* Posts by Alan Brown

15029 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Feb 2008

Lunar rocks brought to Earth by China's Chang'e 5 show Moon's volcanoes were recently* active

Alan Brown Silver badge

"the moon does not really have any effect on how seasons work"

Apart from help keeping earth's axial tilt within reasonable bounds and stopping those seasons going to wild extremes like say, Uranus

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: There is obviously only one explanation:

backed up by very "spotty" data

Hitting underground pipes and cables costs the UK £2.4bn a year. We need a data platform for that, says government

Alan Brown Silver badge

"The local power utility is replacing street lights and I saw sombody pushing a Ground Penetrating Radar down the street."

Yup. The technology to _find_ stuff underground exists and is widely used. The problem is it costs and cowboys don't want to pay for it (quite frequently seagull management aren't even aware such equipment exists)

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Costs

"Even where legislation exists about keeping records, the bare minimum will be done to comply with the law."

In the UK, yes. In many other places it's regarded as more expensive to NOT keep records because you end up having to repair damage

Alan Brown Silver badge

> This is partially because services like "dial before you dig" are relying on data manually copied from 100 year old drawings using references like "cable 2 ft from kerb edge".

What amazes me is that I was taught how to use a Cat and Genny to determine depth 40 years ago, but most modern users seem to have no clue how to do it (it takes about 30 seconds and is quite accurate)

It wasn't even my area of work, but I was expected to be able to repair the things, (they're a simple RF circuit) so I was expected to be able to use them in the field and understand the kinds of errors users would encounter

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Dowsing

they don't, but other devices do (geophysics is a fairly well-understood science)

Alan Brown Silver badge

"Was there anything I could have humanly done to prevent the incident? Short of doing the work myself?"

Institute $STAGGERINGLY_LARGE penalty charges with personal liabilties on company officers who screw up and make sure they sign off on it

Once your house and job is on the line, you start paying attention

If you think I'm jesting, it's more or less what several telcos started doing in the 1990s - the level of litigation damages they started going after JCB operators for was so high that liabliity insurers would wash their hands of the deal, leaving the companies high and dry.

A couple of well-publicised rounds of that ($250k-$500k/hour outage charges were common and liability insurance capped out at $2-5 million in most cases) and suddenly operators were _vastly_ more careful about where they dug - which was the intention all along

Software Freedom Conservancy sues TV maker Vizio for 'GPL infringement'

Alan Brown Silver badge

Not just Vizio

UK's TopUpTV pulled the same stunt back in the 2000s and tried some obfuscation stunts on the Ext4fs when called out on it in order to make it less obvsious what they were doing

Report details how Airbus pilots saved the day when all three flight computers failed on landing

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Automation Issue

"bosses who bully crews into working to the max for the least pay/rest"

Yup, this is a major problem and employers are notorious for hiring pliable crews. Corporate and personal manlaughter liabilities need to be used more frequently against manglement

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Automation Issue

" 60-80% of commercial aviation accidents are the result of human error "

Yup - and a lot of cases of "hero pilot saves plane" are the result of the same pilot making a boneheaded judgement earlier, pressing on regardless and putting the aircraft into a situation which required "rescue"

You don't fly on when running low on fuel, you don't ignore thunderstorm warnings, and you don't ignore microburst issues as three examples of pilots "pressing on regardless"

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Automation Issue

"I thought the pilot was demonstrating the alpha protection on a go around (e.g. performing a landing, "

Nope. the primary cause was that the crowd was on the wrong runway (not the one briefed for) but the pilots decided to go ahead with the flyby visually anyway, having arrived and found everything assembled on the other strip

The trees at the end of the runway in question form a nasty optical illusion and seem safe until it's too late to pull up. If they'd briefed for a flyby on that runway they'd probably have been ok but the last second change of plan gave them no chance to pickup on the issue - which was already in NOTAMS

This one was definitely pilot error - they shouldn't have been over that strip in the first place

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Automation Issue

"The last plane that crashed in LBG ( Paris Le Bourget ) is the Soviet Era Concordsky."

