Re: If your hardware is rusting...
So in 3 years they'll break even. What's your issue with that?
In two years, they'll do it all again... :-(
Vic.
Posts by Vic
5860 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Dec 2007
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BBC bins pricey Windows Media, Audio Factory goes live
Back seat drivers fear lead-footed autonomous cars, say boffins
Monday 16th February 2015 21:51 GMT
Re: Roller coasters
At motorway speeds recommended distances are more to do with reaction time than actual stopping distance.
Errr - no.
Reaction times are fairly constant, so reaction distance rises linearly with speed.
Braking distance is essentially[1] proportional to energy, so rises with the square of speed.
On motorways, of course, most people are driving very much closer than their actual stopping distances, so you're relying on unusual events not occurring. That's a big part of the reason for huge pile-ups...
Vic.
[1] I'm ignoring oddness like brake fade, etc.
Monday 16th February 2015 21:39 GMT
Re: cough @stucs
I can see why it might alleviate car sickness, and why it might not. Anyone know?
It depends on whether or not you can see a true horizon.
Travel sickness occurs when the inner ear describes one sort of motion, and the visual system another - such as when you're inside a vehicle, or when you're reading whilst moving. In evolutionary timescales, such a condition only occurred when you'd been poisoned - and the solution to that is obvious. Travel sickness is a mechanism evolved to protect you from poisoning.
So with a HUD, if you can see the outside, you'd probably get away without sickness, But I can't imagine reading would be much fun...
Vic.
'Come on, everyone – block US govt staff ogling web smut at work'
Tiger Moth: Old school flying without all those pesky flaps, brakes and instruments
Monday 9th February 2015 13:16 GMT
Re: No flaps?
isn't it like the tale of Goldie Locks and the Three Angles of Attack?
I suspect you mean "Glide Slope".
Angle of Attack only really has two states - less than the critical angle, or more than the critical angle. An aerofoil with an AoA greater than the critical angle is stalled. If you didn't do that deliberately, that might well be a problem...
Vic.
Sunday 8th February 2015 23:44 GMT
Re: No flaps?
To land, how does one slow to a safe speed *and* maintain safe descent rate w/o flaps?
Practice :-)
Flapless descents are standard practice, and are a required capability for the PPL, even if you're flying an aircraft fited with flaps. They're very useful if it's a bit tubulent on approach...
This is the aircraft I've had most fun in. It has no flaps either...
Vic.
Saturday 7th February 2015 23:59 GMT
Re: Oh dear
Now I have to book a flight.
That's exactly how I feel...
I'm still trying to find someone that flies Tiger Moths at more reasonable prices, though - I'm used to getting an hour in a Decathlon for under £200. Old Sarum offered me a 20-minute sortie for about the same amount[1]...
Vic.
[1] The museum to which I belong is right next door to Go Fly. I went in and interrogated them.
IEEE rubber-stamps new patent policy
Friday 13th February 2015 01:02 GMT
Re: What about open products ?
If I compile and give a binary to someone will I be liable for license fees ?
From the GPL v2 :-
"if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program"
Vic.
NSA lays out its reforms post-Snowden (they can fit on back of a stamp)
Ex-squeeze me? Baking soda? Boffins claim it safely sucks CO2 out of the air
Monday 9th February 2015 13:12 GMT
Re: Carbonates are how the Earth deals with excess CO2
As long as the oxygen content remains high enough, CO2 levels pretty much doesn't matter - the lungs won't absorb it.
That's completely untrue. CO2 in the inspired gas *will* be absorbed - or at least it will prevent CO2 from the body being expelled. It's just that hypercapnia is a prefeable condition to hypoxia.
Some complain of a headache if exposed to several percent of CO2 for hours, but that may be due do other contaminates in the air
No - hypercapnia is an issue. It leads to an assortment of symptoms - the worst, IMO, being panic in hyperbaric situations. This has undoubtedly led to the deaths of quite a few divers.
Only when CO2 displaces O2 is there a real problem - but that would be true of ANYTHING.
Again - untrue. Try breathing a normoxic O2/CO2 mixture. You'll only take a couple of breaths before you get into respiratory distress[1]. It's a horrible thing to go through.
backfill the coal mines where you extracted it to begin with.
And what form are you going to use to store it? Something soluble? That'll be nice for your water table.
Vic.
[1] The urge to breathe in just about everyone[2] is driven by blood pH. CO2 in your body dissolves in the blood, leading to carbonic acid, which lowers that pH. The lower the pH, the greater the urge to breathe. Carbon dioxide is an active chemical in our lives; it would be an enormous mistake to consider it an inert gas.
