Posts by Mage

Re: why do I have to tell ... my address?

Because it's the law. The government decided.

Here you in Ireland you don't, though they want to introduce it, including

It's NOT a BBC Licence, they just happen to get most (but not all) the revenue. In the old BPO days when the Posts & Telegraph folk controlled everything, the BBC only got 2/3rds. It's a Television receiving apparatus licence. There used to be a loop hole where if you lived some place with no TV signals except foreign satellite (before BSB), you could get an exemption.

In the 1980s my company removed tuners from TVs so they could be sold as monitors not requiring a licence, for home computers etc, though one licence covers a household.

I think S4C gets some of the money. Does C4 get any?

A similar arrangement exists in many countries, though often part of the money is set aside for locally made TV for any local channel.

People are paying £300 to £600 a year for pay TV and then watching 92% free content on it, yet complain about the TV licence? Baffling.

Governments can tax whatever they like.

You should see what percentage of Road Tax and Fuel tax goes on roads. Tolls and Road Tax are totally stupid taxes. Simply taxing fuel would be more efficient, fairer and save consumer money for same revenue raised.

Lots of taxes make no sense. Like Corporation tax. Tax the actual human beneficiaries.

why microgravity should affect DNA

It's probably NOT about real changes to DNA, but apparent changes due to some unexpected effect of microgravity on the minION tester. It's an interesting bit of kit. See Wikipedia minION and related articles.

Good news that the gadget gives same the result on ISS.

Re: Infra-sound?

Been done already.

One version modulates fan noise.

Another version can to an extent monitor variations in system noise without any malware pre-loaded.

Re: Forward thinking

Upvote,except in 1979 the personal computer was well established, though the IBM PC didn't exist. 1976 was the start of home and desktop computers.

Re: A linux style macOS 'LiveCD' isn't going to happen*

Because after sale they make lots from iTunes with iOS users (and 1000s times more of them) and almost nothing after a MacOS sale.

Re: OUTLOOK.CRAP - Says it all

Has to match how rubbish the OS Outlook "lite" and MS Office Outlook are. The only reasons I can ever see for them is people using appointments/scheduling/calendar sharing via Exchange. Since the forever there ever was POP3, IMAP and SMTP mail, better free solutions than Outlook have existed. The PC clients at default settings were a magnet for malware. Why did MS think ActiveX on Internet facing programs was a good idea?

Re: We should use neither

Pi is a phone chip on a break-out board. It's for learning, hobby, prototypes. Any volume application is going to use a bespoke PCB.

At what Pi is meant to do, it's brilliant.

Arduino is best at the non-ARM end of simple AVR microcontrollers, similar in capability to PIC 16F and 18F (now bought by Microchip). The clumsy "shield" system is for people that can't solder a stripboard / vero and micro-controller on it. It's great at what it does for certain kind of hobby community. It's not directly comparable to the Pi, as entry level Arduino can't run Linux, they are a target. The Pi only needs screen, keyboard and mouse to be a beginner's development system and target.

The Arduino is as much a hobby system as Pi, but for a different demographic, though there is some overlap. I expect you can develop for an AVR based Arduino on a Pi, but not vice versa.

Re: Official announcement from the ministry of propa... communication

It's propaganda.

The NBS was supposed to bring Broadband to 10%, not one single broadband connection was delivered.

Then the RBS was a failure, because it only offered Satellite.

This plan was supposed to start years ago, they can't agree who is eligible.

Meanwhile Siro and Eir compete with UPC (Virgin Cable) and there are fake claims of fibre that are just fibre to exchanges by Eir.

Imagine's imaginary superfast fibre speed broadband isn't, it's Nomadic LTE on 3.6GHz.

I'd not applaud until we see fibre rollout outside urban areas that often have 200Mbps HFC via cable (UPC /Liberty licensing the Virgin name in Ireland since they bought UK Virgin Media).

Ireland outside cities compares very badly with BT's efforts in N.I., we'll see in 2020 if Rural Ireland has Broadband at all.

Re: "We’re not going to bring it back until there’s a fair rate."

Nothing to do with TIPP.

Why should big International companies decide how much tax to pay? Governments decide. The small or purely national company is at a disadvantage.

Tim Cook: Your company is one of the most greedy, but at least you are not as exploitive of privacy as some of the other greedy companies.

