🚀 go-pugleaf

Your Name Here <username@isp.net.invalid> writes:
>This is a horrible computer …. how in the hell do you guys
>deal with smart finger skating pads?

Disable them and plug in a USB mouse.

On 2018-02-07, Your Name Here <username@isp.net.invalid> wrote:
> This is a horrible computer …. how in the hell do you guys
> deal with smart finger skating pads?
>
> /BAH

Name? OS?


-- 
greymaus.ireland.ie
Just_Another_Grumpy_Old_Man

On 7 Feb 2018 18:58:15 GMT, ma...@mail.com wrote:

>On 2018-02-07, Your Name Here <username@isp.net.invalid> wrote:
>> This is a horrible computer …. how in the hell do you guys
>> deal with smart finger skating pads?
>>
>> /BAH
>
>Name? OS?

Probably Win 10. One of my relatives has that, a touch screen laptop.
Eeewww !

On 2018-02-07, Your Name Here <username@isp.net.invalid> wrote:
> This is a horrible computer …. how in the hell do you guys
> deal with smart finger skating pads?

YMMV (obviously *does* vary). I use a MacBook Pro at work and actually
find its trackpad very pleasant to work with. A lot of handy gestures
there.

On PC laptops the quality is a lot more variable, I suppose. If yours is
terrible I'd go with Scott's advice.

Niklas
-- 
"Some people think that noise abatement should be a higher priority for ATC. I
say safety is noise abatement. You have no idea how much noise it makes to have
a 737 fall out of the sky after an accident."   -- anon. air traffic controller

On 2/7/2018 12:10 PM, Your Name Here wrote:
> This is a horrible computer …. how in the hell do you guys
> deal with smart finger skating pads?
> 
By turning the finger pad off (so my hand won't hit it by accident) 
and plugging a mouse into a USB port.

Your Name Here <username@isp.net.invalid> wrote:
> This is a horrible computer …. how in the hell do you guys
> deal with smart finger skating pads?

Turn them off and use a mouse.

What are you using?

-- 
Pete

JimP <solo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7 Feb 2018 18:58:15 GMT, ma...@mail.com wrote:
> 
>> On 2018-02-07, Your Name Here <username@isp.net.invalid> wrote:
>>> This is a horrible computer …. how in the hell do you guys
>>> deal with smart finger skating pads?
>>> 
>>> /BAH
>> 
>> Name? OS?
> 
> Probably Win 10. One of my relatives has that, a touch screen laptop.
> Eeewww !
> 

Agreed. Touchscreen is good for a tablet, but an abomination on a computer.

-- 
Pete

Got a 25' Unibus cable we are about to chuck at work.  Anybody need it?

Jon

Anybody need a 25' Unibus cable in decent shape?  We are cleaning out some 
junk at work.

Jon

On 07/02/2018 21:42, Jon Elson wrote:
> Got a 25' Unibus cable we are about to chuck at work.  Anybody need it?
> 
> Jon
> 

Gosh, that takes me back, something like a maximum of 56' showing
how slow things were in the 1970s

On 7 Feb 2018 18:10:00 GMT, Your Name Here <username@isp.net.invalid>
wrote:

>This is a horrible computer …. how in the hell do you guys
>deal with smart finger skating pads?

We mostly curse them thoroughly.  If your computer also has a
touchscreen, that may work better for some purposes.  But everybody at
work just plugs in a mouse.

On 2018-02-07, JimP <solo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7 Feb 2018 18:58:15 GMT, ma...@mail.com wrote:
>
>>On 2018-02-07, Your Name Here <username@isp.net.invalid> wrote:
>>> This is a horrible computer …. how in the hell do you guys
>>> deal with smart finger skating pads?
>>>
>>> /BAH
>>
>>Name? OS?
>
> Probably Win 10. One of my relatives has that, a touch screen laptop.
> Eeewww !

Posted from PineappleNews on Mac OSX, so someone is trying out a new Mac and
probably dislikes the multitouch trackpad.  In any case, the remedy offered
is correct - use an external device.

On Wednesday, February 7, 2018 at 4:17:48 PM UTC-7, J. Clarke wrote:

> We mostly curse them thoroughly.  If your computer also has a
> touchscreen, that may work better for some purposes.  But everybody at
> work just plugs in a mouse.

I know I just plug in a mouse despite my laptops having plain ordinary 
touchpads that aren't particularly horrible.

If I had a laptop with a bad one, I would just do that all the more quickly 
and surely.

John Savard

Your Name Here <username@isp.net.invalid> writes:

> This is a horrible computer …. how in the hell do you guys
> deal with smart finger skating pads?

I think most people deal with those by plugging in a mouse.