And the pilots were avoiding a midair collision with an unexpected photography plane, something that the french only admitted 30+ years later

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: "Seems the pilots did a good job,"

"The trouble was a faulty supposition."

Yup, this happens a lot everywhere. The system performed to spec. The problem is that the spec was wrong.

It's the primary reason for cost overruns in various contracts and "goalpost shifting" - but in that case the contractors usually know in advance it won't work as designed but say nothing because they can charge extra for making it work

In some cases I've seen contractiors refuse a job because it won't work, so CTOs shop it around until they find a company willing to take it on "as designed"

Schools email marketing company told us to go away when we told them of exposed database creds, say infoseccers

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: No need to compromise their systems

"The company acted in a cavalier fashion, their staff responded in a cavalier fashion, and it blows my mind that they haven't been reported yet."

Agreed. If I received a response like that, the first thing I'd do would be to hand it to regulators as it's highly unlikely that such an issue would be the only thing wrong at the company

Australian PM and Deputy threaten Facebook and Twitter with defamation liability for users' posts

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Postal

This is the "Compuserve vs Cubby" and "AOL vs Cyberpromo" argument redux

And WHY the USA has "safe harbour" laws. Otherwise if you curate content, you're in the firing line

In other countries, common carrier arguments have never been tested

Config cockup leaves Reg reader reaching for the phone

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Sun kit

"Of course, I was being a twit with dividing the os into so may partitions when it didn't need it as well but I thought I was being clever."

It was still recommended action long after drives with automagic sector remapping were the norm - everyone had their own magic incantation

Telling greybeards not to do it would get you treated as if you'd blasphemed

Cheeky chappy rides horse around London filling station, singing: 'I don't need petrol 'cos he runs on carrots'

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Gus the Horseman owes his fame to Brexit

"there is finally a real Brexit benefit available"

Brexit is already highly beneficial

for Australia, NZ, Ireland, the EU, the USA, Japan, China, Russia, etc etc

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Why now

"But is relying on constant stream of cheap and willing workforce from abroad is a sustainable solution?"

Of course not - and the supply was already drying up as more and more Romanian/Bulgarian drovers realised thery could make better money at home. British pay/conditions are the worst in Europe - and then there's the appalling lack of accomodation and sky high parking charges in motorway truck stops which other EU countries don't do - basically a perfect storm brewing and then Brexit was the icing on the cake

Brexit sisn't just exacerbate what was already happening but ALSO blew away cabotage rules which made it possible for the shortages to be spread across the entire EU rather than "any one country" - meaning that international shipments/drivers have to run point-to-point now instead of doing drop-offs and pickups along the way. That means even fewer drivers want to cross the Channel

In another 2-3 years the supply of drivers would have forced wage increases anyway, but in another 2-3 years there would have been more new ones coming through as well. Right not there's a critical shortage in the UK _AND_ no replacements wanting to come in from anywhere to fill positions _AND_ nobody in training.

Perfect self-inflicted storm. Project Fear has become Project Here

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Why now

"If there really is a driver shortage in Europe as some have reported, then there is bugger all chance of EU drivers jumping through the paperwork hoops to come here only to be turfed out again"

.... unless they're pair really REALLY well for their trouble.

The words "over a barrel" and "awaiting a red hot poker" do spring to mind.

Alan Brown Silver badge

"There is plenty of work to go around, here on the mainland."

At a decent rate of pay, with decent overnight accomodation, without drivers being treated badly or ripped off for parking, etc etc etc

There's a driver shortage worldwide. Covid is worldwide. British pay and conditions are amongst the worst in Europe and then there's Brexit

There's a reason the logistics system is only falling apart in the UK but not anywhere else. Straws and camels spring to mind

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: "He runs on carrots"

here's my claim: it does for my commute to work and even using expensive fast chargers costs about £20/month to fuel up with ZERO maintenance costs to speak of, vs about £200/month to run an econobox

I don't care that my little electric turd only has a 40 mile range and tops out at 80mph - because that's all I need. If I need to go further it's easier and cheaper to hire something, fly or take public transport (and usually less hassle overall)

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: "He runs on carrots"

> But the general human inability to grasp scale issues, and their propensity to keep saying "it's enough for one person, why shouldn't it be enough for a million" is terribly counterproductive and dangerous.

