Posts by Lotaresco

Re: Sad news.

It got worse when Thus plc introduced their "Crap Legal Team[1]" and started to accuse good customers of aggravated mopery and demanded that we all indemnify Demon for its legal costs - without limit. I voted with my feet at that point. It was obvious that under Thus, Demon had become one of the corporate walking dead.

[1] Mutated from "Crack Legal Team" by the users of demon.service

Re: Thanks, Pol Pot

"The only exception to this rule was Thailand -- I don't know how they got away with it but they've always been independent."

They "got away with it" because they were lucky to have a progressive King (Mongkut[1]) who could see the way that the wind was blowing during the mid 19th C and who modernised Siam extremely quickly. He also realised that Westerners had many hang-ups over social conventions and modernised traditional Thai dress and customs to conform to Western expectations. Neighbouring countries that tried to preserve their customs were regarded by Westerners as "primitive" and therefore fit to be conquered by military means or by missionaries. Mongkut tamed both Western military and Western missionaries and adopted Western education in science and technology meaning that the Western powers largely left Siam alone because it was seen as "one of us."

A very clever and cunning man who also managed the royal succession extremely well, ensuring the continuity of the monarchy and the maintenance of Thai idependence.

[1] The King who features in "The King and I" musical.

"Never in a million years would I trust that much data to mechanical hard drive. Impressive feat, but no thank you."

I've been trusting much more data to mechanical hard drives for at least a decade. Given that my drives are configured as RAIDs their failure rate is actually higher than that of a single drive. It would make sense to have high capacity drive for either nearline or offline backup. Locating the drive in another building would improve the odds of not losing everything in a single incident.

"This isn't about pron, as Facebook & Instagram actively block it anyway."

I must be imagining all the pron that is being shown on Facebook then. The few technical groups that I read on FB are plagued with images that appear to be from gynaecology textbooks on how to remove (or is it insert?) objects in orifices. These are sponsored images which means Facebook is getting paid for them and is reluctant to remove them.

Re: Funding

"REAL Brexiteers (not their dupes) moved to Monaco."

Not all of them. Nigel Lawson led the fearless opposition to the EU from his holiday home in France, then applied for a carte de séjour to facilitate his permanent settled status in France post Brexit.

Re: Brexit got done

"It showed how we were overpaying for food (as was established before the referendum)"

Just remind me:

Have food prices gone down or have they increased since Brexit?

Has the quality and choice of food in supermarkets improved or declined?

Are Brexiters rushing out to pick all that lovely homegrown produce that they raved about, or are they letting it rot in the fields because they can't be bothered to get off the couch?

And of course are British fishermen now facing a sales bonanza now that we have "taken our fish back" or are they going out of business and selling their boats, nets, and quotas?

PLACE BETS NOW!!!

Re: The big problem is

"the tories run around believing they're in god's own country of the 1950's"

Before the referendum Brexiters were shouting at me that they wanted to go back to the 1970s "before we joined the EU(sic)". I warned them that having lived through the 1970s they would not like the experience. However to them it was a mythical far off land full of friendly coppers, thatched cottages, long summer days, lashings of ginger beer, Butlins, golden beaches, donkey rides and no money worries. The fact that if they were old enough to remember the 1970s that they would have been children, therefore unaware of politics or economics and feather bedded by their parents didn't penetrate their thinking.

I warned them that in truth the 1970s were awful with rapidly declining manufacturing, coal mines running out of coal, education starting a long downhill slide, runaway inflation which was in fact "stagflation" with rising wages, rising unemployment, declining manufacturing output, hyperinflation, declining living standards, profound social unrest, and regular shortages of power and fuel.

And here we are just over a year from "Brexit" and the 1970s are coming home to roost.

Re: Brexit got done

"The UK did NOT have the option of joining EFTA."

Not actually true, but if it makes you feel better. The UK didn't even begin negotiations to join EFTA. Not only that but they were desperate to stay out of the Customs Union. The ERG is terrified of everything "foreign" and does not want the UK to behave like a civilised nation that negotiates treaties with equals. The ERG fondly imagines that they will issue orders and the world will fall into line, desperate to do trade with Glorious Brexit Britain. Reality is however somewhat different as trillions of pounds are leaving the UK economy.

Re: Brexit got done

"And it is working remarkably well. Northern Ireland has enjoyed something it hasn't enjoyed since it was founded a century ago, being the UK's fastest growing region"

Wait! What is that you said? That NI is the fastest growing region in the UK because it has remained inside the EU Customs Union? That NI's interests are best served by being unified with the Republic of Ireland? That's a remarkable moment of scales falling from the eyes, isn't it?