On 2018-02-07, Niklas Karlsson <ank...@yahoo.se> wrote:
> On 2018-02-07, Your Name Here <username@isp.net.invalid> wrote:
>> This is a horrible computer …. how in the hell do you guys
>> deal with smart finger skating pads?
>
> YMMV (obviously *does* vary). I use a MacBook Pro at work and actually
> find its trackpad very pleasant to work with. A lot of handy gestures
> there.
>
> On PC laptops the quality is a lot more variable, I suppose. If yours is
> terrible I'd go with Scott's advice.
>
> Niklas

++


-- 
greymaus.ireland.ie
Just_Another_Grumpy_Old_Man

Dave Garland wrote:
> On 2/7/2018 12:10 PM, Your Name Here wrote:
>> This is a horrible computer …. how in the hell do you guys
>> deal with smart finger skating pads?
>>
> By turning the finger pad off (so my hand won't hit it by accident)
> and plugging a mouse into a USB port.

I tried to turn all the fancy shit off.  it still did it.

/BAH

Peter Flass wrote:
> Your Name Here <username@isp.net.invalid> wrote:
>> This is a horrible computer …. how in the hell do you guys
>> deal with smart finger skating pads?
>
> Turn them off and use a mouse.
>
> What are you using?
>
It says MacBook on the plastic.

/BAH

J. Clarke wrote:
> On 7 Feb 2018 18:10:00 GMT, Your Name Here <username@isp.net.invalid>
> wrote:
>
>>This is a horrible computer …. how in the hell do you guys
>>deal with smart finger skating pads?
>
> We mostly curse them thoroughly.  If your computer also has a
> touchscreen, that may work better for some purposes.  But everybody at
> work just plugs in a mouse.
>
So I have a choice between a touchy touch pad or the UDFH (User Device
>From Hell)?

Now to debug my shit.   The software wouldn't let me enter my name
in the field which had "Your name here" in it.

It appears that I have an identity crisis w.r.t. the computer
address.  I don't know how to fix that.  I have absolutely no
idea what the router's name is (I had Comccast install a router
and provide Cable TV last month).  I received zero documentation
about getting started.  I went to the library to access Comcast's
on-line help and the bitch wouldn't answer anything until I
typed in my social security number.  I told her I wasn't going to
do that and she said that she wouldn't answer any questions until
I did type it in.  So I blew her off.

There was a mention of a "red folder" on their web site.  Now,
it that a physical slash folder which should have come with the
router box or is it a file hidden somewhere with a red folder icon.

I'm about 45% convinced to cancel and say the hell with being
on-line.

I'm very used to figuring things out with no documentation because
that was the norm in our shop; docs weren't available until we
hit field test.  But finding anything in the GUI menu hell is
impossible.

I'll stop ranting now.

Do you guys see anything else which is wrong or odd or
impossible?

/BAH

Niklas Karlsson wrote:
> On 2018-02-07, Your Name Here <username@isp.net.invalid> wrote:
>> This is a horrible computer ….


I did not type that weird character.  Is it a control character
munged in some flavor?

>how in the hell do you guys
>> deal with smart finger skating pads?
>
> YMMV (obviously *does* vary). I use a MacBook Pro at work and actually
> find its trackpad very pleasant to work with. A lot of handy gestures
> there.

Heh.  The computer I used is a used MacBook.

>
> On PC laptops the quality is a lot more variable, I suppose. If yours is
> terrible I'd go with Scott's advice.
>
> Niklas

/BAH

J. Clarke <jclarke...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7 Feb 2018 18:10:00 GMT, Your Name Here <username@isp.net.invalid>
> wrote:
> 
>> This is a horrible computer …. how in the hell do you guys
>> deal with smart finger skating pads?
> 
> We mostly curse them thoroughly.  If your computer also has a
> touchscreen, that may work better for some purposes.  But everybody at
> work just plugs in a mouse.
> 
> 

The trackpad might be useful on a plane, train, etc. wherever there isn't
enough space to use a mouse effectively, otherwise not so much.

-- 
Pete

Your Name Here wrote:
> This is a horrible computer …. how in the hell do you guys
> deal with smart finger skating pads?
>
> /BAH


Ah, I know the problem with the <foo@bar.baz>.  I didn't "SET
HOST" (DECism) to an official ISP.  I just sent the post
from my computer thru the router.

At one point I tried to login to newsguy but the login glyph
was blocked.  I don't know how fix that.

/BAH

On Thursday, February 8, 2018 at 7:41:52 AM UTC-7, jmfbahciv wrote:
> Niklas Karlsson wrote:
> > On 2018-02-07, Your Name Here <username@isp.net.invalid> wrote:

> >> This is a horrible computer ….

