Posts by gizmo23

Arthur C. Clarke quote

"Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying." ®

I don't think so. There can be thousands of technologically advanced civilisations in the rest of the universe and it would make no difference to us whatsoever. All the tests we've done so far have supported Einstein's theories (the latest from Ars: https://arstechnica.co.uk/science/2017/06/einstein-still-annoyingly-right-as-researchers-weigh-white-dwarf/) so the speed of light is still the limit.

That means realistically, our chances of communicating with any civilisation more than a hundred light years away is pretty much zero. And space is way bigger than that*. Even if we only consider our own galaxy, there's room for dozens of civilisations like us, all of which are too far away for us to talk to in any meaningful time frame. So not so terrifying after all.

*Douglas Adams quote goes here.

what?

"I am less aware of products I want."

What?? I mean just what?

PDP

My immediate thought was "They're running their network on a PDP?!"

Haven't had to support one of those in *cough* years. An 11/23 with RL02's IIRC.

Microsoft instructions

I haven't read through all 5 pages of comments so this may have been mentioned already but has anyone tried

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3080351 ?

This seems to have the instructions you need to turn off upgrades

(including a registry key HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate

DWORD value: DisableOSUpgrade = 1)

I've got an original Moto G, I like it, but a new phone would be nice, the camera could be better.

Oh noes! They're all over 5" screen!

Does anyone make a phone that's less than 5" that isn't a crippled version of their "flagship"?

You have no idea

Worst airport by far: Caracas. Built in the 80's on the back of the oil money and not updated since. Unless something has happened in the last couple of years.

Astronomy

Seems to me this goes with the article about the kilometre array that's going to generate enormous amounts of data.

Compute performance

With super-low-power processors like this I wonder what kind of compute peformance you would get with a device made up of say 1024 of these (or any other LP core for that matter). If they're only 2.2mm square then the box would be roughly 250mm x 70mm (CPUs laid out on a grid 64 x 16 about 4mm per processor). I presume there are serious limitations like I/O rather than heat and other engineering considerations otherwise someone would have already done it right?

+1 to Lewis for "guffblurt"

money

A bit OT but related. Hollywood depiction of money transfers with a progress bar. Like there's some funnel of cash going down a tube. A million is bigger than a thousand so it takes longer, right?

And the dramatic tension idea that if you pull the connection half way through 'cos the bad guys are kicking the door in then you only get half the cash.

remake?

Looks more stylish than Ip man (2009). Is Tony Leung better than Donnie Yuen? Wouldn't like to call that one, myself.

Linux?

Springseed looks interesting, I need a note taking application.

Oh. Only available for Ubuntu, so the package is .deb format.

Ubuntu != Linux

Doesn't seem to work on my Fedora install.

Not the same

Silicon and silicone and wildly differing substances. Would be quite interesting if we could make CPUs out of silicone though.

Over budget

The Aspire project is over budget! And in other news a government research project into the religious beliefs of the Pope concludes that Christianity may be involved. When I was at Fujitsu (not on Aspire) the client PMs either didn't understand that once the contract was signed, ANY changes cost money or they didn't care that they were spending their own money (as taxpayers).

I don't see the distinction between a "top" story and a "most read" story. I'd like the option to view in chronological order, or including the date/time in the heading would be good. Sometimes it's a few days between visits, so I'd like to know how old a story is straight away. Other than that the layout looks OK on both nexus 7 and moto G with stock chrome. IMHO.

TSV

Didn't nVidia have a bit of a problem with through-vias a while ago? Presumably they've got past those issues now. My memories of the bump thing's a bit hazy, anyone else remember details?

Bandwidth

I think the cost of the bandwidth needed to punt your 100 GB per day (or whatever) to the cloud isn't insignificant, and when you need to retrieve a couple of terabytes to search for that email your salesdroid sent confirming some contract clause was ok, then the speed could be an issue. Ok so tape's not super fast but read speed isn't subject to external network contention caused by person+dog downloading the latest cute kitten video.

Clock speed?

Now I've seen it all. An article about a new processor chip and nowhere in it is the clock speed mentioned. So, if the chip speed isn't relevant, just the number of threads you can throw at a job, the new boxes built around this must be aimed at particular workloads. There's a limit to how much parallelisation you can do so it seems to me we're talking about crunching lots of data. In which case, how about the external interfaces? With this amount of CPU, 4 x 8Gb fibre ain't going to cut it. Anyone got any ideas as to just what kind of workload this is aimed at 'cos I'm struggling to imagine it.

Where's the "my mind has just been boggled by these numbers" icon?

sir henry

I see your reference.

I reckon that the primary functions of a phone are to have good sound (voice, not music) and to keep a good signal. I get infuriated when my phone shows 3 bars of signal until I hit the call button and presto! Suddenly I'm in the middle of a previously-undetected dead spot.

Search?

What do I do if I don't have a Win key on my keyboard?

No, seriously, my favourite keyboard is the one that I've used for years (funny that) and it doesn't have a funny key with four-square flag thing on it. Do I fiddle with the keymap or something?

Fiscal third quarter 2013?

That's forecasting!

Head crunching numbers

So, off the top of my head the sun's power is about 3 x 10^26 W and there are about 10^11 stars in our galaxy...

and to top it all, it's 100 times more power than that which is 3 x 10^39 W, divide by c^2 (lets say 10^17) equals 3 x 10^22 kg of matter converted to energy per second... And as the Earth's mass is approx 6 x 10^24 kg that's 1/200 the mass of the earth converted from matter to energy every second.. ooh my brain hurts

Lockheed and defence/defense

I'm just wondering if the increased attention is partly due to the apparent ease with which Gary McKinnon got through the DoD's defences. OK so Lockheed != DoD exactly but some Black Hats reckon it's worth a try.

Old stuff

A bit OT here but just last week I went to see my Mum who had written down a list of jobs for me to do while I was over and she had written it on the back of an 80-column punched card, one of several hundred I gave her when I was doing Fortran.

I still think that if IBM had made their PC/workstation based around the 68000 instead of the 8088/86 then the processing power we'd have had on the desktop in the 90's would have been greater by a factor of 2 or 3. Most 386's were still running 8-bit code when Intel introduced the 486. Intel made the transition from 8-bit to 16-bit to 32-bit take far longer than it would have done if we'd started out with the 32-bit (internal) 68000.

Just my 2p.

Not any time soon

I remember working at a car technology demonstration show sometime in the early eighties where Ford showed all the cool stuff they were going to fit to their cars in the future. This included the LED rear lights (took about 20 years) and multiplexed wiring loom (still waiting). I was one of the crew who pushed the demonstator model car onto the stage because the battery was flat and was in the back of the engine compartment and so could not be replaced without dismantling most of the dashboard assembly.

Based on this statistically significant sample of one I'd say "don't hold your breath".

Slider key boards better

The best *keyboard* I ever used (on a phone) was the Sony Experia X1. However it ran Windows mobile which drove me nuts. It used to switch off the phone function just when I answered a call. Currently using a HTC Desire Z which is very good but would be nicer with an upgrade to Android. Other Half loves her Blackberry Torch slider, though.

"Cyber" Command

Does anyone know how much cybernetics Cyber Command will be commanding for the defence of the virtual free world? S'pose that should be defense in this case.