Why is Apple's profit margin nearly x4 on a phone and where are you paying tax and how much?

I've no sympathy. Shame on the Irish Government too, "aiding" one of the most profitable and successful companies on the planet. Lots of very profitable multinationals don't pay any more tax % or even less than Apple in Ireland by using different schemes. Mostly involving the Bahamas which are a UK controlled parasite.

Re: Not again .....

Out of Apple Warranty, or bought more than two years ago?,

EU SOGA, enacted into Law even in UK. Italy has fined Apple for selling 2nd year Warranties for iThings.

SOGA is two years minimum, manufacturing defects, not working as claimed, dishonest advertising etc. Retailer that sold it to you is responsible, which is only Apple if you bought on Apple Web site or Apple Store.

Re: Deja Vu

Some guys even went to the Moon. I remember watching the grainy B&W video.

I'm baffled. There is even an old wiki article

What is the real reason for these experiments?

Long term LEO radiation experiments have also been done on Mir, Spacelab and ISS.

On 31 August 1950, the U.S. launched a mouse into space (137 km) aboard a V-2 (the Albert V flight, which, unlike the Albert I-IV flights, did not have a monkey), but the rocket disintegrated because the parachute system failed.[5] The U.S. launched several other mice in the 1950s.

On 22 July 1951, the Soviet Union launched the R-1 IIIA-1 flight, carrying the dogs Tsygan (Russian: Цыган, "Gypsy") and Dezik (Russian: Дезик) into space, but not into orbit.[6] These two dogs were the first living higher organisms successfully recovered from a spaceflight.[6] Both space dogs survived the flight, although one would die on a subsequent flight. The U.S. launched mice aboard spacecraft later that year; however, they failed to reach the altitude for true spaceflight.

On 3 November 1957, the second-ever orbiting spacecraft carried the first animal into orbit, the dog Laika, launched aboard the Soviet Sputnik 2 spacecraft (nicknamed 'Muttnik' in the West). Laika died during the flight, as was intended because the technology to return from orbit had not yet been developed. At least 10 other dogs were launched into orbit and numerous others on sub-orbital flights before the historic date of 12 April 1961, when Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space.

On 13 December 1958, a Jupiter IRBM, AM-13, was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with a United States Navy-trained South American squirrel monkey named Gordo on board. The nose cone recovery parachute failed to operate and Gordo was lost. Telemetry data sent back during the flight showed that the monkey survived the 10G of launch, 8 minutes of weightlessness and 40G of reentry at 10,000 miles per hour. The nose cone sank 1,302 nautical miles (2,411 km) downrange from Cape Canaveral and was not recovered.

Re: selective wireless?

If a premises has mains electricity, then fibre can get there cheaper than the electricity install! Fibre can be retrofitted to existing sewers, water mains, electricity poles and even grid transmission lines.

The only arguments now for wireless are outside of premises mobility, or wilderness with no mains sewer or water or Electricity, or Line Of Sight Point to point links as backup for a big business ($1000 per month upwards).

I'm personally on 12km link 8Mbps fixed wireless access, simply because the incumbent Telco was asset stripped after privatisation. Installing 200Mbps to 1Gbps fibre for everyone would be cheaper than giving 500 premises here Wireless.

However the low price of data packages on Mobile, totally subsidised by Mobile voice calls, means that no-one will invest in fibre outside of cable areas.

Re: "not all printers are created equal"

Brother Inkjets & lasers replaced Epson Inkjets and HP lasers here, they got too cost reduced about 10 years ago.

Re: charge for driver updates after a while?

All the real Kindles are only USB storage!

You can connect it to XP, Win7, Linux and even Andriod phones or tablets via USB2Go adaptor cable if the Android device supports USB sticks that way.

It's not like one of those silly cameras that needs a driver, or like an iThing needing iTunes. You don't need ANY application other than a file browser, though I recommend Calibre (works almost all eReaders and many OSes).

How many other USB devices cause this?

Does turning off stupendously stupid autorun fix it?

Re: provide a more controlled environment.

Do railways first, then trams. Forget cars for now.

how many concurrent SIMDs the thing executes ?

Lots or many, I think, thinking of entire computer, not a chip. My brain needs cooled to count that far.