Posts by John Brown (no body) 28765 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2010
"I have noticed that when I lift a drink off the desk - my hand automatically moves on a dog leg path to avoid the cup crossing over the keyboard."
Back when computers in companies were capital purchases and very, very expensive, eating or drinking near one was a capital offence. That's ingrained in me and and so I still don't do it.
"she has a uniquely special talent of discovering functions and keypresses nobody knew existed."
Did she ever find the key combo to turn on shift lock on a PC keyboard? It was so long ago now, I can't remember if it was a keyboard thing, a DOS thing or a Windows thing. I remember it happening to me a few times and have a vague memory that I might have unplugged/replugged they keyboard to "fix" it, which implied it was a keyboard issue. I never found what they key combo was.
"Where I was working didn't do interdepartmental billing at that stage. I would have loved to do a full reinstall and have the cheeky bastards who pulled the stunt explain the bill to their boss."
I did contract hardware maintenance back then. There were a few call-outs to none working screens which turned out to be that some wag had turned the brightness and contrast controls all the way down. Sadly for them, that's not covered by the annual service contract fee so they get a none-contract call-out charge.
"If you're in your final approach and the warhead has separated, then that's a different matter. Assuming they're planning for warhead separation of course."
If you're already hypersonic, do you even need a warhead? A solid lump of something might be enough, or maybe a box of large(ish) ball bearing that opens us before impact for a shot gun effect. I wonder what the effect of a mach 10+ 1" steel ball bearing would be? Or an expanding cloud of them?
"I refer you to "one of the British apparently said [...]" - the Frenchman may have thought he had good cause his interpretation of what the sounds used actually meant in French"
Don't worry, I'm sure the British squaddie said it loudly and slowly so as to make sure that Johnny Foreigner understood.
"Did you notice outgoing President Obama's commitment to spend $1 trillion (which obviously would be multiplied many times in practice) essentially replacing the whole of the USA's nuclear arsenal with newer and better weapons"
And Trump, as he keeps reminding us, is going to reverse everything Obama did? Oops.
"/me used to operate a nuclear reactor on a submarine. yes, I know how they work, quite well in fact. "
That must have been an interesting career change from Petty Officer (Stores) to Nuclear Reactor Operator. I'm tempted to wonder if you are related to Jake "Jack of all trades", who seems to have done almost every job description under the sun :-)
"On the other hand, Vlad is simply poking a stick into a hornet nest - and perhaps attempting to get the USA to spend even more on its military defence technology than it already does..."
I was just remembering what did for the USSR and noting the similarities. The USA has huge debt, a President who want's to "Make America Great Again" and part of that plan is to massively spend on the armed forces, especially the nuclear arsenal, and develop new (and very expensive) weapons. I wonder how much of Putins weapons speech is disinformation and how well backed up that is?
"it should be easy to avoid being observed by them."
Maybe. It depends what you are doing. If the UK MoD is interested, there's a good chance others are too, possibly a data share with the other 5 eyes would give more frequent coverage and if there's that level of interest, then probably everyone with an interest is watching too, even of not sharing with each other.
"Virgin Media are one of the worst for this... they host a speedtest server... so I refuse to use the server they suggest and opt for others closest to me... And I do comparative tests using the netflix based fast.com."
Depends on how you look at it. Having a speed test inside the ISP network can work as evidence that the "fault" is inside the ISP network. Low speeds off-net might be evidence of faults outside the ISPs control OR or might indicate the ISP cheaping out on peering.
"Many drivers of ICE vehicles are stupid enough to set off in bad weather without making any preparations for unexpected stops or possibly tossing a set of snow chains in the boot."
True, but in the case in question, many of those drivers had left work hours early to try to get home and beat the weather closing in. It's also pretty unusual, even in the Scottish central belt to get weather quite so bad. People are not generally prepared for that level intensity because it's rare. So rare that many younger drives have never seen that sort of weather at home or on their commute. Further north in the Highlands, people are generally more prepared because they see it most years. Few people from the central belt and on south even know there is such a thing as winter tyres, let alone can source any locally. They may have heard of snow chains or snow sock, but again, have probably never needed them or seen them on sale anywhere locally.
Owning an electric car won't make those people any more aware unless they are in self-driving cars which may simply refuse to start the journey if it can't find a safe route based on traffic conditions and weather forecast.
"Not being au fait with the science, how easy would it be to rig up a true conveyor (think paternoster lifts) between earth and a point in LEO. "
A space elevator needs to go all the way to geosynchronous orbit and then beyond for counterweight, either as far out again, or with a fecking big weight. ideally, a full 48,000 miles so you get the nice launch platform at the far end.
"even now, this bit of film has me spellbound
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8PR3QIwXHs "
Me too, but with many more years of life behind me than at the time of first seeing it, it looks massively over-engineered, hugely over-complex and I not that some of the landing gear, on retracting, looks like it ends up inside some of the engines :-)
"But funnily enough, there's minimal research into that problem."
