The Reading Vent & Rant Thread

[DNSB]

I've found my public IP used to change once or twice a year. I've had my current wireless router for 13 months and the public address has not changed.

[gmw]

Plus you have to remember that tracking services work across many sites, so they can use the correlations and timings to get a pretty good idea when a particular IP has changed users. Plus new IPs come from the same allocation group, so combined with where you visit and other attributes of your system (resolution, plug-in behaviour and so on), it's not necessarily that difficult to join the dots ... and it's not like the people using such tracking services care if they get a few wrong.

[ownedbycats]

I can always tell when my IP changed because it knocks the wifi offline. Granted, the old neighbour's microwave also used to knock the wifi offline. Wifi in apartments kind of stinks.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

I can always tell when my IP changed because it knocks the wifi offline. Granted, the old neighbour's microwave also used to knock the wifi offline. Wifi in apartments kind of stinks.

You could try living in a townhouse with neighbours who recently downsized. They have a 5 unit mesh wireless network setup and are using 40MHz channel width for the 2.4GHz channels they are using. Which means they render the 2.4Ghz band pretty much unusable for the neighbours on each side. For the 5GHz band, they are using 80MHz though fortunately there, they appear only capable of using the lower channels (36-64) which they pretty much render useless but I can use channel 155 without problems.

Sadly, the only device I have capable of WiFi 6E (the 6GHz band) is my backup router so it's a rather useless feature at the moment. Not to mention that I keep worrying about it flipping over and walking off on it's antennae. OTOH, I picked it up for a great price and it does air gap my backups.

[Witty Username]

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

The real kicker came courtesy of a review at Goodreads, which commented on the female lead's assertion on her appearance in the story that she had an honours degree from Girton. Quite a neat trick since the story is set more than 50 years before Girton awarded any. That's just lazy!

The reviewer at Goodreads is wrong. Cambridge refer to their BA(Hons) degrees as Tripos and the first women to unofficially take (and pass) Tripos Exams was in 1873. The university's own history pages describe the establishment of "two Colleges for women students (Girton in 1869 and Newnham in 1872). From the first, these Colleges aimed to prepare their students for the Tripos, and the first women were in fact examined in 1882."
I can see why a graduate/author would say honours degree rather than Tripos as that would require a lot of explanation of the academic system used at Cambridge.

And just for extra interest:

In 1887 Agnata Ramsay, aged twenty, became a national celebrity. A student at Girton College, she had taken the Classical Tripos at Cambridge and was the only candidate to be placed in the top division of the First Class (“Firsts” were then sub-divided, as “Seconds” still are). That meant that she had done better in the exams than anyone else, woman or man.

TLS article by Mary Beard about women classical scholars

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

In the book, a spaceship pilot was doing complex interstellar navigation calculations with a 3 foot diameter circular slide rule.

Originally Posted by DNSB

Sounds like the astrogation slide rule in Robert A. Heinlein's Starman Jones though as far as I recall, the actual size was never mentioned. Slide rules were also used in The Rolling Stones but I don't remember if they were circular slide rules.

Another deeply etched memory bites the dust.

Thanks. I thought it was by Heinlein, but wasn't sure. Starman Jones seems most likely

Originally Posted by theducks

I still have my 5" one. Guess I better not go into space. Wait I have a HP11C, maybe that would do better.

Mine was 3" or so and was designed to fit in a shirt pocket. The static part was was rectangular and about 3x5 with a bunch of constants and maybe formulas printed on the back. It also had a slide out card with more constants or tables. I think that maybe it was something salesmen hand out to customers. I lost track of it sometime over the years and have never been able to find anything like it until just now. It must have been one of the many made by the company Concise in Japan.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

Mine was 3" or so and was designed to fit in a shirt pocket. The static part was was rectangular and about 3x5 with a bunch of constants and maybe formulas printed on the back. It also had a slide out card with more constants or tables. I think that maybe it was something salesmen hand out to customers. I lost track of it sometime over the years and have never been able to find anything like it until just now. It must have been one of the many made by the company Concise in Japan.

I still have, and use daily, my HP12C. I've had this thing for...gosh. Just shy of 40 years.

Hitch

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Loosheesh

Authors were giving 5-stars reviews of their books on Goodreads before Amazon took it over. It’s tacky and off-putting but it didn’t start with Amazon.

I just rated a book three stars and then I saw the author had given her book a five-star rating. So I knocked my rating down to one star to offset it.

The book was only worth three stars. Good enough, but not especially well written at that.

[Dazrin]

Originally Posted by Hitch

I still have, and use daily, my HP12C. I've had this thing for...gosh. Just shy of 40 years.

Hitch

My HP 48GX isn't quite as venerable, but has been going strong since 1993. Love the RPN notation and don't know what I would do if it ever dies.

[JSWolf]

One thing that does bother me is certain words that take me out of the book.

I know the book I am reading is an old book. It's copyright 1934.

The words so far are (and some don't mean what you may think).

1. ejaculated
2. thank-offering
3. hare

The book is A Man Lay Dead by Ngaio Marsh.

[Little.Egret]

Originally Posted by Dazrin

My HP 48GX isn't quite as venerable, but has been going strong since 1993. Love the RPN notation and don't know what I would do if it ever dies.

RPN calculators are available as tablet, phone etc. Apps.

[Little.Egret]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

One thing that does bother me is certain words that take me out of the book.

I know the book I am reading is an old book. It's copyright 1934.

The words so far are (and some don't mean what you may think).

1. ejaculated
2. thank-offering
3. hare

The book is A Man Lay Dead by Ngaio Marsh.

Ejaculated was standard Victorian English, thank-offering is in the Bible, hare is still live for me (hare off).

More reading needed.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

One thing that does bother me is certain words that take me out of the book.

I know the book I am reading is an old book. It's copyright 1934.

The words so far are (and some don't mean what you may think).

1. ejaculated
2. thank-offering
3. hare

The book is A Man Lay Dead by Ngaio Marsh.

On whose feet are you laying your need to vent and rant about this?

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

One thing that does bother me is certain words that take me out of the book.

I know the book I am reading is an old book. It's copyright 1934.

The words so far are (and some don't mean what you may think).

1. ejaculated
2. thank-offering
3. hare

The book is A Man Lay Dead by Ngaio Marsh.

Enjoy:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.p...aveAGayOldTime

[Dazrin]

Originally Posted by Little.Egret

RPN calculators are available as tablet, phone etc. Apps.

That's like saying "ebook reader apps are available as tablet, phone, etc. Apps."

They are just NOT the same as using a quality dedicated device. Ok in a pinch but that's about it.

If I need to use an app, I will use Google Sheets instead. My calculator doesn't get used every day, but it does get used multiple times a week and having a dedicated device is very worth it for me.