Posts by StudeJeff

Re: New Jersey: stupid isn't just for red states since 1787

No, if that story was true he wasn't exercising his Second Amendment rights, he was demonstrating world class stupidity.

Which would be equally odd if it was someone like the North Korans, Chicoms or Iranians.

Which Distro indeed?

You've pointed out the real problem with Linux.

There are so many different distros, some very different than others, they very often run very differently and will support different things.

So if one wants to make the switch there is no easy choice to make, unlike switching from Mac to Windows or vice versa.

In a previous life I worked in a plat that refurbished computers. Our big blue customer wanted us to come up with a way to package some of these machines with Linux so they wouldn't have to buy Windows licenses for them.

The customer gave no other guidance, so I got to work. I picked Red Hat because it was popular, was (relatively) easy to use, and the price was right, free. Our software boffins created an image we could load on the machines that had the OS, plus Open Office and a few games. I also wrote a booklet titled "What is this Linux thing anyway", that would give the user what they needed to get started.

We presented it as a nice, neat package, ready for the go ahead and we could start shipping.

The big blue sales guy liked what we did, but then said we really needed to use a distro made by a company the big blue company owned, that wasn't compatible with much of anything AND there was a charge for it.

And... that was the end of that project.

Re: A prediction of the future of AI

There is a simple fix that all too often is ignored.

When it comes right down to it in every decision, whether it be from an AI, a committee, a company, Congress or Parliament, there are ALWAYS people who have to sign off on it.

Name names and hold them responsible.

I think he's more like D.D. Harriman.

Re: So let me get this straight ...

Well... if something like the Alcubierre drive really is not only possible but practical for an advanced enough civilization there very well may be alien starships wandering the cosmos.

As any technologically advanced civilization almost certainly had to pass though a phase something like we are now, with technology advancing at an exponential rate and all the challenges that go with that they would likely find us fascinating to study.

We are also making ourselves known, as for most of the past century if you look at our solar system with a radio telescope the brightest object in the system isn't the Sun, it's the Earth with all our broadcasts. (and if they can actually make those out I'm not sure I want to know what they think of them!)

Because he knew she was a loser, and not only that his paper is hemorrhaging cash because of what many see as it's strong left wing bias, and a Harris endorsement would have further cemented that.

On the bright side there is a nice audible overcurrent notification.

Re: Ageing sewers?

Thank you for being a voice of common sense and reason. Characteristics that are all too rare these days.

Re: Did meet spec

And Hughes did? Have you ever used Hughes Net? About all I can say for it is it works and it's better than dialup.

Re: To the Moon and Mars

Nor with the boosters be needed on the moon or Mars. The big problem is getting out of Earth's deep gravity well.

Re: "Collective West"

The Soviet Union was an empire... and putrid Putin is trying to recreate it.

Emperor is just a title and has no more meaning than that.

In my previous life I worked as an process engineer in a North Carolina (USA) plant that refurbished computing equipment for a big, blue computer maker. If you had a problem with equipment you got from us and called our hotline you'd actually reach people in our building.

Once in a while they would get stumped and ask if I'd mind talking to a customer, it wasn't my job to deal with customers, but I was always happy to help.

They would also contact me if there was an dodgy attempted return. They called about a guy trying to return some rather pricey server hard drives, and when I heard the name I told them that under no circumstances whatsoever should they do anything for him. The guy was a former employee and had been fired for stealing parts, now he was somehow a broker. I'd be willing to bet real money that he'd stolen those drives from us to begin with.

They created a tool, that didn't take resources? The resources put into creating that tool with the expectation of a financial gain as a result is pretty much the definition of an investment.

Re: I'm skeptical

Yes... and the Chicoms are liars.

I don't think radio telescopes would be much help in detecting asteroids.

However, what Musk (SpaceX) is working on, the Starship, will make access to space much easier, which in turn will make it that much more likely we could actually DO something about an asteroid heading our way.

Re: We can all agree

Biden got the nomination because the DNC wanted him to have it and blocked any candidates that could have been serious opposition.

So we wind up with a Democratic candidate who has never won a single vote in a primary... and the Democrats claim to be the party that will "save democracy".

Re: Spelling nazi here...

And some of us are just stubborn... I still call the capitol of Red China Peking.

Nahh... they will claim it's fake.

Re: I applaud their actions

I don't know what their plan is, but considering that stuff is well mixed and of very low value I expect the best way to deal with it is to burn it. The heat could be used to generate electricity, and of course the smoke would go though scrubbers to clean it up.

Early in my IBM days I worked on refurbishing machines called RAMACs, named after the original magnetic disk drive. (Which had the delightfully 50's name of Random Access Method of Accounting and Control).

Anyway, these things had up to 16 "drawers", each one with four SCSI drive modules. When we first powered these up we'd check to make sure the lights on all the drives were blinking. Any that were not we'd pull, hold out at arms length, and the raise it up high, swing it down, and stop suddenly. That usually worked!

We'd then put the drive back into the machine and "rebuild" it (I suspect that reformatted it).

Re: Prison

If I'm not in a hurry I avoid the big roads... Interstates on this side of the pond. As the late, great Charles Osgood was fond of saying, "The Interstate Highway System makes it possible to drive from coast to coast and not see anything".

No doubt your motorways are much like that... if I ever get to drive in England I'll avoid them as much as possible, you have some amazing countryside, but that driving on the wrong side of the road would take some getting used to!

Re: Tantrum boy

Tesla is selling a LOT of cars. These shots of Tesla's "piling up" are largely because unlike the legacy automakers Tesla does have dealers to force unsold cars on.

On this side of the pond we have this thing called the "First Amendment", which protects our freedom of speech, even, and especially speech the government doesn't approve of.

The government was WAY out of line "pressuring" social media companies to shut down or restrict speech the government didn't like... and it was pressure like the mobster saying to a shop keeper "nice business you have here, it would be a shame if anything happened to it". Except instead of something like a Molotov cocktail through the window it would be a horde of IRS and Dept. of "Justice" agents.

Re: "usual black-and-white Gateway boxes"

In a book I was reading the main character described breaking into a server room, which he described as being full of "cowbox Pentiums". I have to admit it took me a minute to get it, but once I did I about died laughing.

70 years ago...

People were saying no one would ever go into space, and that putting men on the moon was just nutty science fiction.

And then we did it, and now we are working on going back.

Exploring new places is part of what makes us human, unless we do something stupid we will go to Mars, and then on to the asteroid belt and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn... and then who knows.

We DO have a theoretical design for something like Star Trek's warp drive...