> I did not type that weird character.  Is it a control character
> munged in some flavor?

My belief is that it's a _printable_ character that got messed up on its 
way to Usenet. I've seen that particular weird character before in a lot of 
posts. I think perhaps the Macintosh isn't fully Unicode-compliant due to 
it having supported an extended character set prior to Unicode coming 
along.

John Savard

jmfbahciv wrote:

> Niklas Karlsson wrote:
>
>> Your Name Here wrote:
>>
>>> This is a horrible computer ….
> 
> I did not type that weird character. 

It seems you (or your slippery new computer did)

The sequence "…." without quote marks appears in your original message 
which may be a garbled unicode sequence for a three-dotted ellipse, 
followed by a fullstop

(U+2026 = 0xE2 0x80 0xA6) (0x2E)

see 6th row on left here
<http://www.i18nqa.com/debug/utf8-debug.html>

So presumably you typed "...." and something not quite clever enough for 
its own good altered it?  Niklas's quote didn't mangle your original 
characters, but your re-quoting of Niklas's reply changed it to "…."

So I think you have some kind of 8-bit character set/encoding problem 
going on ...

On 2018-02-08, Peter Flass <peter...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> J. Clarke <jclarke...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 7 Feb 2018 18:10:00 GMT, Your Name Here <username@isp.net.invalid>
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> This is a horrible computer …. how in the hell do you guys
>>> deal with smart finger skating pads?
>> 
>> We mostly curse them thoroughly.  If your computer also has a
>> touchscreen, that may work better for some purposes.  But everybody at
>> work just plugs in a mouse.
>
> The trackpad might be useful on a plane, train, etc. wherever there isn't
> enough space to use a mouse effectively, otherwise not so much.

The trackpad on my Lenovo T410 works well enough that I seldom take
the time to plug in a mouse (unless I'm playing Portal, my one and
only computer gaming vice).

One of the (few) things I really like about Macbooks is the way you
can press harder on the trackpad to get a mouse click.  I find myself
trying to do it on non-Mac trackpads (and am briefly disappointed when
it doesn't work).

-- 
/~\  cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid (Charlie Gibbs)
\ /  I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way.
 X   Top-posted messages will probably be ignored.  See RFC1855.
/ \  HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored.  Join the ASCII ribbon campaign!

On 2018-02-08, Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
> On 2018-02-08, Peter Flass <peter...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> J. Clarke <jclarke...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>
> One of the (few) things I really like about Macbooks is the way you
> can press harder on the trackpad to get a mouse click.  I find myself
> trying to do it on non-Mac trackpads (and am briefly disappointed when
> it doesn't work).
>

Case, you are  viewing pictures that involve lots of pink, and
stroking your mouse analogue, then you realize that there is a camera
just above the screen, and it seems to be doing something.


-- 
greymaus.ireland.ie
Just_Another_Grumpy_Old_Man

On 7 Feb 2018 22:07:54 GMT, Huge wrote:
>
> On 2018-02-07, ma...@mail.com <ma...@mail.com> wrote:
>> On 2018-02-07, Your Name Here <username@isp.net.invalid> wrote:
>>> This is a horrible computer …. how in the hell do you guys
>>> deal with smart finger skating pads?
>>>
>>> /BAH
>>
>> Name? OS?
>
> User-Agent: Pineapple News/0.9.0 (Mac OS X 10.8.5 Intel)

He might use this for posting here, but another OS on the computer in
question.
-- 
Andreas
You know you are a redneck if
you list your parole officer as a reference.

On 8 Feb 2018 21:04:32 GMT, Huge wrote:
>
> On 2018-02-08, Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:
>> On 7 Feb 2018 22:07:54 GMT, Huge wrote:
>>>
>>> On 2018-02-07, ma...@mail.com <ma...@mail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> User-Agent: Pineapple News/0.9.0 (Mac OS X 10.8.5 Intel)
>>
>> He ...
>
> ... is a she.

"Your Name Here <username@isp.net.invalid>" doesn't seem to get any clue
about the gender.

> And that User Agent line was on the posting where
> the name field was wrong - the subject of another posting.

Just saying you can never tell what an OS the user uses looking at the
User-Agent. Although in close to 100% that might match.

> Get your ducks in a row before being so fucking argumentative, eh?

Why so hostile?

And did you had a look into the headers the posting you reply? If not:

| User-Agent: StarWriter on CP/M

was what I put there. No, I not really use that for writing news I
suppose. The User-Agent header in this article here is correct though.

Now have a beer, calm down.
-- 
Andreas
You know you are a redneck if
you list your parole officer as a reference.

Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> writes:

> On 7 Feb 2018 22:07:54 GMT, Huge wrote:
>>
>> On 2018-02-07, ma...@mail.com <ma...@mail.com> wrote:
>>> On 2018-02-07, Your Name Here <username@isp.net.invalid> wrote:
>>>> This is a horrible computer …. how in the hell do you guys
>>>> deal with smart finger skating pads?
>>>>
>>>> /BAH
>>>
>>> Name? OS?
>>
>> User-Agent: Pineapple News/0.9.0 (Mac OS X 10.8.5 Intel)
>
> He might use this for posting here, but another OS on the computer in
> question.

Except the poster used the word "this" to describe the computer.

-- 
Dan Espen

Huge <Huge@nowhere.much.invalid> writes:

> On 2018-02-08, Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:
>> On 7 Feb 2018 22:07:54 GMT, Huge wrote:
>>>
>>> On 2018-02-07, ma...@mail.com <ma...@mail.com> wrote:
>>>> On 2018-02-07, Your Name Here <username@isp.net.invalid> wrote:
>>>>> This is a horrible computer …. how in the hell do you guys
>>>>> deal with smart finger skating pads?
>>>>>
>>>>> /BAH
>>>>
>>>> Name? OS?
>>>
>>> User-Agent: Pineapple News/0.9.0 (Mac OS X 10.8.5 Intel)
>>
>> He ...
>
> ... is a she. And that User Agent line was on the posting where
> the name field was wrong - the subject of another posting.
>
> Get your ducks in a row before being so fucking argumentative, eh?

Oh gee, have the idiot on ignore so I wasn't aware I was in another
bizarre BAH thread.  Looking back, it looks like I was addressing
the Name? OS? part.

Now I'm tempted to give my opinion on track pads:

Like many things, I had to be patient and I learned to use
them reasonably well.  If I had to use one a lot, I'd plug
in a mouse.  I'm not claiming they are great.
In fact, on the rare occasions I power up the
XP laptop, I use my ATEN KVM to toggle the full sized keyboard and mouse
to the laptop.

-- 
Dan Espen

On 2018-02-08, ma...@mail.com <ma...@mail.com> wrote:

> On 2018-02-08, Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On 2018-02-08, Peter Flass <peter...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>> J. Clarke <jclarke...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> One of the (few) things I really like about Macbooks is the way you
>> can press harder on the trackpad to get a mouse click.  I find myself
>> trying to do it on non-Mac trackpads (and am briefly disappointed when
>> it doesn't work).
>
> Case, you are  viewing pictures that involve lots of pink, and
> stroking your mouse analogue, then you realize that there is a camera
> just above the screen, and it seems to be doing something.

When you watch your smart TV, it watches _you_.

Remember when the thought of Orwell's telescreens was terrifying?
Now that they've been deployed, people love them.  Go figure.

-- 
/~\  cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid (Charlie Gibbs)
\ /  I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way.
 X   Top-posted messages will probably be ignored.  See RFC1855.
/ \  HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored.  Join the ASCII ribbon campaign!

On Thursday, February 8, 2018 at 6:27:43 PM UTC-7, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

> Remember when the thought of Orwell's telescreens was terrifying?
> Now that they've been deployed, people love them.  Go figure.

The cameras on laptops or monitors are only supposed to be on when you turn 
them on. It is only different if hackers subvert the security of your 
computer.

Totalitarian regimes, like those in North Korea, are still terrifying.

John Savard

On Thu, 8 Feb 2018 19:32:41 -0800 (PST), Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca>
wrote:

>On Thursday, February 8, 2018 at 6:27:43 PM UTC-7, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>
>> Remember when the thought of Orwell's telescreens was terrifying?
>> Now that they've been deployed, people love them.  Go figure.
>
>The cameras on laptops or monitors are only supposed to be on when you turn 
>them on. It is only different if hackers subvert the security of your 
>computer.
>
>Totalitarian regimes, like those in North Korea, are still terrifying.

My employer provides covers for the cameras on our monitors and
laptops and expects us to use them when not actually engaged in a
videoconference.

On 2/8/2018 9:32 PM, Quadibloc wrote:
> On Thursday, February 8, 2018 at 6:27:43 PM UTC-7, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
> 
>> Remember when the thought of Orwell's telescreens was terrifying?
>> Now that they've been deployed, people love them.  Go figure.
> 
> The cameras on laptops or monitors are only supposed to be on when you turn
> them on. It is only different if hackers subvert the security of your
> computer.
> 
> Totalitarian regimes, like those in North Korea, are still terrifying.

The regimes of the oligarchs and venture capitalists are pretty scary, 
too. But while I don't trust either google or apple, I don't think 
they're likely to execute anyone.

