In my case it's not exactly what I'd call development work. Mainly research, maintenance and restoration of old scientific systems (somebody's got to do it!), combined with a misguided sense of tradition. It can also be quite lucrative.

Re: Let's see how many people don't read the post properly...

"until Trump ordered Musk to send up the previously planned mission to bring them back down."

In the Crew 9 Dragon capsule that has been parked at the ISS since last September.

Wait, what? There is a way to bring them back TODAY? Shirley the Elonald-thing wouldn't LIE to us, would they?

_{Would they?}

Re: So like bleeding the brakes on a car.

This was part of the ground support system, so more like bleeding the hydraulics on a tractor or other heavy equipment. Most of which have been self-bleeding since before man first walked on the moon.

Bleeding modern hydraulics isn't exactly rocket surgery. Or shouldn't be, anyway ... considering that they do it all by themselves.

If it wasn't a company run by a very ethical man, I'd suspect somebody's telling porkies.

Re: In a nod to the past...

The only way I'll ever own a Tesla is if someone gives me one.

And even then, I'll take it out into the desert where such shenanigans are allowed, rent a minigun, and sell people trigger time.

Then post the video on the toobs of ewe, of course.