Posts by Mage

Re: Competition?

The Germans have a hot sausage vending machine.

The Wurst time to be alive!

Re: decisions like "we use QNX"

QNX isn't the problem.

It's a quite good OS and a pity RIM/Blackberry bought it. Used to be used for storage controllers and real time industrial controllers.

I'd like to see it either OS, or owned by someone more generic than Blackberry. Would be nice alternative to Linux for I/O based controllers that only optionally have a GUI.

Linux is OK, but there is too much of a mono-culture.

swallowed cyanide and then shot himself

Before or after setting fire to the room / bunker?

Re: I can take a stab at it..

Also older US corporations, some governments and US Universities have actually enough IP4 addresses they don't need (often 16 million each) that might last the Internet 20 to 100 years.

So every time the IP4 are exhausted, mysteriously they are not.

Lucky to get 192 on DAB

It's 128K for stereo here in Ireland, which is an insult.

Re: The NHS has no tech, no data-centric or tech-centric organisation

Don't they already outsource to Capita, who must in turn outsource because who are the the experts in Capita?

Re: carriers sell the data to services

So another example of how the USA prioritises profits of corporations over the rights of individuals?

FCC needs reformed, and for all the MANY failings of ITU (19th C taken over by UN), DNS, Domain stuff, IP addresses obviously should be under ITU, not ICANN/US Corporations.

Crazy.

Re: indiscriminate due to the technologies of the day?

No. Nothing to do with inadequate technology!

Churchill DELIBERATELY targeted civilian areas of German cities as part of the strategy to distract Luftwaffe from bombing UK airbases in Battle of Britain. Perhaps he remembered the Zeppelin raid on London in WWI. Hitler then ordered development of the V weapons, which ironically killed x10 as many workers (mostly slaves) as targeted civilians. Putting the resources into subs and aircraft would have been more effective.

The firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo were war crimes. The Tokyo conventional bombing killed more civilians than the atomic bomb. Neither atomic bomb was needed. There was no need to repeat Okinawa, just simply blockade and watch the Russians advance. The Russians had declared war only a few weeks previously and were rapidly advancing. They were moving vast amounts by rail from the European front after VE day.

Battery & Polling

This is a nonsense reason. The country or the mast location has in reality no bearing on how often the system should poll a server. Also those sort of parameters (like regular email client pop3 checking) should be under user control.

Which messages anyway? We should know.

Re: Edwin Armstrong

Actually the Superhet was a French invention, and based on mathematics anyway. There is argument that Superhetrodyne and FM should not have been patentable as they are ultimately mathematical ideas. RCA should never have had either patent.

Patents, especially in the USA since the Victorian era, favour big corporations as they can afford a team creating them and lawyers to defend them. They are pretty useless to individuals unless they can quickly sell to a corporation. The USA USPTO is totally broken as they are uninterested in properly searching prior art, novelty, unobvious to those skilled in the art etc as they get more money from approvals than rejection. Their system is built round the idea of the Patent later being tested in Court. Obviously the Richer and US native company will win.

Copyright isn't as tricky but can be bypassed as you can't protect the idea. Again the main problem is big corporations. Google will assume works are orphaned or Public Domain unless a massive Corporation threatens them. They and Wikipedia only care about their OWN content. Hollywood, photo libraries, etc wants to extend forever and claim small guys infringe when they don't. DRM is contrary to the concept of Copyright. It should be illegal.

A good design patent / Registered design is a special sort of copyright. Again it favours the big company, but even there they need a unique shape (coca-cola bottle), or a mis-spelled word (Lyft) or made up word (Kleenex), or a custom design of logo / font face.

The solution isn't abolishing IP, but reforming the system.

Re: Ireland is no California when it comes to sunshine.

Entire weeks with no wind over most of western Europe, inc Ireland. Wind needs 100% backup of other sources and isn't scaleable to much more than 10% when it is there.

Also weeks with grey sky or rain. West of Ireland has about x6 the rainfall of Dublin. There is already about as much hydroelectric as is feasible. Ireland is pretty flat in the middle with most mountains around the edges. Hence bogs.

Iceland is a better choice for datacentres. Or Northern France. Ireland is only an artificial choice.