Posts by Gene Cash

Re: I have yet to see the ISS ...

It's only very easy to spot if you know what to look for.

The first time, I needed an app to point me to the correct spot of the sky, as no one bothers to describe that you're looking for a non-blinking fast moving dot. It moved much faster than I expected.

Re: Trust

We had a restaurant on this side of the pond treating their employees badly and being surprised they were leaving in droves. They chalked it up to "people don't want to work" and moaned about this on twatter. Unsurprisingly, they're out of business.

Re: Oh No!

Then you've got stuff like HALO Infinite where I'm in a "boss battle" - except my rockets and other weapons go straight through the enemy without affecting him. So I've given up.

I remember when you got a console because the games were better QAed.

And there's no way in hell I'd play a game on my phone and that postage stamp theatre crap. I want a reasonably comfortable controller and a monitor where I can actually see what's going on.

Re: "Waterfox users were totally unaffected. ®"

Or had the URLs changed to "https://localhost" in about:config, just to be sure

Over here, if you're carrying a screwdriver, that's a "burglary tool" so the cops get carte blanche to shake you down.

Re: Stuff Happens

I saw an issue where the fuel tank wasn't vented, so it would run for a while, then the vacuum would stop the fuel draw.

Re: What would happen if

Amazon would go under because 95% of the trash it sells now is Chinese alphabet-soup brands.

I've basically stopped shopping on Amazon because I can't find anything decent with search any more.

Re: A little calm ...

Similarly chargers not connected to a communications network are exempt

What do they mean by "communications network"? Does that include my home wi-fi? And if so, does this then include my open-source/open-hardware OpenEVSE unit?

Re: Excessive - but a Space Camera Drone?

No, because the sunshield would be extremely vulnerable to thruster exhaust from any such drone, and the exhaust might deposit on the mirror.

Also, can you guarantee your drone won't malfunction and crash into your $10 billion observatory?

I moved into a new (to me) house and the breaker box was labeled in Egyptian hieroglyphics so I figured I'd update it by turning on all the lights, turning off all the breakers, and flipping them one by one, then going into the house and seeing what lit up.

There was a lot of "HUH, that's INTERESTING" said that day, especially seeing when one room lit up, as well as the closet in an unconnected room. And when one breaker turned on the light and one outlet in the "family room" but all the other outlets were on another breaker.

Granted, this is a house old enough for a NEMA 10-30 for the dryer, which has a neutral but not a ground (which is why it's no longer code)

I'd like the same thing, but there's no reason for any of that to go to some server halfway across the continent. If the app talked directly to the thermostat or light bulb across my wi-fi, that would be ok.

All the thermostats I've found do phone home, but it takes a bit of digging to discover that.

Re: Satellites?

I think they're just using the Microsoft-style "baffle 'em with bullshit" strategy.

Re: USA and Teletext

Speaking of info in the US... my local station had a info channel that was just a camera sliding along a wall of instruments.

There was a clock, thermometer, wind direction, wind speed, barometer, a handwritten weather forecast note, and a couple other things I've forgotten.

The camera would slowly pan along, reach the end of the track and reverse, so you had to wait a minute if you missed the reading of interest. It would dwell on the clock and forecast note at each end for a couple seconds.

So anyone else have this? Nobody else seems to remember such a thing.

Re: Palemoon, check. Seamonkey, check.

I'm not talking about a text editor... any text editor can edit HTML

I'm talking about a word processor style WYSIWYG editor where you set text to bold and it adds [b] tags.

Re: Still Skeptical

I'd buy it.

There's very poor competition here on the Florida east coast.

I have a "choice" of AT&T or Spectrum, which is a choice between crap and garbage. For example, if the power wobbles, I lose connectivity, so obviously the local equipment doesn't have even the most basic battery backup.

I'm paying $80/mo for for 20mb/sec.

The thing that concerns me is customer service. I wouldn't put up with the condescending and patronizing crap that Tesla customers accept. However, being better than AT&T "service" is a very low bar to hurdle.

Re: Nothing to see

HDMI isn't irrelevant, as now I have to wade through even higher levels of "it's not compatible and they won't tell you" when buying a monitor.

"If God tells you it's locked out, double check with Jesus, then test it dead yourself."

Re: Seriously?

This isn't "legacy" - it's a horrible hack, as they're trying to encode a character based representation into a numeric variable and seems to be the result of some horrible mental confusion. This should have never been written in the first place. They need an absolute thrashing.

I would not call them a "coder" any more than someone that "programs HTML"

Re: Oh dear!

Now he's got TWO problems.

Re: I predict .....

Wow, I actually did buy a Magnavox Odyssey in 1972... but aside from that, I bought the HALO box and that's it, mainly because the damn controller was actually big enough for my hands.

Re: Tesco....nicked our car park..

WTF happened to the previous planning conditions?

Absolutely nothing, they're still there. They're counting on people forgetting about it. Nothing will get done unless someone digs it up and does it.

We don't do paid parking in the US. People go elsewhere and the business fails.

Re: Hmm ...

That's why the most important thing in the house is the backup drive, kept in a very thick data-rated fireproof safe. If the house burned down and I still had that drive, life could go on.

Cloud is just a copy. There's nothing there that isn't already on my computer locally.

I've moved houses and I'm now facing the task of tossing my old Creative Computing magazines. It's amazing to read through those and remember stuff.

Remember when object-oriented languages were called "actor languages" and class inheritance and methods were called "message passing"? I mentioned that to a CS PhD at work and had to drag out the old Creative Computing articles to prove it.

Re: Iphone to linux?

I, personally, use the Files app to connect to a samba share on my Linux server.

That info would have saved an iPad from the hammer a couple years ago...

Just prosecute.

Uh huh. And after the cops laugh their black little hearts out and walk off, what do you do then?

I don't see any police force willing to seriously follow something like this up and spend more time than necessary to round-file the complaint.

Re: Colour me impressed...

Watching a MotoGP race (or other race - but this is my experience) on TV is a complete waste of time.

The compression blocks don't even allow you to read the numbers on the front of the bikes, it's that bad.

My TV died 8 years ago and I've not seen anything that would suggest it's worth paying the money to replace it.

So if "computer engineering is fundamentally broken" what's your solution, other than "do it different"?

I'm serious, we need all the help we can get.

I see it's a basic consequence of the fact that every time we write an application, we're mostly doing something completely new, that hasn't been done before, under tight time and resource constraints.

I've seen dozens of major coding methodologies in my life. Flowcharting everything. Gotos are bad. Structured programming. Top-down design. Functional programming, Object-oriented. Pair coding. Agile. Copying from stackoverflow.

People are (mostly) doing their best, but programming is hard and irreducible complexity is irreducible.

Are you sure? There's a bunch of people that "have things in stock" then you actually order one and it's backordered until the second coming. So I no longer trust any of that.

Re: Technically fantastic but...

Eh, as I see it, they were provided a free target for training exercises. The RAF usually has to pay for that.