Kosh's Shadow 11/10/2020 6:02:00 AM

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(Breakfast break)

Saeb Erekat, "Palestinian" "negotiator" dies from COVID

May he rest in pieces and may Abbas join him soon,

And the subtitle of the article "He fought for peace, but never lived to see it" is incorrect. His version of "peace" did not leave room for Jews in Israel.

Occasional Reader 11/10/2020 6:07:41 AM

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Reply to Kosh's Shadow in 1:

I think I’m just going to hold my tongue about this one.

lucius septimius 11/10/2020 6:08:37 AM

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vxbush 11/10/2020 6:45:22 AM

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In #3 lucius septimius said: It's a beautiful morning -- sunny, not Force 7 winds with horizontal rain.

In other words, atypical for fall. 

Morning, campers. My husband was pretty despondent last night over the fraud the Dems are trying to get away with. He avoided all the news and therefore wasn't aware that Sydney Powell had joined the calls of vote fraud and the scale of it. I would love to see her file a few lawsuits myself, but then I really want to see Gen. Flynn exonerated. And the latest news from October 7 has been a filing to disqualify Judge Sullivan from the case. What I don't understand is how submitting that motion to the court where Sullivan is presiding will result in a positive result. It's been before him for a month. 

Occasional Reader 11/10/2020 6:54:44 AM

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buzzsawmonkey 11/10/2020 7:44:02 AM

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Hmmmmmmmmm...if we call the people who've tried to rig the elections "riggers," that might be construed as having unfortunate racial overtones.

Maybe we should just call them "persons of cheating."

Occasional Reader 11/10/2020 7:52:35 AM

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In #6 buzzsawmonkey said: the people who've tried to rig the electio

Sorry... "tried"? 

buzzsawmonkey 11/10/2020 7:59:33 AM

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In #7 Occasional Reader said:

Well, yes, they rigged it---but they haven't gotten away with it yet.  And won't, if the vote is proven.

I won't say "it isn't over till the fat lady sings" because I really don't want to hear Stacey Abrams attempting the National Anthem.

JCM 11/10/2020 8:51:20 AM

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In #8 buzzsawmonkey said: I won't say "it isn't over till the fat lady sings" because I really don't want to hear Stacey Abrams attempting the National Anthem.

I suspect she would sing The International.

lucius septimius 11/10/2020 8:53:31 AM

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In #4 vxbush said: In other words, atypical for fall. 

Not for my current location in Florida.

lucius septimius 11/10/2020 9:08:26 AM

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Reply to Occasional Reader in 5:

I'm sure it's there -- it's just that the Rightwing media establishment is suppressing the news.

buzzsawmonkey 11/10/2020 9:09:16 AM

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In #9 JCM said: I suspect she would sing The International.

I'm surprised the modern Left hasn't replaced "The Internationale" with "The Intersectional."

JCM 11/10/2020 9:46:07 AM

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Popular Seattle park overrun by drugs, crime, trash after hygiene station installed

Enable a behavior.

Get more of the behavior.

vxbush 11/10/2020 10:31:06 AM

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vxbush 11/10/2020 10:36:43 AM

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buzzsawmonkey 11/10/2020 10:45:50 AM

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Obama had "a pen and a phone."

Biden has a Pennsylvania and a phony ballot.

lucius septimius 11/10/2020 11:53:28 AM

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Occasional Reader 11/10/2020 12:14:16 PM

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In #15 vxbush said: the M1 chip

Sounds absolutely garand!

Occasional Reader 11/10/2020 12:16:20 PM

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Reply to vxbush in 14:

Frankly, I'm done with Apple laptops.  Most of what I have to do is on Office platforms, and all the kludgy work-arounds to get them to run on Mac, it's just not worth it.  Plus I just know Lenovo better, as it's what I use for work.  When my current personal Macbook Air dies, I doubt I'm replacing it with another Mac. 

vxbush 11/10/2020 12:36:35 PM

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In #19 Occasional Reader said: Frankly, I'm done with Apple laptops.  Most of what I have to do is on Office platforms, and all the kludgy work-arounds to get them to run on Mac, it's just not worth it.  Plus I just know Lenovo better, as it's what I use for work.  When my current personal Macbook Air dies, I doubt I'm replacing it with another Mac. 

I can appreciate that. Depending on what industry you're working in, a Mac may not fit the bill best. (Good luck convincing Apple of that, of course.) 

Apple is in danger of falling behind on some things, but their silicon development process may actually be way ahead. They are working at 5 nm scale, when Intel is still struggling with 10 nm. That may seriously push them forward, but they can't let up on anything. The business improvement cycle has severely ramped up; if you don't have something new and exciting every 3-4 months, people lose interest. 

vxbush 11/10/2020 12:48:07 PM

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Reply to vxbush in 20:

JCM, You can probably say a lot more on this. 

JCM 11/10/2020 12:53:40 PM

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Reply to Occasional Reader in 19:

No real argument on the app side.

