On Tue, 10 Dec 2024 10:02:45 +0100, D wrote:

> Neither of those grow here. All the needletrees keep their needles all
> year long. The larch must be so... naked.

There is a legend in the Forest Service about a brass hat who came from
the east. In the fall the larch turn a golden color before the needles
fall off, and in some places they make up a lot of the forest, intermixed
with the pines and fir. The greenhorn looked up in the ridge and asked
"what are all those dead trees?"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larix_laricina

We had the eastern larch where I grew up and called it tamarack. Usually
it's a scrubby little tree and is mixed in with other trees, some
deciduous, so it doesn't stand out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_larch

The Western larch is much larger and really stands out.

On Tue, 10 Dec 2024 10:07:36 +0100, D wrote:

> Ahh... I lost a business deal with the government yesterday, and this
> old trick was specifically the reason. The IT-department was very
> pro-windows,
> and with my solution, they had to manage linux and the hardware, but not
> the solution on top. With the competitor, they promised them that they'd
> take care of everything and that they would never have to see a
> terminal, and there was much rejoicing among the windows people.

We had two sites that used Linux on the servers although the workstations
were Windows. In both cases the administrator was a Linux fan. When they
left or moved up the ladder the servers were moved to Windows.

On Tue, 10 Dec 2024 09:58:17 +0100, D wrote:

> This is a very interesting theory! I would _love_ to do that kind of
> experiment, tring out some psylocybin on hard core atheists, or even
> better, not even telling them what the test is about, and see the
> reaction and what they experience.
>
> Then running the same tests on atheists who know the experiments is
> about finding god, to compare.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKUltra

"The Army was subject to the testing of LSD which occurred in three
phases. The first phase included over 1,000 American soldiers who
willingly volunteered for testing of chemical warfare experiments. Phase
two had 96 volunteers who were induced with LSD in evaluation of the
possibility of intelligence uses of the drug. The third phase included
Projects THIRD CHANCE and DERBY HAT which conducted experiments on 16
unwitting nonvolunteer subjects that after receiving LSD were interrogated
as a part of operation field tests.[1]"

"At the invitation of Stanford psychology graduate student Vik Lovell, an
acquaintance of Allen Ginsberg, Ken Kesey volunteered to take part in what
turned out to be a CIA-financed study under the aegis of MKUltra,[60] at
the Menlo Park Veterans' Hospital[61][62] where he worked as a night aide.
[63] The project studied the effects of psychoactive drugs, particularly
LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, cocaine, AMT and DMT on people.[64]"

Kesey said to himself "Man, this is some REALLY good shit!"

On Tue, 10 Dec 2024 15:42:56 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> The guy who wrote Jonathan Livingstone Seagull is a committed
> Christian., IN one of his books he likens sin, to stalling an aeroplane.
> Them's the rules, break than and shit results

Part of the pilot training program is inducing a stall and recovering.
It's fun, as you pull the stick back until the nose seems to be pointed at
the heavens and the stall warnings are blaring in your ears. Then the nose
drops like a rock.

I wonder how that fits with the sin metaphor? fwiw, I always was able to
recover. People die when they panic and pull the stick back with all their
might. You've got to push it forward and get airspeed back, which is
counter intuitive.

On Tue, 10 Dec 2024, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> On 09/12/2024 22:12, rbowman wrote:
>> On Mon, 9 Dec 2024 10:33:06 +0100, D wrote:
>>
>>> I find it interesting how in our modern and enlightened times (say from
>>> the 1950s and onward) there's been a "merge" with eastern spirituality
>>> where christian writers have "christianized" eastern meditational
>>> practices, and sometimes almost re-invented what the original crew you
>>> mentioned above did several 100 years earlier.
>>
>> Prophet in his own land... iirc Thomas Merton, who was well versed in
>> Zen, pointed out the similarities to Christian mysticism and suggested you
>> didn't really need to make the 'journey to the east'.
>
> Mysticism is pretty much the same the world over. As I said some consider its
> the relics of a global shamanism that permeated the dawn of time.
>
> It all deals with non-ordinary states of mind. What differs, is how it is
> described and tge means by which you obtain them.