THIS in spades

In europe, most electricity providers allow an average consumption of 1kW per household when laying out power allowanges and feeder cables

It's 400W/household for older streets

Now, remove gas heating (it will be banned after 2030) and add electric cars to the mix and those design criteria are problematic

The movie "Brazil" didn't actually have any terrorists - explosions were mostly the result of dilapidated infrastructure breaking down. In real life London's already suffered a number of "exploding footpaths" - which were electrocal supply cables failing under overload conditions and the issue is only going to get worse

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: "He runs on carrots"

"On theory it would be a good time to own an electric car but I'm not sure the UK's infrastructure is up to it."

if you reply on the public charging network, it isn't. More chargers around my way are dead than working in my experience of trying to use the things

Computer shuts down when foreman leaves the room: Ghost in the machine? Or an all-too-human bit of silliness?

Alan Brown Silver badge

Rings were a good idea in an age of cooper shortage (ie, just after WW2) and should have stayed there

There is no reason on earth they should have persisted past the 1970s and Radial circuits are the norm everywhere else in Europe.

These days rings are mostly used as an excuse to fit as few breakers as possible to substandard housing whilst running as many sockets as possible on the ring (20 13A outlets on a 32A breaker isn't at all unusual)

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: US Residential Wiring

"I don't believe I've ever lived in a house with lighting and outlets on the same circuits."

A _lot_ of US housing has the "light switch" wired to one or more wall outlets to enable floor lamps to be controlled as well as the ceiling light

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: And their plugs are crap

you only make the mistake with an australian side entry plug ONCE - they can draw blood. UK plugs only inflict bruising

Virgin Galactic cleared to fly again after a spell on Federal Aviation Administration's naughty step

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: "Neither is currently capable of achieving orbit"

Like? It is one - with wings for the return leg

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: "Virgin Galactic has remained tight-lipped over what happened"

"From now on, ATC will have the final say over whether the mission must be aborted."

When you're flying ballistically or with insufficient atmosphere to operate control surfaces, gravity would beg to differ

Power gives way to sail. Always has, always will. ATC's responsibility is to ensure that traffic in the area doesn't approach the descending glider

Netflix sued by South Korean ISP after Squid Game fans swell traffic to '1.2Tbps'

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: The tragedy of the commons...

"I spent an entire easter weekend shifting all my websites elsewhere, mostly early morning when the porno enthusiasts had worn themselves out."

uhhhhh..... surely you had a compleat image of your sites anyway which you could have simply setup elswhere and switched across?

rule #1 of websites: Anything on a webserver is "disposable" and if it was your only copy "too bad"

Alan Brown Silver badge

And this is a problem because.....?

Let's be really clear: whenever a popular service has done something like this, it's never worked out well for the ISP

And let's not forget Google news aggregation

Alan Brown Silver badge

> if I'm a consumer who has had advert yelling "unlimited*", I expect "unlimited"

I remember having a long discussion with a BT salestwit who insisted on telling me she was selling an unlimited connection then telling me I was limited to 10GB per month on it when my existing ISP allowed 100 times as much for the same money

"But BT is so much better, we're unlimited"

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Netflix should not pay

"BT and EE have been asking Ofcom to do the same, change UK's current net neutrality rules to be able to "officially" charge Netflix, Amazon and Google for traffic since these 3 generate 60-70% of all traffic at peak times."

Please do. The moment they start pulling that stunt they'll find that customers will leave faster than rats deserting a sinking shop

BT & EE are the same company and as a former(*) monopolist incumbent, this kind of attitude is hardly surprising

(*)Current - *AHEM*OPENREACH*AHEM*

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Looks like the ISP wants 2 bites of the cherry

" Sender in this case is Netflix, but they expect free delivery because you're paying for a letter box"

Wrong analogy. Everything on the Internet is "receiver pays", not "sender pays"

That's WHY spam is evil and theft of services. It's cost-shifted advertising on the receiver's dime.

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Looks like the ISP wants 2 bites of the cherry

"then the reverse is true, why use an isp if the content you want isn't avalible."