On Thu, 8 Feb 2018 19:32:41 -0800 (PST), Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca>
wrote:

>On Thursday, February 8, 2018 at 6:27:43 PM UTC-7, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>
>> Remember when the thought of Orwell's telescreens was terrifying?
>> Now that they've been deployed, people love them.  Go figure.
>
>The cameras on laptops or monitors are only supposed to be on when you turn 
>them on. It is only different if hackers subvert the security of your 
>computer.
>
>Totalitarian regimes, like those in North Korea, are still terrifying.
>
>John Savard

My lapop camera has duct tape on it. And my desktop has no camera.

On 2018-02-09, Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
> On 2018-02-08, ma...@mail.com <ma...@mail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 2018-02-08, Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>> On 2018-02-08, Peter Flass <peter...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> J. Clarke <jclarke...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> One of the (few) things I really like about Macbooks is the way you
>>> can press harder on the trackpad to get a mouse click.  I find myself
>>> trying to do it on non-Mac trackpads (and am briefly disappointed when
>>> it doesn't work).
>>
>> Case, you are  viewing pictures that involve lots of pink, and
>> stroking your mouse analogue, then you realize that there is a camera
>> just above the screen, and it seems to be doing something.
>
> When you watch your smart TV, it watches _you_.
>
> Remember when the thought of Orwell's telescreens was terrifying?
> Now that they've been deployed, people love them.  Go figure.
>


There was a story that in the UK, people would get a reduction in the
cost of a tv when they agreed to be filmed. (Market research) Some
people would forget that. and do most peculiar things in  front of
the TV.


-- 
greymaus.ireland.ie
Just_Another_Grumpy_Old_Man

On 2018-02-09, Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
> On Thursday, February 8, 2018 at 6:27:43 PM UTC-7, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>
>> Remember when the thought of Orwell's telescreens was terrifying?
>> Now that they've been deployed, people love them.  Go figure.
>
> The cameras on laptops or monitors are only supposed to be on when you turn 
> them on. It is only different if hackers subvert the security of your 
> computer.
>
> Totalitarian regimes, like those in North Korea, are still terrifying.
>
> John Savard

I had a utility that would turn on cameras on laptops in the area
served by a router. Most disturbing. I got rid of it. (Linux)


-- 
greymaus.ireland.ie
Just_Another_Grumpy_Old_Man

On 2018-02-08, Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:
> On 8 Feb 2018 21:04:32 GMT, Huge wrote:
>>
>> On 2018-02-08, Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:
>>> On 7 Feb 2018 22:07:54 GMT, Huge wrote:
>>>>
>
> was what I put there. No, I not really use that for writing news I
> suppose. The User-Agent header in this article here is correct though.
>
> Now have a beer, calm down.

She is /BAH, a regular here, who keeps the place shook up, and has
for many years.


-- 
greymaus.ireland.ie
Just_Another_Grumpy_Old_Man

Andy Burns wrote:
> jmfbahciv wrote:
>
>> Niklas Karlsson wrote:
>>
>>> Your Name Here wrote:
>>>
>>>> This is a horrible computer ….
>>
>> I did not type that weird character.
>
> It seems you (or your slippery new computer did)
>
> The sequence "…." without quote marks appears in your original message
> which may be a garbled unicode sequence for a three-dotted ellipse,
> followed by a fullstop
>
> (U+2026 = 0xE2 0x80 0xA6) (0x2E)
>
> see 6th row on left here
> <http://www.i18nqa.com/debug/utf8-debug.html>
>
> So presumably you typed "...." and something not quite clever enough for
> its own good altered it?  Niklas's quote didn't mangle your original
> characters, but your re-quoting of Niklas's reply changed it to "…."
>
> So I think you have some kind of 8-bit character set/encoding problem
> going on ...

Aw, fuckmeverymuch.  Thanks for the info.  Another item on the list of
things to undo.

/BAH

Dan Espen wrote:
> Huge <Huge@nowhere.much.invalid> writes:
>
>> On 2018-02-08, Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:
>>> On 7 Feb 2018 22:07:54 GMT, Huge wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On 2018-02-07, ma...@mail.com <ma...@mail.com> wrote:
>>>>> On 2018-02-07, Your Name Here <username@isp.net.invalid> wrote:
>>>>>> This is a horrible computer …. how in the hell do you guys
>>>>>> deal with smart finger skating pads?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> /BAH
>>>>>
>>>>> Name? OS?
>>>>
>>>> User-Agent: Pineapple News/0.9.0 (Mac OS X 10.8.5 Intel)
>>>
>>> He ...
>>
>> ... is a she. And that User Agent line was on the posting where
>> the name field was wrong - the subject of another posting.
>>
>> Get your ducks in a row before being so fucking argumentative, eh?
>
> Oh gee, have the idiot on ignore so I wasn't aware I was in another
> bizarre BAH thread.  Looking back, it looks like I was addressing
> the Name? OS? part.