Yeah, I was filling up the car today and there was a strong waft of perfume, very strong. Looked around and there were no women in sight. Unless it was a bloke nearby filling up, the some woman was emitting a huge cloud of smells. I'm not sure there's much difference between people wearing lots of perfume, deodorant, aftershave etc and someone vaping. At least the vaper will take a few puffs and stop. The over-perfumed person standing in the queue next to you won't stop until they've gone, and even then it can a take a while for the smell to clear.
"But that's US, and I'm afraid US judges are terrorized by all those foreign countries inhabited by untrustworthy savages...."
Which is a little odd since most of them trace their ancestry back to the Rest of the World only 2-4 generations back (some more, some less, obviously). Likewise, the large numbers of USAians who identify as American-something based on where their great grandparents came from, and yet there seems to be a growing super-patriotism and an anti-rest-of-the-world sense coming from there. From this side of the pond, the general US attitude seems to be that the rest of the world is either Communist, Socialist, Fascist, Liberal or terrorist breeding grounds (all BAD THINGS(tm) and all need to be either attacked or are fair game for commercial fleecing backed by the might of the USA and the almighty dollar.
"Going electric means building a shed load of power generation and distribution infrastructure that simply does not exist, along with the standards to support them."
But, but, but, Da Guv has announced £400m for charging points and infrastructure. It must be real because it's been announced at least twice, possibly three times to imply it's 2 or 3 times more than it really is. I wonder how many new nuclear power stations we'll get for that?
"let it run on campuses"
My experience of driving around many and various UK university campuses is that it's way more complex than public roads, even city centres. Very poor signage and many, many pedestrians and cyclists wandering into the road at random points. It seems like the ideal place to test AVs.
I've not used Amazon Prime, but Netflix is shite. There's not enough content to keep me interested with a years worth of subscription. The month gift subscription was more than long enough to see all I wanted to see. All they do is pick the cream of what they can find, mix on a lot of skimmed milk to bulk it out.
Every content producer makes some gems and, to many peoples minds, lots of dross, although who thinks what is a gem and what is dross doesn't always overlap. The likes of Netflix don't produce much, though are starting to, they just use their buying power to put what they think is the best of the best all in one place so it appears they are better than the rest. Most of what Netflix have in their UK accessible library has already been broadcast elsewhere.
"Because I like downtown in the largest city in Canada I get 17 channels,"
Is that all? Pretty much the entire UK gets access to a lot more "free to air" than that via terrestrial digital or, for those areas not covered due to remoteness or signal blocking obstacles, via FreeSat.
(Ok, yes, it's not actually "free" in that the licence is required, but way more than 17 channels, even so, but then the Canadian "TV licence fee" is paid by everyone, TV owners or not, out of general taxation, but does work out cheaper.)
From the article...
"The bill is so broadly written that a violation of terms of service could possibly be construed as a criminal violation, and that would be improper delegation of powers."
I suspect there would be very, very few, if any, TOS violations ever brought officially to the attention of this law. It would expose the TOS to examination by the defence lawyers and no companies want those TOS or T&Cs to ever get in front of an actual court.
"Else we'd have to look at who deregulated banks (Barney Frank, Bill Clinton, both (D)) leading to the worse financial crash worldwide ever - and this is a tiny patch on that."
That's probably the best argument against Trumps policy (and hence Pai's) of deregulating business and industry. There may well be a case for light touch reduction of regulation where it may be identified as having been heavy handed in the past, but the current regime seems to be very much against all regulation.
PS, in case it's not clear, I'm not arguing against your point :-)
"would THAT be so eagerly and well reported on if it were favoring OTHER than a large media company like Sinclair ?"
I don't think you understand what "non-partisan" means. Pai isn't supposed to be favouring ANYONE. The story would be the same if he was favouring any specific individual or company.
"It may just be me, but my feelings are that all the scoundrels that have managed to take over the US since they bought the three branches - they are all trying to capture and horde their pieces of the cake before the door opens. I sure-as-fck hope that this shit gets clawed out of them and their mistresses and heirs and "business acquaintances" in as slow and painful manner as possible."
It does seem as though history is repeating itself. Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Morgen, Rockefeller etc were all in bed with the politicians back in the day and had the cash to make things go their way.
And don't just focus on the big bad and rich tech companies. There are plenty of other rich and powerful who are golf buddies with the elite politicos and senior officials.
"It does two things.. speeds up compile time and the machine code is "clean" since it doesn't have to process white space. "
Probably his first programming experience was interpreted BASIC where most of that would actually be true. It might even be true for early BASIC compilers like BASCOM on 8-bit CP/M
"How many of them do you think would stay in the ranks if ordered to move seriously against their own people?"
That's why the Romans took recruits from the conquered territories but sent them elsewhere to serve and fight. I doubt the US military could manage the same WRT to service people being sent only to areas out of their home range.
"For personal weapons, they had the same range and types as those in any military service of the time."
Are you arguing for personal ownership of nuclear armed cruse missile and hellfire armed drones? Maybe Apple, MS and Google could have their nuclear powered aircraft carriers and a squadron each of F35's.
"Simple answer - because the person invading your home won't have that kind of gun."
Are there any stats on how many home invasions have escalated into murders due to home-owners confronting armed intruders with their own guns as opposed to successful defence attempts? That would an interesting stat, whichever way it swings.
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