Re: One sub postmaster's story

"They work exactly as you describe - pedestrians have right of way at entries and exits (so traffic stops and let them cross), and cyclists go around the outside and traffic waits before making a right turn across the bike lane (equivalent of a left turn in the UK)"

Here in Italy, priority goes to whoever gets there fastest in the most powerful/largest vehicle. So pretty much like the UK.

Re: "Where does it say that's happening?"

"richtingaanwijzers"

The direction pointers? I'm liking that better than "indicators".

Re: The big problem is

"Smoke me a kipper, boys, I'll be back for Brexit!" -- Ace Rimmer

The problem being that Johnson isn't even Ace Rimmer, he's more like his alter ego, Ace Hole.

Re: we're in a holding pattern, with our association not being granted

"UK companies can still be involved in Galileo, just not in the secret military part of it."

It's worth remembering that it was the British government that insisted that third countries could not take part in the development and implementation of the military aspects of Galileo. Petard, own, hoist; as is so often the case with this government.

Re: Funding

"You'd be surprised at the amount of stuff spoken in English at CERN over pints. Some of it is even science-related at times."

I'm currently working on a big science programme in France, not too far from CERN. My home is very close to LNGS in Italy. One of the pleasures of this life is that both places have good bars selling real beer (there's an award winning microbrewery near LNGS). And the Brits have managed to exert a malign influence on our European colleagues that has persuaded them that a pint and a chat are great for team building. I used to work in Vaud at one time and I still miss Friday evenings in the fish and chips restaurant at Rolle. English was the main language but for social/domestic use it was essential to learn French, German and Italian.

I recall in the 1980s in Switzerland being astonished that in a French speaking canton, error messages for telephone calls were German only. My Swiss colleagues just shrugged and said "We have to learn German to do admin!"

Re: Lamentable Funding

"Look up 'The brain drain' from previous decades."

Quite. Twenty years ago the then Tory government started the closure of the research institution where I worked. This was the second time that a Tory government worked hard to shut down my research funding and the third time that a Tory government had decided to tell me that I was not needed in the UK as a (then) healthcare researcher. I still have a personal letter from Patrick Jenkin telling me that the NHS didn't need medical researchers and that it was "not the role of the NHS to fund unemployment". I left the country to work in Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and France where I found that these countries and the EU actually value academic research and fund programmes for the long term. Also academic researchers within the EU have status, whereas in the UK politicians treat science research with contempt.

Why would any researcher want to stay in the UK?

Re: Brexit got done

"Like Switzerland and Norway The later having been invited to join several time and always said no"

Norway applied to join the European Communities in 1973 (ie not "invited") but the country rejected membership in a referendum. Despite this, both Norway and Switzerland are within EFTA and within Schengen. Both implement EU directives. The UK had the options of remaining in the customs union, joining EFTA, joining Schengen. The current government's haste and xenophobia got us into the current mess on the promises of unicorns and cake for all.

Re: Equality

"Also, try getting published without the right 'credentials'."

I published my first scientific paper in the 1970s when I had no "credentials" at all (did you mean "qualifications" BTW? I didn't have those either at that time) and was 20 years old. I worked evenings in a laboratory and was allowed to perform my own research project. At the end of the work I was encouraged to publish. It's still my most cited work, fifty years after publication.

OTOH unless you have performed genuine research, done the appropriate literature searches and have argued your point cogently then you will fail peer-review and not get published.

A friend's son is in his mid-teens he has neither credentials nor qualifications. Yet he is happily publishing papers in mathematics and computing and these have been accepted by leading academic publications.

"Stupidity is not a sin and not prohibited in law. "

Stupidity is frequently prosecuted in law. To that extent it is prohibited in law. It is referred to as "negligence", a failure to perform the actions that a reasonable person would have taken to avoid serious or fatal consequences. This can range from civil consequences - causing injury or property damage by negligence is a tort - to criminal consequences, causing death or serious injury by negligence is manslaughter or negligent homicide depending on the jurisdiction and the circumstances. The threshold for deciding if negligence applies is what most people would consider to be a definition of stupidity.

"A failure to behave with the level of care that someone of ordinary prudence would have exercised under the same circumstances."

Also worth noting that stupidity is often a capital offence when it involves the laws of nature. For example, getting into a cage with a hungry tiger.

Re: Clearly it should be millepedes or millepeda

"At 1,760 yards, I wonder who's pace is 1.76 yards long."

My remembery is that the pace is actually two steps. Also that professional Roman pacers used a hodometer, a version of a distance measuring wheel which measured distances of 5,000ft (one Roman mile).

Re: a small step

"Oh, they do. There's several neutrino detectors, including one that (mistakenly) measured them going slightly FTL."

That has happened twice now, with two different detectors. The first time was with the INFN OPERA experiment, later attributed to a loose fibre optic cable. The second time was with the Fermilab MINOS experiment, which gave a mean neutrino speed of 1.000051c; the 99% confidence interval was 0.999976c to 1.000126c.