Don't worry.  I'm trying to fill in the fields so you can continue
to ignore me.


>
> Now I'm tempted to give my opinion on track pads:
>
> Like many things, I had to be patient and I learned to use
> them reasonably well.  If I had to use one a lot, I'd plug
> in a mouse.  I'm not claiming they are great.
> In fact, on the rare occasions I power up the
> XP laptop, I use my ATEN KVM to toggle the full sized keyboard and mouse
> to the laptop.
>

I like using track pads but the newer ones are extremely sensitive.
There are times when I don't even have to touch one.  My fingers
must be invisibly longer.

/BAH

On 9 Feb 2018 15:28:09 GMT, jmfbahciv <See....@aol.com> wrote:

[snip]

>I like using track pads but the newer ones are extremely sensitive.
>There are times when I don't even have to touch one.  My fingers
>must be invisibly longer.

     I have managed that trick, too.  My hands are quite dry. Are
yours?

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

On Thu, 8 Feb 2018 19:32:41 -0800 (PST), Quadibloc wrote:
>
> On Thursday, February 8, 2018 at 6:27:43 PM UTC-7, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>
>> Remember when the thought of Orwell's telescreens was terrifying?
>> Now that they've been deployed, people love them.  Go figure.
>
> The cameras on laptops or monitors are only supposed to be on when you turn 
> them on. It is only different if hackers subvert the security of your 
> computer.

If I'd be paranoid, I'd blacklist the cam driver here in Linux. But I'm
not. Who wants to see an old dude sitting in front of the laptop anyway?
-- 
Andreas
You know you are a redneck if
Jack Daniels makes your list of "most admired people".

On 9 Feb 2018 09:48:31 GMT, ma...@mail.com wrote:
>
> On 2018-02-09, Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
>> On 2018-02-08, ma...@mail.com <ma...@mail.com> wrote:
>>
>> When you watch your smart TV, it watches _you_.
>>
>> Remember when the thought of Orwell's telescreens was terrifying?
>> Now that they've been deployed, people love them.  Go figure.

Or telling all your secrets to a foreigner, today called Facebook.

> There was a story that in the UK, people would get a reduction in the
> cost of a tv when they agreed to be filmed. (Market research) Some
> people would forget that. and do most peculiar things in  front of
> the TV.

Like...? :-D
-- 
Andreas
You know you are a redneck if
Jack Daniels makes your list of "most admired people".

Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> writes:
>On Thu, 8 Feb 2018 19:32:41 -0800 (PST), Quadibloc wrote:
>>
>> On Thursday, February 8, 2018 at 6:27:43 PM UTC-7, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>>
>>> Remember when the thought of Orwell's telescreens was terrifying?
>>> Now that they've been deployed, people love them.  Go figure.
>>
>> The cameras on laptops or monitors are only supposed to be on when you turn 
>> them on. It is only different if hackers subvert the security of your 
>> computer.
>
>If I'd be paranoid, I'd blacklist the cam driver here in Linux. But I'm
>not. Who wants to see an old dude sitting in front of the laptop anyway?

Back in the 1990's, the SGI Indy systems shipped with the
IndyCam, which one generally placed on top of the monitor
pointed back at the user (for video conferencing).  There
was an Indy in the SGI library (now the Google Campus in
Mountain View).   Anyone could access the indy and turn on
the Indycam.   One of the coporate VP's was caught boffing
an admin via the Indycam in the library :-)

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

Gene Wirchenko wrote:
> On 9 Feb 2018 15:28:09 GMT, jmfbahciv <See....@aol.com> wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
>>I like using track pads but the newer ones are extremely sensitive.
>>There are times when I don't even have to touch one.  My fingers
>>must be invisibly longer.
>
>      I have managed that trick, too.  My hands are quite dry. Are
> yours?

I don't think so.  The skin doesn't flake off.  My nails aren't long
either.  (How do people with long nails use these devices?)

Doesn't the gear work based on heat difference?

/BAH

On Saturday, February 10, 2018 at 7:42:04 AM UTC-7, jmfbahciv wrote:
> Gene Wirchenko wrote:
> > On 9 Feb 2018 15:28:09 GMT, jmfbahciv <See....@aol.com> wrote:

> >>I like using track pads but the newer ones are extremely sensitive.
> >>There are times when I don't even have to touch one.  My fingers
> >>must be invisibly longer.

> >      I have managed that trick, too.  My hands are quite dry. Are
> > yours?

