Posts by BristolBachelor

Re: Wwas then never heard from again

I also heard on the side someone saying that you don't want to do that, but I can't tell you why. Nor can you have any data on it (International Trade in Arms Regulations). Just here it is, slightly used but no real data on performances, etc.

I wasn't close enough to know if others did get hints on how to use it, but having worked on other projects, it wouldn't surprise me if they didn't. Far too often, they go and have an hour teleconference, and then come out of it saying that they can't tell you anything.

Washington Post: A CEO who resisted NSA spying is out of prison. And he feels ‘vindicated’ by Snowden leaks.

Re: change the web address??

In addition, the fact that this guy found it, means that he accessed the records of someone else. Yet "Recipero...has no evidence that any of the sensitive information had been siphoned off."

Gives me the feeling that their "intrusion protection" alarm might be a red light bulb that is not wired-up.

@David Austin

"I like the fact IE has a functioning menu bar by default..."

You must be using an old version then. The version I am forced to use by corporate only has a menu bar if you find the option to enble it (and you need the menu bar to find the option).

However I have found no way to get the tabs to be part of the actual page that they are a tab of. I mean when you look at a Rollerdex, the page has your contacts and the tab is part of thst page and has the letter at the top. It doesn't have the page and then 3 lines of menu bars and then the tabs floating on top. MS response? " You want the tab bar of tabs conected to the pages that they are tabs of? Well FK you"

I didn't read anyone saying that someone was guilty.

What I read was someone offering a potential sentence for someone found guilty that might prevent the criminal type migrating to politics to take advantage of the power the position gives them. Criminals will always try to increase their power/wealth, and if they end up changing laws that affect millions, they do significant damage to society. The possibility of dropping on the end of a rope may make them consider something else.

Re: Cut off their internet: problem solved.

"Cut all internet cables to N Korea. Problem solved."

Not really; they also complain that they're being hacked by at least China and Iran. Also loads of other are 'stealing' their IP. Better to cut all the cables going into the US of A, and forget that the rest of the world doesn't exist.

Re: in my small village in italy

Hmmm In Spain I pay 178€/year and get 20MB a day of "full speed" and then it drops to about 128bps and most attemps to do anything just time out. Thank god for internet kiosks.

Next year I'm going to try to negotiate paying for a dedicated fibre from the exchange - the exchange has ethernet so is set up for it, and is only 6km away. That will be my carrot. The stick is that othetwise I will force the legal requirement for them to provide me with a copper pair - and all the pairs within Kms are used.

Re: This is entirely UNreasonable

"This is important in the recent Amazon 1p case: the contract of sale is not formed until the customer has paid, AND the goods have been delivered to the customer. "

That may be the case in the UK, but this whole thing is about the differences in the rules between the different EU members. For example in Spain, the VAT is immediately payable as soon as the invoice is issued. There is no requirement for you to be paid, or for the contract to be upheld. Under a new law, you may be able to convince the tax office to rebate the VAT on something that doesn't end up being paid (although you'll have to wait until the end of the year for your refund, if any).

"VAT is a "Value Added Tax", and the whole idea of is is that at each stage in a production process where value is added, it is taxed."

NO - VAT is a consumption tax. It is paid when something is consumed. Intermediaries in the chain do not charge/pay VAT (and if they do, they claim it back). The idea is that the VAT is charged at the price that the consumer pays, which is normally the higest price in the chain. In your example, the printers buy their ink/paper VAT free, and only if it is sold to a consumer is VAT charged (although in the UK they could claim it is a book, and hence attracts VAT at 0%)

Re: In other news

Given that the Portuguese sites are generally in Potuguese and the Spanish read Spanish (the bilingual ones also can also read 100 words of English), I don't really see that happening.

Re: word change...

"it is US the tax payer that funded the R&D that put all those satellites in orbit."

Quite a bit used to come from Spot image and Infoterra which are European, but do go on.

Re: Generator stories....

"All works great, except that the pump was connected to a non-essential supply....."

I think I maybe worked at that site. Was next to a small regional airport with a grass strip?