I would add a small difference when it comes to purpose. In shamanism
shamans used to visit the spirit plane with different purposes, while in
later mysticism, generally the idea is to find union with god.

I find that perhaps a small "off-shoot" or inheritor to shamanism is the
occult, where people have more tangible intents and purposes behind their
tripping.

On Tue, 10 Dec 2024, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> On 09/12/2024 23:15, rbowman wrote:
>> On Mon, 9 Dec 2024 10:43:00 +0100, D wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Are you a buddhist or do you subscribe to some form of personal
>>> spirituality? Or is it just an intellectual interest? You seem very
>>> knowledgeable!
>>
>> I have had a lifelong interest in Buddhism, as my bookshelf reflects. I'll
>> admit it stemmed from being a 10 year old beatnik wannabe. I could also
>> blame Kipling's 'Kim' for an interest in eastern religion. I would say
>> it's mostly an intellectual interest though I find much of Buddhist though
>> parallels my understanding of the world.
>>
>> However I have the same problem as I have with Christianity. If you don't
>> think the world is 'dukkha', which I find similar to the concept of
>> original sin, salvation isn't a goal. It is the same as Schopenhauer
>> contra Nietzsche.
>>
>
> The guy who wrote Jonathan Livingstone Seagull is a committed Christian., IN
> one of his books he likens sin, to stalling an aeroplane. Them's the rules,
> break than and shit results
>
> "He who shits in the road, will meet flies in his return"

Excellent book! I highly recommend it. Hmm, long time since I last read
it, I should try and dig it out of a moving box next time I'm back in
sweden.

On Tue, 10 Dec 2024, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> On 10/12/2024 08:58, D wrote:
>> I would _love_ to do that kind of experiment, tring out some psylocybin on
>> hard core atheists, or even better, not even telling them what the test is
>> about, and see the reaction and what they experience.
>>
>> Then running the same tests on atheists who know the experiments is about
>> finding god, to compare.
>
> My research suggest that everybody ends up in the same place, but some use
> the language of religion to describe it and some do not.
>
> It is difficult to describe a state of mind in which language and internal
> verbalisation has broken down.
>
> It is in an utterly prosaic and un 'gosh wow' way 'beyond our comprehension'.
> To look at something and not recognise it.

I vaguely remember experiments with the god helmet, where some atheists
just felt a vague present, like someone watching you, while more creative
people had strong visions.

On Tue, 10 Dec 2024, rbowman wrote:

> On Tue, 10 Dec 2024 10:20:41 +0100, D wrote:
>
>
>> Hmm, didn't they print some Nietzsche too and send out to the soldiers
>> in WW1? Hmm, maybe not.
>
> Wikipedia claims about 150,000 copies of Zarathustra were given out.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche#cite_note-300

Ahh, so I wasn't wrong. I checked an "AI" and it said I was wrong. Damn
him! ;)

> The Kaufmann citation is from 'Nietzsche Philosopher, Psychologist,
> Antichrist' and says
>
> "Feelings ran high both in Germany, where Zarathustra was pushed to a new
> sales record as a "must" for the soldier's knapsack, and in England and
> the United States, where Nietzsche began to be considered as the apostle
> of German ruthlessness and barbarism."
>
> In his notes on his translation of Zarathustra Kaufmann says there are a
> few gems in the mire, a lot of very poor writing, and difficulties
> translating the puns and so forth. He also trashes Thomas Common's 1909
> translation, saying at one point he wasn't sure if Common spoke either
> English or German very well.
>
> I wouldn't call Kaufmann a hostile translator but he wasn't a real fan.
> Being a Jew who fled Germany in 1939 he really hated Foerster-Nietzsche.
> He became the Nietzsche expert for a generation but he needs to be taken
> with a grain of salt.
>
>> How much of it is Nietzsche and how much did his sister change?
>
> He had left a few notes for a future work but never followed through.
> Foerster-Nietzsche used the rough outline sort the section headings and
> collected notes and jottings that seemed to fit. She may have edited some
> of those but the real argument is she promoted the collection as
> Nietzsche's final magnum opus, rather than Ecce Homo. I have Common's
> translation of Zarathustra which has a foreword by her. She throws in a
> few snippets from 'Ecce Homo' but tried to downplay it since some of it
> doesn't support her agenda.
>
> fwiw, while Kaudmann might have been full of himself when criticizing
> Common, Common's translation reads like the King James bible with all the
> archaic thee's and thou's.

