A New Build but I don’t have it; story conference; other matters

Chaos Manor View, Wednesday, July 01, 2015

A very good day so far. Niven and Barnes were over for the morning and lunch. Story conference went well, although we were unable to SKYPE Dr Cohen; not sure why.

Eric tells me there is yet another Windows 10 Build; I’ll install it on Precious, the Microsoft Surface Pro 3, in a few minutes.

Build-a-mania!

    There is yet another build released inside of 24 hours from 10158. The newest is 10159.

http://winsupersite.com/windows-10/two-builds-two-days-microsoft-releases-windows-10-build-10159

    I guess the pace is really picking up now they’re in the home stretch and the broadband world allows them to make this happen.

Eric

For a longer explanation see the link.

1600 Just went to update on Precious. It sees the update, but has not started downloading. This is Time Warner glitch time for the next half hour.

1610 Still shows no download. There seems to be no way to induce it to start; I’m on automatic update, and this has a mind of its own.

1625 Details on the Update page tells me that the update is downloading and the machine is waiting to install. The Update page shows 0% downloaded. I can use Precious for anything else, so it’s merely minorly irritating for it to say it’s downloading and do nothing, but patience is a virtue that often needs relearning.

!655 Still at 0% downloaded; I’ll leave it for the evening. I did check to see that the internet connection is working.

2105  Had dinner and watched bad TV.  Came back here and it says 47% downloaded. I did nothing: it downloaded when it thought it was unused.  It now seems to be stuck on 47% so I expect I can’t use the system for several hours; but by morning it may be done.  HooRay.

2200: 60%  It sure seems to be in no hurry…

2230: 82% and I’m off to the bedroom for the night.

0930 2 June: I have medical appointments all day.  The update has down;loaded and is installing.  I’ll see if it finishes before I go out for the day.

Windows Explorer

    The Explorer icon may not have been visible because of the number of items you have pinned to the task bar on the Surface. This is why the Up and Down arrows appeared in the row. Also, that number of items makes the icons tiny and hard to discern. There may be a setting to enlarge them but then you’d need to use the arrows even more often, which in turn kid of negates the value of having the icons pinned to the task bar. The other option is to pull the task bar up a bit to enlarge its display area. You may have to right-click on it first to unlock it.

    The Windows key shortcut has been there since Windows 95. You possibly never got it hardwired in your head due to your attachment to Norton Commander. The brain cancer and stroke surely didn’t help but I suspect the habit was never formed in the first place.

Eric

Not only not formed, never even thought about wanting it. I am sure I have never used WINKEY E before in my life – my main machine keyboard didn’t even have a Win Key, and I never missed it; ctl-esc was good enough if I needed it, and I never knew that WINKEY plus various letters did anything. It’s good to know. For those who don’t already know – probably not many of you — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_key#Windows_10 tells a lot more.

I suspect my addiction to my older keyboards which didn’t have a Win key, plus my long experience with getting Windows to do what I wanted – all the way from pre-Windows 3 to Windows 7 – plus, as Eric notes, my love of old Norton Commander as a file Manager – prevented me from ever needing to know about this; once Microsoft removed the START button – no doubt believing that everyone knew about Win Key E, I really needed to know this but didn’t know to ask. I now see why earlier builds on Precious seemed so frustrating; I really wanted some way to start from scratch, and it was not only there all the time, but Microsoft and everybody else assumed I knew it.

OPM hack consequences

Dear Jerry,

A commenter to Charlie Martin’s article on the hack at PJMedia

(http://pjmedia.com/blog/read-how-and-why-the-office-of-personnel-management-opm-got-hit-with-maybe-the-most-damaging-hack-of-all-time/)

pointed out something that has NOT yet been trumpeted by the news media.

Since the hackers had root access, they could do more than just read the data. They could alter it, or even insert phony data (like, say, “trusted” Federal personnel who are actually Chicom agents). When this sort of thing happens to anyone in the real world, the most common solutions are “take it down to bare metal, then restore from

(old) backups or from paper”. But I’m sure neither solution will be

applied to the OPM computers and databases, so we can only wonder what was deliberately corrupted by the Chinese, and hope we catch those “trusted” agents by other means.

Sincerely,

Calvin Dodge

: Brick-laying robot can build a full-sized house in two days

I can see how laying pavers would be well executed and a good use case but I wonder how it handles complex structures like soldier courses and water bands?

http://www.gizmag.com/hadrian-brick-laying-robot-fastbrick/38239/?utm_source=Gizmag+Subscribers&utm_campaign=dab09564e5-UA-2235360-4&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_65b67362bd-dab09564e5-88920025

John Harlow

Dubai Says Plans World’s First 3D Printed Office Building    (nyt)

By REUTERSJUNE 30, 2015, 9:04 A.M. E.D.T.

DUBAI — Dubai said it would construct a small office building using a 3D printer for the first time, in a drive to develop technology that would cut costs and save time as the city grows.