Re: But

"Worse still the standard kilo (as located in Paris) appears to be CHANGING (not a lot, but enough)."

I read that they found out that it was accumulating mercury from the air. They had a standard one that was kept sealed, and the day-to-day standard. Every now and then, they would compare them, and found that the day-to-day weight was gaining mass. The last guy who was qualified to polish and clean it, did a final clean before he retired and they analysed what came off. They assumed that the mercury came from the breath of the staff who had amalgum fillings.

Re: "rightsholders sit around and lobby government for handouts"

"...in nature, no lion ever sued another..."

No. What happened was that one lion killed another. Are you suggesting that is the correct way then?

Re: Forced to view content (Adverts etc.)

"The alternative is jumping to the top menu and selecting "Play Feature". OK, it's more button presses, but a whole lot faster than the default."

On my Panasonic Bluray recorder, trying that just returns you right to the start, so you have to start watching the anti-piracy and adverts all over again. In fact on some DVDs where you have to use the top menu to watch the firm gets you stuck in an infinite loop. Thankfully I still have an old school DVD player, and will never buy Panasonic again.

Re: What The F...?!

No - HDR photography is taking photos with a high dynamic range. There is no need to take multiple exposures if your image sensor has the requisite range (12 stops is not enough). There have been a few image sensors that had alternate photosites with a different gain (sometimes done electrically, sometimes by using smaller/larger photosites). Using these sensors, the de-mosaic works out the correct photosite to use because one will typically be saturated, and the other somewhere in the noise floor.

The idea of HDR video is to still take a series of single exposures, but each one has a wider range than currently.

Re: Oh, you mean

"Ah, a lot like regional coding on DVDs'???"

Yeah, but you see that (possibly because of the European common market), the whole of Europe is region 2, so if you want to buy your DVDs in Amazon UK, ship them to somewhere else in Europe and watch them there, you can. However, they do try to bend the rules by not putting sound tracks in certain languages; e.g. forcing you to buy the Spanish version of the DVD at 18€ instead of buying the UK version for £4.50.

What he's complaining about is things like Sky saying that you can't be a subscriber if you don't live in the UK (even if you have the necessary 3m dish!), or things like iPlayer saying bog-off because you aren't using a VPN.

Re: Uh, so let me get this straight...

In space you can't use silicon cells - they degrade too quickly because of the radiation. Satellites currently use "Tripple Junction" cells made from Galium Asenide. The 3 junctions each capture photons of different wavelengths which increases the efficiency, so similar to what was done here, but without mirrors. They are currently in the ~30% efficiency level for cells (once you add physical structure, harness, prptection etc. it drops a litle as a system. If interested look here at some examples Azure Space

The article mentions solar thermal generation efficiency, but fails to mention what efficiency the new system has at storing the power so that you can use it to light your house after the sun has set. This built-in energy storage is what makes solar thermal more flexable

Re: Idle curiosity

I believe that the valves need to be re-serviced after 3 attempts, but I am not too involved in that end of the rocket - my stuff is at the top.

Fahrenheit?

'fraid so, yes. Also feet and inches, except for Mars orbit insertions which are measured in London Double-decker buses.

Re: With it's enhanced direction control...

It's sadly lacking in space (and life support) to be a lifeboat. As it is, the Soyuz can depart at a moment's notice; no need to wait while the ISS disintegrates around you (worst case). That is unlike the Space shuttle, which needed to wait until an oportune moment to detach.

Re: "Not available in your country. Sorry."

"As in Amazon.co.uk? (can be used to order stuff to a French address)"

Yes, and I can tell you that Amazon.co.uk can sell you the DVDs. (even to a French afdress, although they'll now stiff you for postage) I can also tell you that the DVD loading sequencies, menus and extras are all worth watching.

There has been discussion of designing one in the future for outer solar sysyem probes, and things like a possible boat craft to sail the seas of Titan (as well as work to produce the required nuclear isotopes). For now, there is some R&D to optimise solar array power generation on the surace of Mars, which would also help for future probes similar to Philae.

