Posts by Charlie Clark

Re: "...staffer breaks record for most *precise* Pi calculation"

Because precision and accuracy have clear and distinct mathematical definitions.

Depends on your defintion of accuracy: they're both only accurate to three significant digits and after that are almost equally inaccurate. I'm not engineer but I think that they're both good enough for most mechanical situations but nothing like good enough for anything computational.

I think the point is that, no it would not have been cheaper to buy a supercomputer. This is a single, highly specialised algorithm, so not necessarily directly comparable with the stuff running on supercomputers. But the speed and price are only, er, part of the equation: with a supercomputer you normally have extremely fast networking and storage for data going in and out.

Still, you can see that we're probably only a couple of generations from being able to rent say a supercomputer rack complete with dedicated glass fibre link. And in the meantime you can develop and test algorithms for that spanking new machine while you're waiting for it to be built.

Re: Time, gentlemen, please

I haven't forgotten it at all. See my posts above: I'm no fan of nagware but there are bound to be people with Windows 7 who are not aware that it will not be supported after January 2020. Some kind of reminder is, in my opinion, okay. But users must be able to disable it and, and it shouldn't install anything automatically.

Re: Time, gentlemen, please

Like, I said you need to have a strategy. I still have a Windows 7 VM and will probably still have one next year. But such systems really should be the exception in any company by the end of the year.

Of course, I should add, but of which no doubt you're only too well aware, of shitty MS support has been of the embedded systems, which can be a lot harder to replace than desktop systems.

They recently did something similar for MS Office, meaning I was getting very frequent notifications to enable auto-updating. Now, I normally do install the updates fairly quickly, but given their size and that I'm often on other people's networks, I don't think this is such a good idea for patches that are often more than 1 GB.

Re: Wireless?

Bluetooth headsets are great not least because you can't get tangled in wires, the phone can be in a pocket or bag or, in my case, mounted on my bike for navigating. And many of them have excellent battery life. The bud-only ones are just asking to get lost.

Re: Why bother?

As these things are designed to be lost as easily as possible, I think the repairability is indeed moot.

Re: Any suggestions how to check these

Not easily. You're best off installing some kind of checker, and Checkpoint's essentially just touting for business with this report, but basically, you're going to have to educate your son about the dangers of installing just any old shit; you know a "don't go with strangers" talk. Note, it's not just games, anything that promises something for nothing is likely to be suspicious.

BTW. 150 million sounds a lot but given the installed base, and the way the numbers were calculated, it's not that significant. Checkpoint has form in the area and regularly releases reports like this.

Re: Panic

Nobody is pointing the finger but withdrawing planes is standard procedure (and really the only acceptable procedure) even when there is only a chance of them being at fault. Or would you like to be the one defending the decision if there is another incident, or should the planes should to be at least partly at fault?

See what happened when the batteries in Boeing's 787 started to smoulder, when the engines on the A380 (which can fly pretty well with just one) had troubles. Planes are very,very safe but, unfortunately, when they do have issues, the results are most often catastrophic.

Re: I forgot to add

Yes, it will be interesting to see what happens if the software is identified as being at least partly at fault. Difficult to see that not leading to a landmark judgement about the liability of software. Of course, as long as it was just people from south east Asia, er, test driving the software, there was always the hope that no one would lawyer up. Could be different for the Ethiopian flight which, unfortunately, had UN people on board, and where the flight recorder could end up in Paris.

Note, I am not making light of the tragedies nor even really pointing the finger at Boeing, which has still has an enviable safety record. In fact, one of the consequences of the near duopoly of Boeing-AirBus has been fantastically safe planes. But the idea of Boeing rushing to offer a software patch should have everyone worried. In fact, the FAA should seriously consider forcing a complete recertification or otherwise leave itself open to court cases for certifying the planes as safe to fly. Pretty certain some countries will require new certification in any case.

