Posts by Charlie Clark

Re: Image quality / Shoelaces

ta, but for all your shoelace knot needs it's nice to know there is a website dedicated to them. Of course, there is.

Re: Image quality

The trick is to ensure the knot itself is tight, rather than the laces being too tight.

Of course, tying laces with a bow is something slightly different. But I have observed with some shoes that no matter how tight I make the bow, it tends to come undone. This is invariably with round laces and I'm fairly sure that the "right over left" stuff has to take the way the laces are twisted into consideration, just that I've never figured it out myself!

Re: Image quality

Very true. I think the real point may be about the length and number of fronts and being able to keep them all supplied. Oh, and having clearly defined and obtainable objectives.

The Russian strategy seemed to be about splitting Ukrainian forces between the east and the centre, seizing Kiev and installing a puppet government. As strategies go there's a hint of the underpant gnomes in this one, just as there was when the US went into Baghdad.

The front will get longer and may soon include parts of Belorussia and Georgia and elsewhere. At the same time, the limits of kleptocracy are starting to be felt in parts of the economy vital to keeping the army supplied.

Re: Image quality

I'm OCD enough to have taught myself how to tie a reef knot on my dressing gown for the same reason. But haven't yet learned how to tie shoelaces that resist bows (I believe it's to do with the direction of the twist)…

Re: Image quality

The Russian communication strategy suggests they're not at all happy with the US being so open about the Russian military: it's a crime to report anything about the war that is not sanctioned by the military.

The convoys weren't supposed to be necessary but they got off to a bad start and kept getting ahead of their supply lines.

Re: Eye in the sky until blinded

Ukrainian peoples willingness to fight and die for their country…

Yes, but as with Afghanistan and the "tribal areas" in Pakistan, there are people outside the country who are also willing and able. If the conflict moves west towards the Polish or Slovakian borders, or south towards Romania, the risk of targetting suppliers on the other side of the border in a NATO country will rise. There is also the risk of an uprising in Belorussia, where Lukashenko is only just keeping a lid on things.

And the long term aim of Putin to establish at least a land corridor to Königsberg if not reinvade the Baltic countries.

And you can also be pretty sure that the CIA, et al. are looking at the Caucuses and beyond, with Putin's troops so widely spread: there's resentment against Moscow from their to Siberia.

Wars are always messy and escalation is almost always inevitable.

Re: Image quality

You can also assume that the images are provided with the consent and maybe even at the behest of the US military: they're for domestic consumption around the world to counter any suggestion by Russian trolls that it's just another training operation and that Ukrainians are welcoming them with garlands of flowers.

If Russia really is relying on convoys then it's asking for people to take pot shots.

Re: Eye in the sky until blinded

Any attack on a US satellite would have to be by the Russian military and would, therefore, be considered an act of aggression and the US has definitely got the capability to react and take out Russian satellites, which it almost certainly depends upon for support at the moment.

Some kind of conflict is almost inevitable at some point, but Russia certainly doesn't want to draw NATO in yet: the last thing it wants is a no-fly zone.

Everyone knows that good passwords should only be used once…

As you say, we've yet to come up with anything better that is as universal.

Re: What about IPv4?

There are certainly elements of this, which is probably why uptake was initially so slow. However, nowadays you could consider adoption an example of Pascal's wager. At some point IPv6 may well be dominant so why not get on board now? If you're going through a network upgrade anyway, being able to run IPv6 outside your network isn't going to hurt.

Re: What about IPv4?

Have to agree that full IPv6 addresses are easy to misread (though jumbling numbers in IPv4 is also really common), but I think a lot of the time you can get away without prefixes which makes things a lot easier.

Re: What about IPv4?

The reason IPv4 still dominates is largely down to IP address depletion not affecting everyone equally. If IPv4 addresses had been allotted equally be country initially, the US would also have started to run out. IPv6 solves some of IPv4's problems, including address range, and is seeing increasing adoption within the networks and service providers with end users hardly noticing: their mobile network is probably already IPv6 and more and more providers are now 6to4 rather than allowing users to go 4to6. The transition will continue to be gradual and may never be complete. But this is true in other areas: altitude for planes is still in feet, speed of ships is still in knots, and some engineering is still done in thous…

Re: There is no such thing as a prototype

Given how much computational code is written in Python but essentially running in Fortran, the usual approach is to prototype in Python but write real thing in Fortran or C++, or use any of the existing libraries.