I use LibreOffice on my Mac. It is open source and free and it handles all of the MS Office files.

I also run Parallels a VM app and run Windows and Linux on my Mac.

Everything work is done on my work PC so I don't have to worry about cross platforming.

vxbush 11/10/2020 2:10:42 PM

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Reply to vxbush in 21:

Reply to JCM in 22:

I do have a Mac Mini that dual boots MacOS and Windows 10 using Boot Camp, so there are some advantages to running a Mac system with those considerations. I'm assuming Boot Camp under Big Sur will also run under the new chipset, so Windows could be crazy fast on the new chipsets--if the claims of the speed increases are true. 

Kosh's Shadow 11/10/2020 2:37:27 PM

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Reply to vxbush in 23:

If the new chipsets use a different instruction set, then they are not going to be superfast running Windows. Emulation technology has improved since I first saw Windows running on a DEC Alpha chipset, but it is not perfect. Non-native code does not execute that well.

As for me, at home I have Windows and the Windows Subsystem for Linux running on them. Works for some things; more than you'd expect (with the VcXserv X windows server you can run graphics applications). There are differences in threading so Firefox, for example, doesn't run.

I also have an older standalone machine running Linux. It runs very well, even though Win7 was intolerably slow on it.

At work, I use PCs with X-Win32. Document editing on Windows, MATLAB on Windows or Linux (found some strange incompatibilities between them, like listing a directory produces a list on one, and a text string with the filenames separated by whitespace on the other)

Most of my work is on Linux, using xterms, Emacs. All our code is designed to be embedded; we debug it with some test programs, and console and log output. (We do have a demo GUI to show it doing something in a more interesting manner)

Funny thing is, I hadn't used *nix commercially for around 20 years when I got this job - but the coding test was set up for Linux, and they figure if I could pass the test (VERY difficult - problem definition was in math, and they had a super fast implementation to compare against) that I could do the work.

I had a bad experience with a Mac years ago (around 4 repairs in 3 years, each of which took 2 round trips to the Apple Store, and then it failed 3 months after AppleCare ran out. I'd consider buying one again if they reimbursed me $600 for my time, and included free AppleCare, and agreed to cover my time for trips to the AppleStore for all repairs after the first one.

Replaced a $2000 Madbook Pro with a $600 HP that only started getting flaky after 2 years, and lasted 3. I could have bought a new system every year for the 3 total it lasted and still saved money. Apples are overpriced for what they are. Besides, it is much easier to find fixes for Windows on the Web; Apple hides some of the more complicated settings.

Now I largely buy Dell and get their Pro Service; that kept one system running over 4 years now. Slow, but it still works. Only hardware failure was keyboard, and that snaps in, so I did it myself.

My wife and I each have a cheap Lenovo for taking places, so if it breaks we don't lose much.

Kosh's Shadow 11/10/2020 2:39:53 PM

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In #19 Occasional Reader said: Plus I just know Lenovo better, as it's what I use for work

So, the CCP knows everything about what you are doing at work.//// (Lenovo is a Chinese company)

(As I said, my wife and I do have each a cheap one to take places.)

I find it interesting the Lenovo models have a shutter for the camera, so you can prevent others from seeing you. I doubt they have that in China (or maybe a mechanism to open it when the CCP wants)

JCM 11/10/2020 3:04:52 PM

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Reply to Kosh's Shadow in 25:

Does your work use Lenovo?

My last place we DoD contractor and Lenovo wasn't permitted. My current doesn't allow them either.

Kosh's Shadow 11/10/2020 3:24:06 PM

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In #26 JCM said: Does your work use Lenovo? My last place we DoD contractor and Lenovo wasn't permitted. My current doesn't allow them either.

No, work is 100% Dell. They don't stop employees or contractors from owning any brand, but work must stay on work computers and home stuff stay off work computers. For example, I have a nice new Dell laptop at home, but it uses Lab-supplied keyboard, mouse, monitor, Ethernet cable, and HDMI cable. (I could use my own HDMI cable, but not mouse, keyboard, or Ethernet cable. Anything that can transmit data beyond a video signal is not allowed)

Can't even connect a phone to a work computer for charging. ("Bring a charger." I do, when I go in.) And I'm guessing if I tried, someone would show up quickly.

Kosh's Shadow 11/10/2020 3:26:55 PM

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Reply to Kosh's Shadow in 27:

Actually, not 100% Dell. Apple Macs can also be supplied.

Most of my work is on VM's anyway.

And there are some other systems, Curtis-Wright, Mercury. Those have about 10 TFLOPS. I haven't used the Grid system, but that is quite fast, too - and we do stuff on it that takes days to run.

Kosh's Shadow 11/10/2020 3:51:40 PM

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To give an idea of the increase in computer speed. When I worked there in 1983,  SAR image (synthetic aperture radar; basically a picture put together from radar data) took a room-sized computer a couple of days to generate from raw data collected on the plane.

Today, a system that can fly on the plane can do it in real time.