Isn't that basically the same thing?

kit from the USA that has been tampered with by the NSA

Qualcomm can only supply parts of the kit, the networks will have to built by Ericsson, Nokia-Siemens-Alcatel (IIRC), Huawei or Samsung.

All suppliers will have to be prepared to tamper with stuff if required to by the spooks: Siemens was happy selling SMS filtering gear to Iran. Mind you, given the amount of trade in instruments of death with unpalatable regimes (House of Saud at the top of the list), does this really surprise anyone.

Maybe Tim Apple will be building the US 5G networks, complete with rounded corners, notches and stylish detention centres for anyone complaining about signal strength.

Re: They should have assumed no deal

UK is in full "Titanic" mode, and the iceberg is approaching...

And it isn't beautiful?

Re: Not Trump again, please

Let's just ignore the fact that at the moment, this is merely posturing, the primaries don't even start until next year*, the position is remarkably similar to Trump's one adopted against Time Warner and the takeover by AT&T. All the democrats who've announced their intention to run are adopting Sanderist positions, even if they know better: Warren used never to be the firebrand that she has become.

The good news is that, in general, virtually none of the policies that get bandied around in the early part of the US Presidential Pageant ever get implemented. The sooner more people realise this and decide that maybe primaries aren't such a good idea, the better.

* I pity you for the barrage of stuff you're going to get for the next 18 months, and, that will also invade the news cycles of the rest of the world.

Re: Roaming?

I don't think the two (mast sharing and domestic roaming) are mutually exclusive. Domestic roaming has been done in many countries, especially with newcomer networks. However, it's difficult to get the pricing right. The host network wants to keep the price high enough that it can't be undercut and the guest network also wants to make some money.

But, with more and more networks essentially being done as joint ventures with the equipment manufacturers I think the point is increasingly moot.

I seriously doubt that there is any part of the British Isles which matches that description

I don't there are some pretty remote areas and the networks will have a pretty good idea of whether people go near their towers from the registrations. Obviously, they can't count the people where they don't have masts but I'm pretty sure that most places you're likely to be outdoors will give you a signal strong enough for the emergency services*. In fact, I think some of the mountain rescue teams consider mobile phones a mixed blessing: on the one hand it's great that people who need help can call for it wherever they are; on the other, knowing that they can do this encourages some people to be more reckless when they do go wandering.

* Or do you really need 100 Mb/s all over the Cairngorms?

Re: Stop making sense!

Yeah, I stopped short of that one for fear of causing more panic. There has, of course, been a lot of work done on the SAR of mobile devices and manufacturers have got pretty good at directing signals away from where the body is likely to be… But along with mast-free phone coverage, surely we can have radio-free phones with broadband? ;-)

A lot of them are too high (will give you greater range but signal strength will be low) and I suspect the rotating blades wouldn't really help but you could do it. But why would you? A wind farm is hardly likely to have a lot of people in it.

The issue is about improving coverage where people tend to be. In most situations this requires unsightly masts and towers that are higher than surrounding objects.

Re: Do the corporate Boards and CEOS want to...

News just in (in 2000): more jobs in the US have been lost to automation than to outsourcing. The only way to reverse that is to get rid of the machines.

Re: It's all relative

Reagan was also not blessed with the best of brains, just good speechwriters. In fact, if you look at the history of US presidents, you'll see that the election process has a lot of similarities with county fairs. Trump is different largely through his attempts to assert the primacy of the executive over the other branches. But he's hardly the first to try and do this, it's just the give of modern media that we get to see him in action so much.

Re: Beanie?

Nicely parodied in Portlandia. Twice.

Re: We have surely reached peak beard.

And it must be like kissing a dog's arse.

I wouldn't know because I've never kissed a dog's arse but I'll take your word for it. I've had a beard for over 20 years and the missus is happy with it. Once it gets past stubble it's much softer and smoother than scraped skin, which incidentally is an great invitation to infections. As the skin produces the relevant oils to protect itself there is no need for all those shitty beer care products. A trim every couple of weeks is all you need.