Interesting. When the times is right, I think I'll have to see for myself!

On Tue, 10 Dec 2024, rbowman wrote:

> On Tue, 10 Dec 2024 09:58:17 +0100, D wrote:
>
>> This is a very interesting theory! I would _love_ to do that kind of
>> experiment, tring out some psylocybin on hard core atheists, or even
>> better, not even telling them what the test is about, and see the
>> reaction and what they experience.
>>
>> Then running the same tests on atheists who know the experiments is
>> about finding god, to compare.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKUltra
>
> "The Army was subject to the testing of LSD which occurred in three
> phases. The first phase included over 1,000 American soldiers who
> willingly volunteered for testing of chemical warfare experiments. Phase
> two had 96 volunteers who were induced with LSD in evaluation of the
> possibility of intelligence uses of the drug. The third phase included
> Projects THIRD CHANCE and DERBY HAT which conducted experiments on 16
> unwitting nonvolunteer subjects that after receiving LSD were interrogated
> as a part of operation field tests.[1]"
>
>
> "At the invitation of Stanford psychology graduate student Vik Lovell, an
> acquaintance of Allen Ginsberg, Ken Kesey volunteered to take part in what
> turned out to be a CIA-financed study under the aegis of MKUltra,[60] at
> the Menlo Park Veterans' Hospital[61][62] where he worked as a night aide.
> [63] The project studied the effects of psychoactive drugs, particularly
> LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, cocaine, AMT and DMT on people.[64]"
>
>
> Kesey said to himself "Man, this is some REALLY good shit!"
>

I think that fits percetly with the drugs affecting the speech centers! ;)

On Tue, 10 Dec 2024, rbowman wrote:

> On Tue, 10 Dec 2024 10:02:45 +0100, D wrote:
>
>> Neither of those grow here. All the needletrees keep their needles all
>> year long. The larch must be so... naked.
>
> There is a legend in the Forest Service about a brass hat who came from
> the east. In the fall the larch turn a golden color before the needles
> fall off, and in some places they make up a lot of the forest, intermixed
> with the pines and fir. The greenhorn looked up in the ridge and asked
> "what are all those dead trees?"
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larix_laricina
>
> We had the eastern larch where I grew up and called it tamarack. Usually
> it's a scrubby little tree and is mixed in with other trees, some
> deciduous, so it doesn't stand out.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_larch
>
> The Western larch is much larger and really stands out.

Very interesting, thank you! =)

On Tue, 10 Dec 2024, rbowman wrote:

> On Tue, 10 Dec 2024 10:07:36 +0100, D wrote:
>
>> Ahh... I lost a business deal with the government yesterday, and this
>> old trick was specifically the reason. The IT-department was very
>> pro-windows,
>> and with my solution, they had to manage linux and the hardware, but not
>> the solution on top. With the competitor, they promised them that they'd
>> take care of everything and that they would never have to see a
>> terminal, and there was much rejoicing among the windows people.
>
> We had two sites that used Linux on the servers although the workstations
> were Windows. In both cases the administrator was a Linux fan. When they
> left or moved up the ladder the servers were moved to Windows.