3D printing, which uses a printer to make three-dimensional objects from a digital design, is taking off in manufacturing industries around the world but has so far been used little in construction.

Dubai’s one-storey prototype building, with about 2,000 square feet (185 square meters) of floor space, will be printed layer-by-layer using a 20-foot tall printer, Mohamed Al Gergawi, the United Arab Emirates Minister of Cabinet Affairs, said on Tuesday.

It would then be assembled on site within a few weeks. Interior furniture and structural components would also be built through 3D printing with reinforced concrete, gypsum reinforced with glass fiber, and plastic.

The project is a tie-up between Dubai and Winsun, a Chinese company that has been pioneering the use of 3D printers to build houses. Gergawi cited studies estimating the technique could cut building time by 50-70 percent and labor costs by 50-80 percent.

(Reporting by Andrew Torchia, editing by David Evans)

– self-driving cars will suppress human drivers

Hello, Jerry : I’ll be surprised if legislation is needed to remove human drivers, once autonomous cars are legal. I’d expect the rapidly increasing cost of insurance will do the deed. A few millionaires may persist in driving as a hobby, but few of us will be able to afford the liability. Marcus P. Hagen

Guess who was 1st slave owner

That didn’t match my understanding of history, but it largely matches the account presently on Wikipedia…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States#Colonial_America

The first 19 or so Africans to reach the English colonies arrived in Jamestown, Virginia in 1619, brought by Dutch traders who had seized them from a captured Spanish slave ship. The Spanish usually baptized slaves in Africa before embarking them. As English law then considered baptized Christians exempt from slavery, these Africans were treated as indentured servants, and they joined about 1,000 English indentured servants already in the colony. The Africans were freed after a prescribed period and given the use of land and supplies by their former masters.

There were no laws regarding slavery early in Virginia’s history. But, in 1640, a Virginia court sentenced John Punch to slavery after he attempted to flee his service.^[5] The two whites with whom he fled were only sentenced to an additional year of their indenture, and three years’ service to the colony.^[6] This marked the first legal sanctioning of slavery in the English colonies and was one of the first legal distinctions made between Europeans and Africans.^[5][7]

In 1654, John Casor, a black indentured servant, was the first man to be declared a slave in a civil case. He had claimed to an officer that his owner, free black colonist Anthony Johnson, had held him past his indenture term. A neighbor, Robert Parker told Johnson that if he did not release Casor, Parker would testify in court to this fact; which under local laws, may have resulted in Johnson losing some of his headright lands. Under duress, Johnson freed Casor, who entered into a seven years’ indenture with Parker. Feeling cheated, Johnson sued Parker to repossess Casor. A Northampton County court ruled for Johnson, declaring that Parker illegally was detaining Casor from his rightful master who legally held him “for the duration of his life”.^[10]

In a message dated 6/30/2015 8:42:27 A.M. Central Daylight Time,

http://www.tpnn.com/2015/04/30/guess-who-the-1st-legal-slave-owner-in-america-was-dont-expect-the-media-to-report-this/

“It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.” – Voltaire

Enumerations and the ninth amendment

Hi Jerry,

Hal O’Brien wrote, “What the Ninth Amendment explicitly says is, as you learn that meaning of liberty over time, the Bill of Rights should not be construed as a comprehensive limiting list, denying and disparaging what you find in addition through the years.”

I’m unsure how he gets this meaning from the Ninth Amendment; which only limits the use of enumerated rights to suppress rights not mentioned. It in no way hints at discovering or finding new “rights” as he suggests. Only if one assumes that rights spring from the Constitution or from judicial/legislative decree can this be seen as true. It also absolutely negates any and all protections given by a constitution since all a judge has to do is pronounce a new “right” and none of the protections in the Constitution would limit the government from implementing this new “right”. For example, the Right to Zero Violence could be proclaimed and all the protections of the 2nd Amendment would vanish as this newly discovered “right” combined with the Ninth Amendment would supercede the 2nd. SImilarly, the Right to Zero Insults would destroy 1st Amendment protections as government moved to ensure no one spoke an insulting word.

In all deference to the opinion of Mr. O’Brien, the Bill of Rights are not a minumum nor are they a maximum. Each is unique and each is aimed at the federal government, not the people. I would even go so far as Alexander Hamilton who famously wrote, “For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do? Why, for instance, should it be said that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed?” This notion of a severely limited government was at the very heart of its creation.

The federal government was not given the authority to define marriage in any way. This limitation exists for all branches of the federal government including the Supreme Court. State constitutions provide this authority for individual states and it is at the state level that the decision for what constitutes and does not constitute a marriage contract reside. Based on the current SCOTUS ruling, however, I see no recourse for states but to refuse to recognize all forms of legal marriage. This would certainly free up some state resources and divorce settlements could then be handled quickly by the priest, minister, or individual who sanctioned the marriage to start with.

r/s

Braxton S. Cook

Thank you.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.