> I don't think so.  The skin doesn't flake off.  My nails aren't long
> either.  (How do people with long nails use these devices?)

> Doesn't the gear work based on heat difference?

No. Trackpads, unlike some elevator buttons, work by touching them and 
bringing into contact strips connected by a different level of resistance 
to the power and ground.

Even without skin flaking off, on a dry day, you could still have static 
electricity, which might mess things up.

John Savard

Quadibloc wrote:
> On Saturday, February 10, 2018 at 7:42:04 AM UTC-7, jmfbahciv wrote:
>> Gene Wirchenko wrote:
>> > On 9 Feb 2018 15:28:09 GMT, jmfbahciv <See....@aol.com> wrote:
>
>> >>I like using track pads but the newer ones are extremely sensitive.
>> >>There are times when I don't even have to touch one.  My fingers
>> >>must be invisibly longer.
>
>> >      I have managed that trick, too.  My hands are quite dry. Are
>> > yours?
>
>> I don't think so.  The skin doesn't flake off.  My nails aren't long
>> either.  (How do people with long nails use these devices?)
>
>> Doesn't the gear work based on heat difference?
>
> No. Trackpads, unlike some elevator buttons, work by touching them and
> bringing into contact strips connected by a different level of resistance
> to the power and ground.
>
> Even without skin flaking off, on a dry day, you could still have static
> electricity, which might mess things up.

It's not static electricity.  I'd feel enormous pain if it was.

/BAH

On 10 Feb 2018 14:34:09 GMT, jmfbahciv <See....@aol.com> wrote:

>Gene Wirchenko wrote:
>> On 9 Feb 2018 15:28:09 GMT, jmfbahciv <See....@aol.com> wrote:
>>
>> [snip]
>>
>>>I like using track pads but the newer ones are extremely sensitive.
>>>There are times when I don't even have to touch one.  My fingers
>>>must be invisibly longer.
>>
>>      I have managed that trick, too.  My hands are quite dry. Are
>> yours?
>
>I don't think so.  The skin doesn't flake off.  My nails aren't long
>either.  (How do people with long nails use these devices?)
>
>Doesn't the gear work based on heat difference?

     My skin does not flake off.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

On 9 Feb, in article
     <PM000564C...@aca41494.ipt.aol.com> See....@aol.com
     "jmfbahciv" wrote:

> Andy Burns wrote:
>> jmfbahciv wrote:
>>
>>> Niklas Karlsson wrote:
>>>
>>>> Your Name Here wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> This is a horrible computer ….
>>>
>>> I did not type that weird character.
>>
>> It seems you (or your slippery new computer did)
>>
>> The sequence "…." without quote marks appears in your
>> original message which may be a garbled unicode sequence for a
>> three-dotted ellipse, followed by a fullstop
>>
>> (U+2026 = 0xE2 0x80 0xA6) (0x2E)
>>
>> see 6th row on left here
>> <http://www.i18nqa.com/debug/utf8-debug.html>
>>
>> So presumably you typed "...." and something not quite clever enough for
>> its own good altered it?  Niklas's quote didn't mangle your original
>> characters, but your re-quoting of Niklas's reply changed it to
>> "…."
>>
>> So I think you have some kind of 8-bit character set/encoding problem
>> going on ...
> 
> Aw, fuckmeverymuch.  Thanks for the info.  Another item on the list of
> things to undo.
> 
> /BAH

Water way under the bridge by now, and noting that BAH is currently
off-line anyway, but just for info: the fundamental cause of BAH's 8-bit
character set problem is Niklas's non-compliant slrn/pre0.9.9-111, which
incorrectly used "charset=utf8" in the MIME Content-Type field: the
correct charset parameter for UTF-8 has a hyphen (RFC 3629 section 8).

The only problem with BAH's setup is that her Pineapple News/0.9.0
didn't recognise the invalid "utf8" charset, and hence it displayed a
three-byte UTF-8 encoding in Niklas's malformed message as three
separate characters, and encoded them thus when sending her reply.

This seems to be caused by a faulty example in old slrn.rc documentation
rather than a bug in slrn per se, so Niklas should be able to fix his
config; there are references to the docs being fixed in slrn in 2010,
and a 2011 Debian bug report of the same issue notes that

  a wrong charset definition like that will keep other newsreaders from
  correctly displaying the message (as they don't know a charset named
  "utf8" and fall back to their default which very likely is not UTF-8).

which is exactly what we've seen here.

You can certainly argue that Pineapple News could be more accepting of
malformed charsets (as some others -- including slrn -- evidently are),
but it's a little harsh, and sadly misleading, to tell BAH that she's
got an 8-bit charset/encoding problem -- or to suggest that her Mac
isn't Unicode-compliant, as someone else did -- when the fundamental
fault lies elsewhere.