In the cases of a lot of USA customers - "Because nothing else is available" (this also applies in many other areas around the world)

This is a business model based on being the only game in town and shutting out competition. A model which (in the USA at least) is ripe for disruption and the people who've been coining it are rather belatedly realising that pissed off customers who are offered Starlink will bite off the proffered connection at the elbows to get away from the old ISP - EVEN IF the old incumbent ISP turned around and matched Starlink's bandwidth and cost

A quick bit of google-fu shows that Korea is mostly a comfortable Duopoly for broadband with some areas having a whole FOUR ISPs to choose from (but seldom all four in any one location), which explains why this rent-seeking activity is being contemplated by an incumBENT ISP in the first place - it's a case of "dominant Chaeboi seeks to manipulate market to its own advantage"

Anywhere else, customers would leave. In Korea it appears they have little choice (for the moment)

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Looks like the ISP wants 2 bites of the cherry

"Ask your owners how much it'd cost to increase your capacity to support 1.2Tbps of traffic"

It wouldn't BE 1.2Tbps of traffic with local caching appliances in the network, that's the entire fucking point of the appliances for such flows

Are you being wilfully clueless in order to keep the argument going or are you actually as stupid as you appear to be?

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Looks like the ISP wants 2 bites of the cherry

" This ISP has identified the cost element, and that cost is due to Netflix. "

No, this ISP has identified an opportunity for "rent-seeking behaviour"

It's a textbook example

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Looks like the ISP wants 2 bites of the cherry

" In the early days of fixed rate connections in the UK it was 50:1 for residential, 20:1 for business"

UK had per minute call charges for local calls which put people off staying dialled in for long periods. It was 20:1 or lower for residential connections elsewhere

Alan Brown Silver badge

As someone who also built an ISP, I concur

This behaviour is what you expect from a monopolist, not a competitive business

Alan Brown Silver badge

"The problem here is that the Internet is a hugely inefficient way to deliver television to millions of people compared to broadcasting radio-waves, and that's not going to change any time soon."

Clifford Stoll made the very same point in Silicon Snake Oil about 25 years ago

And there is a solution for broadcasting: Multicast/mbone - which ISPs ignored

Alan Brown Silver badge

"the Korean cable provider"

aka Vertically integrated Monopoly

There are very good reasons for not allowing this kind of behaviour in a regulated market

Speciality electronics outfit boasts of 64-fold density increase for its latest space-ready MRAM parts

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Spintronics is clearly a parasite to the space time continuum.

when you see the tentacles start to emerge and waver, you know your time is up, monkey boy

Don't touch that dial – the new guy just closed the application that no one is meant to close

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Happened to me at school

> I was later (well, about 10 seconds later) informed that there had in fact been a notice displayed above this computer saying not to use it,

Under such circumstances the appropriate location for such a sign is over the top of the screen with another over the keyboard

Check your bits: What to do when Unix decides to make a hash of your bill printouts

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: I quietly disagree

I like "driving" but commuting isn't driving, it's just getting from A to B with as little faff as possble

What happens when a Royal Navy warship sees a NATO task force headed straight for it? A crash course in Morse

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: NATO task force can't read Morse code?

they are defined as that, but in reality fuses are there to reduce the need for fire extinguishers

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: interesting stuff

what she really wants is to stop them by running them down and leaving the occupants in the water

which is problematic on a number of fronts

Alan Brown Silver badge

The last time I was seasick was because someone had projectile vomited all over me from an upper deck

I normally just head for the canteen and then fall asleep. Guess i'm lucky

BOFH: You'll find there's a company asset tag right here, underneath the monstrously heavy arcade machine

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Smoke from paper in the fuser...

" melting the entire plastic casing (one of those white Fujitsu 486s I think). Very lucky it didn't set on fire."

They won't burn - bromiated plastics see to that - however the fumes are probably mildly carcinogenic :)

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Toaster Smoke Alarm

the solution - of course - is to ban bagels

Alan Brown Silver badge

"but it wuz cheeper!"

Alan Brown Silver badge

Re: Personal heaters

"fool killer"