Yep... a story that is sadly waaaaay too common! And todays story... some
of the students a colleague of mine is currently teaching networking
thought the exam was too difficult, so they told the school they will
refuse taking it, until it is made easier. ;)

The key here is that each students brings the school a nice profit of 8000
EUR per year, so the threat of a student dropping out very often softens
the heart of the school, to the great frustration of the teachers. =/

On 2024-12-10, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

> The guy who wrote Jonathan Livingstone Seagull is a committed
> Christian., IN one of his books he likens sin, to stalling an aeroplane.

I like that one - it's a great metaphor. I have a number of
Richard Bach's books, but I don't recall seeing that one.

> Them's the rules, break than and shit results

I guess you could define God (or Mother Nature or whatever floats
your boat) as the one who makes the rules. At least those rules
which are beyond any human persuasion to bend.

> "He who shits in the road, will meet flies in his return"

It all comes down to the fact that actions have consequences.
So many people have been denying this for so long (and have
worked so hard to build a social structure that lets them
get away with it, at least for a while) that the concept
of actions having consequences is now largely forgotten.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Growth for the sake of
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | growth is the ideology
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | of the cancer cell.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Edward Abbey

On 10/12/2024 21:04, D wrote:
>> Kesey said to himself "Man, this is some REALLY good shit!"
>>
>
> I think that fits percetly with the drugs affecting the speech centers! 😉

I have somewhere a very old book detailing some of the early research in
that area.
In one case the subject was subjected to Rohrsach (Ink blot) tests.
In one case he was shown the blot and asked what it resembled. After a
very long pause he said 'squirrels'

After the test was complete his answers were reviewed and he was asked
by he had said 'squirrels'.

"Well" he said "I had a lot of trouble understanding the question, but
then I did and I looked, and really it don't look like anything. But I
thought 'these guys have gone to a lot of trouble, and I don't want to
disappoint them', so I looked again. and I thought it looked vaguely
like bears, but I couldn't remember the word for bears' so I said
'squirrels' instead"

--
"A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight
and understanding".

Marshall McLuhan

On Tue, 10 Dec 2024 22:03:06 +0100, D wrote:

>> archaic thee's and thou's.
>
> Interesting. When the times is right, I think I'll have to see for
> myself!

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1998/1998-h/1998-h.htm

That's the Commmon translation with Foedster-Nietzsche's introduction.

Amazon has Hollingdale's translation for the staggering sum of $0.29 on
Kindle. There are quite a few other translations of Zarathustra as well as
other works that are very inexpensive on Kindle.

A good way to start a fight in a barroom full of Nietzsche scholars is to
ask which is the best English translation. Kaufmann is the usual answer
but he disagreed with much of Nietzsche's thought, hated Common, who was
conveniently dead when Kaufmann did his translation, and didn't think much
of Zarathustra. Others like Common, followed by Hollingdale.

The question is if anything more complicated than Schwedenkrimi can really
be translated. In one of Heidegger's more accessible essays he questions
if we can adequately translate Greek with the nuances and associations the
words had in the original.

On Tue, 10 Dec 2024, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> On 10/12/2024 21:04, D wrote:
>>> Kesey said to himself "Man, this is some REALLY good shit!"
>>>
>>
>> I think that fits percetly with the drugs affecting the speech centers! 😉
>
> I have somewhere a very old book detailing some of the early research in that
> area.
> In one case the subject was subjected to Rohrsach (Ink blot) tests.
> In one case he was shown the blot and asked what it resembled. After a very
> long pause he said 'squirrels'
>
> After the test was complete his answers were reviewed and he was asked by he
> had said 'squirrels'.
>
> "Well" he said "I had a lot of trouble understanding the question, but then I
> did and I looked, and really it don't look like anything. But I thought
> 'these guys have gone to a lot of trouble, and I don't want to disappoint
> them', so I looked again. and I thought it looked vaguely like bears, but I
> couldn't remember the word for bears' so I said 'squirrels' instead"

Fascinating!

