Posts by John Brown (no body)

Re: @Jamie Jones

"In Chicago maybe your guy is "johnsrefrigerationchicago.com" if you're lucky (and want to type all that) but you'd find it isn't and have to search anyway."

Of course, John as a local company, could go with the .us tld and possibly a state abbrev. sub-domain below the TLD eg johnsrefridgeration.ill.us .us seems to be remarkably underused.

Re: The whole thing's stupid

"There is no reason for the company to have dot-amazon. It's just polution."

I fully agree. Why would Amazon the company want a global domain anyway? They restrict access to users in various countries and re-direct them to their local ccTLD in many cases so a global .amazon TLD would almost certainly end u[ being used almost elusively as us.amazon, uk.amazon, fr.amazon, de.amazon, br.amazon etc. etc. etc.

Re: Lemme see...

"You missed the giant worms and the serious drug problem, but I suppose at least 50% of that is easily resolvable!"

Yes, enough of the right kind of drugs and you'll soon start seeing giant worms!

"Then launching 600,000 people to inhabit Mars in 100 years. Really? In the entire history of space flight, some 56 years, ~550 humans have gone into space, so about ten per year on average."

If you take the first 56 years of powered flight and average out the number of people who have flown per year, how realistic would the yearly average be compared to the number of people flying in 1966? Any number of new developments could happen over such a time period.

To throw some currently ridiculous suggestions into the mix, cheaply produced strong aerogels weighing next to nothing suitable for structural jobs, single stage to orbit "space planes" a la Reaction Engines plans, maybe something clever with high temperature superconductors.

Even rocket nozzles might be improved for all I know though we think we are pretty much at the pinnacle of nozzle design. That exhaust is coming out in a pretty chaotic fashion like water out of a hose. Maybe some bright spark will come up with materials and a design to improve the lamina flow like modern "dancing fountains" nozzles. Dunno, I'm not a physicist or materials scientist.

Re: Cost?

Great if they can really build it mostly out of materials already avaiable on Mars. Minimise weight, and then send a few robots to Mars to build the domes and have them ready before the colonists arrive"

Also a handy demonstrator of the technology required to build a new air-conditioned, oasis-like community for the local ruling elite when the oil runs out and temperatures rise. </tinfoil hat mode>

"Christ, I drive past TWO RAF stations on my way into work every day.... Literally alongside the airstrip!"

As do everyone driving up and down the A1 in Nth Yorks, barely 25yds from the boundaries of Catterick Garrison, RAF Leeming and RAF Dishforth. No doubt there are many other roads around the country putting much of the population into a similar situation.

For that matter, what does "in the neighbourhood" mean? GCHQ is almost surrounded by housing estates and the M5 isn't too far away.

"third party Twitter clients"

Errrrr what? You mean people don't send txt msgs to the Twitter number and get txt msgs back any more? How do I get this new fangled stuff working on my Nokia 5110?

"Or, to put it differently: managers of consultant organizations are quick to charge their customers for security services, but not as quick to pay themselves the security fees."

What;s even more sad, is these are the very companies doing the assessments for standards which in some cases are a legal requirement if you want to stay in business. You HAVE to pay them or their ilk for the service. Who does their assessments and who signed off on it?

Re: Irrelevant

"This is Uber's behaviour, quite apart from its usual 'bending' of the rules because it's a special "disruptor" company which thinks the rules don't apply to them."

The saddest thing of this sorry affair is that is exactly what so many people seem to see Uber as. A small start-up disrupter being stamped on by the bullyboys. They spend lots of money maintaining that image when the reality is the are a multi-billion dollar, multi-national mega-corp stomping on any rules they don't like, spending their way to success. The problem Uber has over other "innovative" start-ups who grew up too fast to mature into adults is that their business model really is a shaky house of cards. They can't undercut the competition by scaling up because the fixed cost part of the journey always stays the same, no matter how big you are. The only way they can undercut is by subsidising using the VC money.

Re: Irrelevant

"If VC's want to piss away money on Uber users, that sounds great to me: it's no business of the government or TFL."

Until Uber have pissed all over the competition and ended up a monopoly and suddenly decide they need to make back all those billions spent buying the monopoly.

Re: The N word

"The only actual distinguishing feature between liberalism, and neoliberalism, is the 'neo' part, which as anyone with a smattering of knowledge of the Greek language knows, means 'new'."