Python and other similar languages have proved a godsend for all kinds of work because they let talented scientists do stuff they'd never otherwise be able to do without first getting a Comp Sci degree first. And at least 50% of this is down to providing bindings for decades of excellent Fortran and C++ code…

Re: You know you've got the right job...

IIRC the museum is largely run by volunteers and, at least when I was there, the relationship with the Bletchley Park museum is not as good as it should be.

It's well worth a visit, though you probably need to bring a bit of understanding of how computers work and how they've developed. Personally, I found looking at the electronic parts, some of which are now more than 40 years old but I remember from my childhood, less rewarding than the older stuff where you can see something's going on. Maybe that will change over the years.

Re: re. more blankets

It's true that in the frozen North there aren't many options for power. But that doesn't make nuclear any "greener" than other sources of power. It remains very expensive and the waste problem is as unsolved as that of burning fossil fuel. For decades it has been promised that the next generation will be cheaper and cleaner. That might happen but that won't solve the problem of all the mess produced over the last 60 yeards.

In most places, wind and solar are cheaper than nuclear, which is why they're displacing it for baseload production. What's missing is effective storage (neither hydro nor batteries are really suitable) for surges in demand.

The fight over labels shows just how many vested interests are chasing the subsidies.

Re: re. more blankets

Easy enough to invoke anti-terrorist legislation as was done against Iceland after the 2009 crash. That didn't make any real waves in the courts but doing it against Russia would be even easier to justify.

Re: re. more blankets

The Finnish greens have traditionally been open to fission reactors, though their fervour seems to be dimming.

Really, until we've solved the problems of nuclear waste, fission isn't an option: it's a differently deferred problem, that's all.

But this isn't all about gas. It's about depending on relatively cheap source of energy without controlling their production.

Re: re. more blankets

I'm not making predictions, but I think it would be naive to assume that the status quo in central Asia and the "Stans" as Russia turns it eyes westwards. Many of the seasoned troops due to be engaged in Ukraine are from that area and we've already seen Russia intervene in Kasaschstan.

I don't think we can rule anything out.

Re: re. more blankets

Afghanistan was incompetence after incompetence but it was Trump who essentially set the timetable for the withdrawal.

I know all about the borders being redrawn during and after the second world war. None of it can be considered fun. However, acknowledging the the borders has become a tenet for European peace. By going against this, Putin has effectively declared war on Europe, though some might not have noticed yet.

Unfortunately, it's probably only a matter of time before there is escalation beyond Ukraine's borders.

Re: re. more blankets

Cost of extraction versus cost of synthesis. Russia has relatively high extraction costs.

Synthesis isn't cheap yet, but then again, we haven't really put much effort into it because industry has prefers other bigger handouts like batteries and "clean" hydrogen.

It spent the last 400 years part of russia and was only really recreated again under Kruschev

You obviously don't know any Ukrainians. Like much of the former Russian empire, Ukraine, which has a longer tradition of statehood than Russia, with the Kiever Rus actually giving Russia its name, was subjected to various bouts of russification with Tsars banning the use of the language and Lenin stamping on the newly independent Ukraine in 1918.

But Putin has made it clear he won't stop at Ukraine. So, at some point, as the song goes, then they came for me.

Re: left him too long

That always sounds good but regime change is always difficult to engineer.

Re: re. more blankets

The initial decision to phase out nuclear power was taken at the start of the millennium. And, if anything wasn't rational, it was rolling that back and letting the power companies draw up new contracts with left them with fewer liabilities and a higher payoff when the inevitable shutdown came.

Putin has been playing with the gas tap all winter, but, while reserves are low, winter is coming to an end and new sources of supply such as US LNG are becoming available. This makes it largely a matter of price, which the West as a whole can easily afford. This suggests that Vlad's timing was poor.

Russia can try selling gas to China, but China will dictate the price. China might like annoying the US but it certainly doesn't want an aggressive and impulsive Russia.

Shutting the Russian government off from the bond markets is going to cause a lot of problems as is moving all those trained troops from the Caucuses and central Asia. Even Afghanistan could become Russia's problem again at the Taliban look for sources of income and power.

Re: Mobile pages optimized

I've seen the same thing, even significant drops in performance as some nice (and clean) optimisations were removed when changing CMS and service supplier. The data on httparchive.org also confirms that websites are getting fatter and slower.

Re: So Magento has been fully integrated now

Don't forget, like Flash, they bought Magento. And, as it's written in PHP, validation issues are to be expected. Yes, anyone can write good code in any language but for years PHP favoured convenience over best practice.

Just because the US patent system is fucked, doesn't mean everyone else's is.