(Hope you get to see this somehow, BAH!)

-- 
Simon Turner                                    DoD #0461
si...@twoplaces.co.uk
    Trust me -- I know what I'm doing!          -- Sledge Hammer

Simon Turner wrote:

> it displayed a
> three-byte UTF-8 encoding in Niklas's malformed message

The problem didn't start when BAH quoted Niklas, the UTF-8 encoding and 
the three byte sequence … were in BAH's message that started this 
thread ...

On Monday, in article <fg5i5l...@mid.individual.net>
     use...@andyburns.uk "Andy Burns" wrote:

> Simon Turner wrote:
> 
>> it displayed a
>> three-byte UTF-8 encoding in Niklas's malformed message
> 
> The problem didn't start when BAH quoted Niklas, the UTF-8 encoding and 
> the three byte sequence … were in BAH's message that started this 
> thread ...

Have another look.

Note that I'm reading the raw spool, so I get to see the raw message
text without any software trying to interpret it for me.

BAH's original message contained a perfectly valid UTF-8 encoding of the
Unicode character U+2026 (HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS) -- the three binary bytes
0xE2 0x80 0xA6, i.e. "…" -- in a correctly-formatted MIME UTF-8
message.  This may not have been what BAH was expecting (her
oh-so-clever software turning the first three dots of her four-dot
ellipsis into a separate non-ASCII character), but there was no
*problem* with this until Niklas's poorly-configured slrn repeated that
UTF-8 encoding, but marking the message as having the non-existent MIME
charset "utf8".

Depending on the flexibility of your software in interpreting invalid
charsets, you may have seen Niklas's message containing a horizontal
ellipsis, or two/three bizarre binary characters.  (Incidentally, Scott
Lurndal was the first to reply to BAH's original message, but his
software isn't MIME-compliant and quoted the three-byte UTF-8 encoding
without making any attempt to tell us what the charset was: I see that
Google Groups, which is clearly quite flexible, sees it as UTF-8 anyway
and therefore displays it correctly.)

At this point BAH replied to Dave Garland and J. Clarke, both of whom
had quoted her original message, but validly (Dave's was UTF-8 and used
the same three-byte UTF-8 sequence; J.'s was "ISO-8859-1"[0] and used
the single byte 0x85).  BAH will have seen what she expected in the
quote of her original message: four dots in a row.  (The fact that the
first three of them were a single non-ASCII character is neither here
nor there.)

Then she got to Niklas's message, with its broken MIME charset
parameter, and was confronted by two/three odd characters (which you
quoted above in your valid UTF-8 message[1]); she replied to Niklas,
observing that "I did not type that weird character" (which she hadn't).

The problem *started* with Niklas's message, with its broken charset; it
got amplified when BAH quoted it, because her software converted the
three unknown-charset binary bytes 0xE2, 0x80, 0xA6 into their Unicode
equivalents U+00E2, U+0080, U+00A6 and then put those in her perfectly
valid UTF-8 reply to Niklas.  We all then got to see what BAH had seen
in Niklas's message (ish: see [1] below), and started telling BAH she
had a broken system, when we really should have been lambasting Niklas
for having a broken slrn config. 8-(


[0] Actually Windows-1252, which is a superset of ISO-8859-1: ISO-8859-1
doesn't define 0x80 - 0x9F, but Windows-1252 mostly does (five of them
are undefined); the bytes 0x80 and 0x85 have no meaning in strict
ISO-8859-1, but are the Euro sign and horizontal ellipsis respectively
in Windows-1252.  Most ISO-8859-1 implementations are actually
Windows-1252: Wiki's page on ISO-8859-1 says "For the character encoding
commonly mislabeled as "ISO-8859-1", see Windows-1252." 8-/


[1] The three UTF-8 encodings in BAH's reply to Niklas, which were
almost-but-not-quite repeated by you above, are:

 * 0xC3 0xA2 (U+00E2, "â", LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH CIRCUMFLEX);

 * 0xC2 0x80 (U+0080, "€", <control>), which your software (and
   others, e.g. Google Groups) seem to have assumed must really be the
   "ISO-8859-1"[0] character 0x80, i.e. the Euro sign, and converted it
   into Unicode (U+20AC, EURO SIGN), which has the three-byte UTF-8
   encoding 0xE2 0x82 0xAC (as appears in your message above);

 * 0xC2 0xA6 (U+00A6, "¦", BROKEN BAR)


-- 
Simon Turner                                    DoD #0461
si...@twoplaces.co.uk
    Trust me -- I know what I'm doing!          -- Sledge Hammer