On Wed, 11 Dec 2024, rbowman wrote:

> On Tue, 10 Dec 2024 22:03:06 +0100, D wrote:
>
>>> archaic thee's and thou's.
>>
>> Interesting. When the times is right, I think I'll have to see for
>> myself!
>
> https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1998/1998-h/1998-h.htm
>
> That's the Commmon translation with Foedster-Nietzsche's introduction.
>
> Amazon has Hollingdale's translation for the staggering sum of $0.29 on
> Kindle. There are quite a few other translations of Zarathustra as well as
> other works that are very inexpensive on Kindle.
>
> A good way to start a fight in a barroom full of Nietzsche scholars is to
> ask which is the best English translation. Kaufmann is the usual answer
> but he disagreed with much of Nietzsche's thought, hated Common, who was
> conveniently dead when Kaufmann did his translation, and didn't think much
> of Zarathustra. Others like Common, followed by Hollingdale.

Haha. Yes, Kaufmann is the name I've seen pop up the most when I checked
Nietzsche translations. On the other hand, I am fairly fluent in german
when it comes to reading, so maybe I should aim higher and actually read
the original? =)

> The question is if anything more complicated than Schwedenkrimi can really
> be translated. In one of Heidegger's more accessible essays he questions
> if we can adequately translate Greek with the nuances and associations the
> words had in the original.

This is very commonly thought and communicated in russian and chinese
culture. The conclusion is of course, the russiand and/or chinese culture
is so sublime it can never be translated or understood by western
barbarians. ;)

On Tue, 10 Dec 2024 22:03:06 +0100, D wrote:
> The question is if anything more complicated than Schwedenkrimi can really
> be translated. In one of Heidegger's more accessible essays he questions
> if we can adequately translate Greek with the nuances and associations the
> words had in the original.

In a discussion on Quora about the ambiguities of Bible translations,
Franklin Veaux said somethiong like "Imagine a translator 2000 years from
now trying to figure out the difference between a butt dial and a booty
call".

Franklin is one of my favorite writers on Quora.

On Wed, 11 Dec 2024 12:33:16 -0000 (UTC), Lars Poulsen wrote:

> On Tue, 10 Dec 2024 22:03:06 +0100, D wrote:
>> The question is if anything more complicated than Schwedenkrimi can really
>> be translated. In one of Heidegger's more accessible essays he questions
>> if we can adequately translate Greek with the nuances and associations the
>> words had in the original.
>
> In a discussion on Quora about the ambiguities of Bible translations,
> Franklin Veaux said somethiong like "Imagine a translator 2000 years from
> now trying to figure out the difference between a butt dial and a booty
> call".
>

All so very, very true.

There is one solution however: comments, comments, and comments.

In one of the best translations of the ancient Greek tragedies that
I have ever encountered (sadly, both the author and title are now
lost to me), the author commented heavily on nearly every line
of the translation. This was done in the book using facing pages,
i.e. the left page contained the original Greek and the English
translation while the right page contained the extensive line-by-line
commentary.

One could easily glance back and forth between the facing pages
to develop an insight into the original. This kind of a set-up
is much better than the often used footnotes.

However, much meaning and nuances are probably still destined
to be lost.

--
Systemd: solving all the problems that you never knew you had.

On Wed, 11 Dec 2024 11:03:28 +0100, D wrote:

> Haha. Yes, Kaufmann is the name I've seen pop up the most when I checked
> Nietzsche translations. On the other hand, I am fairly fluent in german
> when it comes to reading, so maybe I should aim higher and actually read
> the original? =)

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/7205/pg7205-images.html

Du grosses Gestirn! Was wäre dein Glück, wenn du nicht Die hättest,
welchen du leuchtest!

Common has

"Thou great star! What would be thy happiness if thou hadst not those for
whom thou shinest!"

Kaufmann has

"You great star, what would your happiness be had you not those for whom
you shine?"

One criticism of Kaufmann is he rearranges Nietzsche's idiosyncratic
punctuation. The newer translations mostly follow Kaufmann, some with
slightly different sentence structure or wording. After all when you're
doing the 15th translation you need to do something differently.

