Posts by Charlie Clark

10:1 ratio correlates strongly with the vaccinated: non-vaccinated ratio and this is likely to be the key figure. In the US it is reported that over 99% of all recent deaths are of non-vaccinated people. While I suspect there may be some fun involved in that number, it's around what we expect so expect the pressure on the unvaccinated to increase.

Re: Odd...

The communication around mask wearing is, I think, somewhat deliberately more than a little mixed. Initially, they were supposed protect those around a person but not the person themself, assuming the wearer is infectious. This was later extended to suggest that they do offer a degree of protection for the wearer. While the data does suggest that masks can help reduce the spread of infection, in some circumstances, it's marginal rather than advanced and there are all kind of caveats, especially over time. But what isn't in doubt is the visibility of them, which has made it easier to make them an item of faith.

Re: "...over 85% of the population on at least their first jab..."

You're only right about the 85% having had one jab. You're wrong on the rest: unvaccinated people can be infected but this doesn't mean they'll act as a reservoir and most certainly not one where new, vaccine resistant strains can arise. Once the illness has run its course through someone they are clear. Selection pressure (viruses can't evolve in the same way we do) suggest that mutations are most likely to arise in people with poor immune systems where it takes longer for the body to clear the infection. There is even some suggestion that in the UK the treatment of patients with antibody-laced plasma may well have been the source of the alpha variant.

Re: What really grinds my gears.

What's your point that that a licensed frequency product is not called WiFi?

Well, we could use the various IEEE specifications but WiFi is easier to remember.

It's great because it's unlicensed so no one has to ask permission and it's bad for exactly the same reasons. However, contention between neighbouring networks seems to have got better, at least in my experience – it's on the way to a managed network – via smaller but more powerful cells. I've lived in densely populated apartment buildings with well over 20 networks visible and rarely seen many problems except with dweebs who think they can manage channels better than the silicon: if you can go with 5 Ghz which does have enough bandwidth.

Re: What really grinds my gears.

In which case it wouldn't be WiFi any more… Those who want to use amateur radio for data have been able to do so for decades.

WiFi was supposed to be available to all, or, more accurately: some clever manufacturers saw an opportunity in unlicensed spectrum, which is why the first few years were such a mess of incompatible devices.

Re: Long term I expect WiFi and LTE to converge.

I'm not sure what particular part is nonsense. In terms of the radios, LTE and WiFi are already very close as I can confirm with the way handover works between repeaters in the network here. LTE has different bands because and more (licensed) spectrum than is available to WiFi. But contention is always a problem for wireless networks. It has better user management, with or without charging, but when it comes to "pico" cells you really can't tell the difference any more.

Re: This months of work from home showed too....

The WiFi meshing has got a lot better over the last few years.

As we're only temporarily where we are and the internet connection is in one of the most remote corners of the building, WiFi was the only way to go. 2 x 1200 Repeaters + 1 x 600 + 1 x DECT required in total mean that everywhere has about the same speed as our downlink.

My biggest beef with WiFi is the shared password malarkey, I'd much prefer individual access in any managed environment and leave ad-hoc to the guest network. This is currently causing havoc at a client's network as deploying personal certs to mobile devices without an MDM is a PITA. So, guess what, everyone's I-Phone is on the guest network which, of course, restricts access to certain resources such as the mail server…

Long term I expect WiFi and LTE to converge.

Re: The Wire - without the drama

Devolo is currently touting 2400 Mbit. I've got to optimise a friend's setup so I'll soon find out what really comes through.

Re: "hires 5,000 engineers"

Outside the state-owned enterprise sector there is a thriving market economy. There just is any political freedom.

Re: "hires 5,000 engineers"

To a certain degree in China (and India) those engineers are being churned out of the universities at a sufficient rate. But more importantly, this isn't a new development and thus there is already a market of skilled and experienced engineers as demonstrated by the rising wages in China.

Re: I would like to buy a phone made by free range workers paid living wage at very least

Fairphone's work has been well documented. For example, they admit that it's almost impossible to get untainted minerals. But the bigger problem with mass adoption is that the phones are considered several generations behind.

Re: Use early Microsoft formats where possible for interchange

Microsoft's programs are particularly dumb when it comes to file extensions so an xls renamed as xlsx will not be opened. In fact, you can't mix and match xlsx and xlsm. I'm not sure if this is by accident or by design but I'm pretty sure that the number of infections due to the office formats declined with the switch. That, and the fact that it's easy to get people to click on links in e-mails…

Re: Use early Microsoft formats where possible for interchange

As someone who works with the specification I know how awful it is. Still, it is at least there and Microsoft does contribute actively to improvements in the documentation, though these generally affect the strict implementation although the world lives with the transitional specification. But you can do an awful lot with just the schema.

ODF is definitely a better format – XLSX is largely an XML form of BIFF – but it's not without its problems and it is not really being actively maintained.

Re: Use early Microsoft formats where possible for interchange

XLS is limited to 256 cols and 65,384 rows…

LibreOffice et al. has had some long-standing bugs in handling XLSX files that could easily have been fixed if they'd read the specification, which was at least published, unlike BIFF which was never published.

Re: Use early Microsoft formats where possible for interchange

Microsoft disables a lot of features by default for files from elsewhere and macros have to be enabled specifically.

Re: I see no ships

No, it wasn't and they didn't.

SQL Server's general licensing terms are a pain even on Windows, I've got several instances I'd love to replace with Postgres just to reduce the hardware demands. But, as they're "embedded" databases, I'm entirely dependent upon the developers learning to work with a DB they can't just click together.

Re: Another dimension of complexity

Sticking with plain old C is the safest bet

Given the number of known errors in C code, this is plainly not true. Rust is very C-like but was built with a view to reducing some of the known common errors in C code. It has been adopted by several projects for this reason and, thus far, people seem to be happy with the results. In many ways it's a bit like a pre-compiler, which is why it's suitable for an alternative implementation: many of the existing tests should be usable.

Re: Big is better (?)

The quotas have been demonstrated to be a poor way to reduce overfishing: ships just dump the excess but dead fish in the sea before making port. The Icelandic system, which gives fishermen a stake in the fishery, seems to be a better approach but is probably more difficult to role out across multiple states.

Still, we haven't got rogue Chinese trawlers fishing there. Yet.

Civil liberties arguments aside, the real problem is handing yet more power over to the gatekeepers. Personally, I do not want to have to whip out my phone every time I cross a border, there is far too much other stuff on it that is no one else's concern.

Re: You're nuts

You missed out the real memory hog which was Windows Vista. That needed 4GB to be usable at a time when that much RAM was expensive. Once they put the XML-based window manager (what was it called? WPF?) on a diet things improved a lot and I regularly run Windows 7 VMs in 2 GB and can work quite happily in them.