Posts by Alfred

Re: I WAS FIRST MATE

How about ten vending machines? That's a lot faster than one barman.

Re: From afar

The evidence indicates that companies are no more the hypothetical perfectly economically-rational entity than individuals are.

Re: Trump is right

I understand some evidence indicates that these immigrants you are speaking of, on the whole, are net contributors to US society. It's a contentious subject and the net economic effect is very difficult to judge.

Here's a page discussing various factors; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_impact_of_illegal_immigrants_in_the_United_States

So unless you've got anything more solid than simply asserting that they are a net cost to the US, it is clear that you literally don't know what you're talking about. I don't just meant that as an insult. You literally do not have the information and analysis necessary to make a good judgement here.

Re: government spooks

The part-timers ARE the TA (or rather, the Army Reserve, Royal Navy Reserve, RAuxAF and any Royal Marine Reserve who feel the need), so they attract pay at the standard daily rate for their rank/rate.

So yes, they do.

Re: "their freedom to wear whatever they want"

Well, at least by advertising it so publicly, everyone gets to know you're a dickhead. You can stand at the edge of school grounds asserting your magical independence to be a twat.

Re: From the other side

Apropos of the general theme, my current employer and the one before last are fucking Vikings when it comes to fixing the spec on signing the contract and charging a fortune to change it. It works out better for everyone; people actually think about what they want before they agree to buy it, and it doesn't change unless it really, really needs to.

Agile, whatever it once was, has just become a way everyone involved avoids having to think about what it's actually meant to do. While it may well have started life as a defence against incompetent customers who don't know what they want and the incompetent sales people who sell them something without actually identifying what it is they want, it seems to have become a way to actually embrace that incompetency and let it flourish.

Re: how about a simpler system

"teens nowadays do these things like breathing"

A small number of them do. I find the majority of them are by no means the internet and technology savvy digital natives the media get so breathless about.

Re: It's not a compass.

"You need another bit of information, where you started from."

OMG, you've spotted the fatal flaw. Unless... unless... yes, it's just possible that someone could make a note of where they're starting from.

Evidence for Skilled Abacus Operator being faster than someone with a calculator

"does anyone have any evidence for or against the old claim that a skilled abacus operator can produce results faster than someone using a handheld calculator?"

I'm glad you specified "skilled abacus operator" rather than specifying operating on an actual abacus.

The very skilled abacus operators don't even the abacus; they begin with the physical abacus, but as they progress they use a model of one inside their head to do the calculation, instead of having to accept the delay of physically manipulating a real abacus.

Here's a skilled abacus operator (not using an actual abacus - that'd be too slow!) summing 10 four digit numbers in three seconds:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3g63WR_PelY&t=0m55s

Here's a Guardian piece on the championships. 15 three digit numbers flashed up in 1.70 seconds , and the skilled abacus operator summed them.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/alexs-adventures-in-numberland/2012/oct/29/mathematics

Re: What do you mean?

"Sexist Dinosaur plc,"

Nothing sexist about what you said. By all means, you have a tall blonde man as your personal assistant to look nice, sitting at your reception desk painting his nails and finding ways to show off his stocking-clad legs to your customers. Knock yourself out.

Re: Emotional damage and stress to all involved.

"how were they to know the system was setup with 2 different search terms (old and new) and did not bring up a per word result (screening + cancer) but only brought up a single term result ("cancer screening" exactly)."

I can only speculate on how *they* could have known, but *I* would have known because the testing would have included identifying records (which could have been artificial test records, or anonymised real records, or perhaps just plain real records with suitable privacy precautions taken) containing one word, and both words, and no words, together and apart, testing search terms in all the various permutations, and the results compared with the expected output based on the identified test records.

Whether by design or process or procedure or incompetence, what on the face of it sounds like a relatively simple test to consider and execute wasn't done. This is incompetence; spread across which levels (project, programming, testing, management, requirements, etc etc), I couldn't speculate, but this is incompetence.

I was working for a company that got a piece of this in the early days, and that would have been around 2002. I suspect that in this case, the civil drone industry has come a very long way in the last 16 years; often, there's just no way to know in the early days of a programme that by the time it finishes, the civil industry would have produced a cheap alternative.

Re: "They looked for the password on the CD . . ."

It does, but sometimes (maybe not in this case) there's no reason at all for the data to be password protected; there's simply a blanket demand that all data be password protected.

I sent someone a list of suppliers I'd cut and paste from the internet. Policy was that all data being sent out had to be password protected. Duly zipped it in a password protected zipfile, named "thePasswordIsBeans", with "password = beans" written on the CD.

Policy obeyed, data protected to the level required.

"Within 24h of any invasion threat, a crew could be flown in and have them operational."