The real question is what effect was Nietzsche striving for? His father
was a Lutheran minister so he had plenty of exposure to Luther's bible
translation. Was he trying to adopt the tone or parody it?

While the archaic language can put people off Common does capture the feel
of du/sie and behind that the attempt by bible translators to capture the
original singular/plural pronoun distinctions.

Personally, I'll go for the readable versions. I'd never read the New
Testament due to the traditional two column layout and the somewhat
stilted language. Oddly one of the things issued in boot camp was "Good
News for Modern Man", and I finally got around to reading it. Bible people
will argue about the dynamic translation but at least I read it. Of course
there wasn't much else to read besides the green book with its wisdom
about which side of a Claymore gets pointed to whoever you're trying to
kill.

>
>> The question is if anything more complicated than Schwedenkrimi can
>> really be translated. In one of Heidegger's more accessible essays he
>> questions if we can adequately translate Greek with the nuances and
>> associations the words had in the original.
>
> This is very commonly thought and communicated in russian and chinese
> culture. The conclusion is of course, the russiand and/or chinese
> culture is so sublime it can never be translated or understood by
> western barbarians.

On Wed, 11 Dec 2024 12:33:16 -0000 (UTC), Lars Poulsen wrote:

> In a discussion on Quora about the ambiguities of Bible translations,
> Franklin Veaux said somethiong like "Imagine a translator 2000 years
> from now trying to figure out the difference between a butt dial and a
> booty call".

That's about right. One of my favorites is a runic inscription, ALU in the
Roman alphabet. It shows up in a number of places but it isn't clear what
it means. My friends who went to Catholic schools always put

M
J J

on the top of their homework, essays, and test papers. Good luck figuring
that out in 1000 years.

On 2024-12-12, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:

> On Wed, 11 Dec 2024 12:33:16 -0000 (UTC), Lars Poulsen wrote:
>
>> In a discussion on Quora about the ambiguities of Bible translations,
>> Franklin Veaux said somethiong like "Imagine a translator 2000 years
>> from now trying to figure out the difference between a butt dial and a
>> booty call".
>
> That's about right. One of my favorites is a runic inscription, ALU in the
> Roman alphabet. It shows up in a number of places but it isn't clear what
> it means. My friends who went to Catholic schools always put
>
> M
> J J
>
> on the top of their homework, essays, and test papers. Good luck figuring
> that out in 1000 years.

Interesting. I never went near a Catholic school, but around grade 5 or 6
a classmate, Mads Jensen, wrote a monogram like the above, except that the
tops of the Js were attached to the legs of the M.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Growth for the sake of
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | growth is the ideology
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | of the cancer cell.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Edward Abbey

On 12/10/24 3:52 AM, D wrote:
>
>
> On Mon, 9 Dec 2024, John Ames wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 8 Dec 2024 13:39:51 +0100
>> D <nospam@example.net> wrote:
>>
>>> I've heard about it, but I do not think they supported a laptop last
>>> time I checked it out, and was VM-only, but perhaps things have moved
>>> in the right direction!
>>
>>> This is the truth! As long as I can have some basic tools, vim, xfce,
>>> wifi and decent battery life (oh, and suspend), I'm a happy camper!
>>
>> It remains mind-boggling to me how poor power-management/laptop support
>> is in the FOSS world, outside of Linux (which gets it mostly by virtue
>> of being the proverbial 800-lb. gorilla, relative to the other players.)
>> OpenBSD I can understand, those people *exclusively* care about server
>> environments, but it's surprising how spotty NetBSD is with it, and
>> even moreso something like Haiku which is intended specifically for use
>> in a desktop personal-computer context...
>
> This is the truth! I get about 14 hours or so out of my 1 year old Asus
> with linux if I really make an effort. FreeBSD when I tested it 1 year
> ago looked very promising, but since I did not have a lot of time for
> testing, I never maxed it out.
>
> I followed this guide:
>
> https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2018/11/28/the-power-to-serve-freebsd-power-management/

Had an EEEpc ... great little unit ! Then I dropped
it off a ladder while aligning a security camera :-(

Ran MX.