[2] There are, apparently, a (very) few chronic CO2 retainers whose ability to determine blood pH has failed. I'm fairly sceptical of this, but I've not bothered to research it in detail, as it's not going to apply in the environment[3] in which I'm going to be involved...
[3] Diving :-)
$10,000 Ethernet cable promises BONKERS MP3 audio experience
Monday 9th February 2015 15:16 GMT
how they could possibly claim Ethernet is directional, is beyond me - regardless of what data it is that's travelling down the cable - an ack needs to be sent back for every packet - making it bi-directional?
Each pair only sends data in one direction - that's why it's full-duplex; you have a separate pair for each direction of travel.
That said - current flow in each pair is *still* bi-directional...
Vic.
Ofcom can prise my telly spectrum from my COLD, DEAD... er, aerial
Monday 9th February 2015 12:49 GMT
Re: "Broadcast is efficient" Badvoc
I was refering to the fact that I am sure most streams are not 50i or 25p
...In which case, I have absolutely no idea why you introduced temporal compression to the discussion, since that is entirely orthogonal to the framerate and interlacing of the video.
Vic.
Saturday 7th February 2015 17:57 GMT
Re: "Broadcast is efficient" Badvoc
Also I am sure there is temporal compression as well.
There's temporal compression on almost all forms of digital TV. Those that don't use it (e.g. MJPEG) are not useful for broadcast, as they do not achieve the compression ratios necessary to get a reasonable image quality with the data rates available.
Vic.
Saturday 7th February 2015 17:46 GMT
Re: "Broadcast is efficient"
Does anyone watch the "shopping and fucking" ... channels?
Yes. People do.
QVC, for example, is one of the biggets moneyspinners in digital TV. That's why they put so much effort into making it perfect[1], even if the decoder isn't working correctly...
Vic.
[1] For example, the A/V sync is largely maintained by transmission time. So even if your PTS sync is badly broken - as it was originally in all the early Sky boxes, because it was broken in the ST reference tree - the lip sync is still pretty much there.
Plane crash blamed on in-flight SELFIES
Sunday 8th February 2015 00:17 GMT
Re: So wait
as did the loss of control and stall.
From the sound of it, he didn't just have a bit of a stall - the rate of descent implies an uncontrolled spin. Which, given the fact that he appeared to be part-way through a climbing turn when it happened is somewhat understandable.
I was reading some FAA materials on spinning[1] a few weeks back - the upshot of one report was that, if you spin at 1200ft or less, it doesn't matter who you are; you're going to crash.
Vic.
[1] I was about to go on my first spin lesson. It was one of the most exciting things I've ever done :-)
Helium HDD prices rise way above air-filled spinning rust
Saturday 7th February 2015 18:53 GMT
The Helium on Earth isn't just "floating around". There isn't enough gravity to keep it in the atmosphere.
Really? What gives it upthrust once it reaches the edge of the atmosphere, then?
There is a finite amount available in recoverable reservoirs
There's still plenty. The amount used in hard drives won't make any difference to world stocks.
Vic.
First look: Ordnance Survey lifts kimono on next-gen map app
Saturday 7th February 2015 15:12 GMT
Re: For what it's worth, my hiking map solution:
Lamination is relatively expensive, can still suffer water penetration
I guess that must depend on how you do your lamination; when diving, I generate tables[1] for the dive and laminate them. I've never suffered from water ingress, despite using the same tables many times on fairly deep dives...
Vic.
[1] with DDPlan - thanks Gordon!
O2 notifies data cops 'for courtesy' ... AFTER El Reg intervenes in email phish dustup
Breaking news: BBC FINALLY spots millions of mugshots on cop database
Microsoft tells big biz: No free Windows 10 for you, crack wallets open
Tesla bumps up Model S P85D acceleration – with software update
Apple CEO: Fandroids are BINNING Android in favour of IPHONES
ICANN CEO criticizes domain 'hoggers'
Tuesday 3rd February 2015 17:14 GMT
Re: Times like this...
Hope to see them gone forever
No chance. There's way too much money in it.
A few years ago, I was approached by a domain squatter to build him a new capture system - the old one was now being outpaced by others in the same game. Technically, it looked like an interesting job. My refusal was on ethical grounds...
Vic.
Great Firewall of China blasts DDoS attacks at random IP addresses
Tuesday 3rd February 2015 16:38 GMT
What weak spot of the DNS system are we talking about here?
Most DNS lookups are simple UDP packets without even so much as a serial number. So a client asks the question, and accepts the answer with no way to know whether or not the response is trustworthy. Thus a bad actor can send incorrect responses and subvert the DNS system. To make matters worse, it can flood out such responses even before the question is asked...
