Posts by Mage

Re: It's Phil's fault!

Ah, that's why the EU is abolishing the twice a year clock changing!

Re: Your list

Coca Cola bought Costa. A match made in heaven.

Why aren't Trading Standards after McD in UK. They claim to serve meals and happy meals.

Virtual desktops have been available ... Win 10

Available to install on Windows as long ago as NT4.0, just not promoted by MS.

UNIX/Linux has ALWAYS theoretically had multiple desktops.

Explain again why I'd want the pseudo laptop / Cloud Terminal spyware from Google rather than Windows, MacOS or Linux?

Re: Health data is the missing piece for Google

No, they have already done dodgy deals with UK Health trusts.

However no way should anyone anywhere approve this. This serves three purposes:

1) Yet another buy in instead of development. Android was bought in and very successful for phones and tablets. Garbage on TVs and a disaster on wearables. Android & Chrome & ChromeOS replace the street view war-driving.

2) Gather even more personal data.

3) Compete with Apple in Apple's last niche, which having got off to a poor start the Apple Watch is inexplicably doing well.

Thus Google buying Fitbit was inevitable given failure of Android wearables/watch and growth of Apple smart watch. Also the Apple Watch has been adding health features.

Re: onus of proof.

It's not the same scenario as individuals charged under a criminal justice system, nor indeed civil law, where more often you do have to prove you didn't do wrong. It's a completely different issue especially as many big international companies are more powerful than countries and think laws don't apply to them at all.

See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_corporate_acquisitions_and_mergers

These lists are incomplete.

Victorian Antony Trollope saw a lot of this coming: "The Way We Live Now".

c.f. Dickens and "Little Dorrit".

Or John Brunner and "Shockwave Rider", far better than over hyped "Future Shock".

Maybe even Roland Perry "Program for a Puppet".

Which Corp is most like House Harkonnen?

Re: How much?

Smaller projects only need a spreadsheet and one manager that spends a few minutes a day or even per week updating it.

I used to give courses in MS Project and was appalled how many people were sent on the course with zero training in project management, or indeed in anything other than doing work set by a supervisor. Also it's better suited to NON-Software projects. Big ones.

Re: Not sure when the world got duped into this rental-only model

Long before PCs and minicomputers. Not just HW & SW, but um, buildings and cars too.

Sometimes leasing or rental makes sense. Not with most computer HW & SW for most businesses.Locks the small to medium into dependency on the Cloud Provider and ISP.

Risks the world infrastructure because if one retail chain, business or wholesale goes down it's no big deal. Even if the "Cloud" is 1000x more reliable (it's often less than decent on premises), then when it goes down it's an apocalypse.

Fortunately the tipping point of dependence has not yet been reached.

Set slightly in the future:

https://www.amazon.com/Silver-Lining-Celtic-Otherworld-Book-ebook/dp/B06Y26M8Z6

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/716453

Yes, it's got Fairies and Otherworlds, but I think the warnings about "The Cloud" are real.

During the minicomputer and PC era we went forward. Digital Equipment Corp developed cheap two PC clustering that only need a pair of ordinary servers, SCSI cards with two external ports, four external SCSI bus repeater/isolators for when a PC/SCSI card failed and two external racks of SCSI drives, mirrored, as a minimum. Windows NT 4.0 Enterprise Edition. Rather cheaper than a 1991 VAX cluster.

Outsourcing to the cloud and trusting the big USA mega corps is a backward step since that high point of development of on premises gear. Later you could use fibre and put the shelves, UPSes and servers in two separate sites.

Re: I would rent that!

Only to record, never to to play an existing recording.

When VHS & Beta was new I had an EIAJ 1/2" VTR. Some versions had a colour under adaptor. The surplus 1/2" spools of computer tape sort of worked transferred to empty reels. The late 1970s and early 1980s saw a mad variety of video machines on sale and in our service dept. A 1/4" colour reel to reel Akai, 1/2" EIAJ Panasonic cartridges, stacked spools in N1500 (a chassis that looked like made of meccanno) and N1700. The 3/4" Umatic. VHS and Betamax. The security machines based on VHS with a stepper motor to advance the tape slowly on record. The oft promised but never available Video 2000. The V2000 was a good idea but too hard to mass produce. Arrived too late.

Then ever so much later the S-VHS with more horizontal resolution. The last attempt was Digital VHS, but unlike the two main digital tapes on camcorders it never took off.

There was digital archive based on Video tape, hence 44.1KHz sampling for CD. Then the later helical based made for audio and computer archive machines.

The Digital 8mm camcorder than can play analogue 8mm via firewire is handy, but the Philips audio equivalent, the DCC that could play regular cassette tapes, like the Analogue Elcasette (1/4" audio cassette), was too late and too expensive. RCA did actually have a 1/4" audio cassette before the 1962 compact cassette, which predated the Lear Jet 8 track cartridge, only really popular in USA because of inclusion as standard on some cars.

Ah, memories!

Re: cut it because it was neither amusing nor interesting.

I wish I had a good editor like that for my books, though gradually after over 25 years I'm learning. Still need other people to at least beta read.

Also while I have strong views, perhaps an adventure story is the wrong place to preach.

Re: plugs and sockets designed to have correct polarity

Even in 1960s people plugged mad stuff into the two pin bayonet lamp socket.

People wire plugs wrong, hence law now to have a pre-fitted plug

People add and wire sockets wrong

I've even seen supply at meter wrong polarity.

UK & Ireland earth of neutral historically was substation in UK (so neutral might not be 0V at home) and at meter + earth spike in Ireland.

Also while the 13A rectangular pin shuttered socket system cam in maybe 1947, plenty of older UK houses in 1970s still had 2A, 5A, 15A round pins and mix of 2 pin and 3 pin plugs and sockets.

DVD rental

Inexplicably here in Ireland the local mall has recently acquired a DVD rental kiosk.

I do still have a S-VHS machine and recently found a VHS version of Metropolis for 30c. I doubt a DVD or download would be any better quality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolis_(1927_film)

I do wish the 42" HDR 4K TV had a Shrink or inverse Zoom for poor content such as 640 x 480 video games, VHS and early badly encoded CDi video.

Re: 32bit

It's not just about gaming.

It's about old applications that no-one is developing further.

People used to go on to other things or die or whatever and the application works well enough and has no equivalent. It's niche or needs special expertise in some field other than programming. So it's NEVER EVER going to have 32 bit dependencies removed or even be a 64 bit version.

I've 20+ year old software that no-one is going to write replacements for. Some works fine on 32 bit WINE on Linux but on no 64 bit version of Windows.

Re: An alternative solution

EU is part funding ferries direct Ireland with mainland Europe and an electricity connector with France.

The recent Irish budget suggests an impact of about €400 per person if Brexit. The UK cost might be about £2000 per person and the UK has about x20 the population.

The damage is asymmetrical. It will destroy the N.I. economy.

Re: borders to be regularised or smoothed out by mutual agreement

Ah, the famous 1922 Border Commission which was unable to operate!

So an IT system that doesn't exist and is unlikely to be be delivered on time and does nothing about deliberate smuggling or "criminality" by the "registered" users. Have they ANY idea how porous it is and how cross border shipping would be monitored?

The EU and Ireland will not ever agree to essentially an uncontrolled 3rd party border. This system can't even be as good as VAT collection and the UK has been doing that badly resulting in two kinds of VAT fraud between UK and rest of EU, often with a conned legitimate middle man in the supply chain.