So are you saying the only difference between Labour and Tony Blairs New Labour was the word New?

"Usually the word is just thrown about as an insult without any attempt to actually clarify what it means."

Usually by people who don't actually know what it means.

Re: What a bunch of curmudgeons!

You'd all be the ones standing round saying things like "This fire is a waste of time, if you leave your meat on too long it turns to a cinder and, although it might be able to fend off a wolf or two, it burns my fingers every time I try to pick it up!"

Oh, stuff it up your nose!!

(Grateful thanks to one Mr. D Adams)

Compared to the standards of today. Compared to what prevailed previously, not so horrendous. Unless you count more abundant and affordable food, better housing, more affordable clothing etc. as "horrendous".

I'm well aware of being cautious about comparing "then" and "now", rather than "then" and "more then" :-) and am aware that that was also the era when some of the best changes for the better began to happen. I was simply pointing out that despite the great wealth around, not that much trickled down other than from individual philanthropists such as Salt, Cadbury etc. until quite late in the era when city and town councils eventually got around to incorporating and doing stuff, often with philanthropists donated money, land donated as public parks etc. or even by public subscription.

"Shame that if we'd just focused on the science instead of the in-fighting, and allocated the budgets accordingly, we could probably be 100 years or more ahead of where we are by now."

I get your point and I'd like to agree with it, but the really big money goes to the military. Without that, we'd be many years behind where we are now. Of course, if there was no military, things would be very different, which I suspect is what you mean, but I wonder if there would be the same drive for technology without the regular international conflicts? Look at Victorian Britain. The richest, most widespread empire the world has known and industrially the most advanced but the majority lived in horrendous conditions with the country as a whole little more than a cesspit.

Re: "congestion around here is caused more by parked cars than moving traffic"

"look , if there was a driver in there he could see you at all times. do you find that creepy?"

Only if his/her eyes glow with the "Recoding On" red LED indicator so they can keep a permanent recording.

Re: Is the idea not for taxis to be cheaper?

"With autonomous cars taxis could become much cheaper,"

But won't because "new technology", "safer" etc, so a premium will be charged, at least initially. Once critical mass is achieved, prices will tumble to kill off the remaining human driven taxis, then the prices will rice back up to "all the market will bear", possibly with a slight nod to competition when the newest incarnation of Uber and their ilk try to "disrupt" the new market.

Re: "congestion around here is caused more by parked cars than moving traffic"

"at least with a human driver people have to limit themselves most of the time."

I would expect that shared/hired AVs will have CCTV inside too. The owner will want to protect their investment. I think I find that a bit creepy. It's one thing for the taxi firm to know who you are, where you live, where and when you go places, but to have a CCTV pointed at your face at all times? And you just KNOW this is how it will work. Your choices will be a) accept it, be never use an AV "taxi" or c) be rich enough to have your own or pay for the "exclusive luxury" service.

Re: Good analysis here

https://www.londonreconnections.com/2017/understanding-uber-not-app/

An excellent and wideranging report on how Uber operates. It seems pretty balanced and objective too. It ought to be required reading for anyone commenting on any Uber story.

I think some of the most salient points raised there include the separation of the Uber companies, where the money goes, the fact Hailo and it's app was around at the same time because other minicab firms were already using apps, ie before Uber, and the outrageously unfair competition by operating at a loss of about 50% per journey to kill the competition. Having a "loss-leader" as part of your product line to get customers is one thing, but selling your entire product range at a 50% loss is surely unfair competition.

Uber seem to have done an Apple in terms of generating the impression they invented taxi apps when the reality is they spent $billions on publicity.

"What else is there to discuss? If Tfl wanted them to make changes then it would have already told Uber to clean up its act by way of a warning."

They have. Multiple times. Reported by El Reg. There's a search function at the top of the page.

Aaargh... endless Microsoft puns, I feel like I'm cortana loop...

You appear to be attempting to write a pun. Would you like some help with that?

Re: Ah, memories.

"One use that I *do* remember was printing off grids of greyish, round-edged squares to represent an enlarged line screen of a print job, then overlaying them and gradually rotating them until they produced a moiré."

I used that trick to show animated data flow paths by moving one slide over another. Then we got one of the monochrome LCD panels mentioned up-thread. As mentioned, you had to be careful with animations due to the rather slow refresh rates in those days.

Re: Ah, 'booking'

"Actually +1 is too generous, because it should have been sorcery not sourcery"

It the IT angle!