That's not true, unless you're willing to pay maintenance crews permanently to keep the vessels in order, and crews paid permanently to stay in date on the vessels. At which point, you've basically just created full-time ships with full-time crews.

Re: Stupid but?

" Should we go easy on ... pedophilia because of that?"

Pedophilia isn't a crime. Acting on it is.

There is no magic money tree

But there is, I am told, an Enchanted Brexit Fountain of Prosperity :)

Re: Well, first, the order has been rescinded by the courts...

The LEFTIES are having the LAW applied. If you don't like the rule of law, that's your preference, but don't twist the facts to enable your double-think.

Re: Not that bothered..

"because the BBC went even further to the Left"

People with the other set of narrow-minded prejudices insist it's biased to the right. You, and others like you, just see what you want to see.

Re: What the hell

Money spend buying something from abroad, by the very definition of how international money works, will come back to the UK for spending. If it doesn't ever come back, we got them for free.

Re: Who cares?

"it will make the UK safer"

Safer for whom? It will make the UK more dangerous for everyone whose details are collected and retained.

Re: Some people think it sounds crazy, some don't

"I prefer a world where we can all make jokes about each other without thin-skinned killjoys telling us we're bad to do so."

Good to know, you cock-gobbling child abuser.

"Because, of course, the US Navy is conducting surveys into ocean currents and salinity. Yes, natural thing for the military to do, is that. Definitely. At this time of shallow budgets and cost-consciousness, naturally they're just putzing around near their biggest foe making sure the sea isn't too salty."

Well, yes, it is. Naval survey vessels do this sort of thing a lot. It's a pretty common activity. I accuse you of having very little context and basically of having no idea what you're talking about. You've latched on to a simple idea - why would they be doing this - and with zero knowledge spun yourself an empty conclusion.

"naturally they're just putzing around near their biggest foe making sure the sea isn't too salty."

Their biggest foe, The Philippines? You really do have no idea.

"Most people don't update or modify their computers..... might install bits of software, games and the like"

Bingo. If they didn't do that, their computers wouldn't have to be capable of it, and a PC that was intended to never change once it left the manufacturer would be enormously more reliable.

That's the constant modding that users do, and that's (and the fact that the PC has to be capable of being constantly modded in this fashion) what makes it not like a car. That users don't realise they're taking an enormously complex machine and constantly fiddling with it doesn't change the fact that they are.

Re: The Matrix

You *are* in the Edwardian era. From the several orders of magnitude further up the progress chain that the controllers are, the Edwardian era and the 21st century look the same.

Re: Ubuntu and RH Enterprise

Sadly, I honestly don't recall. I know that at one point years ago I tried Ubuntu and found that it was easier for me in my particular set of use cases, but that was then. I went through SUSE as well. I wouldn't be surprised if RHEL was actually now just as good, or better, for those use cases, but as with all tools, I'll only switch back when the pain of the one I'm currently using outweighs the pain of switching.

Re: ?

It communicates to other mariners that you are at anchor. It's law of the sea via the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Regulations_for_Preventing_Collisions_at_Sea

Re: "only around a hundred outsiders get to see it each year"? Really?

I think they must have relaxed a bit on visas. As I understood it from Koryo tours, if you're not a journalist and you don't have pictures of yourself on facebook mocking the DPRK or Kim, you'll be fine.

Re: This is bloody ridiculous.

"How exactly were they assisting in the crime sweetie?"

They were told that advert X is placed by a criminal, to facilitate a crime. They chose to continue displaying advert X. In doing so, they knowingly assisted a criminal commit a crime.

Your use of "sweetie" marks you out as a passive-aggressive prick. Your inability to understand how knowingly displaying an advert from a criminal, placed for the purposes of criminal activities, assists the undertaking of a crime, marks you out as dangerously stupid.

Re: idiots with more money than sense...

"Works fine".

Up until the point that a building catches fire, it has a perfect record of not catching fire. As you say, works fine.

Re: 20 wks in prison! He's a kid for fucks sake!

I don't get it. Do you mean 20 wks old? Was there a typo in the original article?

Sometimes, the wall is really quite tall. Sometimes, it's several walls in a row and climbing over the first five so you can use a periscope over the sixth isn't really practical. Sometimes the wall is far away, and sometimes standing behind it to use a periscope puts one very much in the open. Basically, there are lots of times when sauntering up to something with a periscope is a worse idea than hiding somewhere safe and sending a little drone to do the looking for you.

If you're happy with the idea of spy planes instead of sending a man to take a look, then this is the same principle, writ smaller.

Re: Or the Russians haven't updated their website yet

" 'The A and B jointly invaded C'. If you don't know what A, B and C are, would you conclude that A & B moved on the same day? At least I would yet in this case it would be a clear untruth."

So YOU would be stupid enough to make a false assumption not supported by the data? Is that really your argument? Your own stupidity?