Actually this laptop runs MX too ... it's been a good
system for most everything. doesn't consistently rank
so high on DistroWatch for nothing. Have NOT 'updated'
to a BookWORM version though ... and won't.

Working on FreeBSD for an N95-based BMax micro-box.
Got everything good in a VM - now to put it on the
hardware .....

Hey, has anyone ever tried to 'dd' a VirtualBox VM
onto real hardware ??? Get a really good image and
Grub2 *might* be able to find it and make it bootable.
MX has a utility for creating a clone, bootable,
customized system - it's been useful more than once.

On Thu, 12 Dec 2024 03:07:45 -0500, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:

> Had an EEEpc ... great little unit ! Then I dropped it off a ladder
> while aligning a security camera :-(

I've still got mine. The OEM OS wouldn't handle WPA2 so I sidelined it.
Earlier this year I got it up and running with Q4OS after a couple of
failed installs when it ran out of room. The Trinity desktop is
lightweight and being a KDE derivative has the Windows XP feel the
original Linux had.

I jumped on it when it first came out as something small and cheap enough
to stuff into a motorcycle saddlebag.

On Thu, 12 Dec 2024 05:06:18 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

> Interesting. I never went near a Catholic school, but around grade 5 or
> 6 a classmate, Mads Jensen, wrote a monogram like the above, except that
> the tops of the Js were attached to the legs of the M.

Yeah, that was the real thing. I wasn't going to mess around with ASCII
art to that extent.

On 12/10/24 4:06 PM, D wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, 10 Dec 2024, rbowman wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 10 Dec 2024 10:07:36 +0100, D wrote:
>>
>>> Ahh... I lost a business deal with the government yesterday, and this
>>> old trick was specifically the reason. The IT-department was very
>>> pro-windows,

Then not worth suffering for ....

>>> and with my solution, they had to manage linux and the hardware, but not
>>> the solution on top. With the competitor, they promised them that they'd
>>> take care of everything and that they would never have to see a
>>> terminal, and there was much rejoicing among the windows people.
>>
>> We had two sites that used Linux on the servers although the workstations
>> were Windows. In both cases the administrator was a Linux fan. When they
>> left or moved up the ladder the servers were moved to Windows.
>
> Yep... a story that is sadly waaaaay too common! And todays story...
> some of the students a colleague of mine is currently teaching
> networking thought the exam was too difficult, so they told the school
> they will refuse taking it, until it is made easier. ;)

Then FAIL them all ... no mercy.

> The key here is that each students brings the school a nice profit of
> 8000 EUR per year, so the threat of a student dropping out very often
> softens the heart of the school, to the great frustration of the
> teachers. =/

Ah ... Gen-X/A2 ... it it ain't easy/zero-IQ then it's
not worth attempting :-)

Look up the US term "DEI" .....

The SCHOOL - well - the the profit per-student likely
dictates its sympathies .....

Somewhere, at least for now, there WILL be some who
actually want to learn/practice the Black Arts of
Linux/Unix and do-it-yourself programming. HIRE THEM !

Kinda worried about BEYOND Now .....

As some point the "AI" will be called upon to do
it all. Then, for people, it's all MAGIC afterwards.
NO comprehension of what/why/how.

I speak as an oracle here ... just watch ......

SOON NOW - the "AI" will be giving advice/code on
how to improve the "AI". Humans won't Get It - and
will just sign-off on the upgrades in hope of
more $$$. THAT ought to be interesting :-)

A little bit of advice ... while you can ... get
a fairly good general-purpose PC and install one
of the BSDs. OpenIndiana/Solaris is maybe an
offbeat alt (it's OK) and even the odd Plan-9
can be useful (though intended for distributed
systems). This will give you fair access while
kinda circumventing the "AI"s and spy apps and
such for awhile.