Re: Sounds like Vodafone is unhappy

I have a phone that could not be more consumer friendly - I can put ANY SIM from ANY network in it and it will work. No need for anything else. No need for the manufacturer to do anything, and certainly no need for them to compile the list of who I can use.

Re: They're not fighting the wind @ratfox

Yup, that's right. They are sort of trying to do an Iridium on the cheap (launching satellites is still bloody expensive). However they are running into the same problems; each country wants to regulate the airwaves within their borders. They'll have to negotiate with every country they overfly for bandwidth (or re-sell their broadcast capability to current license holders in each country).

I don't know how succesfully the loons could change their altitude to take advantage of winds in different directions to stay in a rough location.

I wonder if Hans Vestberg is just suffering from sour grapes from not being able to sell his companies kit to go on the loons?

Re: SIMMs

Yeah, and before they were selling the new Mac Mini, there weren't any PCB manufacturers making the PCBs for it either. Funnily enough, there are now. If Apple says they want to buy memory in a certain format, it will be available.

I obviously don't know the reason, but soldering the RAM directly on the board will save the cost of the extra PCB, and the sockets. Selling it for the same price means extra profit. Forcing people to trade up to a more expensive one rather than buying a cheap one and seperate RAM elsewhere makes even more profit. Not having people change the RAM avoids lots of service and technical questions about what you can do or because it doesn't work right afterwards. A bit of negative press; people will still buy them; there is almost no negative for Apple.

Re: Yah! @No 6

In addition to what is said above; if I enter into a contract with, say Vodafone, how does locking a phone to Vodafone stop me from selling the phone to someone else who wants to use it on Vodafone?

And if they insist on locking the phone to protect the contract, they won't chase after someone who stops paying?

The contract protects the contract full stop. Locking the phone is just to spite you if you want to go elsewhere.

Re: Value for money?

I'm still playing nicely with the Dell U2410. This uses the same IPS LCD panel as the iMAC from a while ago. However the difference is that the Dell has a CFL backlight that gives nice even coverage and AdobeRGB colour gamut. The i-version only manages sRGB, has a very shinny front and uneven lighting. Also the i-brightness is so high that you lose almost 2-bits per pixel attempting to adjust the brightness level when you calibrate it (and the calibration still varies across the screen). All of this is necessary with things that actually go to print.

I'm watching the Dell 5k monitors with interest to see how they play out. I'm unlikely to buy the i-version because of the limitations that normally come with it. Oh and I'm not anti i-things at all. These Dells are driven from Macs.

As an aside, I'm lost for words that Windows cannot scale the UI properly on screens, given that Window3.0 had a screen resolution DPI setting that was expressly designed to do things likt this.

Re: It would make more sense to have a "passive" Interface

So what you are saying is that instead of having the modulator/demodulator next to the RF stages and antennas, you put it at the other end of a Cat5 cable?

And this allows you to more easily upgrade your infrastructure? <Sarc>Why, because you don't have to climb a ladder to where the RF/antennas are to change the modulator/demodulator - you just change them in the rack where they are fitted instead? </Sarc> If you seriously change the modulation scheme, you still have to change the modulator/demodulator unless you built enough flexibility into the original design, and in this case it doesn't matter where it physically is.

Also beam forming invloves adding a phase delay into the RF signal. I'm not sure that you could do it at any stage other than RF. Beam forming is also to direct the signal from a particular set of antennas that are close together. If you have a whole site that was say 300m accross and tried beam forming, the beams would only really be formed at a significant distance from all the antennas (likely beyond the range for WiFi), and would not really work inside the perimeter of the antennas. Meanwhile, beamforming accross the 6 antennas of a single AP works very nicely because you are outside the perimeter of the antennas, and at 2-3m away you are at a significant distance compared to the 10-15cm between the antennas.

Re: "using a password and PIN that was subsequently written into a "pin.xml" file in cleartext"

But presumably "automount" means that the user doesn't want to/need to enter it (similar to the auto login account name and password being stored in clear text in the windows registry)