There are ways to improve on this - but they are very far from widespread.
Vic.
El Reg Redesign - leave your comment here.
I ain't afraid of no GHOST – securo-bods
Thursday 29th January 2015 20:21 GMT
"Without a reboot, services using the old library will not be restarted"That's the problem right there.
Not really - it's not actually true.
Services must be restarted, but that's a trivial matter. The machine as a whole does not need to be rebooted in the short term; this might, of course, lead to certain daemons still running the old code, but the attack surface is minimised and the public-facing services left running the patched version.
Restarting web, mail and other network services takes less than a minute all in.
Vic.
Is it humanly possible to watch Gigli and Battlefield Earth back-to-back?
Wednesday 28th January 2015 10:23 GMT
Re: Mine...
And I thought that Starship Stormtroopers was bad enough
Starship Troopers was an excellent movie. It just wasn't the moviue most people seem to think it was.
If you saw ST as an action romp, with the good guys shooting up the evil aliens - you missed the whole point of the movie. It is a satire. It is a reflection on a society entirely beholden to its military, unable to see the evil it is perpetrating.
The sequels, howver, were total unadulterated crap. Despite having Jolene Blalock in one of them.
Vic.
Copycat drug souk Silk Road 2.0: Another man cuffed
Telcos try to head off net neutrality rules with legislation
Which of UK's major ISPs will let you have exotic p0rn? NONE OF THEM
Warning: Using encrypted email in Spain? Do not pass go, go directly to jail
Tuesday 20th January 2015 21:25 GMT
Re: Another reason for Google to leave Spain
It's sort of like a cop stopping you for speeding, and then adding the broken headlight.
It isn't - it's like a cop stopping you for (allegedly) speeding, then adding in the fact that you have headlights which could be used for nefarious purposes.
Vic.
Scary code of the week: Valve Steam CLEANS Linux PCs (if you're not careful)
Tuesday 20th January 2015 21:07 GMT
Re: Don't use rm directly
find ${start} -type f -user ${user} -name <reg-exp> -print | xargs rm -f
Don't do that!
You will get unexpected results if you have filenames with spaces in - potentially leading to a name-clash that will wipe out the wrong directory.
If you must use such things, use the -print0 flag, and supply the -0 arg to xargs.
Vic.
Tuesday 20th January 2015 21:02 GMT
Re: Achievement unlocked: The Scientist!
Legend has it there was once a comment in the UNIX kernel that said "You are not expected to understand this."
I once left the following comment in code I wrote for a customer :-
# This next bit is evil. Look away now.
Vic.
[ It was evil - it was a nasty perl bless to sort out an error in CGI.pm, which doesn't return filehandles from multi-part uploads in the way the docs say it should. ]
Tuesday 20th January 2015 20:55 GMT
Re: script write should have checked.... but
Should have been seen with at least one review, especially with the comment.
I was working somewhere last year where a near-identical piece of code was submitted for review.
Of course, every reviewer screamed at it. But the coder complained to his management that he was getting a hard time, and management then *insisted* that the code be used. So it went live.
That particular code didn't go to external customers, but it will cause the system to melt down eventually...
Vic.
Peers warn against rushing 'enhanced' DATA SLURP powers through Parliament
Wednesday 14th January 2015 18:24 GMT
Re: Fast track
There shouldn't be any fast track. For any legislation. All legislation should face thorough scrutiny and debate before being passed
*Very* occasionally, emergency legislation does need to be passed. *Very* occasionally.
In such a case, any such legislation should have a maximum duration related to the length of time it had for scrutiny - with no extension permissible. A non-subvertible sunset clause...
Vic.
Sony boss: Nork megahack won't hurt our bottom line
Monday 12th January 2015 20:39 GMT
Re: If what I've heard about the Sony hack is true, then he's full of hooey
Supposedly 15K servers were destroyed (not just infected or erased, but actually rendered non-operational)
The thing about attacks such as this one is that exaggeration of the damage is always to be expected...
To destroy a server physically, you've got to do something like turning off the fans - and even then, most units will just shut down, not melt. I don't believe a word of it.
Vic.
Erik Meijer: AGILE must be destroyed, once and for all
Monday 12th January 2015 16:51 GMT
Re: TDD
The developer should write the test and code
I disagree.
The bug that causes the most expensive screw-ups is the spec ambiguity. The coder goes off and does what he thinks meets spec - and might even do so - only to find out that that wasn't what the spec-writer meant.
By having two separate individuals write the code and its test suite, you get two goes at interpreting the spec. If there is a disagreement, it's pretty clearly a spec problem, and that can be sorted out earlier rather than later.
Vic.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
